Michael Harper

Michael Harper was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938. He has published
more than ten books of poetry, most recently Selected Poems (ARC
Publications, 2002); Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems
(2000); Honorable Amendments (1995); and Healing Song for the Inner Ear
(1985). His other collections include: Images of Kin (1977), which won the
Melville-Cane Award from the Poetry Society of America and was nominated
for the National Book Award; Nightmare Begins Responsibility
(1975); History is Your Heartbeat (1971), which won the Black Academy of
Arts & Letters Award for poetry; and Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970),
which was nominated for the National Book Award. Harper is co-editor
with Anthony Walton of The Vintage Book of African American Poetry
(2000) and Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African
Americans Since 1945 (1994), and with Robert B. Stepto of Chant of Saints:
A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship (1979). He
was the first Poet Laureate of the State of Rhode Island (1988–1993) and is
University Professor and Professor of English at Brown University, where he
has taught since 1970. He lives in Barrington, Rhode Island.