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Professor Redmond is former Chairman of the Creative Writing Committee at
Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Redmond was named Poet Laureate of
East Saint Louis (IL) in 1976, the same year Doubleday published his best selling
book, Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical Commentary.
From 1970-85, Redmond was Professor of English and
Poet-in-Residence in Ethnic Studies at California
State University-Sacramento where he won several honors including
an Outstanding Faculty Research Award. Before he began his
15-year stint at CSUS, he spent two years (1967-69) as Teacher-Counselor and Poet-in-Residence
at Southern Illinois University's Experiment in Higher Education (EHE) in East
St. Louis. At EHE, he taught with Henry Dumas, Joyce Ladner, Oliver Jackson,
and Katherine Dunham, serving as a Senior Consultant to the latter at her
Performing Arts Training Center.
Currently in the middle of a multi-year epic poem about Dunham, Redmond
has authored or edited more than 25 volumes of poetry, collections of diverse
writings, and plays for stage and TV. In his capacity as Dumas’ Literary Executor
(since 1968) he has, with assistance from Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison, edited
several collections of the late writer’s works.
Redmond's awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing
Fellowship, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Pan-African Movement USA, a National
Endowment for the Humanities Grant, a Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, a
Tribute to an Elder Honor from the African Poetry Theater of NYC, an American Book
Award (ABA) for The Eye in the Ceiling: Selected Poems (1993), a second ABA for
Lifetime Achievement (2012), and Writing Fellowships from the Art Councils of
California, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri and West Virginia.
Other collections of his poetry include Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars (1970),
River of Bones and Flesh and Blood (1971), Songs from an Afro-Phone (1972),
In a Time of Rain & Desire: New Love Poems (1973), Consider Loneliness as
These Things (1974), and Blues-Ode to the Fore Dreamers & Other Poems (2001).
He also edited two anthologies: Sides of the River: A Mini-Anthology of Black
Writings (1969) and Griefs of Joy: Anthology of Afro-American Poetry
for Students (1977), and released an LP recording/CD reading his poetry to
musical accompaniment: Blood Links and Sacred Places (1973/2001). Redmond's
50-year retrospective of writings, Arkansippi Memwars: 1962-2012
(Poems, Prose & Chants), will be published later this year by Third World Press.
In 1986, a group of East Saint Louis authors—headed by Sherman L. Fowler and
Darlene Roy--established the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club in his honor; and in
1998, Oprah Winfrey invited him to read an original poem at Maya Angelou's 70th
birthday gala which took place aboard a cruise ship that Winfrey reserved for
Angelou and several hundred of her closest friends. In 1999, Redmond joined
Angelou, Toni Morrison, Walter Mosley, Lerone Bennett Jr., August Wilson and
Henry Dumas as an inductee into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of
African Descent.
In 2003, he received the Staying the Course Award from ETA of Chicago; fellow
awardees included Angela Bassett, CCH Pounder, Conrad Worrill, and Gordon Parks.
Having begun taking pictures of African American writers and cultural icons in
the 1960's, Redmond experienced the fruits of his photographic labors in 2004
when "Visualizing Black Writers: An Extra-Literary Exhibit from the Eugene B.
Redmond Collection," curated by Howard Rambsy II, received international premiers
at Morris University Center Gallery, SIU-Edwardsville (February); and the
African Studies Institute Gallery, University of Ibadan in Nigeria (May).
Other exhibits have occurred at James Madison University, University of
Kansas-Lawrence, East St. Louis (IL) Municipal Building, Missouri History
Museum (St. Louis), University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, and University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. He has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Southern University-Baton Rouge, the University of
Lagos-Nigeria, Wayne State University (as the Martin Luther King Jr.-Cesar
Chavez-Rosa Parks Distinguished Visiting Professor/Writer), Leiden
University-Holland, and University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Recent issues of Drumvoices (#15, #16 & #17) feature "Kwansabas for Maya
Angelou & Quincy Troupe," as well as interviews with Angelou, Troupe and
Michael Datcher; "Kwansabas for Richard Wright/Centennial"; and poetic/prosaic
homage to the "20th Anniversary of DR," "The East St. Louis Sesquicentennial,"
"EBR Writers Club's 25th Birthday," and the "85th Birthday of Miles Davis."
Companions to Drumvoices include Images & Homages: 'Memwars' from the Eugene
B. Redmond Collection and Eighty Moods of Maya & Other Photo-Poetic
Moments from the EBR Collection, all being volumes of photos, paintings,
posters, and various memorabilia gathered by Redmond over the past five decades.
In 2007, Redmond was inducted into the Senior Illinoisans Hall of Fame
at the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield, and received the Sterling A. Brown
Lifetime Achievement Award from the African American Literature and Culture
Society of the American Literature Association. In the same year, during a
November event in honor of his 70th birthday and retirement, SIUE Chancellor
Vaughn Vandegrift announced the University’s plan to bestow an Honorary Doctorate
of Humane Letters on Redmond. That bestowal took place in May, 2008, when
Redmond gave the commencement address.
For more information, call the Cal State L.A. English Department at (323)
343-4140, or contact Dr. Lauri Ramey (lramey@calstatela.edu).
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