Poet and Black Studies scholar, Howard University
Joshua Myers’s Holy Ghost Key celebrates the essential role of African music in the continuity and sustenance of African Diasporic life and culture. Myers weaves his broad knowledge of African and African American music practices, genres and instruments with his memory of gospel lyrics and symbols evoking African spirituality, showing us the ways in which this music has been both the light on our path and the grounding of our historic journey. Though many of the poems pay tribute to the genius of contemporary musicians who have won popular acclaim, the entire collection reminds of a persistent African ancestral legacy.
“His poems are … moving because they are musical, rich in swinging cadences, while they are fat with the funk and soul of great gospel and blues….These poems are deeply planted in Black culture.”
– A.B. Spellman, Between the Night and Its Music
To order: wsupress.wayne.edu; 800-WSU-READ
Naomi Long Madgett Award Book
Distributed by Wayne State University Press
Submissions to NLM Award competition due March 15
c/o 14063 San Juan Dr., Detroit, MI 48238
www.BroadsideLotusPress.org for Guidelines
His first name, LeRoy, translates as “the king” in French (le roi), and that’s how he pronounced it, with the accent on the second syllable. That might strike some as an affectation. But by all accounts Detroit artist LeRoy Foster was as humble as they come. Foster may have lived more like a pauper than […]
The 2012 Kresge Eminent Artist Award goes to Naomi Long Madgett. She’s an award winning poet, editor, and educator. She’s often called the godmother of African-American poetry. Dr. Madgett says the award came as a complete surprise because she didn’t even know she was being considered for the award. “So it means a great deal […]
2019 Naomi Long Madgett Award winner Jacquese Armstrong is a poet/writer residing in Central New Jersey. Her first poetry chapbook, dance of the shadows, was released June 2017. She has been published in For Harriet, A Gathering of the Tribes, The Rising Phoenix Review, Black Magnolias Literary Journal and Ourselves/Black. Ms. Armstrong was a 2015 recipient of the Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts.
Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award Winner 2020
…a daughter’s odyssey through a web of fractured relationships with lovers and kin… a spirit determined to survive….
Jessica Lanay holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including Sugar House Review, Fugue, A Bad Penny Review, and Indiana Review.
Broadside Lotus Press Announces 2022 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award Winner
Sheri Flowers Anderson has won the 2022 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award with her manuscript entitled House and Home. Ms. Anderson is retired and lives in San Antonio, TX. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in business management, with a minor in creative writing, at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. For many years she developed her writing abilities in her spare time while working professionally as a human resources specialist. She has won numerous awards for memoir and short story writing as well as for poetry. Her poems have been published widely over the last several decades, including in Voices International Magazine, and in Voices Along the River, The Dream Catcher and Inkwell Echoes anthologies. We are happy to welcome Ms. Anderson into the Broadside Lotus Press legacy.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Naomi Long Madgett, Poet Laureate of the City of Detroit since 2001 and recipient of the 2012 Kresge Eminent Artist Award, is the author of ten books of poetry and two textbooks and editor of two anthologies. Her poems appear in numerous journals and more than 180 anthologies both here and abroad. Several have been set to music and publicly performed. Her career as a published poet spans more than sixty years. In 1980 Lotus Press, Inc. was recognized as a 501(C)(3) organization specializing in the publication of books of poetry of high literary quality. Naomi continued to serve as publisher/ editor until 2015 when Lotus Press merged with Broadside Press, becoming what is now Broadside Lotus Press
This competition is open to African American poets only. If you have already had a book published by Lotus Press, you are ineligible. However, inclusion in a Lotus Press anthology does not disqualify you. Award entries must be received by March 15, 2025.You will be notified of the winner’s and the judges’ names in June, 2025. The decision of the judge is final.
Dudley Felker Randall’s first self-published work, a poem titled “The Ballad of Birmingham,” was based on the bombing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birmingham church 1963, which killed four girls. The majority of Randall’s works were based on significant historical events and people that impacted the life of African American people. Randall’s poetry developed while attending Wayne State University, one of his poems titled “Roses of Revolution” was published in Milestone I, the university’s newspaper. In 1954, Randall had published a poem titled “Legacy: My South” in Free Lance publication. Prior to 1969, Randall established his own publishing company, Broadside Press, in 1965. Randall first ran the Broadside Press out of his home on the West Side of Detroit and when the company expanded, the publishing company relocated to downtown Detroit.
“Next to Broadside Press, Detroit has also been the home base of a second premier publisher of black poetry in the United States, Lotus Press. Poet Naomi Long Madgett, with the aid of local Detroit supporters, established this company in 1972.”
“What made the Broadside Press significant was that it gave African American poets and writers the opportunity to have their works published during a time when major publishing houses did not take these works seriously. The works of Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks and many others that were mainly Detroit natives had their works published by Randall’s Broadside Press. This led to over 90 Broadside Press published titles of poetry and 500,000 books in print from 1965-1977.”
“Randall and Madgett shared a common bond in becoming publishing pioneers of African American literature.”
“The merger represents “a wealth of literary heritage” said Christopher Rutherford, Chairman of the Board of Broadside Lotus Press, who added that all the works of Broadside Press will begin to be digitized this summer thanks to a grant from the Knight”
“Naomi Long Madgett is 91 years old, but she continues to shape Detroit poetry…Like Lotus, Broadside Press has been an American institution since it was founded in 1965 by the poet Dudley Randall.”
