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2008 Pushcart Prize Winner  Afaa's Resume (49 KB)"Afaa Michael Weaver is one of the most significant poets writing today. With its blend of Chinese spiritualism and American groundedness, his poetry presents the reader (and the listener, for his body of work is meant to be read aloud) with challenging questions about identity, about how physicality and spirit act together or counteract each other to shape who we are in the world. His attention to the way language works is rare, and the effects of that attention on his poetry are distinctive and expansive." Henry Louis Gates Harvard University *** SKIPPING THE 8TH GRADE In 1968, I was a sixteen year old freshman at the University of Maryland in College Park, the main campus. It was a heady year both personally and in the nation. That spring I watched Baltimore go up in flames, laced with the sound of gunfire, as part of the national response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I had done well on the National Merit Exam, and my parents were determined that I should become an engineer. My high school, Baltimore Polytechnic, was an engineering high school and touted as one of the best public schools in the country. I had skipped the 8th grade, and the skipping landed me on the College Park campus with a briefcase full of textbooks for engineering, calculus, chemistry, and English. It was English that would bring me back to my touchstone, a love of words and writing that went back at least as far as the 6th grade when I came to class with twelve pages of an autobiography. Mrs. Louis was undone. “Michael, I didn’t mean for you to do all this.” In 1970, after two years at the University of Maryland, I left university life and went into the life of blue collar factory work, first alongside my father and uncles at the Sparrows Point Bethlehem Steel Company, which had been the largest steel plant in the world. That spring Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, and although my lottery number was very safe, I volunteered for the Army Reserves. One year later after working in the steel mill and going away for basic combat training, I took a job at the Procter & Gamble plant in Baltimore, where I remained as a blue collar worker for fourteen more years. In all of this time, I was writing poetry, getting published, giving readings, and publishing other poets, the cooperative thing we do in the society of poets. After over thirty active years as a poet, it is quite an honor to be compared to Walt Whitman. Instead of consciously trying to embody Whitman, I have been about the business of writing my life on the palimpsest of America as I know it, and I guess that is what has brought me to being compared to Whitman. Rereading Harold Bloom's assessment of Whitman has driven home to me just what an honor it is to be compared this way to the man who kept a rather untidy house around the corner from where I began my tenure track career, at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. Little did I know... For me the guide and translator through all of this has been Langston Hughes, whom I had the good fortune to study through conversations with my mentor and friend at Brown University during my graduate days. That mentor and friend was the late Professor George Houston Bass, secretary to Mr. Hughes and executor of his estate. Professor Bass explained my charge saying, “Langston Hughes had to create his blues. Your father gave you your blues. In your life as a poet, you must bring the respect of the critics to the masses.” It is perhaps the voice that spoke also to Whitman as he wrote: “ONE’S SELF I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.” --Walt Whitman *** I am available for poetry readings and lectures on topics such as Chinese culture and poetics, child trauma and artistic imagination, working class life and American lyricism, and the experience of language acquisition as a middle aged student. For bookings please call 617 521-2220 *** A MORE FORMAL BIO Afaa Michael Weaver In 1951, Afaa Michael Weaver (Michael S. Weaver) was born in Baltimore. He attended the Baltimore Public Schools, and at sixteen began studying at the University of Maryland in College Park as an engineering student. He left the university to begin his fifteen year career as a blue collar worker, which was his literary apprenticeship. During this time he wrote and published poetry, short fiction, and journalism. In addition, he founded 7th Son Press and the literary magazine Blind Alleys. From 19070-73, He served in the armed forces in the 342nd Army Security Agency as a reservist and received an honorable discharge. In 1984 to 1985, his last year of factory work, Afaa received a contract for his first book, Water Song, and an NEA grant. He left the factory in 1985 and entered Brown University’s graduate writing program on a full university fellowship. At Brown his focus was playwriting. In poetry he worked with Keith Waldrop, C.D. Wright, and Michael S. Harper. In playwriting he worked with Paula Vogel, who was his thesis advisor, and the late George Houston Bass, who was secretary to Langston Hughes. In 1993, Weaver had two plays produced professionally. In 1989 Rosa was a finalist for the Multicultural Award from Seattle Group Theater. In 1990, his play the The Last Congregation was cited as a semi-finalist at the University of Colorado’s theater competition. Rosa was produced that spring at Venture Theater under a small Equity contract. Elvira and the Lost Prince was produced at ETA Theater in Chicago, where it received the Playwrights Discovery/ In 1986, he received his B.A. in Literature in English from Excelsior College and his M.A. (later renamed M.F.A.) in Creative Writing from Brown. Since Water Song he has published a total of nine books of poetry in fifteen years, including three in 2000, Multitudes, The Ten Lights of God, and Sandy Point. He is the editor of These Hands I Know, a collection of plays by poets and prose writers on the subject of black family life. From 1997 to 2000, Afaa served as the Editor of Obsidian III, based at North Carolina State University. In the spring semester of 1997, he was Poet in Residence at Bucknell University’s Stadler Poetry Center. His latest collection is The Plum Flower Dance/ He has received a Pushcart prize, fellowships from NEA, the Pew foundation, the PA Council on the arts, and the offices of the Fulbright program. In 2001, as a Fulbright fellow, he taught at National Taiwan University. He began his formal studies of Chinese in 2002, and has received certification for completing the intermediate level at the Taipei Language Institute in Taiwan. At Simmons Weaver is the chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference, the first of which took place on October 8-10, 2004, the first such gathering of its type outside of China and Taiwan in modern literary history. In Taiwan Dr. Perng Chinghsi of National Taiwan University gave Afaa the Chinese name is Wei Ya Feng. Tess Onwueme gave him the name “Afaa.” Afaa holds a first degree black sash in Taijiquan from the World Kuoshu Federation and is a formal Dao disciple of Shiye Huang Chien Liang, the 64th generation grandmaster of the Tien Shan P’ai Association. He has taught City University of New York, Seton Hall Law School, and New York University. In 1990, he took a tenure track position at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, where, in 1995, he received tenure with distinction as an early candidate. In 1998, he accepted an endowed chair at Simmons College as the Alumnae Professor of English. Publication History Books of Poetry: Water Song U of VA 1985 some days it’s a slow walk to evening Paradigm Press 1989 My Father’s Geography U of Pittsburgh 1992 Stations in a Dream Dolphin Moon Press 1993 Timber & Prayer University of Pittsburgh 1995 (Pulitzer finalist 1996) Talisman Tia Chucha/ Sandy Point The Press of Appletree Alley 2000 The Ten Lights of God Bucknell UP 2000 Multitudes Sarabande Books 2000 The Plum Flower Dance U of Pittsburgh 2007 Anthologies (as editor): Gathering Voices (in collaboration with James Taylor and David Beaudouin) 1985 These Hands I Know Sarabande Books 2002 Poetry in journals (a sampling): The Kenyon Review African-American Review The Southern Review Women’s Studies Quarterly American Poetry Review River Styx Cream City Review Seattle Review Artist and Influence 5 a.m. Poetry Callaloo Plays professionally produced: Rosa Venture Theater 1993 (a small Equity professional production) Elvira and the Lost Prince ETA Theater 1993 (winner of PDI Award) |
 The Plum Flower Dance U of Pittsburgh Press The Peking Duck Club (36 KB) photo by Lynda Koolish  In Taiwan with Friends |
