The Poetry Center and City Lights Presents - A Tribute to the Life and Work of Tyrone Williams

Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 6:00 pm PST

Tribute to the Life and Work of Tyrone Williams

This event will be held onsite at City Lights. It will also be broadcast on zoom. To experience the virtual part of the event you will need a device that can access the internet and registration is required.

City Lights and The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University present a tribute to the life and work of the celebrated poet and scholar Tyrone Williams.  Participants include Will Alexander, Taylor Brady, Pat Clifford, Norma Cole, Michael Cross, Brent Cunningham, Steve Dickison, Kevin Dublin, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Tonya Foster, Susan Gevirtz, Cecil Giscombe, Jeanne Heuving, Andrew Joron, erica lewis, David Marriott, Rusty Morrison, Aldon Nielson, Linda Norton, Kit Robinson, Steven Rood, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Juliana Spahr, and Eleni Stecopoulos.

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City Lights and The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University present

Tribute to the Life and Work of Tyrone Williams

Poet and scholar Tyrone Williams left us too suddenly and too soon. We celebrate his life and legacy with this gathering of poets, friends, and community at City Lights. Participants, including Will Alexander, Taylor Brady, Pat Clifford, Norma Cole, Michael Cross, Brent Cunningham, Steve Dickison, Kevin Dublin, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Tonya Foster, Susan Gevirtz, Cecil Giscombe, Jeanne Heuving, Andrew Joron, erica lewis, David Marriott, Rusty Morrison, Aldon Nielson, Linda Norton, Kit Robinson, Steven Rood, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Juliana Spahr, and Eleni Stecopoulos, will give remembrances, read from his works, and present original pieces to commemorate this brilliant thinker, writer, and activist. Although based in the Midwest, Williams played a notable role in Bay Area literature, publishing with Compline, Hooke Press, Krupskya, and Omnidawn. From a first-generation college student at Wayne State University, to a storied 40-years as a professor at Xavier University, to the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), Tyrone Williams made an indelible mark. We miss him dearly.

Tyrone Williams was born in Detroit, Michigan. He began his career in the English department at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1983 after completing his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English at Wayne State University. A founding member of the Winton Community Free Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Williams published both literary criticism and creative work, including chapbooks, critical essays and eight books of poetry. Williams was an exemplary poet-scholar, as both a practitioner of and a leading academic expert in experimental poetry. His books and articles contributed greatly to the fields of experimental poetry and critical theory, and African American culture, drawing on a variety of sources to challenge and investigate language, history, and race. Williams was a co-editor of the critical volume, Inciting Poetics: Thinking and Writing Poetry, and the author of numerous chapbooks, including Red Between Green (2014); Pink Tie (2010); Musique Noir (2006); Futures, Elections (2004); AAB (2004); and Convalescence (1987). His full-length collections of poetry include Stilettos in a Rifle Range (2022); As Iz (2018); Between Red and Green: Narrative of the Black Brigade (2016); Howell (2011); Adventures of Pi (2011); The Hero Project of the Century (2009); On Spec (2008); and c.c. (2002). Additionally, his work appeared in numerous national magazines and journals including, Callaloo, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, and The Nation, among others.

Williams travelled extensively, giving poetry readings at venues across the country and internationally as well as presenting critical papers at numerous academic conferences. An important figure in the poetry community, he wrote innumerable reviews for books by both new and established authors, while also acting as a judge for prizes and publications and being awarded numerous literary residencies. After a long and storied 40-year career at Xavier, where he was beloved by both students and faculty alike, Williams retired and was appointed the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters at SUNY Buffalo in 2023. After a brief battle with cancer, he died in March 2024 in Cincinnati surrounded by friends.

Program participants include:

Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, and musician. He has published over two dozen books in a variety of genres and has earned many honors and awards including a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is currently the poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California.

Taylor Brady has written several books of verse and prose, including most recently In the Red. He edited Will Alexander’s collection of essays, Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat. He is currently working on several long-unfinished series of poems, including Scotomata, dedicated to Tyrone Williams and Thomas “Bugs” Hunter.

Pat Clifford is a community practice social worker based in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has served as a community leader, activist, and consultant in areas of community collaboration and social change. He first met Tyrone at Xavier University in the 1980s. During the last twenty years, they collaborated on several poetry and critical projects including washpark in 2021.

Norma Cole is a poet, visual artist, and translator. Her books of poetry include FATE NEWS, Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside, and Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988—2008. Her translations from the French include Danielle Collobert’s It Then, and Jean Daive’s White Decimal. Her visual work has been shown at the Miami University Art Museum, [2nd floor projects], and the Berkeley Art Museum. A book of drawings, called DRAWINGS, was published by Further Other Book Works. Her new book of poetry, Alibi Lullaby, is forthcoming in 2025.

Michael Cross is the author of In Felt Treeling: A Libretto, Haecceities, and The Katechon: Book One. Additionally, he edited the volumes Involuntary Vision: After Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, and The George Oppen Memorial Lectures. He runs the independent poetry press, Compline.

Brent Cunningham is a writer living in Oakland. He is the author of the poetry books Bird & Forest, Journey to the Sun, and a chapbook, The Sad Songs of Hell. He has been working on a novel since the Clinton administration.

Steve Dickison is the author of Inside Song and Disposed. He is the co-editor of collections of essays and a magazine, editor of a small press (Listening Chamber) and was director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, 1999 to 2024.

Kevin Dublin is a writer of poetry, prose, scripts, and code.  As founder of Living Room SF, he’s focused on expanding economic accessibility to creative writing through workshops, producing readings, and facilitating partnerships. He’s the author of Eulogy and How to Fall in Love in San Diego.

Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in San Francisco. He is the author of Blood on the Fog (City Lights Publishers, 2021), which the New York Times listed among the Best Poetry of 2021; Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Publishers, 2017), which received the California Book Award and an American Book Award; and Someone’s Dead Already (Bootstrap Press, 2015). A poet, movement worker, and educator, Eisen-Martin was appointed the eighth poet laureate of San Francisco and received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship in 2024.

Tonya M. Foster is a poet, essayist and Black feminist scholar. The author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; the forthcoming Thingifications::Mathematics of Chaos; and a co-editor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art; as well as the forthcoming two-volume compendium Umbra Galaxy, Umbra Reader. A recipient of the 2023 CD Wright Award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Tonya is a Creative Capital Awardee and a Radcliffe Fellow. Serving as the inaugural George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University, she is a New Orleanian raised by New Orleanians from way back. She lives in Emeryville, CA.

Susan Gevirtz’s recent books of poetry include Burns, Hotel abc, and Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger. Her critical books include Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson and Coming Events (Collected Writings). She works with Prison Renaissance and Operation Restoration as a writing mentor to incarcerated people, and co-founded the Paros Symposium, an annual translation and conversation meeting of Greek and Anglophone poets.

Cecil Giscombe is a poet, essayist, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the Robert Hass Chair in English. Books include Negro Mountain, Railroad Sense, Similarly, Border Towns, Ohio Railroads, Prairie Style, Giscome Road, and Here.

Jeanne Heuving was the 2021-2022 Judith E. Wilson Fellow in Poetry, Cambridge University, UK. Her recent books include Mood Indigo, Brilliant Corners, and Indigo Angel and her-coedited book with Tyrone Williams, Inciting Poetics: Thinking and Writing Poetry and her edited volume, Nathaniel Mackey, Destination Out: Essays on His Work.

Andrew Joron is a poet, essayist, and speculative fiction writer. His poetry collections include The Absolute Letter and Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems. His collection, O0, is work of speculative fiction. As a musician, Joron plays the theremin in various experimental and free-jazz ensembles. He teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University.

erica lewis is a poet. Books include the precipice of jupiter, camera obscura (both with artist Mark Stephen Finein), murmur in the inventory, and the box set trilogy: daryl hall is my boyfriend, mary wants to be a superwoman, and mahogany.

D.S. Marriott teaches philosophy at Emory University. His most recent books include: Before Whiteness (City Lights, 2022). Letters from the Black Ark is forthcoming from Omnidawn.

Rusty Morrison’s books include Risk, After Urgency, the true keeps calm biding its story, and Beyond the Chainlink. She teaches, gives writing consultations, and is the co-publisher of Omnidawn.

A.L. Nielsen was the first winner of the Larry Neal Award for poetry. His recent books include Tray, Sufferhead, Back Pages: Selected Poems and Spider Cone. Among his volumes of criticism are Black Chant, Integral Music, and The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka. His most recent album of spoken word and music is More Blues, Rage and Hollers.

Linda Norton is the author of The Public Gardens: Poems and History(introduction by Fanny Howe), a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Wite Out: Love and Work, and Cloud of Witnesses: Essays, Poems, Collages.

Kit Robinson is a Bay Area poet, writer, and musician. He is the author of two dozen collections of poetry, including Quarantina, Thought Balloon, and The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976-2003. Robinson’s essays on poetics, art, travel, and music, as well as video and audio recordings of his recent readings and interviews, may be found at his website: www.kitrobinson.net. He lives in Berkeley and plays Cuban tres guitar in the charanga band Calle Ocho.

Steven Rood has two books from Omnidawn: Music from Behind a Stone Wall (2024) and Naming the Wind (2022). He was a 2019 National Poetry Series Finalist.

Jocelyn Saidenberg is a writer, educator, and performer based in the Bay Area. Her books include Kith & Kin, Dead Letter, Negativity, Mortal City, and CUSP. Two books are forthcoming in 2024: IF AN ELSEWHERE, a collaboration with visual artist, Cybele Lyle, and Echo Otherwise: A Poetics of Sound and Loss in Ancient and Contemporary Poetry. She is the founding publisher of Krupskaya Books.

Juliana Spahr’s books of poetry include That Winter the Wolf Came; Well Then There Now; The Transformation; This Connection of Everyone with Lungs; Things of Each Possible Relation Hashing Against One Another; Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You; Response, which won a National Poetry Series Award; Spiderwasp or Literary Criticism; and Nuclear. She is the Frederick A. Rice Endowed Professor at Mills College at Northeastern University.

Eleni Stecopoulos is a poet, essayist, and critic. Her book of critical lyric essays, Dreaming in the Fault Zone: A Poetics of Healing, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books this fall. Her other books are Visceral Poetics (ON Contemporary Practice, 2016), a hybrid of criticism and memoir; and Armies of Compassion (Palm Press, 2010), a poetry collection. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works with writers as an independent editor and mentor.

Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation