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June Jordan was born in Harlem in 1936 and grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Poet, activist, teacher, and essayist, she was a prolific, passionate and influential voice for liberation. June Jordan, who died in 2002, lived and wrote on the frontlines of American poetry, political vision and moral witness. Learn more NEWS ... I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own — June Jordan, from “Poem About My Rights” Save the Date! October 1, 2020 My Name is My Own: Celebrating June Jordan and Ruth Stone A Virtual Benefit Event for Copper Canyon Press Featuring Jericho Brown, Rio Cortez, Elizabeth Gilbert, Alison Rollins, Monica Sok, Bianca Stone, and Michael Wiegers Thursday, October 1, 2020 6:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time Join us to honor two iconic poets as we launch new anthologies in the Copper Canyon Essential Series, and raise funds to support next year's extraordinary poetry collections. Stay tuned for more details: visit Copper Canyon Press. Past Event:
Writing & Teaching in a Time of Crisis: Lessons from June Jordan with Taiyo Na Poets House, March 15, 2019 Writer, musician, and educator Taiyo Na offered the following remarks as part of “Writing and Teaching in a Time of Crisis: Lessons from June Jordan,” a panel presented at Poets House with the support of the June M. Jordan Literary Estate. Na was joined by Kay Ulanday Barrett, Sofía Snow, and Bill Zavatsky in honoring June Jordan. In this second annual panel celebrating Jordan’s work, poets and educators explored her essay “For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us.” The event took place as part of What is It, Then, Between Us? Poetry & Democracy, the third annual initiative of the Poetry Coalition, a national poetry coalition working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. Past Event:
A Tribute to June Jordan... is an intergenerational exploration of the legendary poet’s life, work, and legacy. This daylong conference on Friday, May 18, 2018, at the Proshansky Auditorium C-Level Rooms - The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City, will begin with a keynote address by Jan Heller Levi. A series of lectures, discussions and readings will follow featuring, aracelis girmay, E. Ethelbert Miller and Evie Shockley, among many others. Free and open to the public, this event is co-presented by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc., the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust. See here for schedule of events. Past event:
Writing & Teaching in a Time of Crisis: Lessons from June Jordan Introduced by Jan Heller Levi DATE AND TIME: February 24, 2018 - 3:00PM EVENT LOCATION: Poets House, Elizabeth Kray Hall 10 River Terrace New York, NY 10282 ADMISSION: $10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House members During her life, poet and essayist June Jordan (1936 – 2002) energetically responded to the crises of the disenfranchised with activism, writing and teaching. To continue her legacy of speaking truth to power, poets Joshua Bennett, Suzanne Gardinier, Donna Masini and Aja Monet talk about their own experiences with writing and teaching in our current time of crisis. Presented with the support of the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust. Past event:
December 6, 2017 6:30-9pm Pen + Brush Presents A Celebration of We’re On: A June Jordan Reader (Alice James Books) edited by Christoph Keller and Jan Heller Levi with an introduction by Rachel Eliza Griffith This will be a glorious reading celebrating the new book, and the remarkable, inimitable bravery and brilliance of June Jordan Jordan herself. Readers include: Elizabeth Alexander Mahagony L. Browne Cheryl Clarke Cornelius Eady Terrance Hayes Yusef Komunyakaa E. Ethelbert Miller The event is free and open to the public. Pen + Brush, at 29 East 22nd Street, NY, NY, is wheelchair-accessible. Please RSVP to RSVP@penandbrush.org. Meanwhile … - Publishers Weekly named We're On: A June Jordan Reader one of the best books of 2017. - Poets & Writers named it a new and noteworthy book in their August issue. - E. Ethelbert Miller called it cause for celebration in the New York Journal of Books. - Stephanie Burt in American Poet Magazine, says "This first posthumous volume to hold both her verse and her prose puts her back near the center of conversations where -- with Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich -- she clearly belongs." - Oprah.com featured it as a "collection of work by and about bold, free-spirited poets," along with Nikki Giovanni, Mary Oliver and Joni Mitchell.
"In defiant black ink marching across the white page, June Jordan (1936–2002) speaks from the eternal front lines of justice: “I am black alive and looking back at you.” Jordan was a lover and liberator. She stood against oppression in all its forms: literary and material, personal and political. ..." Read entire review. Get We're On. UCSF Doctor and co-founder of the Global Health organization HEAL Initiative gave a moving Tedx talk in February 2016 that tied together June Jordan, poetry, Global Health, suffering and narrative entitled Whose Suffering Matters Less, and Why? Sri was part of June Jordan's Poetry for the People in 1998-2001. June wrote a poem dedicated to him and P4P, Its Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean. 
Life as Activism, published in February 2014 by Litwin Books and edited by Stacy Russo, is the first complete collection of the columns June wrote for the Progressive Magazine (from 1989 to 2001). This beautiful new book comes with a foreword by Angela Davis and a preface by Matthew Rothschild.
From Angela Davis's Foreword: “What is remarkable about these articles is their resonance on our contemporary political landscape.” “Published during the last decade of the twentieth century, these columns remind me just how much June Jordan’s formidable voice is missed today. She was a poet, but also equally a journalist, and no ordinary journalist, for her illuminating accounts of ongoing events were always infused with her unique poetic vision.” From Matthew Rothschild's Introduction: “I miss June Jordan. And after you read these breathtaking essays and poems, you’ll miss her, too, and you’ll want her back, as I do. No one wrote like June Jordan, packing her lines with beauty and love and righteous anger. No one fought harder with her words than June Jordan.” “I know of no writer who was more fully engaged in the historic moments and burning issues of her day.” ... and: 
The second volume of the Wiley Blackwell anthology of African American Literature, 1920 to the Present, published in January 2014, includes twelve of Junes poems, among them "If You Saw a Negro Lady," "What Would I Do White" and "In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr." as well as her essay “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley.” ... and: 
June Jordan's 1997 book of poetry, Kissing God Goodbye, has just been published in Germany by Weidle Verlag, translated, Poetry-for-the-People-style, by the students of Technische Universität Dortmund and Professors Julia Sattler and Walter Grünzweig, in a beautiful bilingual edition, German and English, with an elegant cover by Max Cole. ... and: 
Technical Difficulties, June Jordan's 1992 collection of essays, has just come out in Spanish, with an introduction by Angela Davis, especially written for this foreign-language edition. The beautiful book is published by LaOficina / BAAM, Madrid. ... and: The Progressive's new - and first - eBook, Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall, from its Hidden History Series, edited by Matthew Rothschild. The volume includes three of June Jordan's columns written for the magazine (and anthologized since many, many times): "A New Politics of Sexuality" (July 1991); "Requiem for a Champ" (April 1992); and "The Invisible People: Black Rage and the Stolen Election" (March 2001). 
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A sampler of June Jordan's poems has been translated into Bengali in the small and very nice literary magazine Birutjatio. Check it out here. ... and:
Watch this film put created by the documentary film students of the University of Georgia, based on June Jordan's poem "Take Back the Night." ... and: If you're in London on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, check out the screening of Pratibha Pramar's A Place for Rage. ... and: Under the motto Poetry by and for the 99%! Poems of Provocation & Witness Split This Rock Poetry Festival celebrates the life and work of June Jordan on the 10th anniversary of her death: Join them in March! Be active! Poetry Occupies! March 22-25, 2012, Washington, DC ... and: Check out Rita Dove's The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry with June's "Poem About My Rights" as well as many other great poems. Or go get it from the St. Mark's Bookstore shelves. |
