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.


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NEWS ...

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.

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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.



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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.


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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."


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If you're in London on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, check out the screening of Pratibha Pramar's A Place for Rage.
 

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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


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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.