Naomi Long Madgett

Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 5, 2020) was an American poet and publisher. Originally a teacher, she later found fame with her award-winning poems and was also the founder and senior editor of

At the age of 17 she published her first small collection of poetry, Songs to a Phantom Nightingale (1941), a few days after graduating from high school.[5]

She went on to Virginia State College (now

Madgett worked for a while as a staff writer at the Michigan Chronicle, where she published many poems under the name Naomi L. Witherspoon.^[2] She gave birth to a daughter, Jill Annette Witherspoon, in 1947, although the marriage was short-lived, ending in divorce in 1948.^[2][5][7]

In 1949 Madgett's poem "Refugee" appeared in The Poetry of the Negro, an anthology edited by Arna Bontemps with Langston Hughes, who was an early mentor of Madgett's, after at the age of 15 she had met him at a poetry reading of his in St Louis.^[3][8]

In 1955, she graduated from

Some of Madgett's poems, including "Midway", have been set to music as songs and publicly performed.[2]^[8] As well as publishing collections of her own poetry, Madgett was editor of the anthology Adam of Ife: Black Women in Praise of Black Men (Lotus Press, 1992). She also wrote a textbook on creative writing

In 1993 the national Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award was established, an annual award sponsored by Broadside Lotus Press to recognize and publish an outstanding manuscript by an African-American poet.^[12]

The many honors Madgett received included 1993's

Her autobiography, Pilgrim Journey, was published in 2006, an in 2011 Madgett was the subject of a documentary film by David B. Schock called StarbyStar: Naomi Long Madgett, Poet & Publisher.^[13]

In 2012, Kresge Arts in Detroit presented her with the 2012 Kresge Eminent Artist Award,^[14] a $50,000 prize to recognize Madgett's "decades of commitment to originating, illuminating, and preserving poetry by African-Americans, and promoting the study and appreciation of African-American literature in schools and universities".^[15]

Madgett's last poetry collection, You Are My Joy and Pain: Love Poems, was published in fall 2020. She died on November 5, 2020, at her home in

• Octavia and Other Poems (1988) was national co-winner of the College Language Association Creative Achievement Award.
• Long Poetry Foundation offered its first annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for excellence in a manuscript by an African-American poet.^[17]

Selected bibliography

• Songs to a Phantom Nightingale, Fortuny's Publishers, 1941 (30 pages).
• One and the Many: Poems, Exposition Press, 1956 (including "Midway").
• Star by Star: Poems. Harlo Press. 1965.
• Pink Ladies in the Afternoon, Lotus Press, 1972 (reprinted 1990).
• Exits and Entrances. Lotus Press. 1978.
  ISBN 978-0-916418-13-7
  .
• Phantom Nightingale: Juvenilia: poems, 1934–1943. Lotus Press. 1981.
  ISBN 978-0-916418-30-4
  .
• Octavia and Other Poems.
  ISBN 978-0-88378-121-0
  .
• Remembrances of Spring: Collected Early Poems.
  ISBN 978-0-87013-345-9
  .
• Connected Islands: New and Selected Poems. Lotus Press. 2004.
  ISBN 978-0-916418-94-6
  .
• Pilgrim Journey: Autobiography. Lotus Press. 2006.
  ISBN 978-0-916418-97-7
  .
• You Are My Joy and Pain: Love Poems, Wayne State University Press, 2020.

As editor

• Adam of Ife: Black Women in Praise of Black Men, Lotus Press, 1992.

Selected anthology contributions

• Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, eds (1949), "Refugee", The Poetry of the Negro: 1746–1949.
• Langston Hughes, New Negro Poets: U.S.A. (1964)
• ISBN 0-224-03592-4
  .
• ISBN 978-0-19-512563-4
  .
• Melba Joyce Boyd; M. L. Liebler, eds. (2001). "City Nights; Grand Circus Park". Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry 2001. Wayne State University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-8143-2810-1
  .