Ahmos Zu-Bolton

Ahmos Zu-Bolton. Courtesy African-American Registry.

Ahmos Zu-Bolton II (October 21, 1948 - March 8, 2005) was an African-American poet, literary editor, small press publisher, teacher, and organizer of cultural events.

Life

Zu-Bolton was born in Poplarville, Mississippi, and grew up in DeRidder, Louisiana, near the Texas border.

From Oxford Reference:

"Ahmos Zu-Bolton II was one of the most influential figures in the development of the “new Black poetry” in the South during the 1970s. His career exemplifies the Black Arts movement idea that African American artists should also be “cultural workers” responsive and responsible to their communities, affirming the belief—as Zu-Bolton expresses it in his 1976 poem “Struggle-Road Dance”—that “this place / must be a workshop” for Blacks. Zu-Bolton's role as poet is complemented by his work as a literary editor, small press publisher, teacher, and organizer of cultural events.

Zu-Bolton's free verse poems—collected in A N****** Amen (1975)—employ African American vernacular speech and are sometimes cast in the form of dramatic monologues or modeled on the sermonic tradition. These works reflect the poet's many varied experiences, ranging from cutting sugarcane on Gulf Coast plantations to playing professional baseball for the Shreveport Twins of the American Negro Baseball League in the early 1950s.

In 1965 he received a scholarship to Louisiana State University, being among the class of black students who integrated the university that year. His college studies were interrupted by military service as a medic in Vietnam. He graduated from California State Polytechnic University in 1971.

In 1970, he founded Energy West Literary Works in Los Angeles, which published Energy West Poetry Journal and Shoreline Magazine. In 1972, he moved the operation to the south, changing the name to Energy BlackSouth Press, and launched HooDoo Magazine, a magazine devoted to African-American activism and arts.

Also in 1972, he organized The Witchdoctor Theater, a poetry-music-drama group.

In 1973, he opened the Up-South office of Energy BlackSouth in Washington D.C.and became co-editor of Black Box, an innovative poetry magazine issued on cassette, along with Alan Austin and Etheridge Knight.

From 1973 to 1976 he worked for the Humanities Resources Center, or African-American Resources Center, of Howard University in Washington, D.C.. There he came into contact with Stephen E. Henderson, E. Ethelbert Miller, and other writers, who encouraged him to publish HooDoo.

In 1975 he published a collection of poems, A N*ggered Amen, and co-edited Synergy D.C. Anthology.

In 1976 he moved his company to Houston, and then to Galveston, Texas, renaming it Energy Earth Communications, Inc., and reorganizing it as a small press distribution network.

Between 1977 to 1980 he also organized a series of HooDoo Festivals, which presented poets and musicians in New Orleans, Galveston, Austin, Houston, and other cities.

During the same period Zu-Bolton was also a leading figure in the Southern Black Cultural Alliance (a network of writers, musicians, literary journals, and theater groups that promoted the ideas of the Black Arts movement).

In 1983, he moved to New Orleans where he opened the Copastetic Community Book Center, which served both the literary and community theater movements. Ror its 10 years of existence, until 1992, the bookstore was an active venue for literary events, presenting plays, poetry readings, children's programs, and workshops for young writers.

While living in New Orleans he taught English, African-American studies, and creative writing classes at Xavier University, Tulane University, and Delgado Community College. He was visiting writer in residence at University of Missouri. He was also a journalist, contributing articles to the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Louisiana Weekly.

Zu-Bolton also wrote several plays, including The Widow Paris: A folklore of Marie Laveau, The Funeral, Family Reunion, and The Break-In.

He died March 8, 2005, at Howard University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., of cancer.

Poet In Residence

"I linger here for the mountains the waters, and the shadows only … this tribe ain’t mine." -Ahmos Zu-Bolton

Zu-Bolton was an African-American Beat poet of the 1970s who touched lives as a “poet” in the classrooms of Virginia, Georgia and Texas. He was instrumental to college campuses adding new bodies of thought about poetry and color, as a writer of poetry collections such as Fishpond Australia, Ain't No Spring Chicken, Hoo-Doo, and A N*ggered Amen, which was published December 1, 1975.

Cavalieri: "In 1977 he took my first full-length poetry book Body Fluids for distribution and sent me the first check I ever received for poetry. I think it was $7.00 or $8.00. He reached across race to include me. Connections. Interconnectedness is more like it."

In Washington, D.C., Ethelbert Miller became his historian. Zu-Bolton was co-director to Ethelbert Miller's Directorship of the Afro American Resource Center at Howard University; and, there still exists in D.C. a community of poets who will always revere and love him. He teamed up with artists in New Orleans, Galveston, Austin and Houston to produce his HooDoo Festivals.

While living in New Orleans he taught English, African American Studies and Creative Writing at Xavier University, Tulane University and Delgado Community College. He was Visiting Writer in Residence at University of Missouri. When Zu Bolton died in 2005, that college held a candlelight vigil. And, he connected with the old as well as the young: he and his wife, poet Harryette Mullen, worked with senior citizens in 1978, teaching and encouraging their life stories.

Writing

Concise Oxford Companion to African-American Literature: "Zu-Bolton's free verse poems — collected in A N*ggered Amen (1975) — employ African American vernacular speech and are sometimes cast in the form of dramatic monologues or modeled on the sermonic tradition. These works reflect the poet's many varied experiences, ranging from cutting sugarcane on Gulf Coast plantations to playing professional baseball for the Shreveport Twins of the American Negro Baseball League in the early 1950s."

Grace Cavalieri: "His work is his version of history. He knew his life and experience were too important to leave to other people. He created worlds and populated them with people to act out the blood and pulse of being black in America."

His book Ain’t No Spring Chicken is a selection of poems published by the Voice Foundation in 1998.

"There is a cure for the Blues" (excerpt)

"There is a cure for the Blues
[...]
A white cabbie says there
ain’t never been no/great
colored poets
[...]
and I think to myself
man this cat is hip/ smooth,
there’s truth in his meter,
so I sez to him I say, hey man,
how come a professor
like you is
driving a cab?"

-Ahmos Zu-Bolton, from "Taxicab Blues".

A N*ggered Amen, Zu-Bolton's masterpiece

The poetry collection is in Epic poetry form with 4 sections: The Books of X, Y, Z and A (the alpha and omega?). Zu-Bolton’s main characters are Blackjack Moses and Livewire Davis, starting with Blackjack Moses returning from Vietnam... "he has no weapon/ (he threw away his gun/ when he threw away/ his bible." In "spacedream struggle" he writes, "I fought the Christians today. / Me and my man Jesus, who is/ on this mission with me,/ and who would have me/ turn the other cheek/ n*gger." The words "Me" and "Jesus,". Later in the poem cycle "the fool (an excerpt from the diary of blackjack moses)" is a 6-page poem: "the fool/ you know him/ he once told you the secrets/ of his life/ there’s a file on him/ at the pentagon/ he ain’t no myth/ him for-real baby…" And "the fool lies down/ with these ancient ones./…they teach him/ the holy song & dance,/ they give him cups/ of his own blood/ to drink// they teach him to eat/ of his own flesh…"

And so it goes.

Recognition

Yusef Komunyakaa included Zu-Bolton's poem "Reading the Bones: a Blackjack Moses nightmare" (originally printed in American Poetry Review) in The Best American Poetry 2003.

Publications

Poetry

• A N*ggered Amen: Poems. San Louis Obispo, CA: Solo Press, 1975.
• Featuring Four Third-World Poets (by Peter Blue Cloud, William Oandasan, Ahmos Zu-Bolton, & Ricardo Sánchez. Laguna, NM: A Press / Austin, TX: Relampago Books, 1979.
• Ain't No Spring Chicken: Selected poems. New Orleans, LA: Voice Foundation, 1998. ISBN 978-0-9668063-0-4
• 1946: A poem. Berkeley, CA: Ishmael Reed Publishing, 2002. ISBN 978-0-918408-34-1

Edited

• HooDoo 1 (edited with Carolyn Chew). DeRidder, LA: Energy BlackSouth Press, 1972.
• Synergy: An anthology of Washington D.C. Blackpoetry (edited with E. Ethelbert Miller). Houston, TX, & Washington, DC: Energy BlackSouth Press, 1975.
• HooDoo 4. Houston, TX: Energy BlackSouth Press, 1975.
• HooDoo 6½ (edited with Lorenzo Thomas & Adesanya Alakoye). DeRidder, LA: Energy Earth Communications, 1978.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

The OutSpoken Word - Carroll Zu-Bolton sharing a piece from Ahmos Zu-Bolton

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Quincy Troupe, ed., Giant Talk: An anthology of Third World writings. Vintage Books, 1975.
• Turdier Harris & Thadious M. Davis, eds., Afro-American Poets Since 1955. University of Michigan Press, 1985.
• Dorothy Abbott, ed., Mississippi Writers: Reflections of childhood and youth, Vol. III: Poetry. University Press of Mississippi, 1988.
• John Oliver Killens & Jerry W. Ward, eds., Black Southern Voices: An Anthology. Plume, 1992.
• Rudy Lewis, "Ahmos Zu Bolton, HooDoo Poet, Opened a Channel to the Ancestors," ChickenBones Journal, March 2005.
• E. Ethelbert Miller, "In Search of the Hoo-Doo Man: Reconstructing Ahmos Zu-Bolton," Drumvoices Review, Volume 14, Issue 1/2, Spring-Fall 2006.
• Kim Roberts & Dan Vera, eds., DC Writers' Homes, "Ahmos Zu-Bolton II." 2011.

External links

Poems

• "Spacedream Struggle"
• "Alexandria Revisited: What Would Have Become?"
• Ahmos Zu-Bolton II in Black American Literature (2 poems)
• Testimonials and poem ("A Crucifix for De Ridder") at Chicken Bones: an online journal
• Ravis by Ahmos Zu-Bolton Ahmos Zu-Bolton: Pick of the Week

Pegasus Literary Journal 1976

• Introduction to Pegasus Literary Journal 1976

Books

• Ahomos Zu-Bolton at Amazon.com
• Black Magnolias - Psychedelic Literature Home

About

• Ahmos Zu-Bolton II at Mississippi Writers Page
• Ahmos Zubolton II in the Oxford Companion to African-American Literature
• Ahmos Zu-Bolton II: A writer and teacher at African-American Registry
• Candlelight Vigil for Ahmos Zu-Bolton at Chicken Bones
• "Ahmos Zu-Bolton's Poetry of Invention" at Beltway Poetry Quarterly
• [1] Civil Rights - DocShare.tips