Naomi Long Madgett

Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 4, 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 Lotus Press, established in 1972, a publisher of poetry books by black poets. Known as "the godmother of African-American poetry", she was the Detroit poet laureate since 2001.

Life and work Madgett was born as Naomi Cornelia Long in Norfolk, Virginia, in July 1923. She was the only daughter and the youngest of the three children of Baptist minister Rev. Dr. Clarence Marcellus Long and Maude Selena Long (née Hilton). Naomi was 18 months old when the family moved to East Orange, New Jersey, where her father was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church. having her first published poem published in the Orange Daily Courier when she was 13 years old. She graduated from Ashland Grammar School and began attending East Orange High School, until in 1937 her family moved to St. Louis, where for the following four years her father served as pastor of Central Baptist Church. but that year moved to Detroit, Michigan, after marrying Julian Fields Witherspoon, whom she had first met at Sumner High School.

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.

In 1955, she graduated from Wayne State University with a M.Ed. Her poem "Midway", from her 1956 collection One and the Many, attracted wide attention as it portrayed black people's struggles, and victories, in a time when racism was prevalent in the United States. The imprint published Black writers such as Herbert Woodward Martin, Dolores Kendrick, James A. Emanuel, Gayl Jones, Haki Madhubuti, May Miller, Toi Derricotte, and Dudley Randall, and for many years was run by Madgett from her basement mostly single-handedly – though in the early years she invented an editorial assistant named Connie Withers "to give the imprint corporate heft." Madgett would continue to serve as publisher/editor of the company until 2015 when Lotus Press merged with Dudley Randall's Broadside Press to become Broadside Lotus Press.

The many honors Madgett received included 1993's American Book Award and the George Kent Award in 1995.

In 2012, Kresge Arts in Detroit presented her with the 2012 Kresge Eminent Artist Award, 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".

Madgett's last poetry collection, You Are My Joy and Pain: Love Poems, was published in fall 2020. She died on November 4, 2020, at her home in West Bloomfield, Michigan, aged 97.

Awards 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.

Selected bibliography Songs to a Phantom Nightingale, Fortuny's Publishers, 1941 (30 pages). One and the Many: Poems, Exposition Press, 1956 (including "Midway").

Pink Ladies in the Afternoon, Lotus Press, 1972 (reprinted 1990).

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) Margaret Busby, ed. (1992). "New Day" and "Black Woman", Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent, Jonathan Cape. .

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