Carolyn Rodgers

Carolyn Marie Rodgers was born on the fourteenth of December 1940 at Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Clarence Rodgers — a Chicago Black welder of the post-Great-Migration Chicago industrial community — and Bazella Colding Rodgers. She was raised in the principal Chicago South Side Black community of the principal post-Second-World-War Bronzeville-and-Oakland neighbourhoods.

She completed her secondary education at the Hyde Park High School at Chicago in 1959 — and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1960 to 1961 and Roosevelt University at Chicago in 1965. She completed the master's degree in English at the University of Chicago in 1980.

She co-founded with the principal Chicago Black-Arts-Movement playwright Hoyt W. Fuller, the principal Chicago Black-Arts-Movement poet Don L. Lee — Haki Madhubuti — and the principal Chicago Black-Arts-Movement novelist Sterling Plumpp the principal Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) at Chicago in 1967 — the principal Chicago Black-Arts-Movement literary-and-cultural collective of the principal post-1967 Black-Arts-Movement Chicago canon.

She published her first poetic volume Paper Soul at the principal Third World Press at Chicago in 1968 — and her second poetic volume Songs of a Black Bird at the principal Third World Press at Chicago in 1969. She was a principal founding poet of the principal Third World Press, the principal first Black-Arts-Movement publishing press of the post-1967 Chicago Black-Arts-Movement publishing canon.

She published the principal poetic volume How I Got Ovah at the principal Anchor Books at New York in 1975 — the principal Black-Arts-Movement spiritual-conversion poetic volume of the principal post-1975 Black-Arts-Movement post-Black-Power post-spiritual-conversion poetic-canon.

She published seven further poetic volumes across the principal post-1975 Anchor-and-Third-World-Press period — including The Heart as Ever Green of 1978, Translation: Poems of 1980, Eden and Other Poems of 1983, Morning Glory: Poems of 1989, and We're Only Human of 1994.

She was awarded the principal 1969 Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Award and the principal 1970 Society of Midland Authors Poet Laureate Award — and was nominated for the principal 1976 National Book Award for poetry for the principal How I Got Ovah of 1975.

She died at Chicago on the second of April 2010 of complications of cancer, at sixty-nine.

She is honored here as the author of How I Got Ovah.