I'm Steve Ember.
BARBARA KLEIN: And I'm Barbara Klein with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about the award-winning poet and writer Lucille Clifton. Critics call her one of the greatest writers of our time.
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STEVE EMBER: Lucille Clifton began writing poetry when she was about ten years old. She had developed an interest in poetry because of her mother, Thelma Sayles. Her mother was also a poet although her poems were never published. As a child Lucille would sit on her mother's lap and listen as she read poetry. She learned to love words and the power of words. That stayed with her as she grew.
There was another experience that stayed with her, too. Once, her mother was offered a chance to publish her poetry. But her husband, Samuel Sayles, ordered her not to do it. In anger, and sorrow, Missus Sayles threw her poems into a fire. That memory also stayed with Lucille. She would write about it years later in her poem called "fury". Like many of Lucille Clifton's poems, "fury" is personal. It deals with her own experiences.
BARBARA KLEIN: Lucille Clifton believed that it was important for poets to write about their own memories. She said poetry comes out of the life of the poet. That, she said, is the only way that poetry can reach other people. Lucille Clifton's poems deal with life and death, religion and politics, motherhood and family. They tell stories of racism, sexism and injustice. They tell of terrible things done to humans by humans.
In one poem she calls it the extraordinary evil in ordinary men. In the poem "Cruelty," she takes a different look at violence.
LUCILLE CLIFTON READING "CRUELTY"
don't talk to me about cruelty
or what i am capable of.
when i wanted the roaches dead i wanted them dead
and i killed them. i took a broom to their country
and smashed and sliced without warning
without stopping and i smiled all the time i was doing it.
it was a holocaust of roaches, bodies,
parts of bodies, red all over the ground.
i didn't ask their names.
they had no names worth knowing.
now i watch myself whenever i enter a room.
i never know what i might do.
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Miss Clifton received many other honors during her long career. She won a National Book Award in two thousand for her poetry collection "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems." She was nominated for three Pulitzer Prize Poetry Awards. She is the only poet to have received two Pulitzer nominations in a single year.
Her "Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir" and her collection "Next: New Poems" were both nominated for Pulitzer Prizes in nineteen eighty-seven.
BARBARA KLEIN: Miss Clifton also won an Emmy Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Los Angeles Times Poetry Award. In two thousand seven, she became the first black woman to receive the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize. It is considered one of the highest honors a poet can receive. It includes a one hundred thousand dollar award.
In addition to her writing, Lucille Clifton spent many years teaching poetry. She served as a writer in residence at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland. She also taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Saint Mary's College of Maryland and Duke University in North Carolina. And she was the first African-American poet laureate for the state of Maryland.
Lucille Clifton died in two thousand ten from problems related to cancer. She was seventy-three years old. She leaves behind a written record of her life and legacy through the words of her poems.
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STEVE EMBER: This program was written and produced by June Simms. I'm Steve Ember.
BARBARA KLEIN: And I'm Barbara Klein. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are at www.unsv.com. And you can find us on Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.