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Poetry Reading
The 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist, Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd, is a native Detroiter, and she was a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit (retired 2024), and an Adjunct Professor in Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (1990-2025). She was elected to the Academy of Scholars in 2021. An award-winning author of nine books of poetry, three documentary films, two biographies, editor of two poetry anthologies, and over 100 essays (1972-2024). She was the assistant editor to Dudley Randall at Broadside Press (1972-76), a contributing editor to The Black Scholar (1980-2004), and she is currently the editor of the African American Life Series at Wayne State University Press.
She has given lectures and poetry readings throughout the United States, Europe and China. Her poetry, essays and scholarship about African American literature and film have likewise appeared in anthologies, academic journals, cultural periodicals and newspapers locally and globally. Her poetry has been anthologized and translated into German, Italian and French, but possibly her most significant singular work is her poem, “This Museum Was Once a Dream,” engraved in bronze and displayed on the dedication wall of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. Lines from her poetry appear in the sculpture, “Transcending: Michigan’s Tribute to Labor,” in Hart Plaza in Downtown Detroit, and her poem, “Maple Red” appears adjacent to the painting by Ed Clark in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Her poetry collection, Death Dance of a Butterfly, received the 2013 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award for Poetry. Her first book of poetry, Cat Eyes and Dead Wood (1978) received a publication award from the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2010, Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall received the Independent Publishers Award, the Library of Michigan Notable Book Award for Poetry, and it was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the ForeWord Award for Poetry. Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press received the 2004 Honor for Nonfiction from The Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She received the Sojourner Truth Award from the Council of Negro Women, and she received the Spirit of Detroit Award on Martin Luther King Day in 2023. Boyd’s critically acclaimed and widely reviewed, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911, (1994) was the first comprehensive study of this 19th century, Black woman poet, fiction writer and essayist, who braved the Abolitionist and Woman’s Rights Movements.
Melba Joyce Boyd was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bremen, and a Visiting Professor at Colgate College and Fudan University in Shanghai, China. She has held academic positions at the University of Iowa, Ohio State University, and was the Director of African American Studies at the University of Michigan—Flint. She was the Chair of African American Studies at Wayne State for 16 years. She has M.A. and B.A. degrees in English Language and Literature from Western Michigan University, and a Doctor of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan.