Lorenzo Thomas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | August 31, 1944 |
| Died | July 4, 2005 (aged 60) |
| Nationality | Panamanian |
| Occupation(s) | Poet Critic |
| Years active | 1973–2005 |
| Known for | Umbra Workshop |
Lorenzo Thomas (August 31, 1944 – July 4, 2005) was an American poet and critic. He was born in the Republic of Panama and grew up in New York City, where his family immigrated in 1948. In 1973, Thomas moved to Houston, Texas. Thomas had a two decade career as a professor at the University of Houston–Downtown.[1][2]
Thomas was born in Panama to Afro-Caribbean parents. His father, a pharmacist, was from Saint Vincent and his mother, Luzmilda, a community activist, was Jamaican, born in Costa Rica.[3][4] Her sister Sadie Clemencia Dolphy was the mother of musician Eric Dolphy.[5] As a child in NYC, he attended Duke Ellington Elementary School (P.S. 140;) Edgar D. Shimer Junior High School (P.S. 142;) and Andrew Jackson High School.
Thomas was a graduate of Queens College in New York with a B.A. in English Literature, and minor in History & Communication Arts (Radio and Television.) He pursued graduate work towards an M.L.S. at the Pratt Institute. During his years in New York, he joined the Umbra Workshop, and was one of the youngest members. The Umbra Workshop drew young writers to the Lower East Side of New York City in search of their artistic voices. It served as a crucible for emerging black poets, among them Ishmael Reed, David Henderson and Calvin C. Hernton. The workshop was one of the currents that fed the Black Arts Movement of the '60s and '70s, the first major African-American artistic movement after the Harlem Renaissance.[6]
In 1973, Thomas moved to Houston as writer-in-residence at Texas Southern University. At Texas Southern, he helped edit the journal Roots. Beginning in 1984 and for more than two decades as a professor of English at the University of Houston–Downtown. From 1973 to 1979 he served as Writer in Residence at Texas Southern University, Florida A & M University; the State of Arkansas; and the state of Oklahoma.
Thomas also made important contributions to the study of African-American literature.[7]
In 2000, he published Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry, his overview of the work of James Fenton and Amiri Baraka, among others.[1]
Thomas died in July 2005 at Texas Medical Center Hospice from emphysema.
Published in an edition of 300 copies by Angel Hair at the Poetry Project, St. Marks Church In-the-Bowery, N.Y.C.
Expanded second edition (of 1980 original publication) collects new poems, and includes an introduction by the author
A lecture delivered on April 7, 1988 as part of the Poetry Project's 1988 Symposium, Poetry of Everyday Life
