Carolyn Rodgers

Carolyn Marie Rodgers (December 14, 1940 – April 2, 2010) was a Chicago-based writer, particularly noted for her poetry.

The youngest of four, Rodgers had two sisters and a brother, born to Clarence and Bazella Rodgers.

Rodgers was also a founder of one of America's oldest and largest black presses, Third World Press.

She got her start in the literary circuit as a young woman studying under Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks in the South Side of Chicago.

Later, Rodgers began writing her own works, which grappled with black identity and culture in the late 1960s.

Rodgers first attended college at the University of Illinois in 1960, but transferred in 1961 to Chicago's Roosevelt University, where she earned her BA degree in 1965.

She became distinctive as a new black woman poet in the 1960s with the publication of her first two books, Paper Soul and Songs of a Blackbird (Chicago: Third World Press, 1969).

Following the national success of Paper Soul, Rodgers was awarded the first Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Fund Award.

Rodgers first became involved in writing during that period while attending Writers Workshops by the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), of which she was an active member from 1967 to 1971.

The organization sought to promote city involvement and inclusion of the arts in the city of Chicago, which Rodgers was eager to participate in.

In her earliest writings such as Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Blackbird (1969), her revolutionary ideas about women's roles conflicted with the more traditional ideas of the African-American culture.

She was criticized for her use of profanity, which male leaders of BAM found inappropriate for a woman.

Haki R. Madhubuti, chair, publisher and fellow founder of Third World Press, told the Chicago Sun-Times that: "She would take no quarter from insults, or downgrading her writing as a woman ... Her writing could stand by itself."

So while Rodgers's Songs of a Blackbird includes themes about survival, mother-daughter conflicts, and street life, it also criticizes those who dishonor her use of profanity.

In her poem "The Last M.F."

she fights back:

they say,

that I should not use the word

mothafucka anymo

in my poetry or in any speech I give.

they say,

that I must and can only say it to myself

as the new Black Womanhood suggests

a softer self

Rodgers also won the Poet Laureate Award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1970.

She then went on to receive an award from the National Endowment of the Arts, following the publication of Songs of a Blackbird.

She was a leading voice of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) and the author of eleven books, including How I got Ovah (1975).

She was also an essayist and critic, and her work has been described as delivered in a language rooted in a black female perspective that wove strands of feminism, black power, spirituality, and self-consciousness into a sometimes raging, sometimes ruminative search for identity.

She also wrote deeply on the subject of mother/daughter relationships, particularly focusing on feminist, matriarchal issues.

Born in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, Rodgers was encouraged from a young age to pursue music, and learned to play guitar and composed music for much of her life.

She kept a journal throughout adolescence in which she explored poetry, but did not take writing seriously until she began college.

She later earned an MA in English from the University of Chicago in 1980.

Rodgers is most well known for her writing contributions to the Black Arts Movement (BAM).

In 1980, Rodgers won the Carnegie Writer's Grant.

She won the Television Gospel Tribute in 1982 and the PEN Grant in 1987.

In 2009, Rodgers was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing.

In 2012, Rodgers was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Rodgers's poetry is recognizable for its themes, which included identity, religion, and revolution, and her own use of free verse street slang and concern with feminine issues.

In her early days, black revolutionary themes and "cuss words" wove through some poems.

She used slang and heartfelt language to write about love, lust, body image, family, religion, and the grace of human kindness.