Bert’s Tanka

Poet, writer, storyteller, cultural historian, interdisciplinary humanities scholar and librarian, Gale Jackson is the author of Put Your Hands on Your Hips and Act Like a Woman: Song, Dance, Black History and Poetics in Performance (UNP); MeDea A Novella (Glad Day); Suite for Mozambique (Ikon); Bridge Suite: Narrative Poems Based on the Lives of African and African American Women in the Early History of These New Black Nations; and A Khoisan Tale of Beginnings and Ends (Storm Imprints). Her work has been performed, exhibited, presented and anthologized widely in publications including The African American Review; Freedomways; The Journal of Black Studies; American Voices; Callaloo; Tribes; Artist and Influence, Ploughshares, and Essence. She is a contributing writer to The A-Line; editor of Collaborative Voice: Art in a War Time anthology (CollaborativeVoice@Goddard.edu), and co-edited Art Against Apartheid: Voices for Freedom. She facilitates the Ehecatl Olin Learning Studio and The Poet in the House Collaborative with New York City students, serves as a professor on the graduate faculties of Interdisciplinary Arts and Education at Goddard College, and has been awarded an NEH fellowship for her work in griot traditions. Photo: Shelia “Chela” Anozier