Friday, June 12, 2026

LONG LIVE THE BLACK RADICAL TRADITION: In Homage To the Extraordinary Life, Work, and Legacy of David Henderson (1942-2026) an original, innovative and dynamic poet, cultural critic, literary scholar, author and teacher who helped transform U.S. literature from the mid 1960s on and played a major, very important. and seminal role in the rise and evolution of the revolutionary Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. --PUBLIC READINGS --PART 2


"...so much blood in this soil we're all gonna turn red someday..."
--Line from the poem 'Saga of the Audubon Murder' taken from poetry volume 'De Mayor Of Harlem' (E.P. Dutton, 1970) by David Henderson

UC SAN DIEGO
Library Digital Collections

David Henderson New Poetry Series reading
5/12/76

Component 1 of 3

Reading
Embed

Collection
New Writing Series: Recordings Description

Henderson reads from 'De mayor of Harlem' Creation Date05/12/76Creator Henderson, David, 1942- Physical Description

1 sound tape reel : analog, 3 3/4 ips, mono Material Details

spoken word Note

Recorded at the University of California, San Diego

Unless otherwise noted, the copyright holder(s) of a sound recording is/are commonly the performer(s) being recorded, and/or the producer of the recording. Series UCSD new poetry series

Format

View formats within this collection sound recording-nonmusical LanguageEnglishIdentifier

Mms: 991001149669706535 Statement Of Responsibility

David Henderson Work Featured

Henderson, David, 1942-. De mayor of Harlem : the poetry of David Henderson Rights HolderPrivate partyCopyright

Under copyright (US)

Use: This work is available from the UC San Diego Library. This digital copy of the work is intended to support research, teaching, and private study.

Constraint(s) on Use: This work is protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of this work beyond that allowed by "fair use" or any license applied to this work requires written permission of the copyright holder(s). Responsibility for obtaining permissions and any use and distribution of this work rests exclusively with the user and not the UC San Diego Library. Inquiries can be made to the UC San Diego Library program having custody of the work. Digital Object Made Available By

Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0175 (https://lib.ucsd.edu/sca) Last Modified

2023-09-22 

DAVID HENDERSON..READING POETRY
  
VIDEO:
 

A well-respected though perhaps under-recognized poet, David Henderson was a founder of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He has been an active member of New York's Lower East Side art community for more than four decades. Henderson has published four volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies. A revised and expanded edition of his highly-acclaimed biography of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix was scheduled for publication in 2006. Co-founded Umbra Born in 1942 and raised in Harlem, David Henderson later studied writing, communications, and Eastern cultures at various colleges and universities without ever finishing a degree. His first published poem appeared in the New York newsweekly Black American in 1960. Upon moving to the Lower East Side of New York, Henderson became an active participant in the various black nationalist, arts, and anti-war movements. In 1962 Henderson, along with other black writers, founded the Society of Umbra. They held weekly writing and criticism sessions and gave popular public readings. In 1963 the group began publishing the magazine Umbra as an outlet for black writers, with Henderson serving as co-editor and later editor. The first issue included poems by Julian Bond and Alice Walker, as well as three of Henderson's poems. Umbra introduced the work of Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, and Quincy Troupe, among others. Henderson also was involved with one of the country's first—and most-admired—counterculture newspapers, the East Village Other, which gave rise to the Underground Press Service. Read more: David Henderson Biography - Co-founded Umbra, Infused his Poems with Jazz, Known for His Lush Voice - Poetry, American, University, and York 
 
JRank Articles:  
http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2805...

David Henderson, "Keep On Pushing" (Harlem Rebellion /Summer/1964) —The Poetry Center


Poetry Center Archive Goes Live!

September 13, 2023


Full program video with downloadable audio at Poetry Center Digital Archive: 
 
 
David Henderson, Thursday March 15, 2018, reads from his longer poem "Keep On Pushing (Harlem Rebellion / Summer / 1964)" — with its title from the song by Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions — from De Mayor of Harlem (E.P. Dutton, 1970), at The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University. 
 
The full program features Henderson's complete reading, a generous span of poems from his early books to the present, followed by an extensive conversation in response to questions and comments from the audience.
 
#davidhenderson video by DocFilm Institute, SFSU--San Francisco State University

Readings in Contemporary Poetry - David Henderson and Andrei Codrescu



Dia Art Foundation 
Posted on February 3, 2018 
Tuesday, January 30, 2018, 6:30 pm

This reading, which was originally planned for December 5, 2017, has been rescheduled for January 30, 2018. Dia:Chelsea 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor New York City Readings in Contemporary Poetry curator, Vincent Katz provided an introduction for the evening's reading 
 
PLEASE NOTE:  David Henderson's part of this program begins with an introduction by Victo Katz @ 32:48 and the formal reading by David begins @ 37:23 
 
VIDEO: 
 
David Henderson, "Song of Devotion to the Forest" (for the Ituri Pygmies) —The Poetry Center



Poetry Center Archive Goes Live!
September 13, 2023
 
#poetrycenterarchivegoeslive#davidhenderson

Full program video with downloadable audio at Poetry Center Digital Archive: 
 
David Henderson, Thursday March 15, 2018, reads his brief and lovely poem "Song of Devotion to the Forest (for the Ituri Pygmies)" from his book The Low East (North Atlantic Books, 1980), at The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University. 
 
The full program features Henderson's complete reading, a generous span of poems from his early books to the present, followed by an extensive conversation in response to questions and comments from the audience. 
 
 
Video by DocFilm Institute, SFSU

David Henderson, "Keep On Pushing" (Harlem Rebellion /Summer/1964) —The Poetry Center



Poetry Center Archive Goes Live! 
 
September 13, 2023 
 
 
Full program video with downloadable audio at Poetry Center Digital Archive: 
 
 
David Henderson, Thursday March 15, 2018, reads from his longer poem "Keep On Pushing (Harlem Rebellion / Summer / 1964)" — with its title from the song by Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions — from De Mayor of Harlem (E.P. Dutton, 1970), at The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University. The full program features Henderson's complete reading, a generous span of poems from his early books to the present, followed by an extensive conversation in response to questions and comments from the audience.
 
VIDEO:
 

#poetrycenterarchivegoeslive #davidhenderson video by DocFilm Institute, SFSU 
 
BOOKS AND RECORDINGS BY
DAVID HENDERSON:

Books:
  • Felix of the Silent Forest (poetry), Poets Press, 1967
  • De Mayor of Harlem (poetry), Dutton, 1970; North Atlantic Books, 1985
  • Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age, Doubleday, 1978; condensed and revised as 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: The Life of Jimi Hendrix, Bantam, 1981; revised and reissued, Omnibus, 2003. Expanded edition, Simon & Schuster, 2009.[4]
  • The Low East, North Atlantic Books, 1980
  • Neo-California, North Atlantic Books, 1998
Edited books 
  • Umbra Anthology 1967–1968, Society of Umbra, 1968
  • Umbra/Latin Soul 1974–1975, Society of Umbra, 1975
Anthology appearances 
  • New Negro Poets: USA, Indiana University, Press, 1964
  • Where is Vietnam? American Poets Respond, Anchor/Doubleday, 1967
  • Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, Morrow, 1968
  • The World Anthology: Poems from Saint Mark's Poetry Project, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969
  • Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1970, Doubleday, 1970
  • Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems. Simon & Schuster, 1973
  • Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry & Prose, Coffee House Press, 1993
  • Trouble the Water: 250 Years of American-American Poetry, Signet, 1997

Recordings 
 
  • New Jazz Poets, Broadside, 1967
  • Black Poets IV, Pacifica Tape Library, 1973
  • Poems: Selections, Library of Congress, 1978
  • (With Sun Ra) "Love in Outer Space", The Singles, Evidence, 1996
  • (With Ornette Coleman) The Complete Science Fiction Sessions, Columbia/Legacy, 2000


https://biography.jrank.org/pages/2805/Henderson-David.html#ixzz2HjyvgInF
 
David Henderson:
Biography

Co-founded Umbra, Infused his Poems with Jazz, Known for His Lush Voice

1942-2026

Poet, author
 
A well-respected though perhaps under-recognized poet, David Henderson was a founder of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He has been an active member of New York's Lower East Side art community for more than four decades. Henderson has published four volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies. A revised and expanded edition of his highly-acclaimed biography of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix appeared in 2007.
 
Co-founded Umbra
 
Born in 1942 and raised in Harlem, David Henderson later studied writing, communications, and Eastern cultures at various colleges and universities without ever finishing a degree. His first published poem appeared in the New York newsweekly Black American in 1960. Upon moving to the Lower East Side of New York, Henderson became an active participant in the various black nationalist, arts, and anti-war movements.

In 1962 Henderson, along with other black writers, founded the Society of Umbra. They held weekly writing and criticism sessions and gave popular public readings. In 1963 the group began publishing the magazine Umbra as an outlet for black writers, with Henderson serving as co-editor and later editor. The first issue included poems by Julian Bond and Alice Walker, as well as three of Henderson's poems. Umbra introduced the work of Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, and Quincy Troupe, among others. Henderson also was involved with one of the country's first—and most-admired—counterculture newspapers, the East Village Other, which gave rise to the Underground Press Service.

Henderson's first poetry collection, Felix of the Silent Forest, appeared in 1967. In the title poem, the cartoon character Felix the Cat "walks the City hungry in every sense," representing disenfranchised blacks and others spurned by American society. These poems introduced many of Henderson's recurrent images and themes, such as the forest in the city and the assassination of Malcolm X. "They Are Killing All the Young Men" was dedicated "to the memory and eternal spirit of Malcolm X." 
 
In his introduction to the collection, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) wrote that the poems were "local epics with the breadth that the emotional consciousness of a culture can make."

Infused his Poems with Jazz

In his article on Henderson in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Terry Joseph Cole described the poet as "the literary heir of Langston Hughes." Cole wrote: "His poetry makes use of personal experience, popular culture, and European and American mythologies to create a new mythology for the people of Harlem and the castaways on Manhattan Island." He clothed himself in "the mantle of the traditional African storyteller and chronicler."

In his introduction to De Mayor of Harlem, Henderson described his second collection as "poems, documentaries, tales, and lies" written between 1962 and 1970. 
 
The documentaries described events such as the 1964 Harlem riots: "I see police eight to one // in its entirety Harlem's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics // Helmet // nightsticks bullets to barehead // black reinforced shoes to sneaker // Am I in Korea?" 
 
Later poems signaled Henderson's move toward jazz poetry, which he described in the introduction as "the language of the man of the moment; it's improvised; it's street language…African 'talking drums'—the basis of jazz—were one of the world's first mass communications systems. People related to those rhythms in a unified way."

Henderson's poems frequently portrayed jazz musicians, such as Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, and he began performing on jazz recordings. In 1971 he recorded with the avant-garde saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Henderson wrote the lyrics to composer and pianist Sun Ra's "Love in Outer Space" and recorded with Sun Ra as well with saxophonist David Murray and "Butch" Morris.

Known for His Lush Voice

Henderson worked with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Free Southern Theatre in New Orleans, and the Teachers and Writers Collaborative at Columbia University. For a time he taught and was poet-in-residence at City College of New York. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Henderson lived in California, serving on the board of directors of the University Without Walls in Berkeley and as artistic consultant to the Berkeley Public Schools. He taught English and Afro-American literature at the University of California at Berkeley and San Diego. Later he taught courses, seminars, and workshops at Long Island University, New York's New School, and the St. Mark's Poetry Project. His 2004 writing workshop at Naropa University in Colorado was entitled "Geography of War."

Henderson has performed at various venues over the past four decades. He interviewed and hosted readings by black poets for Pacifica Radio in San Francisco and wrote, produced, and directed the radio documentary Bob Kaufman, Poet. Henderson's funk opera Ghetto Follies was first produced in San Francisco in 1978. That same year the Library of Congress began taping his readings for its permanent archives. Henderson's 1980 collection The Low East celebrated his return to New York's Lower East Side.

Henderson's poetry has been published in numerous anthologies, including two that were edited by Langston Hughes. The many periodicals that have published his work include Black American Literature Forum, Black Scholar, Essence, Paris Review, New American Review, Evergreen Review, Saturday Review, and the New York Times.

Wrote Biography of Jimi Hendrix

Henderson spent more than five years researching, conducting interviews, and writing Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age. 
 
Originally published in 1978, it was condensed and revised as 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky in 1981. 
 
A new expanded edition was published in Britain in 2003 and a new updated and revised American publication appeared on Atria Books in 2009 as 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky—Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Child.

Jimi Hendrix included transcripts of recorded conversations and first-person accounts. It was an innovative biography, detailing Hendrix's musical influences, especially blues and jazz, his lyrics, and the development of his groundbreaking electric guitar style and the technology that made it possible. Greil Marcus of Rolling Stone called it "the strongest and most ambitious biography yet written about any rock and roll performer."

At a Glance …

Born David Henderson in 1942, in Harlem, NY. Education: Bronx Community College, 1960; Hunter College, 1961; New School for Social Research, 1962; East-West Institute, Cambridge, MA, 1964-65; University Without Walls, Berkeley, CA, 1972.

Career: Umbra, co-editor, 1963-68, editor, 1968-74; 
 
National Endowment for the Arts, consultant, 1967-68, 1980; 
 
City College of New York, lecturer, 1967-69, poet-in-residence, 1969-70; 
 
Berkeley Public Schools, artistic consultant, 1968; New York Public Schools, consultant, 1969; University of California, Berkeley, lecturer, 1970-72; 
 
University of California, San Diego, lecturer, 1979-80; Naropa University, visiting professor, 1981, 1995, 2004; 
 
State University of New York, Stony Brook, visiting professor, 1988-89; 
 
New School, visiting professor, 2000; St. Mark's Poetry Project, workshop leader, 1995, 2003.

Awards: Great Lakes College Association of New Writers Award, 1971; California Arts Council, New Genre Poetry Grant, 1992; Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Artist Grant, 1999; New York Foundation for the Arts, Artist Fellowship, 1999.

Addresses: Home—PO Box 1018, Cooper Station, New York, NY 10276-1018.

Henderson described a Hendrix performance at the Fillmore East: "Hendrix assaults the mind, sublimating horrible noises of the city. Subways busting through violent tunnels, exploding Mack trucks, jet exhaust fumes, buses; he turns the fascist sounds of energy exploitation into a beautiful music with a pyramid base of urban blues guitar. B. B. King's looney obbligato screams, Blind Lemon Jefferson's beautiful justice of country space, and Jimmy Reed's diddy-bop beats; Jimi exalts them all into a personal mastery of primordial sound itself, beyond ken and imagination. We hear spaceships landing in the heavy atmospheric gases of fantastic planets, we hear giant engines changing gears, we hear massive turbines that run cities, Frankenstein life-giving electric-shock blasts, jets taking off and exploding into melody."

Henderson described his most recent poetry collection, Neo-California, as "meditations on his Third World America." As of 2005 Henderson continued to write and compose poetry criticizing the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. He was also involved in the PoetsConsensus, a group devoted to post-9/11 issues.

Selected works
Books

Felix of the Silent Forest (poetry), Poets Press, 1967.

(Editor) Umbra Anthology 1967-1968, Society of Umbra, 1968.

De Mayor of Harlem (poetry), Dutton, 1970; North Atlantic Books, 1985.

(Editor) Umbra/Latin Soul 1974-1975, Society of Umbra, 1975.

Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age, Doubleday, 1978; condensed and revised as 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: The Life of Jimi Hendrix, Bantam, 1981; revised and reissued, Omnibus, 2003.

The Low East, North Atlantic Books, 1980.
Neo-California, North Atlantic Books, 1998.
Anthologies

New Negro Poets: USA, Indiana University Press, 1964.

Where Is Vietnam? American Poets Respond, Anchor/Doubleday, 1967.

Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, Morrow, 1968.

The World Anthology: Poems from the Saint Mark's Poetry Project, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.

Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1970, Doubleday, 1970.

Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems. Simon & Schuster, 1973.

Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry & Prose (includes "Sonny Rollins," "A Coltrane Memorial," "Thelonious Sphere Monk"), Coffee House Press, 1993.

Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African American Poetry, Signet, 1997.

Recordings

New Jazz Poets, Broadside, 1967.

Black Poets IV, Pacifica Tape Library, 1973.

Poems: Selections, Library of Congress, 1978.

(With Sun Ra) "Love in Outer Space," The Singles, Evidence, 1996.

(With Ornette Coleman) The Complete Science Fiction Sessions, Columbia/Legacy, 2000.

Other

Color: A Sampling of Contemporary African American Writers (videorecording), The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives, San Francisco State University, 1994.

"Seven Poems from Neo-California,"
 

Sources

Books

Cole, Terry Joseph, "David Henderson," Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 41, Gale Group, 1985, pp. 166-71.

Periodicals

African American Review, Winter 1993, pp. 579-84.

On-line

"David Henderson," Biography Resource Center, www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (May 12, 2005).

"A Poets Consensus," 
 
Public Art Forum: zumThema! www.public-art.de/forum/poetcons.html (June 23, 2005).
at