Sketches toward an independence day poem

Poet, writer, storyteller, cultural historian, interdisciplinary humanities scholar and librarian, Gale Jackson is the author ofPut Your Hands on Your Hips and Act Like a Woman: Song, Dance, Black History and Poetics in Performance; MeDea A Novella; Suite for Mozambique; Bridge Suite: Narrative Poems Based on the Lives of African and African American Women in the Early History of These New Black Nations; andA Khoisan Tale of Beginnings and Ends. Her work has been performed, exhibited, presented and anthologized widely, and appears in journal publications including The African American Review; Freedomways; The Journal of Black Studies; Feminist Studies; American Voices; Callaloo; Tribes; Artist and Influence, Ploughshares and Essence. She edited the Collaborative Voice: Art in a War Time anthology (CollaborativeVoice@Goddard.edu) and co-edited Art Against Apartheid: Voices for Freedom collection. She facilitates the Ehecatl Olin Learning Studio and The Poet in the House Collaborative, with New York City middle school 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.