In Memoriam
Toni Brown 1952 - 2008
Cave Canem Fellow 1997, 1998, 2002
"Her work is transcendent, just as Toni was in her life."
Toni Brown served as Director of Education, Training and Outreach for Girls, Incorporated, Philadelphia, a national nonprofit youth organization dedicated to empowering American girls growing up in underserved communities. "I teach them to use poetry as a tool for examining their world before blindly reacting to it," Toni said. "They read the work of other Black women poets who write about our lives and circumstances with strength and hope." She also served as an editor of Painted Bride Quarterly.
Of her own writing, Toni said, "I write poems to slow the world." She was the recipient of a Leeway Foundation Emerging Writers Poetry Grant, and her poems and stories were published in several journals and anthologies, including Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Night Bites: Vampire Stories by Women, Night Shade: Gothic Tales by Women, Pillow Talk II, Fireweed, American Poetry Review, Philadelphia Poets and Prairie Schooner.
Phebus Etienne 1964 - 2007
Cave Canem Fellow 1999, 2001, 2002
"A poet of powerful articulation."
Phebus Etienne was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and spent her childhood in East Orange, NJ. She earned degrees at Rider University and New York University. She completed a full-length manuscript of poems, Chainstitching, and her powerful work found publication in such places as American Poet, The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States, Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Paterson Literary Review, Lips and Crab Orchard Review. She was the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
A proud Cave Canem fellow and tireless volunteer for the organization, Phebus was beloved and admired. Described as a poet of "intense visual acuity" by Rodney Jones, her verse commanded widespread respect. Toi Derricotte has called the experience of reading Phebus's poems "like drinking clear water." In American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Volume 31, Jones wrote, "Always lucid, Etienne's poetry is at once salutary and elegiac. Like Milosz's, it has a complex business to conduct, often referring to the personal, social, and religious elements of a life in exile; of mixed identities and conflicting obligations."
Tribute gifts in Phebus's name may be sent to Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. by post or online. These fully tax-deductible donations provide financial aid for Cave Canem retreat fellows.
Reginald Lockett 1947 - 2008
Cave Canem Fellow 2000, 2002, 2003
"If there was ever a poet deserving of the title poet laureate for a city, Reggie was Oakland's unnamed honoree."
Poet and educator Reginald Franklin Lockett was born in Berkeley, California, and lived in Oakland for most of his life. Al Young, former poet laureate of California, said of Reginald, "His work breathed Oakland—each syllable an experience that we, who call this fair city home, could relate to."
Reginald received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English literature from San Francisco State University, where he was a founding member of the Black Students Alliance. He later returned to teach creative writing there, as well as at City College of San Francisco, Laney College and College of Marin. He was a tenured instructor of Language Arts at San Jose City College for 20 years. He co-founded PEN Oakland in 1989, along with Floyd Salas and Claire Ortalda, and served as the organization's Vice President. He was also the owner and publisher of Juke Box Press, which raised thousands of dollars for Hurricane Katrina victims with the publication of the poetry anthology, Words upon the Water.
A dedicated teacher, Reginald was perhaps best known as a poet. He was the author of Where the Birds Sing Bass, winner of a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award in 1996, Good Times & No Bread, The Party Crashers of Paradise and Random History Lessons.
Carrie McCray Nickens 1913 - 2008
Cave Canem Fellow 1996, 1999, 2006
"She made the dry facts of history sing."
Born in Virginia, Carrie Allen McCray Nickens earned her Bachelor of Arts from Talladega College in Talladadega, Alabama, and her Master of Social Work from New York University. She received dozens of awards and commendations, including the Social Worker of the Year Award from the National Association of Social Workers and the United Negro College Fund's Teacher of the Year award. She spent the last several years of her life in South Carolina, and remains one of the state's most beloved literary figures.
Though Carrie wrote scholarly articles and some short stories and poems over the years, it was not until she reached her 70s that she began writing more seriously. "She never stopped growing, changing and undertaking the next challenge, right to the end," wrote Toi Derricotte. "She spent her last decades becoming a poet and writing our history, so that it will not be forgotten."
Carrie was the author of two books; Piece of Time and Freedom's Child: The Life of a Confederate General's Black Daughter, which told the story of her grandmother, a freed slave, and grandfather, a Confederate general. Her last major work, Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof, a narrative poem about an African pygmy who was displayed in the Bronx Zoo and later lived with her family in Virginia after his rescue. The collection will be published posthumously by the University of South Carolina Press.
Vincent Woodard 1971 - 2008
Cave Canem Fellow 1996
"The man could shake you to your foundations without seeming to break a sweat."
Vincent Woodward was born in Tucson, Arizona. He graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in 1993, and earned his MA and PhD degrees in American Literature from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996 and 2002, respectively. In 2002, he joined the faculty of the department of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he specialized in 19th- and 20th-century American literature, African American literature, Queer literature and culture, and African Diaspora studies.
In addition to his scholarship, Vincent wrote and performed poetry and dramatic work noted for its haunting tones and keen language "'Moving' doesn't even come close to the experience of hearing him perform," Reginald Harris recalls. "Many of us remember him as someone who seemed made more of Light than of Flesh, radiating peace, wisdom and a great deal of strength and courage."
Shortly before his passing, Vincent completed contract negotiations with New York University Press for the publication of his first book, The Delectable Negro: Race, Hunger and Homoeroticism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture.