Discipline: Literature – poetry

Clemonce Heard

Discipline: Literature – poetry
Region: McFarland, WI
MacDowell Fellowships: 2023
More: www.clemonceheard.com

Clemonce Heard was born and raised in New Orleans, LA. He is the winner of the 2020 Anhinga Robert Dana Prize, selected by Major Jackson. His poetry collection, Tragic City, which investigates the events of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, was published in October 2021 and was recently awarded the Wisconsin Library Association Award and shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from Obsidian, The Missouri Review, Cimarron Review, Iron Horse, World Literature Today, Poetry, Rattle, Ruminate, and elsewhere.

While at MacDowell, Clemonce researched and drafted essays and poems that belong to his next two books. Both books deal in his family history of education and racial trauma.

Portrait by Melissa Lukenbaugh

Studios

Veltin

Clemonce Heard worked in the Veltin studio.

Veltin Studio was donated by alumni of the Veltin School, a school for girls in New York with a highly respected visual arts department. As the plaque just outside the entrance attests, this studio was used by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson during most of the 24 summers he spent at MacDowell. Perhaps most famously, Thornton Wilder put the finishing…

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