African-American poetry is an ever-growing and everchanging art form...in coffee houses and night clubs...on music videos and in independent films...from the blues and be-bop, to rap and hip-hop. Catch the Fire!!! is more than a poetry anthology. It is a cultural event: the introduction of a new generation of African-American poets by an established generation, and a celebration of contemporary African-American poetry. Through the themes of family, love, the city, revolution, the body, and the soul, June Jordan, Amiri Baraka, Abiodun Oyewole (of the Last Poets), Ntozake Shange, and Sonia Sanchez discuss their own generation of poets and their thoughts about the emerging poets whose poems they are presenting here.
Tony Medina is the author and editor of sixteen books for adults and young readers, including DeShawn Days (Lee & Low Books, 2001), Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, 2001), Love to Langston (Lee & Low Books, 2002), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press, 2002), Committed to Breathing (Third World Press, 2003), and Follow-up Letters to Santa from Kids Who Never Got a Response (Just Us Books, 2003). Featured in the documentaries Nuyorc 1999; A Weigh with Words: An Inside Look At How Words Create Conflict or Compassion; and Furious Flower II: Regenerating the Black Poetic Tradition: Roots & First Fruits/Cross-Pollination in the Diaspora/Blooming in the Whirlwind, Medina's poetry, fiction, and essays appear in over eighty publications and two CD compilations. An advisory editor for Hip Hop Speaks to Children, edited by Nikki Giovanni, his most recent work is featured in the anthologies Poets Against the Killing Field; Family Pictures: Poems and Photographs Celebrating Our Loved Ones; Fingernails Across a Chalkboard: A Literary and Artistic View of HIV/AIDS Affecting People of Color, Full Moon on K Street; Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75; and Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS (Third World Press, 2010). Medina has taught English at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus and Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, and has earned an MA and PhD in English from Binghamton University, SUNY. Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University in Washington, DC, Medina's latest books are I and I, Bob Marley (Lee & Low Books, 2009), My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (NYQ Books, 2010) and Broke on Ice (Willow Books/Aquarius Press, 2011). Medina was most recently featured in interview on thebrownbookshelf.com's Black History Month 28 Days Campaign. His fiction and poetry are most recently featured in the anthologies 44 on 44: Forty-four African American Writers on the Election of Barack Obama 44th President of the United States (Third World Press, 2011), edited by Lita Hooper, Sonia Sanchez and Michael Simanga and the 2010 NAACP Award winner in Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems (Sourcebooks, 2010), edited by Nikki Giovanni. Medina's books The President Looks Like Me (Just Us Books, 2011) and An Onion of Wars (Third World Press, 2011) are forthcoming this fall.
