is an award-winning poet who participated in several poetry movements in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and the lower east side of New York City, including the Black Arts Theatre, the Umbra Workshop, Le Doux Megots, the Metro, and the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. He has worked with the Poetry-in-the Schools program in several states, and organized the June-teenth Blues Festivals in Texas. He is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston-Downtown.