Background
Brenda Marie Osbey was born on December 12, 1957, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. She is a daughter of Lawrence C. and Lois Emelda Hamilton Osbey.
2018
Hannah Robinson with Brenda Marie Osbey at the 2018 Collegiate Conference, Poetry Without Boundaries.
Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
In 1978 Brenda Marie Osbey received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dillard University.
Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III, Montpellier, France
From 1976 to 1977 Brenda Marie Osbey attended the Paul Valéry University, Montpellier.
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, United States
In 1986 Brenda Marie Osbey obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Kentucky.
Brenda Maria Osbey
Brenda Maria Osbey
Brenda Maria Osbey
Brenda Maria Osbey
(Osbey's first book of poetry, Ceremony for Minneconjoux, ...)
Osbey's first book of poetry, Ceremony for Minneconjoux, uses the many voices of black women of New Orleans to weave what Mary A. McCay in American Women Writers called "a tapestry of black New Orleans life." These women, whom Osbey calls "madhouse women," reflect their African backgrounds but also the influences of the Spanish and French cultures so prevalent in New Orleans. The title character, "minneconjoux," for example, speaks of her Indian heritage.
https://www.amazon.com/Ceremony-Minneconjoux-Poems-Callaloo-poetry/dp/0912759003/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Ceremony+for+Minneconjoux%3A+Poems&qid=1582790829&s=books&sr=1-1
1983
(Like the feast day recalled in its title, this collection...)
Like the feast day recalled in its title, this collection of twenty narrative poems venerates the dead. Brenda Marie Osbey invokes, impersonates, and converses with her Afro-New Orleans forebears - both blood ancestors and spiritual predecessors - weaving in hypnotic cadence a spell as potent as the religious and magical mysteries of her native culture. In All Saints, we come to believe the dead do live, in the slave bricks paving the city’s faubourgs, in the Hoodoo rites and images of saints, and especially in ourselves, who "walk upon the earth a living man / wearing all the shrouds of mourning like a skin / and memory like a stone inside your organs."
https://www.amazon.com/All-Saints-New-Selected-Poems/dp/0807121983/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=All+Saints%3A+New+and+Selected+Poems+osbey&qid=1582791165&s=books&sr=1-1
1997
(History and Other Poems takes as its task nothing less th...)
History and Other Poems takes as its task nothing less than an examination and mapping of the never-ending evil of history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the still-palpable effects of European and American colonialism some seven centuries after the making of the New World. Making, breaking and rebuilding language and languages to suit the needs of her characters and the worlds they struggle to survive in and against, Brenda Marie Osbey has created a compelling study of human will and the determination to wrest life and liberty from destinies long ago written out of history as we know it. Aided by an extensive glossary and notes, this volume takes the reader on a series of gruesome journeys across the Americas, from Columbus's first encounter with the Guanahani Indians to the author's native New Orleans, trailing violence, destruction and oppression with every step, marking the geography of evil on the map of this New World.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568091796/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i5
2012
(Arranged in six sections, Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems ...)
Arranged in six sections, Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems includes the poet’s earliest lyric verse along with poems written in response to Nigeria’s war years; literary tributes and elegies to fellow poets, activists, and loved ones long dead; and recent dramatic and narrative poems. The introduction by Brenda Marie Osbey contextualizes Okara’s work in the history of Nigerian, African, and English language literatures. Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems is at once a treasure for those long in search of a single authoritative edition and a revelation and timely introduction for readers new to the work of one of Africa’s most revered poets.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BU0V3PY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i6
2014
Brenda Marie Osbey was born on December 12, 1957, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. She is a daughter of Lawrence C. and Lois Emelda Hamilton Osbey.
In 1978 Brenda Marie Osbey received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dillard University. From 1976 to 1977 she also attended the Paul Valéry University. In 1986 Osbey obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Kentucky.
Brenda Maria Osbey has taught at Dillard University and the University of California at Los Angeles. She has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.
Osbey is Poet Laureate Emerita of Louisiana, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University (2011-2015), and Distinguished Visiting Professor for the Carter G. Woodson Institute at University of Virginia (2018). She is the author of several volumes of poetry, including All Saints: New and Selected Poems and History and Other Poems.
(Arranged in six sections, Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems ...)
2014(History and Other Poems takes as its task nothing less th...)
2012(Osbey's first book of poetry, Ceremony for Minneconjoux, ...)
1983(Like the feast day recalled in its title, this collection...)
1997Brenda Marie Osbey is a member of the Poetry Society of America, Academy of American Poets, National Writers Union, Modem Language Association, Associated Writing Programs.