(A Temple Looming by Lenard D. Moore is a series of portra...)
A Temple Looming by Lenard D. Moore is a series of portraits, painstakingly rendered, that capture the nuances of the African-Americans whose lives inspired them: splendid in uniform, the barrel-straight stare of his pure black face shines like a bullet. Imagine he'd not returned from the Great War, leaving a void in his family, and in this picture.
(A literal and metaphorical groundbreaker, this unique and...)
A literal and metaphorical groundbreaker, this unique and indispensable collection contains a brilliant array of haiku by five members of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, including founder and guiding spirit Lenard D. Moore, who serves as its editor.
All the Songs We Sing: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective
(Individually, these poems, stories, and essays have helpe...)
Individually, these poems, stories, and essays have helped these Carolinians voice their experiences, remind us of our history, and insist on change, and gathered together, their chorus is turned all the way up and demands to be heard. These writers have shaped the modern literary landscape of the Carolinas for the last twenty-five years and will continue to influence and inspire African-American writers for generations to come.
(In The Geography of Jazz, Lenard Moore celebrates jazz mu...)
In The Geography of Jazz, Lenard Moore celebrates jazz music and jazz musicians. Some of the poems address specific events. Others honor individual artists. Many do both. While the poems may not initially signal the rhythms of jazz in their presentation on the page, they convey jazz rhythms through Moore's deft handling of the poetic line and his use of formal techniques including but not limited to assonance, onomatopoeia, and repetition.
Lenard Moore is a United States writer, educator, and poet, whose strong, direct, and evocative poems connect generations, cross continents, and touch people everywhere, yet they are rooted in his African-American culture. He is as comfortable in writing traditional western lyrical poetry as he is in mastering eastern or Japanese poetic forms.
Background
Lenard Duane Moore was born on February 13, 1958, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, United States. He is a son of Rogers Edward Moore, a career veteran of the United States Marine Corps, and Mary Louise Moore, maiden name Pearson, a club supervisor. Both of Moore's parents worked at Camp Lejeune: his father taught mechanics, and his mother supervised clubs on base. He fell in love with reading in his childhood home, which expanded as babies were born. One day, a salesman showed up at the front door, offering four hardbound volumes of African-American history. Moore's father offered to help him buy the entire set. From there, the written word took him far beyond Jacksonville - and so did the spoken word, especially when his grandfather told stories late into the night.
Education
Lenard Moore enjoyed reading books in elementary school. His love for books early on did in fact contribute to becoming a writer. His bus ride to his segregated school in Jacksonville, North Carolina, was long, and often boring, but he quickly found that books could fill the void. He loved words and the way they worked together. At first, it was just "Green Eggs and Ham" and "The Gingerbread Man." But those turned out to be the simple beginnings of a love for literature that blossomed into a career as a poet. Teachers at school encouraged him to write, science fiction stories to plays. One teacher made each student keep a journal - a habit he has never been able to break. Ever since high school, he has carried a notebook to jot down what he sees, or new lines of poetry, or words to remember. In the early days, he kept it with him when he worked his great-grandmother's peanut crop, or a nearby tobacco field, or the vegetable plot that fed his family of nine most months of the year. Hard work was a way of life, and Moore learned it first by working the land with a hoe, rake, and plow. Between the warm earth and the hot sun, rhythm brought relief, connecting muscle to metal to the soil.
Lenard Moore earned his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Shaw University in 1995, and his Master of Arts degree in English/African American Literature from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1997.
After graduation, Lenard Moore enlisted in the Army to see the world in earnest. Stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, he kept filling up notebooks, and, in his spare time, he took a creative-writing class. He wrote love letters to his sweetheart back home, inserting a poem into each one. "I already believed in the power of language," he says of that time. But he didn't know how that power would shape his life until he returned home. He served in the United States Army from 1978 to 1981.
One winter afternoon, he lay in his childhood bedroom, sick with the flu. To pass the time, he began to leaf through a literature anthology from his creative-writing class and found a Japanese haiku translated into English. Just three lines. Outside his window, he could see the winding dirt road, the chinaberry tree, the barren field. As he began to write, his energy returned. Such a short poem required so much work, he realized. Each word must be precise. From that moment, he began to see tobacco country through the eyes of the medieval Japanese poet Basho. "Without poetry, I might not have made it this far," he says. Moore's collections of poems, rooted in his eastern North Carolina experience, explore themes ranging from military service to jazz to unity among African-American men. After his daughter was killed in a car accident in 2004, Moore navigated his loss at the local library, where he sat every day for a year, writing for his lost child. Notebooks upon notebooks. Into the small containers of poems, he poured his bottomless grief. His poems are extensions of himself - uncluttered, full of compassion and wonder for people and for nature. One of the most striking aspects of Moore's work is his poignancy in using a variety of poetic forms.
In 1983-1984, Lenard Moore was a poet-in-residence for Mira Mesa Branch Library, San Diego. In 1984-1995, he worked as a media technician at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction in Raleigh. In 1987-1993, he was a writer-in-residence for United Residence for United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, North Carolina. In 1982-1983, he was a regional director of the International Black Writers' Conference. In 1990-1992, Moore was a member of the board of directors of the North Carolina Writers' Network. In 1995, he founded the Carolina African-American Writers' Collective, which began as small gatherings around his kitchen table and went on to support acclaimed writers, like 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist Evie Shockley. He is also a co-founder of Washington Street Writers' Group. Moore has taught workshops, served on literary panels, and given hundreds of readings at schools, festivals, colleges, and universities, including the National Black Arts Festival, Zora Neale Hurston Festival, The People's Poetry Gathering, The Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, and The Library of Congress. He has also been featured on several radio and television programs.
Lenard Moore has taught English at Enloe Magnet High School, Raleigh, and was an editorial assistant at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1995-1996. In 1997-2001, he was a visiting lecturer at North Carolina State University. In 1998, he became an adjunct instructor in English at Shaw University. Currently, Lenard Moore, an associate professor of English, teaches Advanced Poetry Writing and African American Literature at the University of Mount Olive, where he directs the literary festival. He also mentors several other poets and writers.
Lenard Moore has written more than 20 forms of poetry, drama, essays, and literary criticism, and has been writing and publishing haiku for more than two decades. In 2008, Moore became the first Southerner and the first African-American to be elected as a president of the Haiku Society of America. He is published in hundreds of journals, magazines, anthologies, and newspapers. His poetry has appeared in translation, in Spain, Italy, China, and especially in Japan. He was a Finalist in the 1987-1988 Japan Air Lines Haiku Contest in which more than 40,000 entries were received. Moore was a recipient of scholarships for Cave Canem Poets Workshop, in 1998, 1999, and 2000; and a grant from North Carolina Haiku Press. In 2014, he received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the highest civilian honor in the state.
(A Temple Looming by Lenard D. Moore is a series of portra...)
2008
Religion
Lenard Moore recalls going to church on Sundays as a young boy in Jacksonville - cleaned up nice, wearing a bow tie that his mother would straighten just so. Sliding into a pew, he'd be drawn into the service as soon as the preacher began to speak. What captivated him wasn't necessarily the words themselves - talk of heaven or hell, the evils of Jim Crow - but the way they were said. Moore remembers vividly the preacher's sonorous voice rising and falling, pouring out emotion and circling back to the same refrains. "Those sermons weren't just for the mind - I felt them," he says. Adult meanings may have gone over his head back then, but sound and rhythm went straight to his heart. He thought that sermons had a lot in common with poetry.
Politics
Lenard Moore is an adherent of Democratic Party political views.
Views
Haiku, a 17th-century Japanese art form, is, for Lenard Moore, "like a spiritual journey and a new way of life." The three short lines are, at first glance, deceptively simple. Yet within those lines is all that needs to be said. He likes the conciseness, concrete details, contrasts that one must employ when writing haiku. He also likes how the haiku form causes him to write about the human oneness of existence with the natural world. Moore believes that haiku, in some way, enables him to see the beauty of phenomena in the natural world.
Quotations:
"I write because it is my way of life. I must write to survive. Writing is like a beating heart, a vital organ that keeps history and heritage alive. Writing is as crucial as inhaling and exhaling. In addition, I write to learn, to stay in touch with my inner self, to make sense of the past, present, and future, to inform and entertain, and to celebrate our existence."
Membership
Lenard Moore was an executive chair of the North Carolina Haiku Society in 1995-1997 and 1998-2001. He is a member of Raleigh Writing Alliance, Poetry Study Club of Terre Haute, and many other organizations.
National Federation of State Poetry Societies
,
United States
Poetry Society of America
,
United States
Academy of American Poets
,
United States
In 2008, Lenard Moore was elected president of the Haiku Society of America.
Haiku Society of America
,
United States
Tanka Society of America
,
United States
National Book Critics Circle
,
United States
College Language Association
,
United States
North Carolina Poetry Society
,
United States
Haiku Poets of Northern California
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United States
World Poetry Society
International Platform Association
Interests
reading, music, sports, gardening, family events
Writers
Etheridge Knight, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Peggy Willis Lyles, Raymond Roseliep, Richard Wright, Roberta Beary, Sonia Sanchez
Connections
Lenard Moore married Marcille Lynn Gardner, a poet, on October 15, 1985. They had a daughter, Maiisha, who died in a car accident in 2004.
Father:
Roger Edward Moore
Roger Edward Moore was a career Marine who served two tours in motor transport with the 5th Communications Battalion in the Republic of Vietnam. He also taught mechanics at Camp Lejeune.
Mother:
Mary Louise Moore
Mary Louise Moore supervised clubs at Camp Lejeune.
Daughter:
Maiisha LaShawn Moore
Lenard Moore's most recognized haiku was written after his daughter, Maiisha LaShawn Moore, was killed in a car accident in 2004. Moore describes the day of the funeral as a humid afternoon in which the moisture caused his fingers to make a squeaking noise when he ran them along her casket:
