Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was an accomplished, nationally recognized poet and author, college faculty member, and mother of six children. She was the second woman and first African American to serve as Poet Laureate of Maryland (1979-1985). Clifton's career reflected her self-satisfaction as a strong, African American woman who believed that only by accepting individual responsibility can people live a better life.

She was born Thelma Lucille Sayles in 1936, in Depew, New York, a small town outside of Buffalo, to Samuel L. and Thelma Sayles. Her mother, a poet, encouraged her creativity, and as a young girl she began to compose stories and poems. Clifton was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and, in 1953, she won a scholarship to Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in drama. She left Howard after two years after deciding that she would rather write poetry.

A year after leaving Howard, Clifton attended Fredonia State Teacher's College (now State University of New York at Fredonia). In 1958, she married Fred Clifton.

Clifton's first volume of poetry, Good Times: Poems, was published in 1969. It was cited by The New York Times as one of 1969's ten best books. Clifton published over thirty volumes of poetry and books for children and adults. Her writing focused on themes related to African American women and families. It has been noted that her pride as an African American woman helped her write positively about overcoming the difficulties faced by those living in the inner city. In 1987, Clifton was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Good Women: Poems and Memoir, 1969-1980, and Next: New Poems.

Clifton's talent was especially noted in her works for children. Her book My Friend Jacob, a story of a friendship between two children, one of whom lives with a disability, won the Access to Equality Conference Award for Children's Literature in "Recognition for Outstanding Treatment of Disabled Children."

Clifton earned many awards and honors throughout her career. She was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Maryland and Towson State University. She was the poet in residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore between 1971 and 1974. Clifton's greatest Maryland honor came in 1979 when she was appointed Maryland's Poet Laureate.

The following year, Clifton was a visiting writer at both Columbia University School of the Arts and George Washington University. She became a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1985.

After several years in California, Lucille Clifton returned to Maryland in 1989 where she was the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She conducted numerous seminars and workshops for Maryland students, writers, and educators.

She died in Baltimore on February 13, 2010. Her daughter Sidney Clifton reacquired their family home near Baltimore and with the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and established the house as the Clifton House, a place to support young artists and writers, in 2020.

“won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?”
- Lucille Clifton, “won't you celebrate with me” from Book of Light (1993)

Biography courtesy of the Maryland Commission for Women, 1993; updated 2023.