Norman Henry Pritchard, or N. H. Pritchard (October 22, 1939 – February 8, 1996),Aldon Lynn Nielsen, ''Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism''
Cambridge University Press, pp. 130-133, 136. was an American poet. He was a member of the

Umbra poets Umbra was a collective of young black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side that was founded in 1962. Background Umbra was one of the first post-civil rights Black literary groups to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing th ...

, a collective of Black writers in Manhattan's Lower East Side founded in 1962. Pritchard's poetry is considered

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

. His poems often include unconventional typography and spacing, as in "Harbour," or lack sentences entirely, as in " " ".

Biography

Pritchard was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He studied for a B.A. degree at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

, where he was president of his campus Fine Arts Society and an active contributor to his college's literary magazine. He did graduate work at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, and taught briefly at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSSR ...

and was a poet-in-residence at Friends Seminary. During the years he was a member of the Umbra poets, his work appeared in magazines and journals such as ''Athanor'', ''Liberator'', ''Season'', ''

Negro Digest The ''Negro Digest'', later renamed ''Black World'', was a magazine for the African-American market. Founded in November 1942 by publisher John H. Johnson of Johnson Publishing Company, ''Negro Digest'' was first published locally in Chicago, Illi ...

'', ''Sail'', ''

Poetry Northwest ''Poetry Northwest'' was founded as a quarterly, poetry-only journal in 1959 by Errol Pritchard, with Carolyn Kizer, Richard Hugo, Edith Shiffert and Nelson Bentley as co-editors. The first issue was 32 pages and included the work of Richmond Latt ...

'', the ''

East Village Other ''The East Village Other'' (often abbreviated as ''EVO'') was an American underground newspaper in New York City, issued biweekly during the 1960s. It was described by '' The New York Times'' as "a New York newspaper so countercultural that it ...

'', and ''Gathering'', as well as in several anthologies of African-American writing, including

Walter Lowenfels Walter Lowenfels (May 10, 1897 – July 7, 1976) was an American poet, journalist, and member of the Communist Party USA. He also edited the Pennsylvania Edition of ''The Worker'', a weekend edition of the Communist-sponsored ''Daily Worker' ...

's ''In a Time of Revolution'' (1969) and ''Natural Process'', edited by Ted Wilentz and Tom Weatherly. Pritchard's work was published in two books and three journals: ''The Matrix: Poems, 1960-1970'' (Doubleday, 1970) and ''Eecchhooeess'' (New York University Press, 1971) ''New Jazz Poet''(1967), ''The New Black Poetry''(1969), and ''In a Time of Revolution: Poems from Our Third World''(1969). As

Richard Kostelanetz Richard Cory Kostelanetz (born May 14, 1940) is an American artist, author, and critic. Birth and Education Kostelanetz was born to Boris Kostelanetz and Ethel Cory and is the nephew of the conductor Andre Kostelanetz. He has a B.A. (1962) from ...

states: "Only one one-man collection of visual poetry, for instance, has ever been commercially published in the United States, even though 'concrete' is reportedly 'faddish'; and since that single book, N. H. Pritchard’s ''The Matrix'' (1970), was neither reviewed nor touted, it seemed unlikely that any others would ever appear—another example of how the rule of precedent in literary commerce produces de facto censorship." Pritchard “stopped publishing in the early 1970s, and before his early death from cancer was residing in eastern Pennsylvania.”

References

External links

N. H. Pritchard: books at Eclipse
*On N. H. Prichard by Charles Bernstein (2004/2015)
Jacket2
Recovery Project by Zachary Schomburg. Octopus Magazine.

The Devil's Accountant, June 17, 2010. {{DEFAULTSORT:Pritchard, Norman American male poets Living people 1939 births African-American poets 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people African-American male writers