Lucille Clifton reads "Turning"

Program Description
Lucille Clifton was born in Depaw, New York, in 1936, and educated at the State University of New York at Fredonia and at Howard University. She is the only author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in one year: Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 and Next: New Poems. These were followed by Quilting Poems 1987-1990 and The Book of Light. Her awards include the Juniper Prize for Poetry, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz and American University in Washington, D.C. and is presently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

Lucille Clifton introduces and reads her poems. The following poems were edited for broadcast and general distribution, and appear on the master tapes with and without "Poetry Breaks" logo and copyright:

"The Lesson of Falling Leaves"
"Spring Song"
"Let there be new flowering in the fields..."
"The Lost Baby Poem"
"This Morning"
"Turning"
"Homage to My Hips"
"In the inner city..."
"In My Thirty-Eighth Year"

Multiple takes of these poems appear on the source tapes of original footage, along with Clifton's answers to the following questions:
What is poetry to you?
Where do your ideas come from?
What's a poet's life like?
Selected answers were incorporated into the schools and libraries version.

Produced and directed by Leita Hagemann Luchetti.

"Poetry Breaks," conceived by Leita Hagemann Luchetti and co-produced by Luchetti and WGBH New Television Workshop, is an ongoing series of over 100 thirty-second to four-minute spots presenting internationally known poets reading their work on location. These have aired individually on WGBH and public television stations across the country. The Workshop collaborated with Luchetti until its closing in 1993, at which point the works became co-productions of Luchetti and the larger WGBH Foundation.

"Poetry Breaks II," produced from 1991-1994, began airing on WGBH-TV in 1994, and was also broadcast by dozens of other public television stations throughout the country starting in 1994. Between 1995 and 1997, three new poets were taped for Poetry Breaks III.

Series Description
The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.

As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included "Artist's Showcase, " "Frames of Reference, " "Dance for Camera, " "Poetry Breaks," and "New Television," as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for "Visions," a series produced by WNET (New York), and "Alive From Off Center," a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul - Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980's, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.