Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers by William T. Langford IV ***Ritzenhein Emerging Poet Award Winner***

Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers by William T. Langford IV ***Ritzenhein Emerging Poet Award Winner***

(1 customer review)

$16.99

 

In this bluesy ode to Detroit and its working-class people, William T. Langford IV has crafted a deeply thorough spirit of communal uplift. These poems resonate with “the gospel-growl” of those who still boom and brim within. But this book also demands a worthier way forward by reckoning with a city’s history of loss and abandonment. Fueled by his gifts of lyricism, musicality, and imagination, Langford ignites and warms a future harmony for Detroit that reflects “the dreamwork/ of divergent minds/ in concert.”

–Geffrey Davis, Author or Night Angler

 

“Will’s work builds the type of communities I want to belong to, where everyone is welcomed, held accountable, and celebrated. His poems are the invitation,  the tools, and the blueprints.”

–Thomas Budday

 

Langford’s work is a heartwarming tribute to place, culture, and resilience, through the lens of family, school spirit, and love. A celebration of what it means to be proud of where you come from and where you choose to be. As well as a celebration of the musicality of language.

—Sarah Blake, Author of Naamah, Mr. West 

 

In William Langford‘s Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers, you’ll find prayer and praise; reckoning and response cry: “Oh steel city,/oil slick,/slipping/from me./City I left./Oh steel city.” Detroit hums in these pages like cool jazz, like Motown Sound, like a layered and loving relationship between son and father—a son and father bearing “the same stitched scar/on different arms.” I adored this collection, pulling up a chair for city delicacies like “meat and sweet shops,. . .mango, supple melon for the yuppies,/. . .free hymnal books/dispensed like soup rations.” Langford demonstrates he is a master poet of place, elevating his city through every carefully-chosen image so that readers are handed a Coney Dog “with yellow onion’s ghost white insides,/granules strewn like salt on an icy walk.” William Langford has a heart here as big as Detroit, spilling out into both sonnet and story. This is a stunning debut collection, and William Langford is a poet to watch.

–Janine Certo, author of Elixir, winner of the New American Poetry Prize and the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize

 

 

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Description

Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers ***Ritzenhein Emerging Poet Award Winner***

by William T. Langford IV 

$16.99, paper

978-1-64662-856-8

2022

William T. Langford IV, AKA Will “The Poet” Langford, is a community-engaged teaching artist and Fulbright ETA Alumnus (Kenya). He divides his energy between education and community development projects in Michigan, the U.S, and East Africa—alongside the Children & Youth Empowerment Center in Nyeri, Kenya. Will is also a visual artist—drawing inspiration from Detroit’s vibrant community of mural artists.

Langford’s poetry is focused on themes of resilience, hard work, and unity. As a teenager growing up on Detroit’s west side, Langford’s English teacher gave him a copy of Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die”. It was then that Langford knew that poetry could do so much more than rhyme: it could be a revolution unto itself, it could have teeth, it could transport him anywhere.

Will Langford is the 2017 Motown Mic Spoken Word Artist of the Year. As a performance artist, Langford’s poetry has garnered “Best of Show” in the American Advertising Awards, a Michigan Emmy Award, and the 2021 Mark Ritzenhein Emerging Poet Award, sponsored by the Lansing Poetry Club.

Langford’s art has appeared in or is forthcoming from: The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook, Ilanot Review, Work/6, Falling Hard, 2 Bridges Review, and Finishing Line Press.

You can learn more about Will “The Poet” Langford at www.WillThePoet.Com and keep up with his community engagement work on Instagram: @WTLThePoet

Congratulations to William Langford and FLP for winning the College for Creative Studies Creative Award Winner

William Langford, Adjunct Faculty, Liberal Arts

Langford IV, William T. Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers. Finishing Line Press, 2022.

Select Committee Members:

Karen McGarry (Art Education)

Steve Stanchfield (Entertainment Arts)

Suven Young-Harper (Transportation Design)

Becca Pad (Ex-Officio)

The CCS Publishing Award celebrates the scholarly and creative publishing efforts of faculty and staff by selecting two faculty or staff members who, in the two calendar years prior to the nomination deadline, published exemplary scholarly or creative work as determined by the selection committee. Academic Affairs is pleased to announce the 2025 CCS Publishing Award winners.

1 review for Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers by William T. Langford IV ***Ritzenhein Emerging Poet Award Winner***

  1. Tom Arthur (verified owner) –

    Really enjoyed not only reading this book but following the QR codes to watch live performances of some of the poems. Langford catches the zeitgeist of Michigan and especially Detroit.

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