Etheridge Knigh.

Etheridge Knigh

Etheridge Knight was born in Corinth, Mississippi, in 1931. After dropping out of school in eight grade, he began to learn the art of toasts, which is a form of oral improvised poetry. Its roots are found in African poetry and play a major role in shaping Knight's career as a poet. Having served in the U.S Army in Korea from 1947-951, and suffering a shrapnel wound to the head, Knight began a life-long struggle with drugs.

From 1960-1961, Etheridge Knight served a prison sentence for robbery. While in prison, Knight mastered the art of the toast. He honed his talents and learned from outsiders how to become a better poet. Knight was introduced to poet Gwendolyn Brooks who mentored him in his first published work, Poems from Prison (1968). It is in prison he found his audience. Knight would use fellow inmates, prison guards, whomever he could get to listen to his poetry. He even began writing poetry on behalf of his fellow inmates for their spouses or girlfriends.

Knight was born to a poor family in rural Corinth, Mississippi, in which he was one of seven children. Knight decided to drop out at the age of 16. At such a young age, he realized that without an education, his opportunities were limited. In his hometown, he could only find menial jobs such as shining shoes and spent much of his time at pool halls. This took an emotional toll on Knight. Desperate to relieve himself of the despair of reality, he slipped into drug addiction. In an attempt to find himself and a purpose in life, Knight decided to join the U.S. Army in 1947. Knight served as a medic in the Korean War until he was discharged from service in 1951, after suffering from a shrapnel wound. After his time in the Army he settled in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he picked up the art of telling toasts, which are traditional, black, oral narrative poems acted out in a theatrical manner. During this time, he still maintained his addiction to heroin.

In 1960, Knight snatched an elderly woman's purse in order to support his addiction, and was sentenced to serve a ten to twenty-five year term in the Indiana State Prison. Enraged by his lengthy prison sentence, which he believed to be unjust and racist in nature, Knight, during his first year of prison became hostile and belligerent in his ways. However, in the following years of incarceration, he turned to books such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the poetry of Langston Hughes. Inspired by them, he redirected his embitterment into the writing of poetry so as to liberate his soul. By drawing from his experience in toasting, Knight developed his verse into a transcribed-oral poetry. The poems he had written during his time in prison were so effective that Dudley Randall, a publisher/poet, published Knight's first volume of verse, which he called Poems from Prison, and hailed Knight as one of the major poets of the New ...