CONGRATULATORY RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, Tyehimba Jess has won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and Midland Society Author's Award in Poetry for his collection "OLIO", during the centennial of Our Ms. Brooks (i.e., the late Pulitzer prize-winning Illinois poet laureate and Library of Congress poetry consultant Gwendolyn Brooks): and
WHEREAS, This esteemed body has been informed ofthis momentous occasion by the Honorable Carrie M. Austin, Alderman of the 34th Ward; and
WHEREAS, Poet Tyehimba Jess contributed prominently to Chicago's poetry scene as a writer and spoken word performer dating back to 1992. He earned his BA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and mentored by poet and scholar, Sterling Plumpp. He pursued his MFA degree at New York University; and
WHEREAS, Tyehimba Jess received a 2000-2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in poetry while a member of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, was a winner of the Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, a 2006 Whiting Fellowship, and a 2016 Lannan Literary Award in poetry; and
WHEREAS, Leadbelly, an earlier Tyehimba Jess poetry collection, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. He was named by Black Issues Book Review and the Library Journal as one of the best poetry collections of 2005; and
WHEREAS, Tyehimba Jess's poetry has appeared in journals, as well at anthologies such as; Angles of Ascent, A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Bum Rush the Page, A Def Poetry Jam, Role Call, A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Beyond the Frontier, African American Poetry for the 21st Century, and the Art of Performance Poetry, Power Lines, and Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago Guild Complex; and
WHEREAS, Tyehimba Jess was granted a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment of the arts and a 2004-2005 Winter Fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Center. In his own words, Tyehimba Jess maintains that he wouldn't have a literary career if public funding of the arts did not exist at the time he landed, developed and refined his poetry career. A grateful and passionate Poet, he continues to urge state and local governments to reinstate funding programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts; and
WHEREAS, Tyehimba Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, is poetry and editor of African American Review and professor of English at the College of Staten Island in New York and faculty advisor for Caesura, the University's literary arts magazine; now, therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the Mayor and members of the City Council of the City of Chicago, assembled this twenty-third day of May, 2018, do hereby express our congratulations to Tyehimba Jess on being a recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and Midland Society Author's Award in Poetry and wish him continued success.
Alderman, 34th Ward
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a suitable copy ofthis resolution be prepared and presented to Tyehimba Jess as a token of our esteem and best wishes.