At 72 years old, Detroit poet Melba Joyce Boyd is adding yet another accolade to her 50-year career.
Boyd has been named the 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist, a lifetime achievement for artists that comes with a $50,000 award.
The award-winning poet, essayist, editor, biographer, and filmmaker has received multiple Library of Michigan Notable Book Awards, a 2010 Independent Publishers Award, and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Poetry in 2010, but winning the Kresge still feels special.
“The one thing that’s great about this award is that you don’t apply for it,” she said in a press release. “You’re getting real appreciation for your work from people who understand what it means to make work in Detroit. That’s something special. It’s a reminder and celebration of the culture we have here and the way that it continues.”
Earlier this month Boyd was presented with a surprise Spirit of Detroit Award as she delivered the keynote Martin Luther King Jr. Day address at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.
She has published 13 books, including nine collections of her own poetry, and contributed more than 100 essays to anthologies, academic journals, newspapers, and cultural periodicals in the U.S. and Europe. Her poems have been translated into French and German.
Her poem, “this museum was once a dream,” dedicated to the Charles H. Wright Museum, is inscribed in bronze on one of the museum's walls.
“She’s exactly an eminent artist,” Kresge Eminent Artist selection panelist and interdisciplinary artist Scheherazade Washington Parrish said. “Her words have touched people in Detroit and abroad, and she maintains a love for the craft. One of the ways that love is seen is by her continuing to teach so that the craft and art lives on to inspire others.”
Other panelists that selected Boyd as this year’s Eminent Artist include associate professor at the College for Creative Studies Gil Ashby, jazz musician and 2018 Kresge Eminent Artist Wendell Harrison, art curator for Wayne State University and the University of Michigan Grace Serra, and Metro Times writer, photographer, and 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow Kahn Santori Davison (what up Kahn!).
Previous Kresge Eminent Artist awardees include Charles McGee, Ruth Adler Schnee, Marie Woo, Shirley Woodson, Olaymi Dabls, Marcus Belgrave, Patricia Terry-Ross, Wendell Harrison, Bill Harris, Naomi Long Madgett, Dr. Gloria House, Bill Rauhauser, Leni Sinclair, and David DiChiera.
You can check out a video of Boyd reading some of her powerful poetry at the Ferndale Public Library below.
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