"Margaret Danner" (1915-1986)

Margaret and her parents moved to,Chicago when she was young.When Margaret was in the eight grade,she wrote her first prize winning poem,"The Violin."It would be many years before her first book of poetry was published,the image and theme of the violin reappeared many times in later works.She attended Loyola and Northwestern Universities and began her association with prominent writers partly through her affiliation with the avant-grade magazine Poetry:The Magazine of Verse,where she eventually became assistant editor.In 1945, Margaret was second prize in the Poetry Workshop of the Midwestern Writers Conference.In the early 1960s she moved to Detroit to become poet-in-residence at Wayne State University where she established Boone House,and art center for children.In collaboration with poet Dudley Randall,he and Margaret published "Poem Counterpoem" in 1966,a volume of Black poetry.That same year she traveled to Africa to read her poetry and found inspiration for future poems grounded in an African aesthetic.Critics believe these works are her best work.She also became the Poet-in-Residence at Lemoyne Owen College in Memphis.She continued to edit poetry anthologies and produced two more volumes of Poetry before she died in Chicago.