Scope and arrangement
The Patricia Spears Jones papers recount her professional and personal activities from the 1970s to the 2010s. While the papers largely focus on Jones' career as a Black poet, writer, editor, and publisher, they also contain material generated from her work in the non-profit sector and personal life. The papers illustrate Jones' development as a poet and writer, and growth as an environmental and social justice activist.
The collection is arranged into three Series that includes Writing, Publishing, and Collaborative Projects; Non-profit Work, Memberships, and Affiliations; and Personal.
The Patricia Spears Jones papers are arranged in three series:
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1970s-2010s
This series, dating from the 1970s to the 2010s, is comprised of materials related to Jones' career as a poet, writer, playwright, editor, and publisher. Most of the material depicts Jones' efforts to publish and promote her poetry. Correspondence regarding publishing poems, applications for grant funds and residencies, annotated and revised poems, and ephemera from poetry readings and interviews are well represented in the series. Professional and personal correspondence often overlaps, because Jones' personal and professional lives are interwoven.
Jones' growth as a poet and activist appears in the progression of her poetry's content and form. The revised manuscripts and poems from Jones' full-length volumes of poetry, The Weather That Kills (1995), Femme du Monde (2006), and PainKiller (2010), as well as poems from her chapbooks, Mythologizing Always: 7 Sonnets (1981), Swimming to America (2011), Living in the Love Economy (2014), and the collection, A Lucent Fire: New and Select Poems (2015) impart this growth. Of note are the correspondence, poems, and manuscript of Key of Permanent Blue (1993), the precursor to The Weather That Kills. Jones' labor to publish Femme du Monde is detailed through correspondence with various publishers; poem revisions and annotations; drafts of the volume; drafts of the publishing contract; and ephemera associated with the volume's release and promotion.
Lynda Hull, David Rivard, and Mark Doty were Jones' advisors when she was a graduate student at Vermont College of Norwich University. She maintained all of their letters and feedback from her graduate years, as well as correspondence, course materials, notebooks, poems, newsletters, and copies of her thesis.
Jones' grants and fellowships to Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Millay Colony, Yaddo, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts are exhibited in correspondence and ephemera from her residencies. She retained correspondence, programs, flyers, and brochures from her work as a panelist, moderator, and/or speaker at various events such as literary conferences, workshops, and festivals. Jones participated in many local and national interviews about poetry and art that are represented in sound recordings. There are other interviews that Jones conducted with artists and poets, such as June Jordan, for essays that she wrote for various magazines.
Jones kept correspondence, biographical notes, poems, and ephemera affiliated with the publication and twenty-five-year celebration of Ordinary Women (1978). The Ordinary Women correspondence includes letters to and from the contributors to the anthology, such as Akua Lezli Hope, Helen Wong Huie, and Frances Chung, as well as Adrienne Rich, who wrote the introduction.
The series also takes account of Jones' work as a writer and playwright. It features essays and popular culture reviews that Jones wrote for Bomb Magazine, The Village Voice, and Essence Magazine. Jones preserved notes, a video recording, press clippings, programs, and drafts of the Mabou Mines commissioned play, Mother (1994). Jones' collaboration on other creative projects, such as the performance piece, Women in Research (1980), and Mabou Mines site-specific work, Song for New York (2007) are also rendered in the series.
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1975-2010s
This series, dating from 1975 to the 2010s, relates to Jones' career as a development officer, administrator, board member, advisor, educator, and consultant of various non-profit organizations. Materials in the series include board meeting minutes; correspondence; fundraiser programs; radio programs created by Mabou Mines; event ephemera; juror packets; and fundraising proposals and coursework.
The majority of the files consist of Jones' work as a development officer, administrator, and consultant at non-profit arts organizations, such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, and the Poetry Project. There are some annotated papers related to Jones' work as a panelist and juror of poetry contests, fellowships, and festivals. Jones retained syllabi, coursework, and correspondence from poetry workshops she taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Parsons School for Design, Naropa University Summer Writing Program, The Poetry Project, and Cave Canem. This series also recounts Jones' participation in social justice organizations, including the Women's Action Coalition and the Black Earth Institute.
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1970s-2010s
This series, dating from the 1970s to the 2010s, constitutes material from Jones' personal life. The bulk of the files consist of personal photographs and correspondence, as well as programs from theater, music, and poetry events Jones attend from the 1970s to the 2000s.
The files detail Jones' observations of the world through sketches, diary entries, and early poems in notebooks, journals, and correspondence. The series hold photographs and guestbooks that give an account of Jones' friends and aquantainces attending her annual tea party and birthday celebrations. Jones retained calendars, telephone messages, and events ephemera that delineate her daily schedule from 1977 to 2013. The events ephemera recount Jones' presence at various music concerts, plays, musicals, and museums around the world. Some commercial music recordings gifted from friends, or compiled by Jones, appear in the series.
Of note are photographs from Jones' early years in New York City, Ordinary Woman celebration, residencies, birthday parties, and travels; journals and notebooks containing observations of society, politics, and poems; and correspondence with Jodi Braxton, William Allen, Thulani Davis, Jane Dickson, Akua Lezli Hope, Maureen Owen, Nathalie Schmidt, and family members.