Shirley LeFlore

Shirley LeFlore is a St. Louis poet, performance artist, activist and educator. During the late 1960s, she was a member of the Black Artists’ Group, meanwhile working on civil-rights and housing issues in the local community. LeFlore founded the Messenger Singers, a female vocal ensemble, in the early 1970s, and along with that group performed with musicians such as the trumpeter Baikida Carroll, and the percussionist Famoudou Don Moye of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Since her years in BAG, LeFlore has continued her involvement in projects pairing poetry with other artistic mediums, including the Free N’ Concert ensemble, which combined spoken-word performance with dance and music, and the New York-based group Spirit Stage, a five-piece jazz and spoken-word ensemble that released its first album in 2002. During the mid-1980s, LeFlore founded the Creative Arts & Expression Laboratory, an institution built from the BAG blueprint and intended to foster young poetic voices in the St. Louis area. In 1996, LeFlore appeared in the documentary film “Underground Voices,” produced by the Tony-Award-winning poet Reg E. Gaines. She has taught at a number of educational institutions, and was associate professor of African American Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her work has been published in numerous collections and periodicals over the past several decades, and in December 2005 she received the Warrior Poet award from the nonprofit arts organization Word in Motion.