BIOGRAPHY
1939 Born in New York, New York.
1957–1961 B.A. in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York.
[1962]–1963 Graduate studies in Art History at Columbia University, New York.
1962–1965 Member of the Umbra Poets’ Workshop, New York.
1969–1975 Taught poetry at the New School for Social Research, New York.
1996 Died in eastern Pennsylvania.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Peter Freeman, Inc., New York. Boom!
(12 June – 1 August)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Alex Balgiu / NH Pritchard in the chamber of EECCHHOOEESS
(15 May – 30 June)
2022 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept
(6 April – 16 October). Catalogue.
1972 Supernova, New York. The End of Intelligent Writing: A Transreal Awakening
(March)
READINGS & PERFORMANCES
1981 Kutztown Arts Center, Pennsylvania.
1980 Washington Square Church, New York. The 12th International Sound Poetry Festival
(11–21 April)
1971 Supernova, New York. Supernova Poetry Series: N.H. Pritchard
(1 October)
RESIDENCIES
[1968]–1975 Poet-in-residence at Friends Seminary, New York.
AWARDS
1969 Grant for young writers from the Abraham Woursell Foundation, Vienna.
RECORDINGS
1967 “Alcoved Agonies,” “As Once Was,” “These Dead,” “From A Harlem Mourning Vantage,”
“Hue; Blues,” “As Alter Is,” “Constriction,” “Aswelay,”
Destinations: Four Contemporary American Poets. Essence (12) – ELP 3501, 1967, vinyl record.
“Gyre’s Galax,” New Jazz Poets. Broadside Records – BR 461, 1967, vinyl record.
SELECTED WRITINGS
2024 The Mundus, ed. Paul Stephens (New York: Primary Information, 2024).
2006 Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans,
eds. Aldon L. Nielsen and Lauri Ramey (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006).
1980 “Gyre’s Galax,” Text-Sound Text, ed. Kostelanetz (New York: Morrow, 1980), pp. 290–97.
1973 “Lore,” “Quanta,” “Bones,” and “Selected Speeches,” Clown War, nos. 3–5 (1973–1974).
“O,” You Better Believe It: Black Verse in English from Africa, the West Indies and the
United States, ed. Paul Bremen (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 419–21.
1972 In Youth, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Ballatine, 1972), pp. 234–35.
“Three Transatlantic Poems,” Yardbird Reader, vol. I, ed. Ishmael Reed
(Berkeley: Yardbird Publishing, 1972).
1971 The East Village Other, vol. VI no. 25 (18 May 1971).
Eecchhooeess (New York: New York University Press, 1971. Reprint, New York: DABA, 2021).
Natural Process: An Anthology of New Black Poetry,
ed. Ted Wilentz and Tom Weatherly (New York: Hill and Wang, 1971), pp. 92–97.
1970 “As,” “Aswelay,” “#”, “Alcoved Agonies,” “:,” “.-.-.-.,” and “Parcy Jutridge,”
Dices or Black Bones: Black Voices of the Seventies, ed. Adam David Miller
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 63–69.
The East Village Other, vol. V no. 8 (28 January 1970), p. 11.
“HOOM, a short story,”
19 Necromancers from Now: An Anthology of Original American Writing for the 1970s,
ed. Ishmael Reed (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 259–82.
The Matrix, Poems: 1960–1970 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970.
Reprint, New York: Primary Information and Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021).
“[Untitled],” UMBRA / BLACKWORKS, Issue 4, ed. David Henderson (Summer 1970).
1969 The East Village Other, vol. IV no. 11 (14 February 1969), p. 19.
In a Time of Revolution: Poems from Our Third World, ed. Walter Lowenfals
(New York: Random House, 1969).
The New Black Poetry, ed. Clarence Major (New York: International Publishers, 1969).
1968 “Aswelay,” UMBRA Anthology 1967–8, Issue 3, ed. David Henderson (1968), p. 55.
“The Vein,” The East Village Other, vol. III, no. 7 (19–25 January 1968), pp. 10, 12.
1967 “Magma,” “Season,” “De Tu and I,” “Gathering,” and “Sail,” Liberator, vol. VII no. 6
(June 1967), pp. 12–13.
1966 “Mist Place,” “Ology,” and “Subscan,” Poetry Northwest, vol. VII no. 1 (Spring 1966),
pp. 12–13.
1963 “Alcoved Agonies,” and “From Where The Blues,” UMBRA, Issue 2, ed. Tom Dent
(December 1963).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2025 Dues, Coleman. “On The Mundus by N.H. Pritchard,” The Poetry Project Newsletter, #279
(Winter 2025).
Schwabsky, Barry. “Some Odd Star,” New Left Review (21 February 2025).
2024 Grundy, David. "‘FORMING / ELSE WHERE’: N. H. Pritchard by Sight and Sound,"
African American Review, vol. 57 no. 1 (2024), pp. 15–42.
2023 “In Conversation: Ishmael Reed with Bob Holman,” The Brooklyn Rail (March 2023).
2021 Cardwell, Erica N. “N.H. Pritchard's The Matrix and EECCHHOOEESS,”
The Brooklyn Rail (June 2021).
Grundy, David. “Matrix Revolutions,” Artforum (27 April 2021).
Latimer, Quinn. “Ones and Zeros,” Poetry Foundation (29 March 2021).
Schwabsky, Barry. “A Reader’s Diary: ‘as if a bird in f light,’” Tourniquet Review
(15 July 2021).
2020 Dworkin, Craig. Radium of the Word: A Poetics of Materiality
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020).
2019 Stephens, Paul. “The transrealism of Norman Pritchard,” Jacket2 (20 June 2019).
2015 Bertram, Lillian-Yvonne. “‘a lance to pierce the possible’: Reading N. H. Pritchard,”
Poetry Foundation (26 May 2015).
2014 Reed, Anthony. Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
2006 Schomburg, Zachary. “On N. H. Pritchard’s ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Eecchhooeess,’”
Octopus Magazine (20 November 2008).
2005 Smethurst, James E. The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
2004 Bernstein, Charles. “On N. H. Pritchard,” Dark Horses: Poets on Lost Poems,
ed. Joy Katz and Kevin Prufer (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
2000 Thomas, Lorenzo. Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and
Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000).
1997 Nielsen, Aldon L. Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
1992 Young, Kevin. “Signs of Repression: N.H. Pritchard’s ‘The Matrix,’”
Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. III no. 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 36–43.
1978 Thomas, Lorenzo. “The Shadow World: New York’s Umbra Workshop &
Origins of the Black Arts Movement,” Callaloo, no. 4 (October 1978), pp. 53–72.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York