User:Bodicheetah/Junior Burke

Junior Burke (born Thomas Burke Bishop, Jr. in Montgomery County, Illinois) is a writer and educator. He is the Chair of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado.

Written Publications, Theater Productions & Recorded Music

His writing has taken a number of forms. His songs have been performed and recorded by Richie Havens, Bob Dylan, Mandy Patinkin, the Rochester Philharmonic and Utah Phillips. Burke was also active as a composer and lyricist in Chicago, once having three productions running simultaneously at the Goodman, Drury Lane and Travel Lite Theatres. Having performed under his legal name, Junior Burke was assumed while he was acting in a production of David Hare’s Teeth n’ Smiles at Chicago’s St. Nicholas Theatre, and it was determined that another Equity actor had his name. Under union rules, he was forced to choose a name that had not been spoken for. Although he has not released many of his own performances commercially, his years in Chicago were exceedingly well documented, primarily by Rich Warren of WFMT’s Midnight Special and by several interviews conducted by Studs Terkel.

His three-act play American Express was directed by the legendary Paul Sills at his theatre in Hollywood and featured Severn Darden, Paul Sand, and Laraine Newman. His song Trials of the Heart, co-written with Rocky Maffit and Michael Day, appeared in the film About Last Night, and All Over You, co-written with the same collaborators, received a gold record after being included in the soundtrack of the rap/vampire cult-classic, Def by Temptation.

In the mid-90s, while under contract to write songs in Nashville, Burke began teaching at Tennessee State University. He also produced (at RCA’s iconic Studio B) the soundtrack to the independent film American Reel which starred David Carradine and Mariel Hemingway, and featured some of the last substantial work of master fiddler, Vassar Clements.

Academia

It was around this time that Burke’s prose began to achieve notice, receiving an award in the essay category from New Millennium Writing, one of six writers cited nationally. In 1999, he was invited to Naropa University to teach in the Summer Writing Program. In 2000, he married Michele Leonard; their daughter, Simone, was born in 2002. He began teaching for Naropa online, and designed and implemented a low/residency MFA degree in Creative Writing. In 2004, he founded the e/zine not enough night [www.notenoughnight.org] which has published Kerouac School co-founder Anne Waldman, Amiri Baraka and Ed Sanders. Also in that year, he accepted a Lecturer’s position in the Film Studies Department at the University of Colorado. After three years of directing Naropa’s low/res program, he was tapped to be Chair of Writing & Poetics for the Kerouac School, a post first held by the poet, Allen Ginsberg.

Recent Works

In 2004, The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art produced Someone Else’s Dream, a retrospective of his songs. The novel Something Gorgeous (Farfalla, McMillan & Parrish) appeared in 2005. This work of speculative fiction explored the historical background of the era that spawned The Great Gatsby. A compact disc of original songs, While You Were Gone, was released on Red Thread Records in 2007, produced by Jim Tullio. Also in 2007, Burke, along with Lisa Birman, founded The Poets Party, a non-organization which urges artists of all kinds to engage politically, celebrating free speech, freedom of assembly and separation of church and state.

In 2008, he received Naropa’s President’s Award, selected by his fellow faculty for his commitment to that university’s contemplative, Buddhist-inspired mission. He has come to be regarded as a contemporary beat figure, a source for such publications as The London Observer, when they presented a feature on the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road.