top of page

Image: Coconut/Cane & Cutlass (1994) by Michelle Mohabeer

Between 1920 and his death in 1933, Harry Alan Potamkin wrote poems for literary magazines, workers' newspapers and Black newspapers. He was first inspired by the example of modernist poets, and as America changed in the days of the Great Depression, so too did Potamkin's poems, striking an uneasy balance between social vision and aesthetic experimentation. Potamkin's poems fused elegy, outrage and reportage with the concerns of the ancients. "In the Embryo of All Things" is the first collection of Harry Alan Potamkin's poems. This volume gathers his complete poems, including a speculative arrangement of his unfinished Spectacle Negre and his lyrics for children's songs written for the Pioneers, a Communist youth organization.

 

Author Biography

Harry Alan Potamkin (1900-1933) was a poet, social worker, publisher, revolutionist, and a critic of cinema, literature and society. His poems appeared in magazines such as The Fugitive, Tambour and Transition; workers' newspapers such as The Liberator, New Masses and the Daily Worker; and Black newspapers such as The Crisis and Opportunity. At the time of his death, he was widely acclaimed for his film criticism, which appeared in publications such as Experimental Cinema, Hound & Horn and Close Up. He was the Executive Secretary of the John Reed Club. His writings on cinema were previously published as The Compound Cinema: The Film Writings of Harry Alan Potamkin (Teachers College Press, 1977), compiled by Lewis Jacobs.

 

Stephen Broomer is a filmmaker and film preservationist. 

In the Embryo of All Things: The Poems of Harry Alan Potamkin

C$10.00Price
Only 9 left in stock
  • Author(s)
    Harry Alan Potamkin

     

    Editor(s)
    Stephen Broomer

     

    Year
    2017

     

    Pages
    132 pages

Product Page: Stores_Product_Widget

TERRITORY & SOLIDARITY: The daily work of CFMDC takes place in Tkaronto (Toronto) which is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. We also acknowledge The Dish with One Spoon treaty between the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee that covers the land of what is now called southern Ontario. We work with the knowledge of the importance of recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the four First Nations Principles of OCAP®. As a Media Arts organization we draw your attention to the work of the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC). As part of  anti-colonial solidarity, CFMDC board and staff proudly commits to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Calls to support PACBI and the wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) come from Palestinian civil society and are grassroots strategies opposing the colonization of Palestine by directly targeting complicity.

  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

209 - 401 Richmond Street West  

 Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8

  416-588-0725

LOGOS

ON_POS_LOGO_BLACK_RGB.png
bottom of page