Very sad to learn today of the passing of poet Jayne Cortez, whose death at the age of 76 has been reported in New York. The mother of Denardo Coleman, and former wife of Ornette Coleman, Cortez was a significant poet and intellectually inclined performance artist of some note. She was what all good poets are, honest, and also acutely aware of socio-economic, gender and racial injustice in her work and said so directly whether people wanted to hear or not. She wrote as many as 10 books of poetry, and her work encompassed performance and behind-the-scenes writer workshops, organisations, and conferences including one entitled Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writer Dissecting Globalization, held in New York. She was awarded the Langston Hughes Medal, an NEA award, and the American Book Award, among other honours, and her books include Firespitter, and Jazz Fan Looks Back of which this extract is taken:

I crisscrossed with Monk
Wailed with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
                    Jazz at the Philharmonic