Hoke S. Glover III

Education

• BA, Bowie State University,  English 1994
• MFA, University of Maryland, College Park, Poetry, 1997

Areas of Expertise

Creative Writing, Creative Non-fiction, Poetry, Publishing, Bookselling, Taiji, I-Ching, Intersection between African-American Culture and Chinese Culture, Spoken Word, Black Poetry and Music,

Biography

Glover graduated from the Bowie State University English Department in 1994. He was taught by Dr. Mary McManus, Dr. Anne Nedd, Dr. Richard Sterling, and Dr. Virginia Guilford among others. While still at Bowie he began selling books and other items in the now closed Wiseman Student Center. This small vending operation grew to become Karibu Books, one of the Nation’s largest black bookstores from 1993-2008. With six locations and over forty employees, Karibu developed in Glover a sense of business, systems refinement, and a deep working knowledge of the book industry. In 2005, he returned to Bowie as a Professor in the same Department he graduated from. A Taiji (T’ai Chi) practitioner for the past twenty years, his work in poetry has been influenced by that art’s use of metaphor as modes of instruction for long term instruction in nuanced subject matter. Students who study with him are given insight to the relationship between image, simile, and metaphor as core concepts in Creative Writing. Most importantly, this method demands student learn to develop their creative writing skills through a series of exercises that can be likened to practicing musical scales. His books include Inheritance (2017), One Shoe Marching Towards Heaven (2019), and Crazy as Hell: the Best Little Guide to Black History, co-authored with V. Efua Prince (2023). The core of his work is the wider arc of the documented record of African-American consciousness via the text and the contradictions that arise from the lack of African-American publishing infrastructure.

Research Interests

• Metaphor and Human Cognition and Consciousness
• African-American Book Publishing History
• African-American Bookstores
• Taiji (T’ai Chi) as mindfulness practice, martial art, and mindfulness practice
• African-American Poetry and Jazz Music