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I have long held that Steven Leech is Delaware’s pre-eminent person of letters. He is a writer, critic, editor, archivist, journalist, promoter, disk jockey, and investigator of Delaware literary, musical, and visual arts, especially works outside the canonical metropole. This summer (2015), Leech will see a vindication, of sorts, of his life of letters on the periphery through his collaboration with the Delaware Art Museum in
Dream Streets: Art in Wilmington 1970–1990, (see sidebar) which will run June 27, 2015 through September 27, 2015. Leech edited the lit mag
Dreamstreets almost from its founding in 1977 through issue #50 in 2006, and a commemorative
Dreamstreets #51 has being published by the museum. Leech will be featured along with
Dreamstreets alumni and new talent at a special Dreamstreets Downtown reading at the museum on July 18, 7-8 p.m. An early film by Leech,
Having Come and Having Gone, is included in the exhibit. (Cont. below fold.)
DREAM STREETS: ART IN WILMINGTON 1970–1990
DELAWARE ART MUSEUM, June 27, 2015 - September 27, 2015 During the 1970s and 1980s, Wilmingtonians witnessed a flourishing artistic community and the establishment of many of the cultural pillars that continue to support the visual and performing arts within the city today. Organizations such as the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, the Delaware Humanities Forum, and the Delaware
Steven Leech’s scholarship uncoveres the critical edge of Delaware literature, from works that challenged Delaware’s slave economy to twentieth-century exposés of Chateau Country. Leech explains why he has chosen to take his stand outside the establishment but within Delaware boundaries in The Wedgehorn Manifesto: A Cultural Treatise from the Underground (2008):
Alphabetical list of
historical Delaware regional authors (un-linked yet to be added; suggestions welcome)
John Biggs, Jr.
Mary Biggs
Robert Montgomery Bird
Henry Seidel Canby
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
George Lippard
John Lofland
John P. Marquand
Anne Parrish
Victor Thaddeus
George Alfred Townsend
Christopher Ward
Charles Wertenbaker
G. Peyton Wertenbaker
James Whaler
Theatre Company were founded during this period, as well as commercial galleries and city-supported arts initiatives. This landmark exhibition will plot the development of artistic trends within the Wilmington community and their relation to national creative trends
In his
Manifesto, Leech rescues Delaware’s artistic legacy from the Memory Hole. He traces the history of Delaware jazz, rock and roll, the African-American press, the counter cultural and alternative press, 19th and 20th century authors, cinema, and visual artists, not only the Brandywine Tradition of Schoonover and Wyeth, but what Leech identifies as the Christina Tradition: Edward Grant, Edward Loper, and William D. White, who was featured recently at the
Biggs Museum in Dover, thanks in part to
efforts by Steven Leech. In the
Manifesto, Leech calls for artists to be caretakers of the community conscience. For a free pdf copy of
Wedgehorn Manifesto, email your request to publisher@brokenturtlebooks.com. Soon to be release is a companion piece to the
Manifesto, A City of Ghosts.
Leech carries on a family tradition. His father, Steven Leech senior, was a writer for FDR’s Works Progress Administration and published in the 1938
Delaware: A Guide to the First State. The work was reprinted by the Historical Society of Delaware in 2006,and Leech the son wrote the introduction.
during these two decades, showcasing craft and design, drawing, painting, performance art, photography, and sculpture. A comprehensive publication and a rich program of dance, film, music, and theatre will accompany the exhibition. Additionally, Steven Leech and a number of original Dreamsteets authors, as well as some new stars, will feature at a special literary reading July 18. (DAM Website; see below the fold.)
It is because I see a cultural presence here that has been driven underground—so far underground that it often doesn’t recognize itself. It is a presence that is the true outgrowth, product and result of its own cultural past. It is a past that I can almost remember, but a huge social and political gash that spans the post world War II era has severed us, until only recently, from that which defines us as a cultural community.
Steven Leech is founder of Dreamstreets Press, Broken Turtle Books, Broken Turtle Booklist, and the Delaware Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has also published numerous personal and whimsical imprints such as Screamweets, Creamtreats, Nemocolin Xpress, and Pinhead. In addition to editing Dreamstreets, Leech was editor of two African American Newspapers in Wilmington, The Delaware Spectator and The Delaware Valley Star, as well as Viewpoint, the public face of the University of Delaware Cosmopolitan Club. He was one of the founders in 1981 of 2nd Saturday Poets, now Delaware’s longest-running poetry venue. Recently Leech founded Dreamstreets Downtown, a reading currently held 3rd Saturdays at 3 p.m. at the Chris White Gallery in the middle of our struggling burg, Wilmington.
Leech is a leading radio personality. Folks in northern Delaware and three contiguous states know Leech through Even Steven’s Boptime, heard on WVUD
91.3-FM Saturday mornings from 6 to 10 p.m. Boptime features popular music, jazz, and show tunes in their cultural, historical, and political contexts. One of the show’s regular features is “Cliffords Corner,” where Larry Williams, Bob Fleming, and Maurice Simms join Leech to tell of personal encounters with luminaries like Betty Roché, Lem and Daisy Winchester, and Clifford Brown. Another feature is Vietnam Rock, which Leech, a Vietnam veteran, uses as part tribute to the troops and part exposé of that dreadful conflict. Leech also produces
Dreamstreets 26, a radio show on WVUD that has captured the voices Delaware poets and writers of the past half-century as well as readings from authors of the last 200 years. The show is currently broadcast Monday’s at 1 p.m. Leech even produced a video of this writer’s poem
“String Quartet,” featuring the Delos String Quartet, for WHYY-TV12 in 1986.
Not only has Leech published many hundreds of incisive articles on politics, history, and the arts, but his fiction and poetry are as daring as anything by the predecessors he admires. Works such as
Raw Suck, Untime, and
2000 Years are at times dark and painfully personal, sometimes humorous, and always prophetic. He floats his characters in and out of alternative universes, some hellish, some as life was supposed to be. His work is never lukewarm. As the Good Book says, the lukewarm the Lord spits from His mouth.
Steven Leech is the recipient of both Emerging and Established Artist fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts. Events associated with the exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum are available at the
Museum’s Website.
Most of Steven Leech's literary works are listed on his Broken Turtle Booklist
Page. There is also an archive of some of his works and old photos at
Flying Snail. Of course, there is a wealth of Leech's literary productions at the
Dreamstreets Archive.
DREAMSTREETS: A LITERARY READING
DELAWARE ART MUSEUM, July 18, 2015 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Dreamstreets was the seminal arts and literary journal of Wilmington from 1977 to 2001, publishing experimental poetry, fiction, and artwork by Bob Chartowich, John Hickey, Suzanne Michelle, Lew Bennett, Diane Wolf, e. jean lanyon, Steven Leech, and many others. This reading will feature several of the original Dreamstreets authors as well as Wilmington’s newest literary stars.
This program is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Photo by Franetta McMillian
Featured Author for June and July, 2015
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