Hickman, Leland

Co-editor of BOXCAR and a poet, Hickman was born in 1934 and died in 1991.

Editor of Temblor and a poet, Hickman was born in 1934 and died in 1991.

Editor of BACHY and a poet, Hickman was born in 1934 and died in 1991.

Actor, poet, and editor, Leland Hickman was born 15 September 1934 in Santa Barbara, CA.

From the early 1950s to late 1960s Hickman worked as an actor in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In 1967 he began his literary career, publishing in THE HUDSON REVIEW a part of his long meditational work TIRESIAS. From 1977 to 1981, Hickman worked as editor of BACHY, a magazine sponsored by Papa Bach Bookstore in Los Angeles. In 1981 he co-founded the magazine BOXCAR with Paul Vangelisti, another Los Angeles poet. In 1985, Hickman founded TEMBLOR, a magazine soon famous for its publication of American experimental writers such as Susan Howe, John Taggart, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Michael Palmer, and others. Hickman died in Los Angeles in 1991.

Biography

Leland Hickman was born on September 15, 1934, in Santa Barbara, California. He moved with his family to Bakersfield, lived on a farm in Carpinteria, and returned to Santa Barbara where he attended high school. In addition to acting in high school plays, Hickman performed in local theatre productions of the Children's Theatre of Santa Barbara and the Group L Theatre Workshop. He graduated from high school in June 1952. Hickman attended the University of California at Santa Barbara and later studied at Berkeley, where he played with the Berkeley Drama Guild.

After a tour in the Army, he moved to New York City to continue his career in theatre. Hickman toured nationally with the Bishop's Company in 1957, worked in the Canal-Fulton Summer Theatre in Ohio in the summer of 1958, and performed with the Equity Library Theatre in New York City. He subsequently studied on scholarship at the New York Academy of the American Shakespeare Festival. In 1961, Hickman returned to California to play at the Equity Library Theatre West in Los Angeles. He remained in Los Angeles for three years, then returned to New York. In 1969, Hickman moved again to Los Angeles, then to San Francisco briefly, and finally settled back in Los Angeles in 1971.

Leland Hickman's literary career began in the middle 1960's. In 1967, The Hudson Review published "Lee Sr Falls to the Floor," an introductory poem to Hickman's major work, Tiresias, his "ongoing long-poem" about his feelings for mankind, poetics, and America. Hickman continued to write poetry through the 1970's. A section of Tiresias entitled The Great Slave Lake Suite was published in book form by Momentum Press in 1980. Additionally, portions of Tiresias have been published in Manhattan Review, Trace, Momentum, Bachy, New American Review, Newletters, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Rara Avis, Little Caesar, Invisible City, Box Car, and the anthology The Streets Inside: Ten Los Angeles Poets.

Hickman worked as the poetry editor for the Los Angeles literary magazine Bachy, published by Papa Bach Bookstore, from 1977 to the spring of 1981. He edited issues nine to eighteen. In 1981, he co-founded with Paul Vangelisti the magazine Boxcar: A Magazine of the Arts. Only two issues were published. In 1985, Hickman began editing and publishing Temblor, which continued for ten issues. Temblor is noted for the publication of many east and west coast language-related poets. Hickman's editorial and publishing activities brought the work of many established and emerging poets into the public view.

Leland Hickman died in Los Angeles in 1991.