Kid Creole and His Beau-Coconauts: Lloyd Addison’s Astro-Black Infinities

Abstract

This essay takes the example of Lloyd Addison’s Beau-Cocoa as a case study in African American small press activism. Lloyd Addison, one of whose poems gave the name to the Umbra group of poets, began Beau-Cocoa with collaborator Justus Taylor in the late 1960s, and the journal continued through format and personnel changes through 1973. While the journal continued to include writings by others, by far the bulk of the work, encompassing poems, plays, and political and critical writings were contributed by Addison himself, who frequently created concrete and visual works for the publication. Across the several numbers of Beau-Cocoa, Addison published 600 pages, including over 130 of his poems. Sometimes signing himself “the Beau-Coconaut,” Addison used this journal to create a community of readers at the farthest reaches of his black, theoretical poetics.