Poet Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffy on August 4, 1913. Early in life, he was taken in by William Hayden and Sue Ellen Westerfield, and grew up as their son in Detroit. He grew up in a household full of conflict, and its effects lasted throughout his life, and influenced his poetry. As a youngster, he was often ostracized and ridiculed by his peers, and the combination of difficult home life and awkward social life led him to develop a voracious appetite for reading and the written word. Hayden attended Detroit City College, where he was involved with the theater and literature departments. In 1936, he left the college to join the Federal Writers” Project, where he researched black history and culture.

In 1940, Hayden reached two landmarks – he married Erma Morris and published his first volume of poetry, Heart-Shape in the Dust. Its critical acclaim helped secure him a place in a literature course at the University of Michigan where he studied with W.H. Auden. Upon completing his Masters” degree, Hayden took a position teaching at the University of Michigan, moving to teach at Fisk University in 1946. During the twenty-three years that he taught at Fisk, his writing matured and deepened, influenced by such writers as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wyley and Hart Crane.

Hayden”s work was multi-faceted, never fitting easily into any one school or genre, and he deftly avoided most of the political infighting that has often characterized the world of poetry. He wrote as deftly about his ghetto childhood as he did about historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. His writing celebrated African-American oral traditions, and sought to reforge a link with the past that he felt had been broken.

In 1966, Hayden was awarded the grand prize for poetry for his book Ballad of Remembrance at the First World Festival of Negro Arts held in Senegal. He was later named Poet Laureate of Senegal. From 1976 to 1978, he served as the first black to be appointed Poet Laureate. Robert Hayden died in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1980. His work is still considered to be among the most finely crafted and influential poetry of his age.