“My independent, self-publishing press is my labor of love, and publishing my wife's first book of poetry is just a continuation of my dreams,” Banks said. “I named my press after my grandmother because she raised me, took care of me, protected me, and literally made me by her sheer will into a productive man.”

Banks is also currently giving poetry readings from his latest book, “Blue Beat Syncopation,” and last year Banks received the University of Missouri – Kansas City Alumni award, Defying the Odds.

Throughout his career, Banks has made a name for himself through multiple media. Banks has been a guest-recording artist on a jazz-and-blues CD and has performed with jazz-and-blues guitarist, Sonny Kenner. Banks has hosted his own cable television talk show pilot, received both the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship grant and the Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry and was given the Kansas City, Missouri Mayor’s Proclamation in 2002 for his contributions to the community and his accomplishments in poetry and education. Also in 2002, the Black Archives of Mid-America, Inc., displayed a year-long exhibit of Bank’s life and literature.

“It is easy for me to stay humble because when I think of where I came from, I know that I am a combination of being very blessed and very lucky,” Banks said. “So, anytime that I am blessed to receive any personal honor, I always remember that I am the oldest son out of 10 children whose mother was poor and on welfare, whose father was a maintenance man, and whose grandmother was a bootlegger with a second-grade education born in 1899, one generation removed from slavery.”

Through all his accomplishments, Banks said that he still wishes that he could celebrate his successes with his grandmother.

“I wish my grandmother was alive to celebrate with me because she was, and is still, my muse.”