The Jackson Poetry Prize –I am grateful

I am still so deeply honored to be named the 11th Jackson Poetry Prize winner.  The first ever recipient was Elizabeth Alexander and I love this picture us at the Museum of Modern Art at a reception that was part of the Jacob Lawrence Migrations Series exhibition.  She organized a reading that I was part of with nine other Black American poets for the  exhibition.  Tyehimba Jess who recently won the Pulitzer Prize this year was another reader that night.  We were all thrilled and honored-thanks again to Elizabeth for putting that evening together.  And thanks to the Jacksons for creating the Jackson Poetry Prize.  It is not only a great honor, but the funds will be extremely helpful.

 

E. Alexander & me at MOMA, April 2015

Here’s the Jackson Poetry Prize announcement from Poets & Writers.  I am so grateful to the judges and to whomever nominated me.  This is about work, the work I’ve been doing since 1974!  Being a poet, at least to me, is a calling that is now a profession.  I am wealthy in family and friends, but not in finances.  My independence has been both a strength and a challenge.  I have walked this path in my own way for a very long time.  And I know that I have serious readers and I hope to have more.   I thank all of you who have believed in me and who have read my work and challenged me to expand and explore.  #gratitude

https://www.pw.org/about-us/jackson_poetry_prize

 

 

 

a good morning-those first real blooms

public art work-Bed-Stuy

This morning was a pretty one–sun shining, warm.  Storefronts on Fulton closed until the shopkeepers open them up.  Folks clustered at bus stops on their way to work.  Many people smiling  because sun was shining and it was warm.

Brooklyn is loudly branded as a place for hip White people and hip Black people and occasionally others are mentioned.  But it is a place for ordinary people who get up in the morning and go to work in banks’ back offices; for the MTA; clerks at Macy’s or Bloomingdales or in the countless restaurants, bars,hotels, sports centers,  juice joints, etc. that make up the “hospitality industry”, and a few work in fashion or media. Paychecks, bills, families,rent or mortgages to pay.  So a warm Wednesday morning was most welcome.  In Whitman’s prologue to Leave of Grass he catalogues jobs Americans do (did) and it is good that he did.  We have a record of those jobs. We have a picture of the people who made their living.  We now do some of what they did: we serve food or perform in theaters or exchange money.

Today, the Poetry Foundation posted my essay in the Harriet blog:      https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2017/04/colloquy-1-words-on-freedom-confusion-resistance-poetry/

and I hope people read my work.  I am glad to  be part of that industrious mix all the way from Brooklyn.

The cold, then warm, then cold weather is making our green and blooming friends most unhappy–they just want to bloom and get on with it and a few hearty blooms are fighting for show and a flowering tree across the street from a row of daffodils –we all want Spring. Even the plants are working hard.

the only tree flowering

corner yard, Bed-Stuy

purple salutes the green

Poetry Month -musings on my first week!

Whitman statute, Whitman Birthplace Huntington, LI

On Saturday April 1 I read in two very different venues: Passaic County Community College in Paterson,  New Jersey, as I was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Howl Happening, a East Village arts gallery for a book launch of WORD: An Anthology which featured poets and artists or poets as poets and artists. It reminds me that like Whitman, I contain multitudes.  From the broken city across the Hudson where mill building stand, while wood frame houses fall from fire, neglect, despair to the shiny overpriced formerly bohemian EV where I grew up as a young poet and writer and became the woman I am.  The poets range from the academic to the anarchic–I seem to fit in with them all.  I thank Whitman for that inclusiveness of words and tempo and ideas.

Why because on April 7, I took part in the Walking with Whitman series organized by George Wallace for the Whitman Birthplace and Historic Site in Huntington, LI.  Going to LI is not without trepidation.  It’s a haul and I found one of the few express trains there.  I also encounter the not so gentle racism of the place. I sat down in the train car, took out my book to read on the train and this nice middle-aged woman said, “this train does not stop at Jamaica” assuming that somehow I must be on the wrong train.  I politely told her I knew what train I was on and where I was going.  The provincialism of suburbia always amazes me.

But a new friend picked me up at the train station once I got there.  His car had heated seat (nirvana) and off we went to this lovely center which has a beautiful yard, that was the original one for Whitman’s family.  And all things Whitman and a great list of poets in residence there.  I got there in time to hear the “open mic” which was pretty good–most of the poets were middle-aged or older, one very young person.  Then some pleasant music and then George Wallace introduced me and it was one of my best readings.  I read for about 40 minutes & was given an ovation-my first ever. And it was genuine and surprising and I am glad that it was.  I’ve gone to many venues where poets gin up things emotionally or otherwise to get an audience up and off their feet, but I don’t do that, at least not intentionally.

Afterwards there was a Q&A & the questions, the things on people’s minds are the things on mine:-how are we to be poets in this difficult time; how are we to create; what can we do to sustain ourselves and how and what must we do to consider the Future. Whitman talks a lot about the Future in his work, we do as well but it almost always dystopian.  We have to start to think well if we could make a better place for humans and all other creatures and be of good cheer in this cosmos, well what would that be like?  What does it mean to be inclusive, to allow for a range of expressions of sexuality, talent, civility? What will the family be like 50, 100, 200 years from now, that is if humans are still around.  I don’t know.  But I have faith that many of us are working hard to do as poets have done since the first one sang–we create, we present, we hope to connect. We seek knowledge and we hope for love.

Mark Doty, Richard Michelson, me after Paterson Poetry Prize reading.

medallion Walt Whitman Birthplace, Long Island

Palm Sunday

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, a day of celebration and foreboding in the Christian calendar. One that shows triumph, jealousy, pride, fear and treachery in the making. Holy Week is one of the great dramas. Today I talked with my sister who is a CME pastor about her plans for the week and we both talked about Maundy Thursday–which follows The Last Supper and the betrayal of Jesus at Gethsemane. I said to her it is not Judas’ who most bothers me–his treachery is so well-defined. It is Peter’s–who as Jesus said betrayed him three times all out of fear. There are many Peters in this world–who claim they will do the right thing the just thing the loving thing, but cowardice and fear are very strong. Peter was forgiven but he had to work hard to regain that trust. How many Peters of this world have each of us forgiven. How many times have we out of fear betrayed out best selves? No one ever said a spiritual path of any sort is easy. But it is a path.

Window, St. John’s Episcopal -Park Slope

April brings fire and rain

The assassination of Martin Luther King was a day that broke a forward motion leaving many shards, some picked up and moved forward, others still deep beneath the soil. I still remember the silence on the streets of Memphis the day after the riots. I remember the tanks and rifles. I am trying to carry one of those shards. But the ones under the soil–they poison us all.