2014 LIVING IN THE LOVE ECONOMY/THE FUTURE IS IN OUR HANDS

Posted on January 1, 2015January 1, 2015 by admin

This is a year when airplanes dropped out the sky and just disappeared. Where Russian troops in Crimea pretended to not be Russian troops in Crimea. Where ACA almost died under the weight of lousy internet interface. It is a year with news of horrific rape, murder and abduction and it ends with rape allegations against an aging comedian. It is a year when

a generation of poets, activists and actors in their 70s, 80s and 90s left us and where younger ones died by their own hand or via drugs. It was a year that seem to to be like a over heated dressage-many obstacles to leap over; many traps to gallop through. This is the year I learned to be used to be an orphan, a position I so do not like being.

All of those awful, terrible, scary things were backdrop to what may be one of my most productive and accomplished year:
I have a new chapbook, Living in the Love Economy from Overpass Books, young people who are graduates of Long Island University–they studied with Lewis Warsh, who was on of my first poetry instructors when I came to NYC in 1974! The book launch at Berl’s was well attended and I was able to get Anselm Berrigan and Erica Hunt to share the spotlight. I thank them all.

Chapbook from Overpass Books.

Poems were published in The Cataramaran Literary Reader, The Recluse from The Poetry Project and The Mas Tequila Review.

Serious literary interviews were made with me by Lewis Warsh for The Otter and Rochelle Spencer for Mosaic and The Brooklyn Poets interviewed and featured me for the Brooklyn Poet of the Week (that was fun). The most interesting interview was actually a dialogue with Afaa Michael Weaver for the Furious Flower Poetry Center’s archive. And after harrassing, well gently needling Metta Sama, she pulled together this extraordinary convo that Monica Hand, Tracy Chiles McGhee, Raquel Goodison and Ruth Ellen Kocher on women’s creativity, artistic production and well read it at http://theconversant.org/staging/?cat=782.

Rich Blint of Columbia University asked me to participate in a panel for the The Year of Baldwin portion of The Harlem Bookfair. Aimee Meredith Cox moderated the panel and I have to say again that she may have been the best panel moderator I have ever encountered. It was a lively and fresh conversation between me, Christopher Winks and Kiese Laymon. And earlier in the year I participated in the National Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College–that was fascinating esp. seeing Derek Walcott up close.

I blogged for the “Harriet” blog for the National Poetry Foundation in September. What did I know that in September the #Ferguson protests would start up; that I would have some impact on supporting the work of activists or that I’d write up Maya Angelou’s Riverside Church Memorial or that I’d talk about Sonia Sanchez’ 80th birthday or have the chance to report on the Furious Flower Poetry Conference with a focus on what happened after the public events took place! Reading and participating at Furious Flower was important for me as a poet, esp. as a Black poet. I also wrote literary reviews for books by Tony Medina and Yuko Otomo and arts reviews on Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems.

In August I had the great gift of 10 days at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where I put together a next to final draft of my New and Selected Poems with the great help of the VCCA staff–thank you again. I got to know Kelle Groom, Nichole Parcher, Joelle Wallach and other poets/composers, visual artists. And in October, I was able to fulfil my duties as a Senior Fellow for the Black Earth Institute and share in the wonderful hospitality of Michael McDermott and Charlotte Taymor in Wisconsin. The BEI gave its first ever award to Joy Harjo who was skyped in for the event–ah technology.

And also at VCCA I completed a commission–a new poem for a literary supplement to the forthcoming re-installment of The Migrations Series, Jacob Lawrence’s groundbreaking work that will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art. I thank Elizabeth Alexander for placing me in this august group. I had written about Lawrence’s work in an earlier poem which Quincy Troupe published in Black Renaissance Noir. It was a great opportunity and pretty scary-like will I pull this off? I did.

And I also worked with Atim Oton who is bringing her CALABAR brand to my hood, Bed-Stuy and so for the popup I developed a reading series, WORDS SUNDAY and it was really successful, But special shoutout to Janice Lowe who was in the first one, I want you back for a larger audience come Spring 2015.

And finally, I did readings for Paul Romero’s Bryant Park Series, most notably a “Lunch Poem” one with Jocelyn Lieu, Lydia Cortes, Jessica Greenbaum and Sharan Strange. And with Mark Statman for Neil Silbrerblatt’s Voices in Poetry series in Katonah. Rowan Ricardo Phillips brought me to SUNY Stony Brook, where June Jordan and Cornelius Eady advanced contemporary poetry. Getting to know Rowan and his work has been a boon. Also read “The Day Lady Died” for the Frank O’Hara Lunch Poem Publication Anniversary event at the Poetry Project. And at the end of the year I read at KBG with Shanna Compton–it was a night rich with verbal fireworks and deep emotions. There was more, but it’s cold. It’s December 31. It’s time to sum stuff up.

I know that much of this year has been about violence, danger, death and protest. I am sad about the danger, death and violence, but I am so pleased that protests are underway and not just here from Mumbai to Santiago Chile to Hong Kong to St. Louis, Missouri young people are awake and demanding their future–not one of fewer economic prospects, more debt; tyrannical police, environmental degradation; expensive consumerism and shoddy services–but one that may be more equitable, caring and creative. The world has always been violent and dangerous, but cynicism simply keeps whoever is in power in power. I thank young people for starting to say nada mas, no more. Yes #blacklivesmatter, Yes #afutureisinourhands. 2015 HERE WE COME.

Poets connect in ways unexpected.

Posted on June 10, 2014June 10, 2014 by admin

audience Poets House Gala, 26 Bridge Street
all photos by Patricia Spears Jones

On Monday evening I was able to join many poets and poetry enthusiasts for the annual Poets House Gala that follows the Bridgewalk. I was one of the featured poets in the late 1990s so I feel as if I am part of a very special group of poets to have read work on the Brooklyn Bridge. Lee Bricetti and her staff (Stephen Motika, Jane Preston, Reginald Harris, Krista Manrique, and several others) make what I know is a massive endeavor look very easy. Got there just as Mark Doty launched into “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, Whitman’s poem that Galway Kinnell read each year until he could no longer join the proceedings–he is missed of course and I know he was sending good vibes to the audience and to Mark. The high point of the evening was the winner of the Poetry Out loud National Recitation Contest Anita Norman’s recitation of a Stanley Kunitz poem. She worked that poem in front of an audience that a) knew the poem well and b) knew Stanley. The ovation she received was well deserved. But this is when things gets strange–Norman. I went over to speak with her and her father and found that he is the son of one of my former classmates and his grandfather was my elementary school principal. Poets are connected in all kinds of ways. Thom Lux and Vijay Seshadri also read well and Naomi Shahib Nye’s acceptance speech for the Elizabeth Kray award was tender and full of humor. Great to Laureanne Bosselaar, Ira Silverberg, Dave Johnson, Kevin Young, Cornelius Eady and Sarah Micklem, Hettie Jones-I could go and on. Poets House is important to poetry, to New York City, indeed to the globe. www.poetshouse.org.

This past Sunday, Pentecostal Sunday, I left church and got on the subway from Brooklyn to Harlem to meet with Holly Hughes BFA students who are getting an immersion into NYC arts. It is always interesting to meet students of the arts. They ask interesting questions. They see things differently or they walk lockstep w/ whatever trends there are. It is always tricky to look at, critique and create culture. So they were there to see Carrie Mae Weems Museum Series, a group of large scale photographs there were not hung at the Guggenheim during her retrospective. They should have been at the Guggenheim.

But also there is a terrific show When the Stars Began to Fall http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/when-the-stars-begin-fall-imagination-and-the-american-south which is up until the end of June. As a Southerner who has lived Up North for decades, I am also pleased when Black artists from the South or artists interested in the South are exhibited. I really enjoyed the David Hammons piece which consists of several bottles in which he has created pieces representing his take on the Delta-here it is lightning in the bottle. Lightning bolts are common –given the quick and harrowing thunderstorms that arise in the Delta so to see them is in a bottle (contained, yet powerful) makes me smile.

detail David Hammons assemblage

And while the Weems display is very powerful as her black clad figure stands in front of museums from the Pergamon in Berlin to Project Row House in Houston–that one is odd as it is modest,new and in a part of Houston that remains stubbornly proudly Black, I was also pleased to see the work of Beverly Buchanan. Ms. Buchanan has been creating sculptures that mimic, deconstruct, examine Southern vernacular architecture. Her father was a Agri agent and she used to join him on his rounds and so saw many farm houses throughout North Carolina. Years ago, I saw her work and was inspired to write “Shack with Vines” one of the poems in “Why I Left the Country” suite. There was something about the shack’s fragility and its necessity that she was able to convey. Her more recent works are more deconstructed, but they are made of materials that are fragile. She continues to explore how for many shelter is makeshift, modest and can at any moment be blown away or burned down. At any moment.

detail from Beverly Buchanan installation

May is here, but April was amazing

Posted on May 2, 2014May 2, 2014 by admin

Before April–I had the great pleasure of reading from my new book, Living in the Love Economy at Berl’s Poetry Shop with Erica Hunt and Anselm Berrigan, two great poets and very good friends. Joey Infante, et al brought my vision for this collection to a bright fruition. I am so very proud of it and the chapbook Swimming to America, from Red Glass Books both serves as a platform to my New & Selected coming out in 2015 from White Pine Press.

As I’ve often said, April is Cruel to Poets Month–there were so many readings and so little time esp if you are a poet! So I did my best. Heard Cyrus Cassells in conversation with Charif Shanahan at NYU. It was a lively and reflective dialogue after a fine reading by Cyrus. It was great to hear him talk about finding his voice after early and high praise. His new poems are taking even more lyric leaps.

Earlier in the month, went to the CUNY housed Chapbook Festival. My new chapbook, Living in the Love Economy was on display and sold! Song Cave, CUNY’s brilliant Lost & Found series-a must have for serious poetry scholars and readers–and of course Overpass Books were there. Amiel Alcalay, et al read and discussed the latest Lost & Found series including 2 booklets of Adrienne Rich’s writing about teaching at CUNY in the SEEK program.

Brenda Hillman was in town and I got to hear her read at Berl’s Poetry Shop with Evelyn Reilly–a great evening brought to us by Belladonna Collaborative.

And finally, it was really wonderful to attend A Painter and His Poets: The Art of George Schneeman at Poets House on April 26. Maureen Owen was in town from Denver; Bill Berkson, co-curator from Boston, Alice Notley in from Paris, and Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin, et al from NYC. Padgett who was the other c0-curator was an affable presenter and the readings and comments conjured a world where spontaneity and chance were as much a part of collaboration as talent and the ability to take risks. In an era where folks are waiting for funding for . . . these poets worked with a painter who was open to words as they were open to his artistic vision.

Maureen Owen & Bob Holman, Poets House

I read in very disperate events: the Ruth Malaczech Art & Impact event at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at CUNY Grad Center where the living members of Mabou Mines and other avant garde theater people discussed the life and art of the great actress and founding member of Mabou. The Reading of the Inferno by Dante at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Maundy Thursday organized by Marilyn Nelson–saw some wonderful friends and it ended before midnight! And an Alice Notley tribute reading for the Downtown Literary Festival; and finally for Nita Noveno and Sara Lippman’s fine series, the Sunday Salon with Terence Degnan, et al. They posted a video. http://www.sundaysalon.com/video

And now it’s May–the sun is shining FINALLY and on May1, I saw photographs from The Birmingham Project by Dawoud Bey at The Mary Boone Gallery on Fifth Avenue. Bey has grown as an articulate and fierce documentary photographer of the Black Experience. His artistry is at its best in these works that were done in Birmingham in response to the legacy of the Black Alabamans who struggled for civil and human rights and the children who now live in the city. It is a major work and should be seen and housed in a major museum and soon.

Carrie Mae Weems and Sandra Payne at Dawoud Bey’s exhibition.