OMG 2020 IS ALMOST OVER!

Posted on December 28, 2020December 28, 2020 by admin

Teaching Hollins University, Spring 2020

A sunny Monday morning in Brooklyn. The air goes from chilly to warmish back to chilly–a good winter day in the metropolis. Quiet too–that post Christmas quiet when friends and family are satiated, gifts opened and delighted upon. Or they are returned for that refund. But this year’s Christmas was already quiet. Few people traveling and those that do under extreme circumstances as in a neighbor saying he was driving to Florida to wave at his grand children there. New strain of Covid is keeping him masked up and off airplanes. That kind of Christmas. But along with all kinds of caution, my neighbors have gone all out with lights and decorations–with the exception of Our Lady of Victory a RC church, no one has times for creche but oh those lights. I do miss the blow up Santa and elves, but the family that put them up each year have left.

Indeed, this is a year of departures: the awful and shameless deaths of people from COVID19. The predatory and stalking deaths of Black Americans by police officers from the North to the South with the death of George Floyd added an horrible symmetry as it recalled the death of Eric Garner-both claiming their loss of breath: “I can’t breathe”. Indeed the loss of breath from the police, from the virus, from a variety of environmental accidents, episodes, intentional destruction. And BIPOC (not my favorite acronym) bore the brunt because of systematic and sustained structural issues: racism, sexism, poverty, economic stress. The loss is huge and how it will be balanced remains an issue.

But, a great fight has been joined this year. More people voted in the national election for the first time since the 1960s! Democracy really was on the line and yes, it still is. But the BidenHarris ticket won and by a solid majority. That Trump and is supporters continue the fiction of voter fraud show just how much work we will have to continue to do. The Trump people like to blow up city blocks, kill unarmed protestors and drive cars into people demonstrating for justice. Whether you say defund the police abolish the police or reform the police, you are saying that current policing across this nation is poor and THINGS GOTTA CHANGE.

So this year many things changed for me. I lived in Virginia for 4 months on campus at Hollins University where I was the Louis D. Rubin Writer in Residence. I was prepped to do amazing things: teach, write, read, socialize, explore Virginia and maybe even East Tennessee. And well I taught a really great course with a terrific group of graduate and undergraduate students. I went to JMU at Harrisonburg for a Furious Flower book launch. Before the shutdown I got to eat and drink at interesting restaurants in Roanoke. And then it stopped. And while my Brooklyn friends locked down; I was left isolated. It was challenging but I learned to trust my instincts while living on an almost deserted campus. I learned to listen to the birds, watch the squirrels, rabbits and on Mother’s Day in May, foxes. People helped me get through the residency, but all of those glorious plans remained unfulfilled.

Much is riding on the coming year, but despite many things that did not happen; many things did in 2020. I published important new work both prose and poetry. Two prose works: memoirs–were published, the most recent at https://www.pangyrus.com/category/essay-memoir/. The New Yorker published two poems: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/16/nia

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/30/betye-saars-mystic-chart-for-an-unemployed-sorceress

I curated a Radical Poetry Reading for The Brooklyn Rail New Social Environment https://brooklynrail.org/events/2020/09/16/radical-poetry-reading-with-patricia-spears-jones/

and am pleased that CA Conrad asked me to join an experiment as part of The Poetry Project’s Annual New Year’s Day Fundraiser which goes virtual. https://www.poetryproject.org/events/the-47th-annual-new-year-s-day-marathon

huge moon huge dreams

And finally like many of you I did what I could to keep in touch with family and friends; to support social justice; remove Trump; and stay healthy. None of this is easy. But nobody’s bored. I know I am not.

Keep these words in mind in coming year: CREATIVITY, GENEROSITY, KINDNESS, INTELLIGENCE, LOVE. We will need all of these things to keep our minds and bodies whole and prepared to struggle for a just world where human dignity is standard, not neglected. Where art is exalted not exhausted. Where we will be able to hold each other again. Yes Black Lives Matter. Yes, the environment matters. Yes, disarmament matters. Yes, the struggle for peace continues.

a few moments at Hollins

Posted on May 16, 2020May 16, 2020 by admin

Zoom–online teaching is not my forte, but as with my colleagues worldwide, online instruction took place. Since I was isolated on campus, I decided to use my office on the 3rd floor of the hall that housed the Creative Writing Department offices. Even when I had to walk up three flights with a cane, I am glad I used the office. I had 7 students–5 grad students & 2 undergrads–they are talented and they worked hard, created new poems and presented on a wide range of historical and contemporary American poets. I am glad to have work by them.

The grounds at Hollins are lovely- hilly, green, huge canopy of trees and on the grounds tiny and wondrous flowers. It was great to see the redbud, dogwoods and lilacs. Now the peonies are rose scenting the campus.

I will miss this place. But I am glad that I will be going home.

Far from Brooklyn

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by admin

It is strange to be far from Brooklyn during the coronavirus public health crisis. My neighbors have called me or texted me to make sure that I am still breathing. It’s like that —we really have to be vigilant. The arts community has taken a huge hit: musicians,poets,filmmakers,choreographers, even a most famous drag queen all now gone. And here I am on a small college campus in SW Virginia with few people around. The residency at Hollins University has brought me wonderful students, time to read and yes time to write. While not totally self-isolated, it almost feels that way. I am grateful for this beauty and calm in the midst of a pandemic. I pray each day for all of us on this planet and while this is a time of great stress, it is for some a time for reflection, creativity and thoughtfulness. I know that many friends are finding ways to use this time for their work, but I know it is taking a toll on most of us. And there is great grief across the city, the nation, around the world.

We cannot return to a society that can so easily collapse on poor and working people. 20 million people out of work in the U.S. tells us that the work was not working for them. We have to do different. We have to take care of humans, creatures of the ground and creatures in the sky, the air, water and yes, violets.

It’s been a while but my energy is getting louder

Posted on January 30, 2020January 30, 2020 by tai

My apartment is a swirl of piles: clothes, toiletries, documents—the stuff you need when you take a big trip. And I am about to take a big trip, to Virginia for 4 months. I have been appointed the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University. Dara Weir, whom I met at Hollins when I was a visiting poet; Natasha Tretheway, whose father taught there and other poetic luminaries are past appointees. This is a big deal and it comes on top of many expected and unexpected professional achievements since 2014-15. I am getting used to being a 4 decades overnight success.

Of course, these opportunities do not come helter-skelter. I’ve been published as a poet since my early 20s and have worked to become the best poet I can be and yes I am still growing as a poet and thinker and activist, and as I have grown, the opportunities have come. I am glad I stayed the course.

And that is is something I hope that many of us do as we are daily assaulted with lies particularly from the political right –you know the people who create Middle East Peace Plans that don’t exactly include all of the people who would have to make it work; the people who are now making legal immigration more difficult; the people who claim they can’t bake a cake for same sex couples because it’s against their religion (there’s no such prohibition in the Bible, there’s no Cake commandant. And everyone is tired because the briber in chief constantly tweets stupid, mean and occasionally important stuff. It really is hard to live in a morally corrosive time and have like a desire for truth, beauty and justice. But hey, think of it as being against the mainstream which is corrupt. The Right is running all but the House of Representatives (thank you Nancy Pelosi) and a few major institutions that think liberal and democracy are good things. So we poets and artists have a very important role to play outside that mainstream. And we ought to play it loud and louder.

Over the past two weeks, I went to 2 memorials (there could have been 3, but I could only do 2)-Jan. 19 for Kwame Shaw, whom I may have met in passing while hanging out in the experiemental jazz world of the 80s–I know his adopted daughter Klare and so I went for her and her mother, his ex-wife. The event at St. Mark’s Church was all about music and remembrances. Henry Threadgill, Amina Myers and during the repast, David Murray made us all understand why for Shaw, Jazz was a religion. Then on January 26, what seemed like the entire downtown art world came out for John Giorno’s Memorial. An elegant and beautifully staged event from the rose petals on the sanctuary stage to the perfect video loop and the musical offerings by Meredith Monk, Michael Stipe, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye. Linda Yablonsky, Penny Arcade, Lynne Tillman, Bob Holman were a few of the writers who read from Giorno’s memoirs. The Black activist Jazz freak and the gay Buddhist poet had this in common: a powerful desire to make a difference in the world and the energy and ideas to make that difference happen. Shaw brought the powerful music of the AACM and other Black creative musicians to a larger audience as a way to build up the foundation of Black intellectual acuity. Giorno worked tirelessly to bring gay eroticism into the mainstream, to allow poetry to examine his sexuality and explorations. Both were activists, serious activists–Shaw organized for SNCC, open doors for Blacks in the media, created JazzTracks and Giorno started a fund in support of the first victims of HIVAIDs–he literally saved lives or allowed those dying a measure of dignity. He was a serious practioner of Buddhism. Both men left behind unlikely and loving partners. The memorial I could not make it to was Steve Dalachinsky who like his best friend and frequent nemesis Steve Cannon came to symbolized bohemian New York. and from what a year turned into a huge carnival of poetry, anecdote, music and cheer. These men all were bohemians in NYC. A New York that is quickly slipping away under the huge condos and corporate logos of these corrosive times. These men all lived LOUD lives and well we need to start matching that largeness with our own. June Jordan would so agree with me.

Sanctuary, St. Mark’s Church, Giorno Memorial

So I will take my NYC energy South and do my best to do good work and maybe just maybe bring some ideas and provocations to bear in and out of the classroom. Because when poets stop telling the truth, we all suffer. I am a poet and I don’t like suffering.

https://www.hollins.edu/academics/majors-minors/english-creative-writing-major/louis-d-rubin-jr-writer-in-residence/