I am so pleased to have performed on the night of performances and tributes to the amazing musician and composer, Amina Claudine Myers.  Amina has been making important music for 4 decades–piano works, works for the organ and choral music.  On July 23, her artistry was on full display at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, in Brooklyn.  The Vision Festival 25th year was a powerful and poignant one–it included an elegaic program for the now late Milfred Graves.   But the second night belong to Amina, glorious singers, and yours truly, the poet.  Amina and I grew up in Arkansas–so it felt very homegirl.  Plus Amina’s relatives flew to NYC for this honor. There are many women making music in jazz and improvisational music, but there aren’t as many as there should be, just saying Amina was one of the few women musicians accepted into the AACM back in the day and she’s done much to make the scene more inclusive.  Progress is often too damn slow.  But progress has been made. I was glad to be up in front of the audience and Jason Hwang, with whom I’ve done several programs was there too.  Amina received great applause, many bouquets and the adoration of her fans.

This has been a busy summer of readings, workshops ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM: Gemini Ink, HWVC, Hurston-Wright ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM  so reading before actual human beings in a large, fairly open space–Pioneer Works is huge was a mixed blessing.  And with the Delta variant & whatever other mutating viruses arrive, I see ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM in the near and possibly far future.

Whatever and however we can, we must continue to make ceremony.  We must celebrate the creativity and staying power of artists, elders and younger ones.  We must work hard to be as good as we can be because so much that surrounds us is nasty, violent, evil (see Texas Republicans as an example).   Summer with its heat, rains, hurricanes, tornadoes is almost gone. And I must say I am pleased to be at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts with a fully funded Richard S. and Julia Louise Reynolds Poetry Fellowship. First week here I read with a wonderful prose writer–we really had a blast.

What can we do to keep going to doing bad times, we do our work and with style. Caitlyn Myer and I did at VCCA.