After going to the Page Poetry Parlour performance of Janice Lowe for her brilliant volume Leaving CLE--where she performed her poem/songs with a stellar group of musicians–she’s a great composer/arranger as well as poet–I walked out into the late summer evening and beheld the slowly waning harvest moon. Odd, cop car mid street at 9th Avenue and as I walked along past a building where I heard fantastic drumming (Michael Carven) I saw more cops, a WPIX van and asked two guys, what’s going on. “Explosion” between 6th and 7th. Masses of people were hanging at the corner , no one was panicking just another night in Gotham-one with bombs and 29 people injured. This is life during Wartime. It has been that way for 15 years. And we continue to make art, make love, make our lives as best we can. So this huge moon like the strawberry moon in June reminds me of cycles and sustenance–that things pivot and yet stay the same. There are terrible people who have time and bad intentions on their minds and we can no more stop them then we can stop the wind. They are not going to go away. So I say make your art–poems, stories, songs, paintings, installations, movies, whatever. Make them. Reap a harvest of new work to share. This is nurture. This is the good intention that we all can do as we live our lives as best we can under whatever huge moon we see.
Tag Archives: Janice Lowe
on recent curation–WORDS SUNDAY
One of the best things about being a poet is that I am also a reader and a listener. And like many other readers and listeners, when given the opportunity, I enjoy organizing readings. Atim Oton, an entrepreneur and in her own way community activist decided to open a “Pop Up” of her store, Calabar Imports, in Bed-Stuy near my home. So I took the opportunity to create WORDS SUNDAY. A Fall Schedule ended with a great reading by Gregory Pardlo from his brilliant second collection, Digest which recently won the Pulitzer Prize and Alexis De Veaux who’s amazing career includes poetry, fiction collections, and an important biography of Audre Lorde. The Spring events started with younger, emerging poets Terence Degnan and Soraya Shalforoosh. Soraya, while volunteering with Four Ways Books asked me to read for their series a week before 9-11. Poets are elephants, we remember especially the kindnesses of our colleagues. And the final event in June included Janice Lowe, who I asked to start the entire series; Tai Allen and Ekere Tallie–they were lively and we had a great conversation about the continuing influence of the Black Arts Movement. I am proud of my work as a curator and hope to do more of this part of my work. Some pictures from WORDS SUNDAY, Calabar Imports Bed-Stuy Pop-up Brooklyn New York.
Chat with Gregory Pardlo and Alexis De Veaux November 2014
Renato Rosaldo and Patricia Spears Jones chatting
Words Sunday, March 2015
June 7 event-first one w/ three readers. Janice Lowe was joined by Meredith Wright and Yahann, musicians and singers
Scorpion to Horse–November
November was an amazing month. I organized and curated a literary program at Calabar Imports in Bed-Stuy on Tompkins Avenue, which received some local press. http://www.bkmag.com/2014/11/04/crossing-border-in-the-brooklyn-literary-scene-with-poet-patricia-spears-jones/
Q&A w/ poets
What was great to me was that each Sunday different voices brightened an already very colorful space. Janice Lowe and her actor friends performed a variety of pieces that she has written words or music or both for. Uche Nduka showcased how cosmopolitan African writers often are. Michael Broder and Rachel Levitsky called their event the “queer Jewish poets” reading. Cheryl Boyce Taylor and Jason Schneiderman opened up about grief and writing doing the Q&A and on November 30 was simply sublime. Alexis De Veaux and Gregory Pardlo read from their new works which are brilliant and the Q&A gave great insight into their process. I was so pleased to do this. And so grateful for their words.
I also read with Monica De La Torre at Pace University and Charles North’s introductions for both of us was beautifully crafted. and I really loved being a Brooklyn Poet of the Week. http://brooklynpoets.org/poet/patricia-spears-jones/. Thanks to Jason Koo, et al. And I led a great workshop at Poets House–one of my students is a budding rapper.
All of these great things are back drop to the the awful events in the past two weeks of November–Thanksgiving was difficult for people across the U.S. While I did not think Darren Wilson would be indicted since it was clear that the apparatus for organized to get a non-indictment. But the lack of indictment of NYPD officers for the death of Eric Garner was even more enraging. So with that I am so thankful for the PROTESTS that started in Ferguson and have been led by young people. And that close to 200 protests took place after the non-indictment in Missouri and the hundreds of protests around the globe after the Staten Island decision is so powerful #BLACKLIVESMATTER as a hashtag reminds everyone that all lives matter, but when Black lives are so easily destroyed believe you mean everyone’s life is in jeopardy. The militarized police; the corporate character of political leadership; the refusal to legislate immigration reform; the continuing destruction of public education and the recent election of the White Privilege Party aka the Republicans will make the next two years extremely challenging. But poets have been up to the challenge. On Facebook, Artists Against Police Brutality/Cultures of Violence have been really useful stitching together many different policies, programs, events and reportage. In the twittersphere,much is being done.
As a Black Poet, I’ve written about the live of ordinary people for years and every once in a while an ordinary person is killed in ways that should never have happened. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin and countless other boys, men, girls and women should be breathing. Albert Murray would have something pithy about all of this, but one thing he would most likely agree with me: We have much to do in this nation and “trusting” the police is not one of those things.
Albert Murray projected photo by Patricia S. Jones