Summer zooms along.

Posted on September 3, 2021September 3, 2021 by admin

Vision Fest salute to Amina Claudine Myers

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.

Teaching from home

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.

Caitlyn and I read poetry and prose at VCCA

Just before the solstice

Posted on December 20, 2018February 3, 2019 by admin

window lights–home base

The weather is December–bright some days, gray others–chill even when the temperature reaches in the 40s. The weather is December and now we stay inside and look inside. One of my students titled her chaplet-Internal Struggles and yes, there they all are. But out of that internal struggle, comes external personality–and with great hope, a good one.

This has been a year of travel, teaching, keynotes and risks. Many risks. I am glad to making them at my age–most of my friends are retired and doing interesting things: new kinds of jobs; more artistic work; volunteering; more travel. Many are grand parents now. As an unmarried woman with no children, I do my best with my nephews.

Two residencies kept me from New York City for a total of 9 months! First, thanks again to Rauschenberg Residency in January and February this winter. Captiva Island is a place of great beauty, serenity and a wonderful place to make art. Then later in July and August I went to France-to my first international residency. Both places were on the ocean–the Gulf in Florida; the Mediterranean in France. Even though I live in New York and see the Atlantic on occasion–just go to Coney Island, there was something truly transforming about the coast of France. It may have been the light.

And light has been so needed–the light that illuminates, that sparkles, that bring out the best. There are other kinds of light that appear to do these things, but we all know that’s not even close to true. And we also need the darkness that allows the sight of stars, the moon, the myths of the sky–and this year I got to see many celestial light sky un illiuminated.

The Super Moon, Captiva Florida

And in France, I saw the lunar eclipse. It was magical. And there were shooting stars. I can only say how thankful I am to the BAU Institute for the opportunity and the Camargo Foundation for housing us. The time in France was also time away for the U.S. and I started in Paris with a visit with my good friend Margo Berdeshevsky. She wined, dined and walked me about the city and I finally got to see Shakespeare and Company where I was able to buy Margo’s book for the large and diverse poetry section. While there, my poem “Seraphim” was about to be published by The New Yorker and there was no place to get an actual copy of the magazine there. The French really know how to put we English speaking, English using people in our place. But my poem had been recorded and is at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/30/seraphim. Last night in Paris, we dined with Alice Notley, the perfect way for a poet to prepare for the morning train ride from Paris to Marseilles. During the residency–I got to travel to Marseilles and to Aix-en-Provence where I was the perfect tourist.

Bookstore in Marseille, France, August 2018

In France I stayed in the Panorama Building at the Camargo, Foundation on the 3rd floor with a huge terrace and the light was bright. . On a day as gray as this one I so miss that light and the heat–which could be oppressive except for the French families cavorting in the sea.

my terrace at Panorama Building, Camargo Fdn.
Cassis, France

I am glad to have gone to Chicago, Denver, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Rutgers, New Brunswick, Winston-Salem, Provincetown, Connecticut Circuit sites, and Buffalo. And it was great to read at The Schomburg for the Pauli Murray Book Launch, Poets House for the Fay Chiang Tribute, CUNY Grad Center for the June Jordan conference, at the Poetry Foundation with Kimberly Lyons, and for Belladonna. Moreover, via Patricia Nicholson Parker and Art for Arts/Vision Festival, I performed with Jason Hwang at Roulette and Luke Stewart at Weeksville Heritage Center. These were amazing experiences. I want to thank all of the hosts for conferences, workshops and reading series. The people who develop these programs work very hard to bring a range of poets and writers to their audiences so all of these fine people are in my Angels Book List.

The Vision Festival, Jason Hwang Duo Roulette, May 2018

This year took away some seriously important voices esp. women’s voices: Barbara Barg, Ntozake Shange, and then Meena Alexander, whose struggle with cancer I knew about. We were to have read together with Kimiko Hahn for Meen’a newest book, Atmospheric Embroidery–alas her final hospitalization took place the day before that reading. I miss her. I miss Barg, who grew up in our mutual hometown of Forrest City, Arkansas. And yes, I am one of those people who happened to be at the premier of For Colored Girls at The Public Theater before it went to Broadway–all who were there saw the stage levitate. We did. For that, I salute Ntozake who navigated fame’s stormy seas –sometimes well, sometimes not. So glad she left quietly because she was not quiet in life and for that every woman poet should show gratitude. On the shortest day, remember those who brought you inspiration, joy, challenge or opportunity and thank them.

Ntozake Shange and Patricia Spears Jones 2016

Ntozake Shange and Patricia Spears Jones photo by Coreen Simpson

June is way too chilly

Posted on June 9, 2018June 9, 2018 by admin

Garden on fence, Macon Street Brooklyn

The virtual wake for Anthony Bourdain continues even as I write. His loss hits so many different kinds of people–am convinced he had no idea of the good he was doing, of the lives he made more interesting. Plus, like many a woman poet of the hetero variety, I was like totally smitten. He was that handsome, smart, vibrant, testosterone charged male of my dreams. It is good to have standards. And alas, the standards have been mighty low given the ongoing dispatches from #MeToo. I sort of understand the old dogs and their tricks, but it is these new ones–who raised them is what I keep asking myself since wolves are better behaved.

We live in such harrowing times, we really have to learn more than “self-care”. We must truly care for each other as family as friends and in our community. Just because we are governed by corrupt and mendacious people does not mean that we have to be corrupt and mendacious and unkind and crude (unless crude is the only way seen or heard) with each other. Mother Shelley, our rector a few Sundays ago talked about what it meant to be “Beloved” and to be part of a “Beloved Community”. You do not have to be a Christian or any religious person to be beloved. You just have to be. We are responsible as humans for planetary health. We are really doing a terrible job and Pele in Hawaii is letting us know that.

But often love is not enough. And while there is much said about celebrity and the challenges faced by them, the CDC has pointed out in a recent student that suicide has increased ACROSS ALL SECTORS. I have friends who have committed suicide. I have friends who told me they were seriously thinking about it. I’ve not gone that far, but any person can be a point where the challenges, anxieties, terriblenesses of the day, the week, the month, the year can overwhelm. To deny that is to not deal with our capacity as humans to take lives, starting with our own.

But death in its physical finality has overwhelmed our poetry and literary community over the past few months–am still so very sad about Barbara Barg, Jewish, punkrocker, Southern–we grew up in the same hometown–she was an activist, fearless, a total radical. She is no longer in pain, but had her medical team been more vigilant, she might still be alive. Damn the anti-ACA people. Paul Ryan, et al there are so many curses on your persons and homes and the deaths of friends like Barbara adds to them.

For all this sad talk, there is always (so far, for me) light. Teaching workshops for Rutgers University Summer program; performing with Jason Hwang for the Vision Festival at Roulette, prepping for works at Fine Arts Work Center. But first, the mourning of good people both known to me and known world wide must take place.

Sunrise, Captiva Island, FL Feb. 2018