Samantha's Blog

Trinidad, a photosynthesis, PT. 1

2011-09-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

This summer I had the immense pleasure of spending a week in my homeland of Trinidad and Tobago with my friend and fellow poet Queen Godis. Follow the link below to get a peek into our day in Laventille hills, through poetry, photography and digital media!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCoHA5Hcfo

The Art of Risking

2010-10-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Risk is a topic artists often talk, discuss. When poets look over each others poems and give constructive thoughts, the question often comes: what is this poem risking?

What do poets risk by making our private thoughts public? By committing experiences, afflictions, lies, and shames to paper? What do we risk to gain? What do we risk to know? What do we risk to change? What do we risk to reveal? What do we risk to risk?

This risk business can become all very abstract.

I believe that every poem is a risk of some sort. Even if the risk is spending precious time on something that sucks.

We were five poets strong on this bustling Saturday in New York City. Any one of us could have been doing many other things. We risk time.

I had to tear myself away from my novel, which was actually going well for once. I risk momentum.

Joining us for the first time, Ngoma rolled out of bed and flew straight downtown to meet us. He risks a growling stomach.

This September 11, I was on my way to the Bowery Poetry Club to do a taping of the Illiad. I was to be Helen of Troy. I hopped the 6 where a veteran for peace was speaking against war, which inevitably means speaking against this country's policies.

Standing not far from him, a stalwart American, much younger in years, began shouting, dubbed him anti-American. By the time I exited the train, the two men had come to blows.

And all I could think about was PUP. We risk getting beat up.

I believe greatly in risk. Tangible risk. Risk you can rub between your fingers and smear on a wall. Risk that changes climates, not just weather.

I think to the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who, after his poems incited revolt and got him arrested in 1938, was tortured, placed knee deep in shit on the warship where his trial was held. To survive that stench he sang at the top of his lungs every love poem he knew.

He risked everything.

Now here I was on the train listening to Adam our resident songbird, blessing our ears with:

If you all right say yeah. Yeah. If you all right say yeah. Yeah...

Though his heart may have been racing like this train, his face showed no fear. I was so inspired by his willingness to bear that burden of being first today. That risk. I never take for granted all of the work a poet must do to meet at the Ghandi statue. To swipe that card and stand clear of the closing doors. To see all of these people peacefully reading, dreaming inside their I-Pods, carrying on conversations. Then to interrupt all of that. To be so bombastic in this belief that this lump in the throat is so crucial that it must bogard the silences between us.

As Adam launched into his piece, I thought. What will I risk?

And so, I had to pull out my ode to twins.

Yes, boobs.

It is a discussion of the body. My body. Its wild ways. And toward the end, I cupped my breasts in the middle of this train car and I felt no fear. Because of this, I know I am freer today than I was yesterday. I risk nothing.

Ngoma was a crazy man! I will ride the train with this brother anytime. He filled the potentially awkward silences with his singing, swinging around, and pushing his pelvis into the pole as he made love to Nefertiti inside the imagination of his poem. He was so incredibly free.

Jon will stun the air with a poem in the voice of the black woman he once overheard on a bus in Queens, then turn around with his white boy litany, a self portrait that juxtaposes how he sees himself with how others see him-- through the prism, race.

And Marcy. Ever since the earthquake hit her mother country, this poem has been coming. It begins with a mournful song. Once people realized the poem was about Haiti they paid extra close attention. I could hear the tears rising up in her throat and wondered if she would make it. Gut wrenching, her line about Haitians worshipping a white Jesus, only to find their own faces white with dust.

Afterwards I told her that I had never heard that piece. Her response: I've never done it before.

Risk.

On one of our rides a stranger was moved to take center stage and start free styling, making us all clap and rejoice. In that brief moment between not knowing and knowing, I thought he was one of us. And he was.

Some physicists believe when you drop a stone into a pond, the ripples last forever.
These are probably the same physicists who believe that every moment lasts an infinity.
And in the physics of words, I believe both of these theories to be true.

In her poem, "One Art", Elizabeth Bishop instructs us to lose something every day.

I would like to replace lose with risk.

--Samantha Thornhill

Gleaming in Mansion and Moonlight, a Toilet Tale of South Africa

2010-07-05T06:31:00.001-07:00

June 8, 2010. Right before I boarded my Emirates flight from Dubai to Johannesburg, I picked South Africa’s Guardian from a buffet of South African newspapers splayed out for the boarding passengers. Aside from the president’s personal affairs, most of the paper covered the World cup, which was to officially begin in three days. I could certainly feel the fever there on this here plane. A flock of Mexicans in their green Adidas soccer jerseys and gargantuan sombreros certainly added to the noise level especially with the help of all you can drink booze. I was surprised to find a smattering of empty seats—a foreshadowing of what I was to later learn. That as a whole, South Africa and FIFA expected more people. Imagine entire hotels, built in anticipation and never used. Bars that bought flat screens hoping their counters would be packed with elbows only to find them near empty, night after night.

The most compelling news of the day concerned Cape Town, a place I can see myself building a life someday. The headline “Township Toilet Wars” snagged my eye along with the photo of a simple toilet standing in broad daylight in someone’s yard. Toilet disputes were going down in Khayelitsha, the massive ghetto that accompanies one for most of the journey from Cape Town’s airport to town, miles and miles of shacks.

For decades, township residents have lived without proper sanitation. The DA, the governing party in Cape Town, installed toilets minus enclosures for families throughout the townships, inspiring feelings of insult among township residents. The rivaling political party, the ANC Youth League responded in an uproar, for the blatant lack of dignity the poor were being afforded by being expected to defecate in broad daylight. The president of the DA, however, claimed that they wanted to encourage the families to take ownership and build their own enclosures, their argument being that people should take initiative and not always expect handouts from the government. To appease the uproar, the DA began building ramshackle enclosures, some of which members of the ANC Youth League subsequently tore down, stating that they should dignify the poor by building proper concrete enclosures so that families can feel secure and well protected. These actions lead to volatile conflicts between the protestors and the police force. So here we have two political parties who once fought together against the Apartheid regime, fighting in the streets over an issue so intimate to our every day lives as Americans. Here, using the bathroom is a political act. To shit or not to shit?

*

Dusk as Langa transported me from OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg to my guest house in Pretoria, which some call the capital of Apartheid. The stunning tree canopied roads made me feel I was in a wonderland, that is, until I spotted the high, razor-wired walls encasing ashamed mansions.

Trickling from the gates of these homes are the working class, leaving after a long day to return to their respective township. I wondered for the mental shift even the most accustomed day laborer must make to leave the township so early each morning to clean the insides, manicure the grasses of these concrete monstrosities. To relieve yourself in a bucket at night to avoid having to go outside the comfort and safety your home, only to enter these high walls in the morning with 10 toilets to gleam.

*

June 10, 2010: My first evening in Cape Town, I found myself accompanying Teba (who I write snail mail letters to all year long) and Langa to the townships to run errands. We went to the Marcus Garvey a section in the Phillipa where the Rastas reside. On the way there, Teba popped in his new reggae track entitled “No!” which he wrote out of anger and grief after a member of the Marcus Garvey Rasta community was murdered unexpectedly in his home in the night.

It was well past dusk and the streets were clear, save for the sad packs of mongrel dogs. While the strays in Trinidad have a habit of lying down in the middle of the street, only to raise up just before the knowing Trini driver advances with aggression, these dogs chase your car as you leave, sometimes coming so close to the wheels it is understandable why at least one dog in the pack walks and runs on only three legs.

In Marcus Garvey, I waited outside in the quiet, semi dark. And in the front yard of one of the shacks I spotted a toilet, vulnerable and stark in the night, gleamed by the rag of moon.

Birthing the Staccatode, a nonce form

2010-07-02T10:30:00.001-07:00

In 2001 in Tallahassee during Black on Black Rhyme week, I taught a poetry workshop to my peers. There, I shared my short poem, Prince Charmin'.

Prince Charmin'

I want
a man like
toilet paper

gentle enough
to wipe
away my tears

strong enough
to take
all my shit

We began discussing short poems (that aren't haiku.) What do short poems accomplish that longer works cannot? How does silence serve us then? And since there are so few words how is the title then forced to function in the larger message of the poem? And what to name this poem?

Thus, the staccato was born. Staccato is a short and detached note of music. Think staccato fire.

*

Two criteria for staccato:

1. Brief, though no prescribed length

2. Title should be integral, enhances the experience of the poem greatly.

*

My Half Brother

Man! What happened to your legs?

-Staccato by Keith Rodgers

*

Staccatoes come in all types ranging from raw, disturbing, thought-provoking, silly, and just downright laugh out loud funny. And yes, clever. Outside of a handful, I never did write too terribly many and felt like less than a person whenever I would speak to Keith, who would always ask, write any staccatoes lately? Keith however, has been mastering the craft and has kept the form alive on fb and in the form of poetry workshops to young people, who love them!

*

Meanwhile, thanks to Senor Pablo Neruda, I have been entertaining an obsession of my own. You guessed it...the ode. Most commonly they are said to be poems of praise, though I like to call them poems of dedication. Really for me it becomes an honest conversation to or about something that matters about stuff that matters. Robert Hass once told me that all poems were once odes.

*

Today my head is almost as empty as the sky seems. Just returned stateside from a month long poetry tour in South Africa, I have very few words. But I want to write something. And so I open my pen, and ink, all over my hands.

*

Staccato + Ode: = Staccaode!!

*
#1
Staccatode to My Rolling Writer Pen

Black woman
you explode
when we fly

Just a first stab. We'll see what happens...

Write up of Yours Truly in a South Africa paper

2010-06-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

The below link is to an article published last week in a local paper here in South Africa. Upon my arrival to Pretoria, a journalist at Pretoria News, Kgomotso Moncho, a lover of the arts, greeted me warmly at a down town cafe where we sat for some time and conversed. As we spoke, Kgomotso's eyes flashed with the curiosity of a blade and her questions were simple and most probing. Our interaction was warm, full of laughter, and this article is the result of it. Enjoy!

http://www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5514769

Forever young, an evening to remember

2010-05-11T18:37:00.001-07:00

Cave Canem headquarters in DUMBO is a lovely, inviting space for a poetry, especially with Rachel Eliza Griffith's photos of Black poets splashed across the walls. Mama Lucille and Nikkey Finney, holding hands and laughing. Dear Rita, on her ballroom floor, about to take flight.

The audience consisted mostly of the middle school aged poets there to present, along with their supportive parents. Tonight was a reading celebration of young writers, who have been working hard all year on their writings with the help of Ms. Raspberry, a woman who does her job, does it well, and damn, damn, it showed, shined through each their works. Any one can tell that a whole lot of nurturing went into them in order for their pens to shine so like gems.

Thankfully, I have been privy to many talented poets and writers of the next generation, a generation said to be lost. When I first started doing this work, I often found myself surprised by the sheer intellect and imagination that springs from youthful pens. Sometimes when youth shine we adults tend to watch them in equal parts awe and surprise--underestimating them all this while. But I have learned that once a young person is handed a pen, a violin, the opportunity, guidance, encouragement, they flourish, as all flowers should, once they are given permission to tap into that magical space inside of them. The only reason it is a surprise to us is because we do not see it enough. So we gotta do what we can about that.

As I listened to the young people tonight, the 12 year old girl contemplating the purpose of socialization, the 12 year old boy who wrote a litany to jazz that made my mouth almost break under the weight of my grin. After intermission a woman sang operas to poems about the F train & Brooklyn, all written by Brooklyn youth.

I closed out the evening with a 25 minute set. My day had been long. It started with a early morning faculty meeting at Juilliard, one that lasted 3 1/2 hours as we discussed each first year student in depth. From there I rushed to the Bronx, sailing into my journalism classroom seconds after the bell rang. Fifty minutes later, I make the trek from Bronx to Brooklyn. and got there just in time to hear the first set of poets. And when I stepped on stage, my stomach was growling, awakened by the pulverized banana I had just scarfed down seconds before they called my name.

But you know, I went up there, all 5 of the youth poets watching me expectantly from the front row, and suddenly I had all the energy in the world for them. All tiredness evaporated from my shoulders, tense from hiking up the subway stairs with my books on my back. I performed a Lucille Clifton, 3 odes, and read from my chapter book as well as the first chapter of my YA novel, set in Trinidad. Vulnerable an experience as any, it was my first time reading this chapter aloud to anyone, more less and audience of kids and their parents--it felt like an anointing, a blessing. This particular chapter of Seventeen Seasons addresses the leatherback turtles that are born in Trinidad only to venture out into the wide blue world and return to their birthplace to lay their eggs.

Afterwards, I was vibing with the striking young boy that wrote the jazz litany. I noticed his eyes had been fiercely attentive as I shared my work, fixed on me 95% of the time. He's a math and science kid, who recently picked up the pen and now adores the practice. He said he enjoyed the bursts of Trinidadian culture in my novel. I revealed to him that I've had to return to Trinidad in more ways than one in order to achieve what he sensed.

And he responded: so you're the turtle.

Translating

2010-05-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

After leaving Juilliard, where my first year students put up Pecong, set in the Caribbean. It is a beautiful monster of a play, one that left me with thoughts, heavy on my brain, as heavy as my desire for a strawberry margarita at CPK, where I went afterward, to unpack the tickles and disturbances that emerge from the witnessing. I mused on infanticide and the power dynamic between women and men--especially in the Caribbean.

But I didn't have too much time to muse. I myself was supposed to be performing at a center in the Bronx that support the drug addicted. My buddy Jon teaches a poetry workshop t here once a week and it was to be his first one. He asked me to come in as a guest poet. And when I arrive there, and enter the room, Jon is speaking Spanish to the participants and looks at me sheepishly. It turned out half of the group did not speak English!

Sorry for the curve ball, Jon said. I shrugged. I didn't mind. I was up for the challenge, an inevitable learning experience.

Performing my poems for a crowd not of my tongue was perhaps as vulnerable and as freeing as doing poems to an entire train car. To know straight off that I will not be understood by half my audience was freeing in a that's life kind of way. The circumstances forced me to ponder the idea of being not understood yet comprehended. I have to believe that something translates--every song does. My poems are songs. I know this now more than ever, especially after working long hours on my next CD.

I did three poems. I felt myself naturally working more with my hands, to let the poem speak through my body as well. Some listened with wide eyed appreciation. Others looked down in their laps. One woman shrugged afterwards, as if to say, I don't know what to say because I don't know what you said. While the man on the other side never let the smile leave his face. I appreciated the experience, and will take from it as much as I possibly can.

All I can do sometimes is thank the skies for the places its powers put me in.

PUP Barks: A Dream Fulfilled

2010-05-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

Ever since my talk with Khadijah, where she mentioned doing poems in a grocery store, the dream has been relentless. It is a waking dream. It involves me performing my ode to picking blackberries in the produce section.

Today the dream came true, and Elana and Akua showed up to star in it, outside of Whole Foods, our next target. Moses, our filmographer was also there, ready to capture these moments, as he did on the trains with us almost a week ago.

How were we to do it? And how many poems could we get in before security arrived?

We plotted. Weighed the unknowns. But in the end, we headed downstairs not knowing what to expect, much like our unsuspecting audience. And so, as shoppers buzzed past me with their carts and their lists, I pulled out my carton of blackberries and began to recite my poem while eating them--more challenging than I thought. But it felt something like flying, as I approached customers with my discovery, these wondrous blackberries that I came across one day in the woods off the coast of Seattle.

My legs took me all over the produce section as I said my poem to whoever would listen. Some people stopped to behold the activity with clear appreciation, while others scattered like roaches in sudden light at the sight of me--particularly the couple fondling the lemons, the ones I approached to tell them about this marvelous gift.

When I ended, Elana, in the fish section, tapped a stranger on the back and began reciting her poem about eel--the first line mentions her walking to the refrigerator naked. The worker weighing tilapia raised his eyebrows at the sudden intimacy, and as the customer recieved his fish and scurried away, Elana began to continue her poem to the worker, who listened with clear amusement. The moment was beyond priceless, as customers bumped into one another in trying to flee or to catch a listen.

A few people who stopped to listen to me tuned into Elana, who was speaking to the whole store now. Workers scurried around us, not wanting to interrupt or get in the way of the camera, not quite knowing what to do. We simply took over. When Elana was finished, a small applause.

But it wasn't over. Because Akua emerged with a love poem in the flower section, nearby. The repeat customers stood and obeyed the moment, arrested by her words. By then, our number was up. A worker was on his way with a walkie talkie. We found that Whole Foods was less concerned about the fact that we broke out in poems in their store and more concerned with the fact that we were taping, and so Moses was asked to turn off his camera, as Akua finished up her poem and we dipped.

Outside, on the pavement, we rejoiced, eating the rest of my blackberries. A couple from inside, our captive audience, stopped to speak congratulate us and find out more. In true guerilla fashion, no business cards as yet, Elana tore off a piece of her eel poem and I used it to write down the information to this blog.

So nice couple with the cute baby, if you are reading this, thanks for letting us know how much you enjoyed our performances. Your encouragement meant so much. Go tell your friends that today, you got PUPPED!

PUP Barks: A Magnificent Seven

2010-05-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

From left to right, Samantha , Jon, Ed, Elana, Akua, Adam & Jai.

A Magnificent Seven

Sunday afternoon found me at Union Square Park in the drizzling rain waiting for poets to show. Ones that promised, ones that didn't. Ones I had successfully convinced to join me in this venture I've been stewing across a string of experiences. Unhingings I like to call them.

It started almost 10 years ago in Tallahassee, where I was born into spoken word. I was younger then and much more fearless. With my poetry troupe (BACK TALK!) I used to do poems on the streets of New Orleans and everywhere else we travelled. Keith and I used to perform poetry and hustle our CD's in barbershops on Fridays (pay day). And more recently: my 40 minute featture at a 7,000 person audience in Prospect Park--99% of them definitely not there for poetry. A needle exchange program in midtown, the one by buddy Jon runs. Rikers Island Jail. The health clinic waiting room where I performed poems while people waited to get screened for HIV. Halfway through my set I asked the audience if they had ever been to a poetry venue. They watched me. I asked them if they liked poetry. The answer: we do now.

That equal parts warmed me and angered me. I do not think I should be someone's first good impression of poetry but I was happy to have to do for the time being.

Then there was Roger's poem, which was about him reading a poem he loved on a train , only for the riveted audience to learn in the end that the incident never happened.

I asked myself: well why the hell not?

And so I started PUP--Poets in Unexpected Places. And this Sunday was our first official meeting. First to show was Moses, not one of the poets, but a photographer/ aspsiring filmmaker who is passionate about our venture and was happy to capture it. Seven poets, a magnificent seven, showed on this drippy day, all in varying moods and states of mind, to gather in front of the statue of Ghandi hardly anyone knew was there until now. The locale was no coincidence. This had everything to do with being the change.

An hour later, we found ourselves underground, all seven of us boarding the Brooklyn bound Q train as perfect strangers, everyone seating themselves...except for me. And so it begins. The inst ant the doors closed I announced to the entire car:

"Miss Rosie. A poem by the late great American poet, Lucille Clifton."

Elana would later tell me that the moment I uttered the Lucille Clifton's name, a woman across from her smiled--an auspicious blessing to our debut as a collective.

And without an inch of fear in my heart, just love, I launched into one of my favorite poems in the world. The commut-iny had officially begun!

My captive audience knew not what to make of me. I hardly even looked in their faces., so I cannot say what they looked like. I reveled in not caring. How liberating. Not caring about anything but the words of Lucille Clifton belting out of me. This was the closest a poem not mine could ever be to being mine. And here I was, sharing it with 50+ new friends. What insane fun.

The commuters that put me in the crazy box lifted their eyes when in the second stanza, of "Miss Rosie" Elana rose and joined me, also off paper--a group piece! If folk didn't know it then, they knew it now: this was no accident. And if I was a crazy girl, then I wasn't being crazy all by myself. Because here was Elana, my partner in crime (literally, now) finishing my lines and meeting my gaze for an instant only to whip around attack the other end of the car.

"I stand up," Elana and I said in unison. "Through your destruction/ I stand up."

We sat down. Say Word! I yelled.

Some people looked about, delightfully confused. Whose universe had they just walked into? Ours, dammit. Others remained cool like they see this every day. Liars. I was certain they were exploding inside. Some swallowed their smiles and others made billboards of them, advertising their glee.

One by one, each with their own swaggalicious attitude, the poets made themselves known. Akua liberated her hands of her umbrella, tossing it down to the floor. Pacing the car front to back, front to back, she shared with us her thoughts on "nappy headed hoes" and mused on her own cantankerous mane. She was great to watch, swinging around poles like a pro, sometimes even stooping to address certain people directly, a graceful confrontation.

Say word! Word...

They weren't quite there yet, but were starting to warm up to us. Suspicion fell away. Conversations stopped. I-pods clicked off (or turned up!); headphones remained on for protection. Especially when Jon stepped on the scene with his goofball intelligence and sharp poetic logic. His imagery is so disarmingly off the wall it makes you think. Like really think. While tickling you with its feathers that soared across the car. People began to smile with teeth now. Laughed, even. They couldn't help themselves.

Say Word! Word.

Only for Jai to rise, June Jordan book in hand. Hoodie covered head, he read with this stance , turning the train into his surf board. I've seen Jai perform countless times and I have never seen him perform like this. We were no longer on an elevated stage confined behind a microphone. We were underground, baby! Straight up guerrilla style! People to maneuver. Shopping bags to side step. Babies to consider. Poles to swing on and cling to for emphasis, safety, dramatic effect. The train became a playground. And everywhere each of us looked, at least one of the magnificent seven were there , to support the moment.

The Q train emerged from the underground, plunging the car into daylight. A stunning view of Brooklyn assaulted our gazes, its brown buildings. The dreary day created an intimacy that could only help our cause. Which is to say, finding the comfort outside of the comfortable. Which means, being much less silent than we have been. Ambassadors for our craft. Making it known that poetry lives and breathes--often right beside them. People looked about. Who would it be next? And why was no one asking for change? We were simply being it.

Say word! Word!

Awkward moments passed, even for me. Three poets left to go before we finished this round and hopped another train. Silence. Were people chickening out? Commuters looked about. No one knew who they were sitting next to. Was that the last? Others looked suspiciously about at others. Are you next? Are you? Then Ed, who had been seemingly engrossed in a text stood and began to read from his own chap book. Alien Registration Number? he asked. Cleverly weaved, with very few words, he made his point without making it, and every immigrant in the car couldn't help but smile in silent recognition, including me.

And just when they thought they heard it all, here comes Adam. Adam who is so damn charming and disarming it makes your teeth hurt. Grabbing onto the pole dramatically, like an old curmudgeon telling us youngings a tale of his wild youth, Adam spit a poem about his younger days, when he was first learning to dance to Black music. The nostalgia of remembering all the embarrassing things we did to impress our peers, we chuckled and laughed emerged from the poem incredibly warmed.

There was the demon train, where very few people showed appreciate for us. We later discovered that the cars in that particular model are considerably longer than the newer models, and the chairs aren't conducive to energy flowing, making us work incredibly hard, not realizing why. That train was draining but I loved it! The demon train. Next time we'll be ready for it.

One car in particular, the "love train" we came to call it, was so outwardly appreciative of our presence we left the car overwhelmed with the sound of their clapping trailing us. They applauded more appreciatively than some slam audiences of today. By the third poet in, they were warmed and with us, and understood what we were about. At the end of that ride with the love train, the most amazing 20 minutes of concentrated joy I've lived in recent memory, after everyone else said their piece, I stood up.

Full circle when I launched into one of my personal favorites. The first poem I ever did on a train--two months prior. It was a Wednesday morning as dreary as this Sunday afternoon. Except I was alone, and surrounded by strangers. Not alone and forever lonely. It was one of those dreaded mornings, a personal struggle to get out of bed. I was on the first of my three train commutes to Juilliard where I teach. It's a great place to be, but I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do it today. I looked around. Everyone looked as I felt. As we crammed our bodies into the car , waddling into one another like penguins in our black winter coats. Huddling without touching. Touching without being touched.

My heart racing with fear, with amazing rage, one that is growing in me with each passing day, welled up out my throat and exited in the form of "Signs", one that slipped out my pen years ago in Charlottesville, VA where I attended grad school. This is a poem that has made its travels. South African television (people, stopping me on the streets), Prospect Park Bandshell, Trinidad, prisons, Bar 13, Bowery, Nuyorican, and bars and coffee shops across the country.

And here I was. In a place I spend more time in than any of those places. And instead of the whine of the latte machine or the loquacious guests at the bar, my competition was the rattle of this express train raping its rails.

I went to the end of the car and looked at these people we demanded be our audience. The MTA frowns on this behavior because this here, was a captive audience. Captive indeed. And inside that audience, six magnificent faces stared back at me, these people I will never, ever forget. This moment. I was not alone or lonely this time.

"The same thing that slowly kills us is exactly the thing keeping us alive."

This time the response was overwhelming, as the crowd roared. Moments later, the car doors open. We thanked our audience for listening (even though they had no choice) and they thanked us profusely with their well wishes and lasting clapped. Before we left the car, we said: You just got PUPPED!

After two hours, we all ate afterwards and stewed in what had just taken place, recalling moments, trading observations, gratifying moments, disintergrated terror, what worked and what didnt. But mostly we teased: jai's surf board stance, akua's confrontation ed's stalker piece, when he yelled a line out the door to an exiting commuter right before the doors closed.

I reached home in the early evening and plunged beneath the covers, the hardest I think I ever performed. It was brutal; it was benign. It was freeing. It was draining. So much so that I did not get out of bed until the following morning, when I woke up, full and full of disbelief, bypassed breakfast, and visited my work station to write this.

Samantha & Khadijah Queen Create SPACE

2010-04-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Happening in:
NYC * L.A. * D.C. * Bal timore * Tampa Bay * Tallahassee * Charleston, WV * Kansas City * Seattle * Tucson, AZ * Detroit * and more!

SPACE: Simultaneous Public Acts of Creative Expression

Samantha Thornhill and Khadijah Queen have both done this before. Samantha stood up on a subway one weary day and belted out a poem that freed her from its weight. Since then, Samantha formed PUP -- Poets in Unexpected Places. In 2007 Khadijah set up canvas and easel in the middle of downtown Atlanta to paint the words passersby used to describe themselves, and in the process created an ongoing love affair with public performance art.

When we met up earlier this month and discussed our respective acts, we brainstormed further: What if all the creative people we knew around the country were doing what they do in public, all at the same time? The possibility was too electrifying to ignore.

When:
Saturday, May 1. 12:01 am - 11:59pm

Rationale:
April is Poetry Month. But we believe poetry and the creative arts should be celebrated beyond official designations. Let's b ring the arts to the people in unexpected places with the intention of connecting positively, to use the arts to energize the public sphere.

Who:
Dancers. Writers. Artists. Musicians. Famous or not. Professional or not. Children and mothers and fathers and grandparents. Mechanics and students. Your poem or Walt Whitman's. Your song or Lady Day's. If you have a desire to participate in a live act of mass creativity, grab some friends and join in.

Suggestions:
Choose creatively, but be respectful of the place. We want this to be an act of honoring the arts and presenting it to people when they least expect to see/hear it. Getting arrested or thrown out is counterproductive. Do ballet on the beach at sunset. Kick a poem in the produce section. Sit cross-legged and paint on top of your parked car in a parking lot. Bust out a haiku at the drive-thru. Be safe, and -- well -- creative!

Capturing:
If you can have a photographer or videographer document your act, great! If not, send us an email about the experience and what it meant to you. Photos are welcome also. We are creating a website where images and videos and stories will be posted.

Contact:
art.creates.space@gmail.com

Juggling

2010-04-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

Get a call from my a dear friend today as I am walking to the train station right after workshop with the wonderful senior citizens. When he asks how I am doing, I think of the never ending to do list lodged inside my cerebrum, the joyful checking off of things. In fact, I am headed home to finish layout for the next edition of the student newspaper I generate with 15 kids in the Bronx, an undertaking that devoured my weekend whole. I think of the stack of poems to critique in time for my Juilliard students tomorrow.

To his question I can only respond with: juggling, love, juggling.

Moments later I am underground waiting for the next train, the first of three to whisk me home. Something grabs the corner of my eye and I glance. And right beside me is a man in the blue overalls of an auto mechanic, three initials stitched into the patch on his chest, his neck and knuckles tattooed like an ex gang member.

One red, one white and one blue, ADF gracefully juggles three balls.

Gig @ CSI--A day of many firsts

2010-04-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

It was a full day of many firsts. Morning with the Juilliard actors. Afternoon with my newspaper kids in the Bronx. My third gig of the day landed me at College of Staten Island where I was to present poems and answer questions for two hours.

Now that I had a tangible purpose, this was my first time venturing to Staten Island--home of Wu-tang Clan who I danced to in Denver last week, danced hard.

At the station when I asked some women where to purchase ferry tickets, they answered it was free. I was startled and pleased. Look, I hadn't even arrived in Staten Island yet and already I felt like a tourist, a tourist in my own town. I would later learn that Guiliani, who also hailed from Staten Island explains the free ferries.

My friend Tyehimba, who invited me to read at his teaching institution was there on the other side, waiting beside his motorbike Betty, an extra helmet in his hand for me. First time in Staten Island, first time riding on a motorbike. I prepared myself for this cherry pop.

Exhilerating, vulnerable. The only two words I can use to describe riding on the back of a motorbike. At first I held on to Tyehimba for dear life, loving the breeze flying through my open helmet, making my eyes water. As I got used to the ride I began to loosen my grip on him. I knew that we would be goners if a car were to clip our back wheel. That too sharp a turn could obliterate what I know as my left hip. I learned that to ride a motorbike is to not be afraid to die.

College of Staten Island has a lovely sprawling campus full of green field and new buildings. There were posters on the doors with my face on them, advertising tonight's poetry event--two hours with yours truly. The gig was held in a school cafe, a nice vibe. The last college gig I had was in December at Rutgers-Camden, so it was nice to be in front of a college crowd again. They were a nice listening audience and responsive when they found it necessary.

My feature almost entirely consisted of odes and I rattled them off one after the other with personalizing banter in between. It was good to have that amount of time because I got to speak extensively about my friend Kenneth before sharing an ode I wrote concerning our friendship "Ode to a Flower Denied," my second time reading it in public. Overall, it felt great, as always, to share my obsession with a group of curious listeners, many of whom were wonderful enough to buy my CD's and chapbooks after the show.

Afterward, Tyehimba was kind enough to offer me a ride home on his bike. That meant the expressway, the Verrazano bridge--again, my first time. Rain fell lightly. It was us, Betty and the elements, the stunning Manhattan skyline. It all seemed within reach. And the cold air rushing at me was enough to remind me of how achingly alive it feels to be me.

Classy Brothers

2010-04-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

the last time i sat next to an interesting Brother on the plane was in 2003. i was leaving la for the east coast, magically upgraded to first class. window seat. lucky me. a brother winds up next to me. he glances at the book in my lap. he asks: my sister, do you like to read? i look at the book, look at him and say yes, thinking: now who is this lame dude? he asks: have you ever heard of a book called finding fish? i say no. he then introduces himself as the author of finding fish, antwon fisher.

on the way to denver for the awp conference, all the way toward the back, so far back you can hear the engine coughing our swanglide across the sky, so far back that if any thing were to go down, you would either die last or first, i met a Brother. we greeted one another but only connected halfway through the flight when i recognized my friend playing the saxophone on this video of a performance playing on his laptop. jazz. he is a drummer who tours the world and teaches a steady gig at a renown arts school. i let him listen to some of the tracks i'm working on (odes) and he let me listen to some of the performance. after it was all said and done we were pretty much like yeah. legit like a mo fo.

he was on his way to denver for a gig, downtown denver, a mile from where all the conference festivities were held. how could i resist taking up on his thoughtful offer providing tickets for me and company? so i sweet talked tiphanie and christian into accompanying me to this totally unexpected gift. flurried there like leaves in wind in an overpriced cab, a cabbie who laughed along with our jokes. tree island people in a cyar? god help him.

dazzle supper club was our destination, its neon pink sign. turns out neal was drumming with this world renowned jazz pianist with a nutsy last name. his fingers were silk gazelles darting across the keys, sweetening the air. so sonorous, the sound of his heart. the hairs inside my ears, used to shrinking from the painful screech of trains, were swaying fields of wheat in this night breeze. don't know much about music. don't know minor from major. just know what sounds good to me, and that night, the night before my panel discussion fed my spirit like coconut water feeds my mouth, even now as i write this.

poetry in motion field trip

2010-04-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

On our search for the best

classroom ever built

Darryl and I break

from Juilliard's four walls

and slow our strolls to sheepshed

meadow in central park

west hugged

by fences closed

since winter.

Skyscrapers loom

in the near distance.

Fortunate fucks.

We arrive

as the gates open.

Sun starved

actors dash

through gates,

the races of my childhood,

dropping their bags and cares

in the meadow's ample

lap, polluting

the clorophyll ocean

with their most perfect

joy. Boys will be

boys throw off

their shirts as the women lament

the sweet double standard.

Auden carves stories

into her pink moleskin.

Half clothed boys assemble

a game of touch

empty evian bottle

their pigskin. Tyrien

pirouettes. The Sisters

and I speak

on Azania,

Black people's land.

We be cliches so

unique. Danielle

hat is

not quite

church

but holier

than cathedral

bells. My tongue is

a bell, ringing in a full

elevator, it's door closing,

closing. We sit

on the dew and stew

haiku. Lamenting

new friends from old towns.

Mark's red shoes singing

of parsley. The rusty man

hole sleeping yards

away face up

like the dead.

Its haiku

crouches under my skin

my skin my

skin my skin

high off the sun's

vitamin

E smear.

Workshop with the Seniors

2010-04-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

Poets & Writers contracted me to teach an 8 week creative writing workshop to senior citizens, starting today! The last time they asked me to teach a senior workshop was 4 years ago, when I first moved to NYC. I adored that experience, and it will forever leave a sweet place in my memory, especially when I think of Bobbi Lynn, a woman with cerebral palsey and the heart of a warrior. Man, her pen was fierce! Bobbi Lynn went on to publish a memoir, which she had originally started in my class.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when P&W called me up again after all this time to offer another such experience. When I walked into the center, the director of senior services informed me that my workshop was going to have stiff competition--bingo. I couldn't help but smile at that. She then pointed me to a room at the end of the long vibrant hallway; she called it the therapy room. Another smile spread across my face. How fitting.

There, in the therapy room, I was greeted by a handful of people twice my age with shiny eyes, their notebooks open and ready. We fell right into lively, stimulating discussion. In a matter of minutes we traveled from Catholicism to health care to the Korean war, thanks to our veteran in the room. By the vibrations I felt like we were on our fifth week of workshop, not the first.

They had been craving this workshop ever since December, when the last one ended. Needless to say, the exchange of gratitude was the sweetest currency. Immediately I felt their trust, their trust of my expertise. They are just so open, so generous, and so game, ready to have fun with language. They brought the world to the table; everything, that got them to that point is game. Intoxicating it was to be in their presence.

I have always had an affinity for older people. I think its partly because by the time I reached 10, all four of my grandparents were dead; two of them died before I was even born. It is a void I have always walked with. What I also admire is their understanding of who they are, what they are made of and generally they could give two shits about what other people think.

We had a fun lesson today, and composed six word memoirs. Here are a few I wrote:

"Left Trinidad age seven. Returned American."

and along the same theme:

"Returned home after 20 years. Myself."

and another:

"Using the pen as a microphone."

The two hours flew. I left there smiling so hard, I thought my face was going to crack in two. I look forward to next week, and all of the wonderful writing that will emerge into the world as a result of this divine time. God knows we need it.

Receipts

2010-04-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

I wish not to dread any day that passes. Because each day, even the worst days, are gifts--even if it seems broken off of something and given just so, no gift wrap, no explanation.

But here we are, back here, again. Tax season. And its time to bite the bullet with my front teeth.

All year this shoebox has been staring me. It once carried winter boots. Now it contains every bank statement, credit card statement, bill, and receipt from 2009. The box has been waiting patiently for me to open its belly like a surgeon and sort through its guts, a highlighter my scalpel.

As a writer, performer, aka independent contractor, everything is a tax write off. For the past few years, I have conditioned myself to expense everything. Every cup of tea I drink outside. Every film or play. Every book I buy or outfit I snatch off a store hanger.

It is time to go in there and make sense of it all. To reminisce on every dollar I spent last year, and see how that matches up to every dollar I earned. I hope it all works out in my favor. I am crossing my fingers and toes. Please tax gods. Please don't make me pay.

Chinua Achebe at the 92Y

2009-10-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Chinua Achebe at the 92Y

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was a great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaine. He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth.

Ah, the opening lines of “Things Fall Apart,” Chinua Achebe’s monumental novel that captures the humanity inside the colonization of Africa—Nigeria specifically. It had been years since I read this stellar text and I found myself falling into its rabbit hole of story, enchanted by its magic all over again as the 4 train shot me uptown to the 92 Street Y where Achebe was to be speaking.

It occurs to me now that Achebe never touched the stage--fitting. Paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, Achebe appeared to us in a wheelchair. A man well into his golden years, he spoke to the sold out auditorium with the heft of a person steeped deeply in the totality of the human experience. How he spoke: imagine an endless sting of pearls in his belly. To speak was to pull each pearl, each word, from his throat one by one—making him easy to transcribe. All around me, I could hear the furious scrawlings of fellow note takers.

I am deeply intrigued by various responses to oppression, as it is a conversation that circles right back into the question of human nature. Etheridge Knight’s “A Fable” is a timeless examination of this and I return to this poem often when certain questions resurrect like dust in me. Achebe’s obsession as a writer has been the examination of how Western customs impacted traditional African societies. His father, a teacher, was one of the first to become Christian in his village, soon after the missionaries arrived. While other Nigerians deeply resisted the inevitable, his father considered this “new faith” the path to salvation, truly believing Christianity would solve the problems of the world, a commentary in itself on his dissatisfaction with the affairs of the day. I wonder if Achebe's father would still feel that today, if he were alive in present times.

As a boy, Achebe attended a government college and described walking into the library as being in another world. His school had a law called the Textbook Act. Three days a week students could not touch a single textbook after school and were only allowed to read novels and biographies, for excessive bookwork they deemed dangerous.

Achebe described himself as “skeptically grateful” of some of the things Westernisms brought to African society—as the good things came with a price. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president, received an American education and returned to enrich West Africa with the concept of free education for everyone, resulting in Nigeria’s fecund literary tradition, or as Achebe said, less illiterates reading the newspaper upside down. On the flip, Achebe was shocked to hear of extremist Christians in his village back home destroying shrines, deeming them idols. Ah, the heartbreaks of cultural erasure. I think of my buddy Bob Holman, who has travelled to West Africa on his mission to preserve endangered languages. His question is: why should we care more about endangered animals than about entire systems of consciousness?

Achebe discussed his extraordinary love hate relationship with Nigeria, which sounded similar to how say, Chicagoans and Trinidadians speak about their homes. This precise tension Achebe speaks of spells the undercurrent of my own life, my own relationship with this beautiful and terrible world. My love and hatred for it are one in the same. I don't know if or where one ends and the other begins but its totality is what fuels my odes and lesson plans; informs my decision to disconnect the cable and overdose on reggae. It is why I see an ad for 1-800-Flowers and think of the flower fields in Ethiopia, and indulge in frivolous delights, like hibiscus sorbet. It is why I smile when I wake up and slap my insides when I catch myself complaining about anything. Why I stay inspired.

It gave me a charge, seeing Chinua Achebe. To listen to him was to drink more fuel for the conflagration that already rages in me like the brush fire that loves its forest.

Summer of Sam, Pt. 3: San Francisco

2009-09-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

On his way to work Kevin dropped me off on Polk Street and said explore. I was to belong to my own curiosity for the next few hours until he got off. I poked around Polk, then wandered into Good Vibrations, past the display of antique vibrators the size of car engines, past the rainbow of dildos and tubes of lube and found myself in the back room where Kevin was to read poems the next evening--my task as his friend to introduce him.The space was simple, its walls white, cheap chairs set up. On the walls was an installation exhibit on the gentrification of Polk Street.

Ah, gentrification. A word on the tip of lips lately. Mounted on all four walls were photographs printed on canvas. They were photographs of people in the neighborhood, headphones hanging below—each headphone promising five minutes of this person’s story, take, or stake. Totally ignorant to the history of this area, from the stories I gathered that Polk Street back in the day was a seedy safe haven where homeless drug addicts, prostitutes and gay teens redefined home for themselves. Polk street: the seedy Castro, necessary and specific in its allure. Teens from as far as the Midwest, after being banished from home after coming out to their red state families, gravitated all the way to the legendary Polk Street.

Out of the 15 or so on the walls, the story that will remain with me is Donna’s. Her photo most striking. She stands with a searching stance in the middle of a desolate street at night, empty syringes blooming out of one hand, gripping plastic armbands with the other. She runs a one woman needle exchange for heroin addicted teens. Her thing is: look, they’re using. Might as well ensure clean needles to prevent infections. She didn’t elaborate, but her childhood was “not cool” and she and her brother started shooting up when she was 14 and he, 12. I assume she’s clean now and out of her own pocket buys clean syringes for teen users. This is Polk Street.

Boutique hotels are replacing the halfway houses that provided beds to homeless gay teens. The seeds that made the area seedy are being swept into the gutters of oblivion. Other denizens of Polk Street welcome the bulldozers of change, the improvements that are happening in the neighborhood.

I keep wondering. All these people that are getting pushed out. The vagabonds. The artists. The insane. Where do they go when they go bye bye?

After leaving Good Vibrations I walk down Polk and turn left on Ellis, toward the Union Square I find inferior to the Union Square of my beloved New York City. I only vaguely know I am walking into the Tenderloin district, through which Polk Street serves as a major artery. Kevin told me last night why they call it the Tenderloin: back in the day it was such a dangerous part of town, that the cops brave enough to cover the area got salary enough to be able to afford steak.

It’s broad daylight. I am walking down Ellis Street in an inspired state, thanks to Donna’s story. Little do I know I am about to get even more inspiration—more than I would know what to do with. Damn these funkified Moleskines. These notebooks are so delightful to work in, they can get your ass killed or in some kind of trouble. Back in the black bullet days I used to whip it 70 mph on the highway between one gig and the next, thoughts avalanching. Now here I am, walking through the heart of the tenderloin district with red palm sized moleskine in hand, scribble scratching verses. My eyes are not seeing eyes.

A man appears beside me. If he’s not homeless he’s damn close. I do not feel threatened by his broken. He asks what I’m writing. I tell him a poem. He asks if I will write down his poem and then moves to recite his phone number. I stop him cold with warmth. He stops his step and allows me to walk off. He is defeated.

I put away the Moleskin and look around. I begin to really take in my surroundings. I am the only non addict on this street. Crack addicts, Meth heads, Dope fiends—you name it. Walking the streets like ghosts. I walk in front of a halfway house, a throng of folk lining up hoping to get a bed for the night. In my pencil skirt and goddess sandals, I walk past the throng, smiling at some, nodding at others.

When I tell folk this story they often ask me if I was frightened. The answer is no. More saddened than anything to be witness to this boulevard of broken souls.

I pass a dude posted on a fire hydrant with a stack of little manilla envelopes in his hand. The broken form a loose line,it echoes the line of us grand slam hopefuls at bar 13 just minutes before the slam list opens at 7. The addicts hobble up to their dealer. The transaction is as swift as it is blatant. It is daylight. At the end of that block, I pass the law. Blue uniform and badge, he is wathcing the entire scene with the eyes in the back of his head.

Two blocks later I find myself staring at the Banana Republic.

Summer of Sam, Pt. 2: Whidbey Island

2009-09-09T12:35:00.001-07:00

After a rather public week in Seattle, the staff at Hedgebrook invited me to come stay the weekend before shooting off to my next destination: San Francisco. What a gift to be reimmersed in the energies of this magical place, even if for such a short while. I vowed to usurp the blessing by writing my most magnificent verses.

The moment I set foot on Hedgebrook's 48 acre property, the memories flooded back from my time there last August. The bench where I first saw Suheir, a book in her lap. Mary's cottage, right up the path from mine. The barn where we watched the presidential debate after being cut off from television for a month. The figs, sprouting from their branches like testicles. Golden raspberries. Cottages. Fresh milk. Baskets. Exquisite food, straight from earth. Baths. Woods. Walks. Nightly fires.

Again I found myself humble inside this caliber of women Hedgebrook has at its fingertips. Women from all parts of the world, tackling difficult issues with their pens while doing amazing things with their lives. This time around I found the degrees of separation to be much smaller. This time I met women who shared some of my closest friends and I could feel the circle ever widening. We are a network in ways we are often astonished to find.

There was a moment at dinner when we were discussing the politics of channelling, Gloria Steinem at the head of the table, as well as the head of this surreal conversation. Glorida is a soft spoken woman engaged with everything that is the world. She has come to call herself a feminist iconoclast and hope a holic. She says the feminist movement is any woman that is not living on her ass. The organizer that she is, she considers hope a form of planning and as a result says it with a curious gleam in her eye. She is one of the most optimistic people I have ever met and loves to tell a good story where laughing is usually involved. And as Gloria is telling some story, Holly Near, the fierce folk singer is to my right, laughing and sometimes heckling her old friend. And I thought to myself, wow. How blessed am I? Just days ago I was at this town hall in Seattle and at the sight of these two women 800 people rose to their feet and clapped long and hard. And here I am among them, breaking bread and discussing the intricacies of our lives.

One of my last nights there, the women decided to commune after dinner to share the writing we've been working on. At first I decided against reading from Seventeen Seasons due to my own insecurities about where I feel it is. I figured I would just share some poems. As the night went on I grew more and more inspired by how Gloria, Holly and the other women who opened up beautifully by sharing their work in such raw stages. So, I decided to read from my first current chapter of the novel, quaking beneath my skin.

After I finished reading, I took in the positive responses of the other women, who listened attentively. Gloria asked if the novel was for teens. I said yes. She smiled and said to me: Samantha, you are going to inspire a whole generation of poets.

It was about the most powerful thing someone has ever said to me. I knew I was ready for the world again. Two mornings later, Hedgebrook released me from its grace. And I found myself on a shuttle, a ferry, then on a plane to San Francisco.

Summer of Sam, Pt. 1: Seattle, WA

2009-08-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

Seattle, WA

Hedgebrook Retreat for women writers throws an annual fundraiser in Seattle. Much Depends Upon Dinner: a $1,000 a plate dinner in a swanky location, 50 seats open to only women, a family style meal cooked by the finest female chefs Seattle has to offer, and most importantly, writers. Fly writers. Female writers. Inspiring writers, reading their work throughout the evening.

So when HB asked me to MC and as well as featured alongside Gloria Steinem, Stephanie Kallos and Nassim Assefi, I said hell yes! So I secured two more gigs in the area and off to Washington I went, the first stop of my Summer of Sam Tour.

Poetrynight in Bellingham was to be my first public appearance for the week. I would later be delighted to find that my summer tour couldn't have started off on a better mic. Nicole, who housed and spoiled me, let me borrow her wheels for the night since Bellingham was 2 hours from Seattle. I deeply appreaciated her trust and the opportunity to relive my road warrior days. I had sold my black bullet upon moving to New York and though I don't miss driving on a daily basis, I miss it every time I do it again.

I drove to lovely Bellingham with the silence of a samurai, poems in my brain begging to be voiced to this new set of ears. I decided in the end to do solely odes, my obsession for the past year. Man, the Poetrynight vibe was exuberant and warm, just like the walls of the cafe. Old school cat on a standing bass, playing throughout the night. Slug killer poster on the bathroom wall. The Podfather of Soul, tabulating slam scores. Writing that contained so much grace and integrity. And then there was Robert, a killer host with the kind of generous energy that he spreads so evenly across the night, Robert who I wished I could have spent more time with. But I had to head back to Seattle right after the show; once again I had a two hour drive ahead of me and half asleep was not the way to do it. I learned that lesson once before the soft way.

My second gig in the area was Seattle Slam, which in conjunction with Bellingham has made me an eternal fan of the Seattle scene. Daemond, the engine behind it all showed me a lot of love after my set. Again, I couldn't help but drench the audience with odes: slug, picking blackberries, twins, trojan, starfig, gentrification, apron, mermaids--well, you get the idea. Good thing was, the audience was totally game and I felt very confident standing before them, naked in my vunlerable, whimsical, indulgent, and sometimes silly ode poetry.

The third event was the big one, the one that flew me out that way. Much Depends Upon Dinner. So it was held in this place called the Sanctuary, which used to be this Christian Science church--a stunning establishment in West Seattle on a clandestine block, partly shielded by trees. Since CS is on the endangered species list of religions, the membership of the church dwindled to sawdust so they eventually had to sell it. An independantly wealthy real estate broker acquired it at some point and lived in it with her two daughters. I walked into the sanctuary; the place was exquisite and a rather outlandish place to live--but hey, if you could, why not? She since moved out and now rents it out for functions such as this. Large painted portraits of her daughters still hang on the walls to cover up quotes by the founder of Christian science, Mary Baker Eddy.

The tables were set up in long rows. There was an open bar, the special drink of the night, lavendar martinis, the lavendar coming straight from the Korean lady's lavendar farm around the corner from Hedgebrook. If I wasn't such an integral part of the evening, I would have been knocking those back like it was nobody's business. But I restrained myself with two--or was it three? People socialized a bit but once all the women were seated in the big open dining area, I kicked the evening off with Ode to Picking Blackberries from the balcony that overlooked the whole scene. Surprised by the tactic, the audience looked up at me in awe, like they were all girls again. From my recollections, it was my first time performing from a balcony. It was so dramatic for no reason. I loved it. Juliet all the way. And later, for further dramatic effect, I performed Ode to Apron wearing one. My first time doing that, too.

I also vibed hard with Nassim Assefi, and Iranian novelist who just came back from the middle east. A doctor by trade she made a switch in her life by taking on her writing as a career and now she practices medicine just for fun--all over the world! How fly is that?

Gloria Steinem showed up looking smart and lovely in her all black--pants and a simple top, clean lines--a rocking red bag. I loved her energy as she greeted me with a warm sisterly embrace, with a curious familiarity, as if we had met once or twice before. When it was her time to speak she thanked me for "rescuing poetry from obscurity." She read from her next nonfiction project on her life as an organizer and this particular essay was about discerning the surreal of every day life. She's been excersizing the practice of, well, looking for the surreal in every day life. For instance, I find it surreal that Walt Staton, a volunteer for this organization "No More Deaths" was arrested and charged for littering. Want to know why? For leaving jugs of water in the desert, a nature preserve, for the illegal families that cross those lands and so often die of thirst from doing so. He was sentenced to 300 hours of community service of picking up trash on the highway.

Thats my first stab at discerning the kind of surreal Gloria is talking about. She herself had some damn compelling examples, but you'll just have to wait till the book drops to find out what they are :)

The next evening was a town hall Hedgebrook put together starring Gloria, legendary folk singer Holly Near, Nassim, Stephanie Kallos and Pramila Jayapal. I was not familiar with Holly's music prior to meeting her but since then I have become hip to her. Later, after we bonded she was kind enough to slide me some of her CD's and I looooove her music! Wow! Where has this woman been all my life? A fierce sassy freedom fighter, she is. Holly's songs are sonorous weapons against war, sexism, homophobia, oppressions and woes of all kinds. Though she approaches her art with so much love for whoever she is directing her songs toward.That's the fiercest thing about her work is the generosity of her love even in a musical onslaught of critique. Hugely inspiring. She has lived an amazing life, knee deep in the times.

The auditorium was packed with 800 people solid, sold out, line down the block. The moment the panelists appeared on stage the anxious audience stood up clapping long and hard. The exuberance in the room for both Gloria and Holly, the stars of the evening, was infectious. HB had asked me to open up the evening with a poem of my choice, so I chose Audre Lorde's "Litany for Survival", a manifesto in itself. I was followed by two other Hedgebrook alums who read poems by Sylvia Plath and June Jordan.

The panelists then spent the next hour in conversation about women writers that have altered their realities. A nice thing to think about isn't it? After a lush two hours of conversation, Holly singing in between, and questions from the audience (some of them not questions, but pontifications and declarations and testimonies), i ended the evening with my poem, "House of the Rising Daughter" a poem I had written last year on the birth of singer Eddie Vedder's baby girl. Really though, its a celebratory meditation on all the little warrior goddesses arriving into these chaotic times.Call it another ode, if you will. It was a cool experience to perform that poem in Vedder's hometown. I had not occured to me to mention who I had written it specifically for but Gloria suggested I do as she felt it would resonate in a special way with the audience, and it did.

All in all, I felt honored and blessed to have opened and closed the evening, and loved sitting off to the side, letting the wisdom of these brilliant women wash over my consciousness like ocean waves. I left Seattle that night, and journeyed to Whidbey Island for the weekend to join Gloria, Holly, and the other sisters currently in residence at Hedgebrook.

Poetry at the Clinic

2009-06-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Invitation

Today, for National Caribbean American HIV/AIDS Awareness day, I took the train to Newark, NJ where I was to perform poems in the waiting room of a health clinic.

East Orange Primary Health Center, a one stop shop of all things health related, provide all realms of health care for impovershed, non-white, muchly Caribbean immigrant populations. Of the 3009 people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in East Orange since December 31, 2007, 93% of them are Black Americans or from the Caribbean.

So in response to this statistical calamity, the clinic put on a health education fest, where they invite the community to come get free screenings for high blood pressure, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. And while people wait, why not slip the arts in there to further educate and expand the mind? So this is where I come in.

The Funk

Thing is, this morning, I wake up in a solemn state, though I would not say it sad. Hey, even with my grinnin ass, some days smiles don't spill across the face so loosely, especially now at this point in the wrestling match with Seventeen Seasons, this monstrosity of a novel that wrenches me like no other love. To tell the truth, I woke up not wanting to be in front of people, not wanting to expose myself in the ways essential to the public poet I have grown to be.

Times like this it hits me: the insanity of what we as poets do, especially ones in the performance realm. Take sex workers for instance, I cannot concieve of sex being my occupation, but here it is, their livelihood. It reminds me of how most folk cannot concieve of being a poet, standing before the comprehending and uncomprehending masses, the empathetic and apathetic, naked inside your language.

But. This. Is. My. Livelihood.

So I spent the morning opening my energies to avoid entering into this poor clinic with a sense of dread because no audience deserves that. It's not their fault I woke up on the wrong side of things.

With Adam Mansbach's End of the Jews in my lap, I read all the way to Newark.

The Clinic

I walk into the clinic, and well, it's a waiting room all right, as they said. Aside from the balloons at the entrance to signify the specialness of the day, the mundanity of the situation is glaring. I scan the space, fingers in my brain flipping quickly through my rolodex of poems. I look around: young, old, men, women, everything in between. I don't have much time; I am to go on soon. What to do what to do.

Booths are set up all over the room with health educators on deck armed with pamphlets, mailing lists and varieties of condoms I never knew existed. Glow in the dark joints? Damn, where the hell have I been?

Youngings are on the prowl, coaxing candy from the young health educators (all women) manning the tables. A gentleman in his 70's palms a bunch of condoms and one falls. The young boy beside him, 7 ior 8, picks it up. Totally unseduced by its vibrant wrapping, he hands it to the man. It strikes me that I have never seen a kid that young hold a condom. I wonder if he knows what it's for.

I study the layout of the room.The chairs are set up in the middle, coming from two separate directions, with a big awkward gulf in between them--tricky to navigate when performing because you then have to divide your energies in two directions--not my strong suit. Oh well. Another day another challenge. Giddy up.

Elbows digging into my knees, I sit in a quiet room, contemplating poems. Contemplating my presence in this space, what it all means. From a performance standpoint, the situation wasn't ideal. But from a poetry standpoint it was beyond ideal, because how often is poetry asked to exist in such spaces? There are poetry venues, and then there is this. This too is necessary.

The Performance

Claire introduces me and the applause is lukewarm and genuine. With no plan, I step. Everything I have done in my short tenure on this earth help bring me to moments like this. I think back to my Tallahassee days, my Black on Black Rhyme days, when Keith Rodgers and I would roll to all the barber shops and hair salons on Friday afternoons (pay day), spit poems and hustle CD's. Oh, and at the Essence festival in New Orleans, 2002, spitting poems on sidewalks, selling my CD's to total strangers, happy to support.

Man, I hardly do shit like that anymore, which is kinda sorta an unsung tragedy in my life. And how fiery and brash I was back then! I wasn't afraid of anything . And if I was afraid, then the fear wasn't important enough to remember. And I find, that I am not afraid now. I wrote poems for 10 years and was too afraid to share them with strangers. Those days are long over. I believe in this gift I give and have been given, I believe in the functionality of poetry's elevated language in the mundane world. Time to spit!

At the start of my set a man breaks into a public reverie about how fine Trinidadian women are. I gestured to myself and told him I know! Vanity is so fun sometimes, like the sun playing peekabo through clouds. There was a girl in the back of the room, whose hand drifted to her mouth halfway through the set and kept it there for the rest of the performance. She didn't even clap. Most just sat there silently, some gazing at me, others looking off somewhere--a distant land?

All now so, there is constant movement that characterizes a clinic waiting room. To my right clinic staff and their clients are talking and laughing at non-poetry friendly volumes. Balancing that out to my left are two women bobbing their heads to the invisible beat to each of my lines, urging me on, thanking me after each poem, a rarity, because I am usually the one thanking the audience kinda profusely just for listening. Because truth be told, whether its big, small, black, white, young, old, a listening audience is gold. Sometimes I wonder if applause is an unnatural response to art. Applause can be loud enough to echo in your ears for days to come, and still be empty. I have had many audiences clap like lunatics, ushering me off stage with an erect ego. That's the same audience that will not approach you afterwards to shake your hand or buy your stuff, ushering you to the next gig a city away, pockets in pain. Poets if you're out there, holler if you hear me!

The Aftermath

There was this one woman in her 50's, who sat in the front row, with her body curiously turned away from me the whole time, stone still, looking down at the floor, not making eye contact once. Though I genuinely don't care about this anymore, I was certain my words were sliding off her like egg yolk. It be that way sometimes!

Do you know this woman was the first to approach me to buy my book, her money already out?

Lessons such as this are so important they need to be relearned over and over again: to never, never assume what you think a person gets or doesn't get out of your work based on how they engage you externally. This is a deep thing we do as poets. It's a dark magic. The journey our beautifully crafted words make into a person is a sacred journey, a journey that has nothing to do with us or the person its happening to. Mysterious, the travels our words make once they leave our bodies thorugh our pens, our lips. Exhilerating thought, the idea of our words go places we cannot follow, more less imagine.

Afterwards I shared some meaningful talks with some of my listeners--and boy were they listening! Some were quoting lines and sharing with sincere detail how and why certain images and whole poems intersected with their insides. Much more useful to me than a pat on the back and "good job!" --which is cool too, if that's what you got. Sold some stuff, too.

I left there feeling uplifted and inspired--nothing like before. I thank Claire from East Orange's Primary Center for comissioning me to come out of my self imposed funk, providing this unique experience for her clients and for me, to learn lessons both explicable and not.

Mashin Down De Place with David Rudder

2009-06-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

I woke the morning of June 19 with a joyous dread that had been building in me since the organizers of Celebrate Brooklyn invited me back in April to headline this day with David Rudder at the Prospect Park Bandshell, an 8,000 person venue.

When I accepted their invitation, my initial thoughts were:

Am I enough for this blessing? And will my people accept me as their own?

Ah, Trinis. Until now I hadn't the opportunity to perform my work for such a large Trini audience. I mean, I performed for small gatherings of people during my time there last year, including my Uncle's church in Caparo, but nothing near this large.

6,000+ people can be an intimidating audience for a poet, period. But 5,000+ Trinis is an especially intimidating audience in my eyes. Trinis eh easy, yes. Not at all at all.

For one, we pride ourselves on being difficult to impress. We have this air about us like we have seen it all, heard it all. Coupled with that, we have been known to heckle especially after some imbibing has gone on.

These aforementioned concerns are the silly insecurities I held in the beginning. Eventually, once I decided to change my mind about it, these insecurities turned into just the opposite: pure, unapologetic, confidence. Hell yeah, I am ready for that stage! It has been waiting for me and now it is mine to claim!

I always try to remember that audiences, with the exception of Apollo's ameteur night, want to see you as a performer, do well. Some Trinis may heckle yes, but as a majority Trinis are excellent participants of language. Calypso music, indicative of this, in turn dictates this of us. Also, Trinis reflect the beginnings of who I am, and therefore, stand to understand layers of my work with an intimacy unsurpassed by any other crowd in the world.

What an enormous gift, this opportunity to hold poetic council with so many of my countrymen&women--who too, in varying degrees, have been geographically dislocated from our home we so love. Their paths led them to Brooklyn, as did mine.

Still, the joyous dread gathered throughout the day. Though the tension in me somewhat eased by the affable vibe of the production staff, as I was backstage, hearing my name called by the announcer, the crowd cheering, my peeps up front in VIP, screaming their faces off, every last memory of nervousness fell away as I journeyed to the mic, looking the audience squarely in the eye, making it clear my readiness.

I opened the set with "Signs" and continued on with "Ode to Twins","West Indian Woman Speaks from the Dead", "Ode to Gentrification", "Locksmith", "Why Won't Glenda Pray?" before ending with my 8 minute tribute to Odetta.

All in all, the challenge stretched me as a performer as well as deepened my bond with myself. While up there, even though the support was massive, never had I felt so alone, 5,000+ pairs of eyes on me. II felt strong,vulnerable, poised, risque, and most importantly, among friends--5,000 of them!

Once I returned backstage, David Rudder approached me with, "You have serious lyrics." His words meant multitudes to me, as Rudder is one of Trinidad's finest Calypsoians, and is loved across the world.

My favorite song of his is "Heaven," a lament on why some human beings find heaven in subjugating others.

The song opens:

Ever since time began man has searched for his heaven.
Sometimes seeking it in the reflection of his neighbor’s blood.

Rudder and the Brooklyn based Sunshine Band mash down the place; the crowd ate them up, singing Rudder's songs so loud that that Rudder did not have to, and dancing hard enough to make you wake up sore come morning. The 90 minute set was a great mix of ballads and jump and wave jams.

The evening felt such an authentically Trinidadian experience. As I wined my waist, surrounded by other jubilant bodies, it occured to me that this entire evening was the most Trinidadian I'd felt since I first arrived here 20 years ago. How healing. For even when I return to Trinidad I feel American, something I never feel until I color outside these dear borders.

I dropped asleep that night drunk off gratitude and woke up with the greatest of hangovers, not to mention soreness from dancing harder than I'd danced in recent days.

Kennth Makes News Yet Again!

2009-06-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Foster Jr. my dear friend and pen pal of some years, was sentenced to death row at age 19 for driving the getaway car after an unplanned murder committed by his friend. Under the Texas Law of Parties, Kenneth was tried alongside the shooter in court and sentenced to death just like the shooter. He lived on death row 10 years and his case weathered 5 trials, 3 of which he won, two of which he lost. He lost the fifth trial, and had no more evidence to gain a 6th, so he was sentenced to death by lethal injection for August 30, 2007. Thanks to the enormous network Kenneth built behind bars, using only pen and paper and the lost art of letter writing, over 17,000 contacted the Governer's office in the weeks leading up to the trial, including President Jimmy Carter and South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Five hours before lethal injection, Gov. Perry gave Kenneth a stay, which means his life was saved, making Texas history. Sweet victory, but the war is far from over. The below message comes from Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network.

Texas House Passes "The Kenneth Foster, Jr Act", Bill Moves to Senate

After almost two years of grassroots organizing, the Texas House of Representatives Friday passed the Law of Parties Bill (HB 2267) and even adopted an amendment renaming the bill "The Kenneth Foster Jr, Act".

The vote was 69-66, with 1 present not voting and several absent members. Three Republicans voted yes and only one Democrat voted no.

This was a collective achievement of many legislators, staffers, activists, family members of death row inmates and other people and groups working together, but we still have to work to get the Texas senate to also pass the bill. We need you to call senators today!

The session ends soon, so there is not much time for us to convince the senate to pass the bill too. See below for information to call state senators to urge them to pass the "The Kenneth Foster Jr Act"

The Texas House of Representatives Friday passed House Bill 2267, "The Kenneth Foster, Jr Act". Sponsored by Rep. Terri Hodge (D - Dallas), the bill would eliminate the death penalty as a sentencing option under the controversial Texas Law of Parties. It would also require separate trials of co-defendants in capital cases. The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.

The Texas Law of Parties gained national prominence in 2007 during the high profile case of Kenneth Foster, Jr., whose death sentence was commuted by Governor Rick Perry following a national grassroots movement to halt his execution.

"It is my hope that in the future no other families have to deal with the emotional, psychological and financial hell associated with having a loved one on death row for a murder they factually did not commit, like my family has had to deal with for the last 13 years," said Terri Been, sister of Texas death row inmate Jeff Wood. Wood was sentenced to death under the Law of Parties.

"This bill, when passed, will make me even prouder to be a resident of Texas," said Kenneth Foster, Sr., father of Kenneth Foster, Jr. "Our family knows first hand the injustices of the Law of Parties, and Rep. Hodge's bill is a step in the right direction."

Although Hodge's bill is not retroactive, and therefore would not affect any current cases like Jeff Wood's, several families of death row inmates convicted under the Law of Parties have lobbied in favor of the legislation.

"This is a major victory for the families impacted by this unfair law," said Bryan McCann of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "We are told the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst, but its application under the Law of Parties affords prosecutors far too much discretion in pursuing the most severe form of punishment."

Executions under the Law of Parties are very rare. Three people have been executed in Texas under the Law of Parties, which amounts to 0.6 percent of the 437 total executions in Texas. The last such execution in Texas was in 1993.

"The Kenneth Foster, Jr Act is a much-needed reform. The current law allowing accomplices who have not killed anyone to pay the ultimate penalty for a murder committed by another person is fundamentally unjust", said Scott Cobb, president of Texas Moratorium Network.

Thank you to all the people who participated in the Lobby Day on March 24 and the many, many people who called their state representative urging them to vote for HB 2267. The groups who worked hard for this historic victory include Texas Moratorium Network, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, and many family members of people convicted under the Law of Parties who all made visits and phone calls to members of the Texas Legislature.

Weekend in Louisville

2009-05-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

Immediately I am charmed by the elegance of my hotel room. The moment I walk in. In an oblique way it makes me remember the old days, minus the nostalgia. You know the stories. Selling just enough CDs in one city to get me to the next destination. Sleeping on the side of the road, fetus curled in my backseat. Sleeping on airport floors and pull outs, their springs with serious appetites for my flesh.

That is not to say those days are entirely over. Hell, just last weekend in Richmond I slept on a pullout so I'm not five starring it all the way. So I just take a moment to stop and take in the days blessing. I hope I never get used to this. Because then I would stop enjoying it the way I do now, with this almost childlike wonder. I am coming to find that gratitude is the best medicine for my life right now, hence the odes I can't seem to stop writing. Though my wallet says Holiday Inn, the fact that I am here, in this five star situation means I am a five star gal, doing five star thangs. I like being cognizant of the spaces and situations that honor my writing. I felt this intensely at Hedgebrook Retreat when I walked into my own cottage. It charmed my tears from their hiding place. This wasn't nearly that emotional, just a small smile to the universe.

Professor Thornhill

Check out your girl, giving an academic lecture at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Their MFA program in children's writing invited me to come down and discuss the research methodologies I used in order to create my poem about folk singer Odetta, which is being published by Scholastic next spring in the form of a picture book.

All in all, I enjoyed myself immensely and really appreciate Spalding, more specifically Kathleen Driskell, for having me come down. It felt like talking for 45 minutes with friends about stuff that so naturally jazz me to the bone.

Sister Chairs

Here we are in the lobby of the Brown hotel, situated in the heart of downtown Louisville. The seating area is expansive with antique furniture that I would not buy for my house yet would admire in the homes of others.

Or so I thought. I found myself infatuated with this chair from the beginning. Shaped like an S, it seemed the chair had tried to say my name, but could only get out the first letter. I would have this chair in my house, and build a whole room around it in order to justify its existence. Suddenly I understand those folk that scour auctions for specific objects, once they hit it rich. Well, since I won't be taking home such a chair anytime soon, I wanted nothing more than to have a damn good conversation in it before I left Kentucky.

I got my wish. After my lecture and the banging Indian buffet dinner that followed, my homegirl Bianca Spriggs drove over from Lexington, an hour away. Initially we had made plans to go somewhere and beverage. Surprise surprise we gravitated over to the sister chairs, sat down, and fell face first into conversation. In it, we went to Africa and back.

Feature at Lyric Ave.

2009-05-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

5/15/09
Richmond, VA

The Big Byrd Theatre

Lorna dropped me off at the Byrd Theatre and said good luck. The Byrd is an old fashioned theatre with a box office and a marquee reading Lyric Ave, the variety show in which I was a special guest feature. The instant I walked into the lobby, the smell of popcorn assaulted my taste buds and I tried not to look at the Milkduds staring at me from their glass prison—my movie theatre weakness.

It’s been at least 6 years since I’d been back down this way—VA, my old stomping ground. Years ago, when I still lived here, I featured for Lyric Ave; at that time, they were in a restaurant. I remembered the restaurant being long; I dislike long rooms from a performance standpoint. I looked around now at the majestic theatre, at the ushers at each door in their black attire; the winding stairs leading to the mezzanine. Lyric Ave. has certainly moved up—a testament not only to the crew’s dedication to what they bring to their community but also the community’s desire for what they do.

Consisting of comedy, drama, song, dance, and poetry, I had heard Lyric Ave was the largest variety show in the nation but I didn’t believe it until I walked through the doors to the actual theatre, which was huge and packed. It is the size of the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, with a band in the pit. I was stone cold impressed. I welcomed the challenge of holding down a large space filled with people who did not necessarily come for poetry. I was also grateful for the opportunity to expose such a mainstream audience to my craft. After I checked in with the organizer Craig, dressed as a woman for a skit he was about to do, his lip gloss popping harder than mine, I explored the theatre to get a sense of the space, something I always try to do before I perform. After sitting up front for a moment, I walked all the way to the back, then ventured up to the mezzanine, reciting poems in my brain.

The Idea of Intimacy

I have been exploring this idea of intimacy. What is it, exactly? I’ve been talking this through with my friend Kenneth, through our letters. We’ve come to define intimacy as that special place where people meet. People often equate intimacy with sex which is erroneous because there is plenty of sex far from intimate. Same with poetry venues. People assume that just because a venue is small, it is intimate. But how intimate is a small venue really when people are carrying on conversation while poets pour themselves on stage? I have come to find that intimacy is not necessarily about the size of the room, but about the vibe an event creates, dictates. Despite the theatre’s size, I found a curious intimacy in it. The sound was crisp and the audience was receptive, transfixed by what was happening in front of them—whether it be a poem or a skit.

All in all, I had fun on the Lyric Ave stage, its light so blinding the audience could only be felt and heard, not seen. I revisited some oldies but goodies and mixed it in with a couple of newer poems. The 600 person audience listened attentively with pin dropping silence and they responded to me so warmly. Even though the stage was as wide as an avenue, I felt I was in a room amongst friends. Now that’s intimate.

The Response

Later on, I was told I got a standing ovation after I finished my set with good old “Locksmith.” I was backstage so couldn’t witness it for myself. Afterwards, I sold a decent amount of CD’s and chapbooks, which will all contribute to my summer fund. I enjoy connecting with folks after because as a poet, I often feel alone in my craft and it’s good to hear how my work resonates/intersects with people. It’s helpful to hear from other people’s mouths how your work communicates with them. The more specific their comments the more helpful it is. In response to my Glenda poem a few people revealed to me that they have incarcerated loved ones so it strummed a special cord in them, as that poem does in me. Based on some of my lines, one woman suspected me a Buddhist, which I had never gotten before. I guess that’s a step up from years back, in Connecticut, when a woman thought I was into witchcraft based on my lines. Well in that case, I think it said more about her than it did about me!

All in all, big ups to the Lyric Ave crew for putting on a well organized show that seeks to expose people to all different genres of performance art. I commend them for the creativity and love they put into what they do. I left feeling warm inside, and that can only mean it was a good night.

Heading to Richmond

2009-05-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

Hello after some silence. My bags are stacked, my fridge is full, thirst insatiable, plane ticket printed, chapbooks packed, just finished teaching, on my way out, my stomach is growling, feeling full.

Busy little bee these days. The weather is fickle while I remain steadfast. Steadfast revising the hell out of this mug. Fiction has been a slow grind--sweet and satisfying. Poems pour out of me instead of sweat but I still wipe my brow out of habit. Feeling like a groundhog, creeping out the cave. Website in the process of getting seriously revamped. Sweet gig at Prospect Park Bandshell coming up. My fashion sense is evolving. I'm starting to like photoshoots finally. As my friend Moon would say, I carry myself like a loved woman. I feel loved by the people I love. And the hair is just growing.

I'm excited to be touring the US this summer with old and new poems. It's been years since I've hit the road the way I'm about to. My work has transformed beneath my fingertips and after I stopped saying what the fuck I have fallen back in love with my writing. This has been huge benefit to my spirit. For years I criticized myself so much with voices unlike my own. I've swept that many headed voice from my head with the wind itself. All of that pain has enhanced me so lovely. Feels good to be at this place where I feel comfortable sharing what I'm writing with peeps old and new. I know what I am doing now, and that understanding was all I needed. So on the road I go. It had to start in a place i can actually order sweet tea at a resteraunt. So I head to Richmond tonight to hang with sister Lorna and feature at a couple spots.

Friday May 15: Richmond, VA

Samantha features at Lyric Ave

Byrd Theatre

2908 W. Cary St

Richmond, VA

show starts 8:30

Saturday May 16: Richmond, VA

Samantha features at Richmond SlamArtspace

Zero E. 4th Street

Richmond, VA 23224

workshop starts at 5pm

show starts at 8pmhttp://www.slamrichmond.com/

This summer my desire is to travel to these cities. Any leads to poetry venues in these areas, or anywhere in general, would be very helpful to me.

San Francisco/Bay Area

Chicago/Milwaukee

Atlanta

New Orleans/Baton Rouge

DC/Baltimore

Seattle

Much Love and I will let you know how Richmond goes.

Currently reading:The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time IndianBy Sherman Alexie

Regretful Poems

2008-10-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

My time at Hedgebrook Retreat for Women Writers was as blessed as blessed can be. The moment I arrived I had this deep feeling that I was on sacred ground. I had heard about the place from my friend Tonya who encouraged to apply and so I did, not knowing at all what to expect, or what I was getting into. And then I got in.

I had flown across an ocean to get there. Wind blown and bleary eyed, skin still humming from the beautifully traumatizing experience that was South Africa, I suddenly found myself on an island I had never heard of, in the sticks I would soon come to know.

When the resident director Vito showed me around the necessary parts of the 48 acre property and then led me into my quaint cottage in the woods--called Willow-- where i was to reside for the next 5 weeks, I burst into tears. Unbelievable how charming this place was and mostly, I was so so touched. Like the retreat as a whole, the cottage itself was so lovingly imagined and thoughtfully structured. At that moment I understood that I walked into a profound situation. Just the mere fact that I was allowed to be in this space is a testament to my work as a writer. I felt so damn honored. Yes, I think that's the word. I felt like my writing was being honored--not exploited, as getting published can often make you feel, but just plain old honored. And so I had no choice but to honor my writing in return.

Does that mean that I wrote like the madwoman in the attic, hardly coming up for air? No. In fact, I didn't spend more than two hours on any given day physically writing though I hold on to the belief that we are always writing. I couldn't sit down and write for more than that; I simply had too many other things to do. I was busy making collages with Suheir and Danai and Nikki. Taking origami lessons from Mary. Mastering my fires in the stove inside my cottage and for hours babysitting and nurturing flame. Which means constantly restocking my wood from the wood shed. I took long walks and longer baths. I laid down in the green meadow for my daily dose of vitamin e-- sun on my body. I ventured into the woods for hours and picked blackberriee and ate them right off the branches. I examined the slugs on the ground and poked them with sticks. I visited the flowers in the impressive Hedgebrook garden. I climbed up on the ladder and picked figs off the trees. I rode a bike down to Double Bluff Beach.

And I wrote poems.

It had been years since I wrote poems for the sheer joy of it. Something happens when you become a poet for a living, when your art becomes your livelihood, becomes your business. There's also something that happens when you subject your work to hours of scrutiny from people who do not care about your work. After I graduated from my MFA program years ago, I realized sadly that my relationship to writing poetry had altered in a way that broke my heart many times over. For never before had I written with so many other people's voices in my head. I mean shit, my own voices of self doubt were quite enough, thank you. When did writing poetry stop being this hard kind of fun? I criticsized lines before I even had a chance to write them, truncating my creativity. It was as brutal as ripping a tree out of the soil before it even got a chance to sprout.

But writing is such a major chunk of my identity, writing is like breathing, I must write, I must write something. And if poetry was starting to act the fool inside my brain then I had to venture into a genre I knew nothing about, where the voices would not, could not follow. And so my journey began with fiction. And soon after, the book deals came...in threes like tragedies often do. And aside from a long children's poem I wrote for Scholastic along with a few forced efforts that will not see the light of day, I have been writing fiction for the past 4 years.

During this time I often wondered if I would ever write poems again just for the fun of it because oh how I missed those days when I would just approach the blank page with that special fervor and lie down inside my ardent verses. I've missed the poem, I truly have. As much as I have grown to love fiction writing, there's something about the poetic craft that sets me ablaze.

Hedgebrook is a magical place that will always rest in the fondest corners of my memory. It summoned the poet in me to gush forth. I was there exactly a week when I wrote my first poem. During my exploration in the woods, i came across a wild blackberry bush, much to my merriment. It was my first time seeing blackberries growing from their actual branches...you know, not in cartons at Whole Foods. And as i began to gorge on the tangy berries, i wipped out my waterproof notepad given to me by Carolyn Forche and scrawled lines as I ate. And that was a divine day. Later on i returned to my cottage and crafted those findings into my first poem, "Picking Blackberries." The magical feeling I missed so much had returned to me.

And I knew then that this was what I had come to Hedgebrook to do. To stretch out, and write poems, dammit, poems about whatever strikes. To resume my deep love affair with truth and beauty. To conform to no one's expectations or aesthetics. To write what I like like Steve Biko. Not for a program, not for publisher, but for myself first and foremost. And whoever wishes to come along for the ride, cool. Whoever doesn't--cool.

And so I will share some of these poems in the days and blogs to come. I call this series "Regretful Poems" for many of them examine the concept of regret in some small, particularized way. But more importantly than that, they are poems entirely about being in the present.

I have written poems about the past. I have written poems from the points of view of others. I have excavated poems purely from the depths of my wild horse imagination. I have written poems to save the world. But in the great tradition of Rumi, Mary Oliver, and Pablo Neruda these poems are purely about Being in the present moment, in this place, at this time, with these people, and just allowing myself to be astonished by life again and its simple gifts.

And whereas so many of my poems in the past made me feel so much older after writing them, these poems served me in the opposite sense, turning back the hands of time and making me feel younger than I had in years, for I was surrounded by the intelligence of nature, and was breathing fresh air again. I managed to retrieve the curiosity I had somewhere along the way lost, the curiosity that children have and lose at our hands-- that precious way of viewing life with this inexorable wonder, awe, and surprise--

ooohing and aaaahing like Smurfs at the darndest things, approaching that blank highway of a page, and driving that pen on a full tank of unleaded magic.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2008-02-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

I heard from a friend that there is a movie out about a man who wrote a memoir with an eyelid. Seeing that I'm struggling to write a novel with two hands, I was intrigued.

I recently itched this scratch after dragging my visiting friend Mervyn to the Angelika Theatre on the lower east side to see this French film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly that I'd heard so much and so little about. I prefer it this way; I don't like previews, and would rather venture into a darkening theature not knowing what to expect.

The film is the true story of a journalist that survived a stroke in his 40's, leaving his entire body paralyzed with the exception of his left eyelid. His mind lucid, his memory fully intact, he became a prisoner of this same body that betrayed him. The human blink, something we so take for granted and seldom consider, was his sole form of communication.

A therapist was able to design a system of communication that would allow his paralyzed mouth a voice. He hired a dictator, and used a system to write his memoir, one letter, one blink at a time. The movie did a masterful job of taking you through this excrutiatingly patient process, where one must recite the letters of the alphabet, waiting for the blink that would communicate the letter he wanted to convey. This was the method he used to build words, string sentences, construct paragraphs, and eventually, weave his life story.

It's an astouding, moving and emotionally wrenching story. From my first blink to my last, I was totally enthralled with the narration. The director really made you feel what he was feeling: the confusion, the humor, the frustration, the immesurable pain. I don't think I really even breathed a full breath the entire time; the movie kept stealing it. I didn't sit back in my seat once, found that I'd leaned in the entire time.

When the theatre spit me back out into the world, I was shaken up inside; like a cherry tree shaken of its cherries, it will harvest many more.Without a doubt it is a worthwhile movie for writers in particular to see. It made me think of all the luxuries I afford myself as a writer--the Rachmoninoff, the Evian, my favorite pen, the correct font, the right kind of comfort, the infitnite revisions.

What is it to dictate your life one letter at a time? I cannot imagine that magnitude of patience, not to mention the mental stamina to hold this thing in your mind with very minimal revision. The revisionist I am, I never considered revision such an enormous luxury until now; I don't know where my writing would be without it.

I found this movie a celebration of many things: the power of the human imagination, the resiliency of the human spirit, and the inevitability of the human story's journey into the world, no matter the obstacles.

I'd been struggling with my novel lately (what else is new?); I've even had the audacity to call these past few weeks hard. After seeing this movie I am reminded that I have no idea what that word means; it was just the kick in the ass I needed to brush myself off and fight!

I approached my novel the day after the butterfly with a more mindful approach, a fresh apprecation for all of the blessings that are within my reach; my Rachmoninoff on loop, my Evian bottle at my side, Google at my fingertips, my lightning fast fingers and yes, the molasses of my mind.

Was MLK an undercover slam poet?

2008-01-19T10:51:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed my day spring cleaning and dissecting Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech from both page and stage standpoints--something I always wanted to do but never did. I encourage anyone to Google MLK's "I have a Dream" speech, a wonderful 15 minute stroll down the memory lane of this nation's history.

After studying the written text and watching the speech several times, i have to say, the speech uses about every literary tool we've got and his deliverance of it is absolutely flawless. MLK wasn't just a poet; he was a slam poet.

I'm not going to discuss the political philosophy of his speech, just its craft. The entire speech, (and hopefully some good ones coming up from our Barack Obama) relies on metaphor, simile, alliteration, allusion, litany, chiasma, you name it. But that's a whole other thesis.

I do want to take this space, however, to talk about his genius as a performer, a nobel peace prize winning, Birmingham jail letter writing, slam poet. I'll share some of my observations:

He's reading his speech, but makes frequent eye contact with the audience.

Every syllable is important. King pronouces and lengthens EVERY single syllable, esp. the last syllable in each word. I was surprised by how short the actual speech was on paper considering the speech is 15 minutes long. He takes his time with every word.

In the beginning of the speech, he seldom elevates the volume of his voice, keeping it almost perfectly even heightening it only at calculated times almost as if to make sure you're paying attention, and the crowd responds accordingly.

He employs the We point of view, just like the constitution. A mere representative for his people, he is delivering the Black Gettysburg address. Somewhere in the middle of the speech, some shmuck sticks his hand in front of King's face to lower the four mics pointed at the Reverend's mouth, slightly lessening the volume. (I was annoyed by that.)

The crowd responds most ardently to the use of metaphor; it is perhaps our favorite literary device. King makes an analogy that America wrote the Black race a bad check (of justice), and it came back insufficient funds. The crowd roars and laughs for the first time in the speech. Let's not forget the relevance of the metaphor; insuffient funds are two words the working poor can certainly relate to.

He doesn't smile once during the entire speech, not even during the insufficient funds joke which achieved the only laugh in the entire 15 minutes.

King doesn't stumble or stutter once, and if he did, he played it off like an expert.

The arc, or should I say, the architecture of the "I Have a Dream" speech is like any of the best movies I've seen or books I've read. It builds and builds and builds its way to a climax, which is the I Have a Dream litany, followed by falling action. Suddenly, MLK switches from the "we" point of view he'd been using throughout the entire speech, to the "I", the first person point of view. I have a dream, he says. The crowd immediately starts to respond to this shift.

He lifts his eyes off the page and keeps them lifted for the rest of the "I Have a Dream" litany. This is clearly the part he has practiced most, in fact, memorized. The speech is more personal. He mentions his three daughters. You can relate to the man now, not just the symbol he has become. Perhaps he has done this part of the speech before, several times, in several places. Could it be his signature piece, the one that always earns him a 30 from his audiences?

Just the steadiness of his eyes alone heightens the intensity of his words and his presence. It's true; we should look the world in the eye when we are telling the world our dreams for it; because our dreams are essentially what we stand for in this life. MLK, in another speech asks us to honestly confront our shattered dreams, and by the look on his face, and the by the sound of his voice, his dreams are by no means shattered.

When he weaves allusions to the Constitution in his speech such as "we hold these truths to be self evident, all men are created equal" and "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the crowd cheers. He is using the beloved language of this nations' founding fathers to imply this nation's hyprocrisy.

Now that he's not glancing down at paper, he elevates his chin and often appears as if looking off into the distance, the future. His volume has significantly heightened but is still controlled, like his anger. Towards the very end, as if to notify you of his soon departure, he lifts his shoulders dramatically, as if preparing for flight. He unglues his hands from the podium and begins to gesticulate, using grandiose gestures, stretching his arms up then out like Jesus on the cross. He ends with a "Free At Last" litany, quoting the Negro Spiritual, followed by a swift exit.

My findings have brought me to this conclusion: MLK Jr. was not just a Reverend "stroking the dark underside of God's wet tongue" as Major Jackson would put it, but an undercover slam poet.Never mind the time penatly. He expertly uses all the literary tools and performance techniques we, in all our greenness, don't take advantage of. Allow our Slam Legend to confront us with the following questions:

How do you speak with your entire voice without yelling at a nation?How do you read from your paper without sounding like you are?

How do you most effectively harness your anger; when is it too much or not enough? Are we defeating our purpose when our anger translates more than our actual message?

Is each repeated line of a litany supposed to represent a nail in the enemy's coffin?

Is listing the blue jeans of slam, never to go out of style?

Though my own political philosophy doesn't exactly match the one that Dr. King embodies, I find the "I Have a Dream" speech simply (and not so simply), dazzling both from a writing and a performance standpoint.

My Everybody Hates Chris Book is out and selling!

2008-01-12T07:15:00.000-08:00

My chapter book Everybody Hates School Presentations, as part of a series of chapter books based on the Everybody Hates Chris television series is out and selling online and in major bookstores across the country.

The timing for this book couldn't be more perfect; the book's topic is Black History Month, right on our doorstep. Here is a short description of the storyline, just a little tease:

"As part of Corleone Jr. High's annual acknowledgment of Black History Month, Chris's history teacher is giving extra credit to anyone who comes to school armed with "Black Facts." Chris is quickly designated the resident expert on all things African American. Then the principal decides that Chris will give a presentation - in front of the whole school - about African-American history. As if this isn't nerve-wracking enough, Chris has to work with his nemesis, Joey Caruso, on the project! Will Chris survive Black History Month?"

The book is geared specifically for middle-grade readers; like any board game, 8 and up. Adults, surely will also get something out of this book. It is ideal for the classroom; in fact, designed for it. In contributing to this chapter book series, my goal was to educate youth on the richness, rawness and depth of the Black struggle, with a few giggle arousing rib pokes in between.

If you purchase the book, I would really like to know what you think. Please leave a review on the Simon and Schuster site, where you can also purchase the book.

I'm really excited that this book is up and out into the world. Thank you for all your support!

Sincerely,

Samantha Thornhill

Studio Museum of Harlem Reading

2007-12-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

So I am featuring at a Cave Canem reading tomorrow evening at the Studio Museum of Harlem alongside poets Patricia Spears Jones, Roger Bonair-Agard and Simone White. These readings hosted at the Studio are a collaboration between CC and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Poets selected by CC are asked to respond to one of the Studio's current exhibits.

Initially we were supposed to respond to Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series. When we started getting stuff in the mail to get us started I was excited because Lawrence's work is spectacular and it appeals to me aesthetically. I knew I was going to be able to vibe off it. The subject of migration also intersects my immigrant past and present.

But life wouldn't be life if it didn't throw us curve balls right? I found out two weeks ago that the Jacob Lawrence Migration Series will not be on exhibit at the Studio Musuem after all. We were asked to instead respond to a contemporary artist named Kori Newkirk.

My response was: Huh? Who? Here I was, on the third rung of Jacob's ladder!

I must say that I found that all of my co-readers acted so positively about the last minute change. I found myself a bit of a grouch about it, but that was mostly my own insecurities emerging. I strongly believe its healthy for artists of all types to put themselves in challenging situations such as this. It's always a good exercise when some element of pressure is involved in producing works. There's also this intimacy about looking at another artist's work in such a way where we are forced to examine how it does or can intersect with our own life, our own artistry.

It makes me think about artistic movements back in the day such as Surrealism, Cubism--Movements that engulfed many and certain poets. I loved the idea of sculptors kicking it with poets kicking it with painters kicking it with dancers kicking it with novelists.

After the exhibit change my nervousness began to ripen like a mango in 100 degree weather. Am I going to generate worthwhile material from this project? What if i don't like this Newkirk fellow's work? What if I go to the Museum and come back with nothing?

Let's not even talk about the fact that the reading was next week! We can't ignore the social pressure of this assignment. I mean, we all want produce something we're proud of and represent, you know! I mean, I've seen advertisements for this reading every blasted where! It's visited me in my mailbox more than once. E-mail. Our faces are also floating around the Studio Museum on these fancy advertisements.

On top of that, I've been writing strictly for kids for the past 2 1/2 years, and most of it fiction, so talk about switching gears. When it comes to poetry I always fear that I'm going to lose my touch, so to speak. But poetry is like riding a bike though one poem may be training wheels and the next could be a Harley.

Newkirk is a contemporary artist who is exploring black culture/blackness through his visual art in some provocative ways. There's the basketball hoop with elongated nets made of synethetic hair, braided, like in a weave. There were his self-portraits, photos of himself with his face blurred out, like in the COPS episodes. He even had a 10 minute movie, which I didn't get at all. Overall, I enjoyed his work and felt things stirring inside my pot.

Last week Thursday Roger and I went to Harlem to check out the exhibit together. Our weather forecast: I was nervous and he was confident. We strolled around the exhibit at our own individual pace. After I explored everything I sat down on the floor in front of a piece prepared to dream a bit, write down whatever lines floated into my head. Roger sat down with me and after a couple of minutes he said "so, i'm ready when you are."

Huh??

Man, I was just getting started! I asked him if he felt he got all he needed and he nodded and said yep. Cocky jerk, i thought to myself. Again, my insecurities speaking. He showed me his little black book where he had taken some measley notes and even a sketch. My book was blank. He asked me a bit incredulously, "so you were planning on writing here?" I was like "um....yeah!" It was like we were on different artistic planets! I found myself intrigued by the contrast, how we all have such different ways of working. I was ready to starting writing some tour de force and Roger was ready to grub.

Minutes later, we were down the street enjoying Trinidadian cuisine.

I recently left my full time position at the Children's Aid Society so that I can write full time. I start back at Juilliard in January. There's nothing more scary and empowering that making a decision to change your life. I certainly recommend it to anyone. I made a decision to shift my worries. Now, my worries will be more financial in nature, but at least I'll have ample time to do what i truly truly love. That was the choice I made.

I feel like I had this room in my mind that was all cluttered with furniture and bodies and suddenly they all just moved out. I'd forgotten what this room looked like before all of this: clean wood floors, large windows. I walk around in this room all day. I'm redecorating. I've put a elliptical machine in there. I'm putting some things up on the walls, threw some cushions on the floor. This is the room I sit in to write.

I've worked on several poems since our visit to the museum last week. Actually, I started working on this really large idea, a book-length idea, pretty exciting--three poems so far. However, I decided to abandon that idea for now and start working on something totally different to satisfy the reading. I'll get back to it later. I'm working on three to four poems for tomorrow. It feels so good to be writing poems again.

Roger and I checked in with each other this morning. Do you know this fool has one line? And he's as cool as a cucumber. I had to laugh. If it were me I would be freaking out! I asked him when he's going to buckle down and he said tonight! Not now, not this afternoon, but tonight. He knows himself, and he knows his poetic imagination will rise to the challenge. I find that most of my own insecurities have melted away. Most.

What I've been looking forward to most about this reading is experiencing everyone's work. This is the fascinating thing about art. Four poets are walking into the same museum, and viewing the same work, though we're all seeing the different things. It will hit different things in all of us, spark our infinitely diverse curiosities.

Oh, I can't wait to hear what everyone comes up with! I'm certainly looking forward to seeing Roger pull this off, because I know he will--he always does. And yes, I'm enjoying looking forward to seeing what more will come out of me as the hours wind down. I just hope that by Thursday evening at 7 it has 10 fingers, 10 toes, a juicy drum of a heart.

Were You Hit as a Child?

2007-11-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a memoir by Stacey Patton called That Mean Old Yesterday. It's an intelligently written autobiography that intertwines certain aspects of chattel slavery with Patton's own journey as a child growing up in a foster home where she endured much mental and physical abuse.

In the book Patton talks alot about the physical and mental abuse she endured as a child, and how the vicious cycles of slavery play out within the four walls of our Black homes. During slavery, white folks used physical punishment to assert their own authoriy over enslaved Blacks. Whites used physical domination as a tool to keep the enslaved Africans fearful, submissive and downtrodden at all times. Whites whipped and maimed the enslaved to mask their own fears, rebellion being the primary one. Not only did we outnumber them, but we were stronger than them physically. This is why they also had to enslave us psychologically. But that's a whole other thesis.

In turn, the enslaved used the same forms of discipline on their children. They whipped their young the way they were whipped. They did it to assert control, to instill fear, to provide discipline. There was probably nothing more fearful for an enslaved parent than an enslaved child with a wild horse spirit, a spirit that could get her unforgivably whipped, maimed or sold away. So to protect their children from themselves, many enslaved used physical punishment to subjugate their own children's spirits so their masters wouldn't have to. Blacks often whipped their children in front of everybody, including their white masters.

This is not to say parents didn't put a whooping on their children before chattel slavery, or in other parts of the world but in the context of this country, physical punishment is much much more prevalent in the black community than in the white community. I'm open to being wrong on this, but this is what I've observed growing up among whites...middle classed whites anyway.

When I startred interacting with white families after I moved to this country, I soonly found that a good ass whooping to an unruly child is more of an immediate answer for us than it is for them. For us its a first resort, for them it may be a last resort, if at all. Man, I saw my white friends get away with murder. The way whites parented their children was so confusing. I heard my white friends tell their parents to "shut up" and "get out" and "leave me alone." Unheard of vocabulary in my house from my mouth to my parents' ears. I couldn't believe the disrespect. I heard my friends scream at their parents and slam doors. I saw these children psychologically run their households. It was a whole new world for me, a world where parents feared their children's wrath. I felt like I was watching one of those daredevil stunts on tv, the ones that are preceded by the announcement: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

Then there are the white children that throw tantrums at the supermarket. Sometimes the parent would give in and give the child what they want (usually candy) to quell the tantrum. Other times, the parent would allow the child to cry and just try their best to shush them down, clearly embarassed by the spectacle their child was causing.

Now, I'm not saying that my mother gave me cut ass in public. She really didn't have to. She put in enough of that work at home so that in public i would act accordingly. Now, I threw my share of tantrums growing up but I knew exactly where and where not to release myself. Whenever mom gave me that look I would know to settle myself immediately, or else. She had that look down to a science. As much as I loved my mother, I feared her. I feared her eyes, her right hand, her blessed belt.

Patton's memoir makes me think on my own upbringing, growing up in Trinidad and in the States in a Trinidadian household that struggled to hold on to its Trinidadianness for as much and for as long as possible.

Patton was not physically disciplined. She was abused. She endured a physical and mental pain as a child I couldn't have imagined. I don't consider myself abused growing up by any stretch of the imagination, but my hands have known many rulers, my ass, many belts.

At school in Trinidad, we were hit with rulers for misbehaving in class. It was generally accepted and embraced by parents. I remember once acting the fool out in the street with my parents not around and a stranger came out of nowhere and whooped me back into my right mind. When I returned home, my mother already knew about my public foible and I was whooped more.

Sometimes it got out of hand. I remember in first grade when two boys were giggling in class in the back of the room and my teacher called both boys up to the front of the room, positioned them on both sides of her, held their heads gently in her hands then knocked their heads together. One boy passed out and came to a few minutes later. The other one was two shocked to cry.

I remember when I saw a boy's ass for the first time. An older boy came to school with his mother to complain to the principal (my grandfather) about a teacher beating him too harshly. I happened to be outside because I had to go to the bathroom. Otherwise the halls were empty. I saw the boy and his mother talking to my grandfather outside, across the way. The boy let down his pants to show my grandfather how bruised his behind was. From that far away I couldn't see bruises, but I did see his beautiful beige buttocks.

I have stories of running from an ass whooping to hid underneath my bed, only to be dragged out by one foot. I have a memory of my mother losing her earring while beating me, then rushing off to an appointment. I kept that earring out of spite and watched her look all over for it when she got home. I think I may have even feigned helping her. I remember the red imprint her hand left on my upper thigh, and watching it disappear after an hour. My siblings have similar stories, theirs even worse than mine because I am the youngest of four, which means I had already missed my mother's prime.

These stories my siblings and I share and laugh about. I *never* felt my mother didn't love me. I wasn't my mother's victim. I didn't survive her, she survived me. From my cesarian birth to now.

Up until just a few years ago, it never occured to me that physical punishment wasn't the best disciplinary action for rearing a child. I know now for sure that there are other ways. Both of my sisters never lay hands on their children, and they've turning out just fine. There are certainly other ways. I have no idea what kind of parent I will be in that regard. Will I be the belt type? The pick your switch type? The whiplash-quick smack to the back of the head type? The ear twisting type? The sit down and talk type? The time out type? I am certain this is one of those things I won't know until it happens.

Eventually, the school system in Trinidad was disallowed from inflicting physical punishment on its denizens. Many people, still nostalgic for the old days swear physical discipline is the best and only way. Now in Trinidad you hear stories of students beating up teachers, unheard of back in the day and many from the old world attribute it to disempowering teachers' authority by relinquishing them of using physical means. Parents in this country fear getting a visit from child protective services for their disciplinary decisions, a fear that is indicative of our changing times--children are speaking out and people are speaking out for them. Child abuse is nothing new; its just that we're talking about it now.

I come from the days of the dunce cap. Hand outstreched and held taut beneath the ruler, its metal edge down. I come from the village that raised the child. That Mean Old Yesterday is making me address some issues. Just because I am a poster child for all the child hitters in the world, just because I am the girl that can say it worked for me, does that make it right? Is physical punishment a part of one of the many sick cycles we inherited from this peculiar institution called slavery?

Patton states that each time a parent hits a child, that parents takes away another piece of that child's self-esteem. For Patton this was entirely true. For me, it wasn't. Fortunately for me, I had a mother that made it clear why she was doing what she was doing. I was never hit for no reason, never hit just to prove a point, never hit out of pure anger. It was always with discipline in mind, and when I was getting hit, I knew what I had done to "deserve" it. I may have left a beating with my mother's handprints that disappeared within the hour, but never with bruises. Many people, like Patton, can't say the same thing. There are lines within this violence that parents cross but it is such a delicate line. My mother walked that line like an acrobat, but never crossed it.

I am really feeling this book because I am forever interested in the ways in which slavery plays out in our homes, our lives, in our interactions with each other and yes, in our interactions with white folk--especially these days with all these nooses flying around to remind us to stay in our place...but that's a whole other thesis.

As a people, a nation, and as a world, I find it of upmost importance to never stop this investigation of our many unclosed and unaddressed wounds.

Jo'burg, South Africa: Day 4

2007-10-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

Midnight

At first, it could have looked like the midwest, the streets of Jo'burg, and it did. BMW's buildings, flawless roads. But that's only because for the first two days, we stayed on the highways. But, after the show at the Market Theatre, we drive through the veins of Jo'burg to drop home an elder, Zwesh, who teaches with each breath. I want the drive to last forever, how I love inhaling his wisdom.

It is five of us in the car: Teba driving, Linda in the passenger seat, Zwesh, me and Ishle. It's night life. We drive through a poor area, where the clubs are. The streets are packed with young people walking with the current, walking towards a good time. Linda is having an intense conversation about her country Zimbabwe, her mother. I feel more drowsy than I've ever been but I am stimulated. We round the corner to a main street in the hood, and it's flooded with cops, pulling every car over. Every one draws in a breath.

I watch Teba's jaws tense. Over the past couple of days we've had conversations about South Africa's cops. In fact, its an aspect of South Africa that many people resent the most. Not all, but many cops are thugs. Like in Jamaica and in Haiti and, they pull folk over and take whatever money they have. Recently cops stopped Teba and rifled through his wallet, asked him for his last 20 rand. Teba said no and they looked through his car for more stuff to take. They ended up taking his CD that he recorded.

We are stopped by a woman cop. She has no malice in her eyes; she is doing her job. She asks Teba for his license and looks at his tags. Everything is up to date and she allows us to go along about our way. Not two minutes later, we are stopped again by a male cop. This cop is angry, speaks to Teba more harshly. Teba's jaws tense up again and he tells the cop that we've been stopped already, his voice sandpapery with a slow building rage. Zwesh, who is Teba's mentor, calms him from the backseat. He sees what I see in this cop. He is angry.

He tells Teba to pop the trunk and get out the car. The energy in the car is tense. Teba does as asked and the man searches the trunk. A car full of artists, all he finds are musical instruments including Ishle's guitar, Linda's mbiri. I finally exhale when Teba climbs back into the car and continues us to our destination.

11:15am

It's Sunday and I have a gig at St. John's College Poetry Festival. I know nothing about the institution, except that I'll be working with high school kids and a "motley smattering of adults" was the organizer's quote. I have two workshops and a performance to deliver. A broken traffic light on the floor makes me sad. It reminds me of a broken body. I ask Teba if he's seen this before. He says there are dismantled traffic lights all over South Africa, that its not an unsual scene. I have never seen such a sight, not even after the slew of Florida hurricanes that I have lived and slept through.

There's young boy in the street with a sign that says: "My dog was arrested for eating neighbor's chicken." He needs money to bail his dog out. It's so bizarre, I don't know what to think. I'm wondering if its a gimmick like the richest homeless man in Tallahassee, the one off High Street with a sign that says: "Why lie? I can use a drink." I wonder: is this boy trying to be funny or tragic?

The streets around St. John's college are canopied by trees and the streets are wide and clean. It turns out the campus is so big, we end up way on the other side. I'm supposed to be there by 11:30 to teach my workshop. I'm technically on time, but on the wrong side of campus. I see rugby fields, flower gardens with bird baths. What is this place? I wonder. What kind of high school is this? It seems to be for the priviledged.

Teba is on the phone with the organizers, trying to figure out where to go. I get out the car and walk over to the flowers. I grab a handful of South African dirt and sprinkle it into a plastic bag, for my roommate Kristine. She asked me to bring her back dirt. It is dark and moist. My hands feel cleaner for having touched it.

11:50am

I walk into a workshop 20 minutes late, 20 people anticipating my arrival. No time for intros, I dive right in. I haven't taught since last semester, at Juilliard and I realize how much I've missed teaching. Like performing (and teaching is a performance of sorts) I don't need to do it all the time, but I enjoy it when I do do it. Joy the organizer was right, it is mostly high school kids with a motely smattering of adults. They are quiet, and seem a bit nervous. I wonder why. I ask them to raise their hand if they've ever written poetry. One girl raises her hand. No wonder. I realize that with this group, I must start at the very beginning, with my Thich Nat Hahn exercise. I make them write so much, their hands hurt. Lunch time.

I get the scoop from Joy, the organizer. St. John's College is an Anglican boarding school for boys. It was originally a monastery, peppered with monks. On our way to lunch, Joy tells me that all of the girls present at today's festival were bused in from other schools for the purposes of the poetry festival. The campus is breathtaking. What a gift. I am never surprised but always astounded by how the other half lives. On the other side of St. John's College is the ghetto. Teba says that a few ghetto youth were bused in for the poetry festival also.

1:45pm

The auditorium is packed with mostly students, but also faculty and parents. I have a great time presenting my work and speaking to the kids on an inspirational tip. I do a vast array of my work: immigration poems, Why Won't Glenda Pray, Locksmith. I answered the students' questions at the end. Their questions were very stimulating: "How have you been received in South Africa?", "What is the business aspect of poetry like?", "Were you born a poet, or cultivated as one?" A really young boy asked: why did you choose poetry? I replied, "It chose me darling. I have nothing to do with any of this." He nodded. I think he understood.

Do you know these students bought more product from me that afternoon than my prior two shows combined? They bum rushed my table as poets bum rush the page.

By my second workshop, which I taught right after I performed, I am mentally exhausted. This second group is much more rambunctious than my first. They are buzzing with energy. I mistake a gerund for a present participle, which an English teacher kindly pointed out. Oh, our thousand parts of speech! After the workshops the group gathers together to say cheese!

4:00pm

I made one goal and one promise before I left Brooklyn. The goal: to fill my small suitcase with CD's and empty it with sales. The promise: that I would leave every rand I earn in Africa, and return the suitcase full of Africa. Teba takes me to the African Arts and Crafts market, a warehouse of stalls filled with goodies and good people ready to bargain. Earrings made of ostrich eggs, rings and bracelets made of bone, and cow horn. Necklaces made from rare green amber. Sandals made from horned mammals. Dashiki dresses from Africa to Taiwan. Sculptures carved from iron wood, the hardest wood in the world. I patron a handful of stalls, bargain with the best of them and make new friends who I will always come back to and patron when I return to South Africa. I am no terminator, but I will be back.

Jo'burg, SA: Day 3, continued...

2007-10-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

3:00pm - The Market Theatre

The topic for the panel discussion is poetry's role in society at the present and in the future, a nice, wide topic. Each of the us distinguished panelists is to give a 5 minute presentation about our take on this topic. After that, we would open the discussion up to the audience. Ishle has something printed out to read. Vonani we ka Bila has a speaking agenda prepared. Sticks Mdidimba, an elder has books out, ready to recite from. I find myself unprepared, not sure of what to say. The plan was to feed off the other panelists organically. Now I'm a bit nervous, feeling like I recieved the wrong idea of the program.

To be honest, I'm not really that fond of panels. People can be really pretentious on them. I tend to feel like the *real* conversations happen after the panel, or after the poetry reading after the panel, around a round table over some stiff drinks. That's where I feel real life takes place, discussions peppered with organically grown jokes. There's also something about the panelists sitting in a straight line that seems unnatural to me. In other words, though they are important to have, I find panel discussions contrived, though I like how informal Teba (who was moderating) makes it. He introduces us briefly and from the heart and we journey into our discussion. And a good one it is.

Vonani talks about the need for poetry to have some level of social awareness-- patriotism was the word he used. Patriotism is a word that is generally like nails on a blackboard to my ears because I fear that blindness that often comes along with patriotism. But, i think what he means is simply caring about the country you live in and having a poetic that is bent towards that caring. I dig what he is saying. Concern for a place and the people in it greatly enriches poetry.

Ishle talks about reclaiming the Korean culture that she was ashamed of as a child. She's gone from a shunner to a preserver of her culture. She has learned a handful of Korean songs and she sings them in her sets. She read a beautiful essay about this. Very moving.

I discuss poetry's responsibility to be available/acessible to the world and by accessible I mean physically and mentally. At the end of the day, poetry can't change the world if its not in the world. And it can't enrich people if they cannot understand it. My major point is: we have a responsibility to get poems out there in the world, to monitor the pulse of poetry in our society and do everything to keep that pulse going strong. I also urge poets to be diligent about the craft of poetry, to chase excellence, and to write what's inside you and not other people's impositions on your aesthetic.

I realize as the discussion continues, more and more people are filing in. I love that so many people have come out to the panel discussion. I am delighted by the amount of young people present as well, there on their own accord, asking poignant questions that stimulate me head and toe (but nowhere in between, promise).

I am enjoying the intellectual and spiritual energy of the people in the audience, in the room. We really have a nice vibe going and I'm thinking: wow, aside from the panel I was on with Walter Dean Myers years back, in Chicago, this is about the dopest panel I've been on. Of course, there's always that someone in the room who tries to stir things up. A man in the audience proclaims that there are no leaders in the poetry community and poets should be teaching math and economics with poetry, using poetry to uplift the community and until poets start doing pragmatic things with their work, he will bow to no poet. It seems he's a bit mad at us. The room grows tense with a silent and sensible resentment, but nothing erupts. A couple of the panelists address his anger gently and indirectly and we move on.

7:00pm
Speak the Mind Poetry Session, evening 2.

The usual backstage camraderie: sharing makeup and food, taking pictures, doing strange warm up exercises, cracking jokes and laughing a bit too loud, leaking into the audience to enjoy each other's work. I love finding people that I can be silly with. Julius, the host of the evening and a well known radio personality is my kind of silly. We make silly noises all evening. He has a 10 month old daughter named Azania, "Black People's Land." She has a mohawk, just like his!

I also vibe really well with a brotha named Thandeka Vabaza, affectionately known as Nkqo, or "knock knock." He's a hot, a well-known local poet, and the first poet to open up and bless the evening, poems in his traditional language, Xhosa. So, I couldn't understand what he was saying, but I loved watching his flourishings. I told him this later. And his rare energy coupled with mine (and not to mention his freckles, those pesky puddles of melanin!) is an exciting combination. Langa hushes us backstage a few times because we're laughing so much. Nkqo doesn't know it, but I consider him my muffin. Linda Gabriel, a poet from Zimbabwe, has the most mesmerizing speaking voice i've ever heard, after James Earl Jones. Her voice is a room filled with incense smoke, a sweet smelling heaviness. We connected really well the first night and decide to collaborate on stage this evening. She plays the mbira, a thumb piano. Backstage I practice my poem "Friendship, Magic, and Revolution" with her playing alongside. Music to both our ears.

There's Lesego, a South African theatre and soap opera actress. We were together on Noeleen's show yesterday but didn't get to vibe until now. Turns out she's quite the celebrity, but I don't know that. I just know her as Lesego, a poet. She's a beautiful woman. I leak into the audience to watch her perform her pieces and she is a goddess. She performs like an absolute pro....well, becuase she is. Actor and poet is a potent combination. She has her performance down to a science: it's nuanced, well-timed, and polished. I learn so much from 10 minutes of just watching her, mesmerized.

And there's wonderful Langa, who brought me here to South Africa, the organizer of Speak the Mind Poetry, his private energy, his quiet warmth, his sensible anger, his steady, uncanny leadership. I didn't really get to spend time with him until day 4 because he was so busy with the festival. It was great to build with him after things wound down. He and Teba are best friends. They've known each other since Capetown, since they were young boys.

9:00pm

It is about time for me to go on. Because the program is running behind, Langa tells us that we each have 10 minutes on stage. Used to doing anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour, a 10 minute feature is always a crisp surprise but it's also maddening when its a particular evening when you have so much to say and it seems so many poems in your repertoire say them just right. I have about 40 poems in my immediate repertoire, 75% of those memorized. 10 minutes means a lot of decision-making.

I love crafting a set. I never do it until I get to the venue and sort out own vibrations. I sit in the dressing room, poems, just pushing through the pores of my skin, and I pick the ones that speak to me most at the moment.

I'm feeling nervous, much more so than last night.To release the nervous energy I dance to myself, drop down into awkward stretches, cock my backside in the air and wag it. Really strange stuff, but it works like a cough drop on a raw throat: temporarily.

I'm nervous because I'm wrestling with the idea of doing "Crying Over Spilled Milk." I actually hadn't planned on doing that poem on this trip: i hadn't factored it into my rehersals. Standing backstage with my hands around my ankles and my ass in the air, my name about to be called, I'm find myself now examining why I hadn't intended on doing Spilled Milk--basically i'm performing therapy on myself before i hit the stage.

Have I outgrown the poem? Has it outgrown me? Maybe I'm afraid of putting myself out there like that in a forgein place. What is South Africa's position on abortion? Will I be shunned and rejected? Am I afraid of bringing the dark and not the light?

Two things inform my decision:

1. The night before, after my feature I was whisked upstairs to interview with this hip hop talk show, Black Rage. A very nice brotha interviewed me, raw and personable with dimples, forgot his name. In the midst of the interview he compared me to the other poets of the evening by saying that my work seemed much more lighthearted. He meant this in a complimentary way. However, his observation left me stunned, and I began to crawl into my head to brood on it. I wasn't offended by him or the observation, but it's often shocking when you find out something new about how you are percieved. And I've found that African folk can be very open about their perceptions of you. I dig that.

I think of all the times I wrote lines of poems and entire poems that ended up being really funny to audiences, the shock i've felt on stage several times. I found Africans laughed at some lines that have never gotten laughs before in America. This must mean that somethng is and/or isn't translating but I don't worry about it; it's just a bit perplexing at times. Come to think of it, that night, my pieces, even if the subject matters weren't light, were funny to people. I think every piece I performed had some element of laugher in it, even if humor wasn't originally intended. I answer him this: that my work isn't all lighthearted and last night's set perhaps didn't well represent the various tones in my work. I was determined the change that the next night.

I learned something about myself: that i don't want audiences to come away thinking that my work lacks intensity and that all my poems are funny. That's a very important, but one-dimensional aspect of my personality, but it is not all of who I am. I walked away from the interview determined to bring the dark next time, along with the light. To have light and dark exist in the same place, side by side, as they do in all of us. I think of Lucille Clifton's quote (Lucille means light, and light she is!): "my poetry strives to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."

I only had 10 minutes to accomplish this. Bet.

2. Also, ever since Azania played Spilled Milk on Metro FM the day before, I'd gotten emails and messages on my website, expessing how moving it was. It re-instilled in me the power of that poem, and reminded me of what a universal experience abortion is. There will always be people who are ready to have sex and not ready to have babies. There will always be women who aren't ready to give birth to the 7 pound result of a rape. Though I don't write poems in "Spilled Milk's" sytle any more, and the style in which its written is no longer relevant to me as a writer, I was reminded of Spilled Milk's relevance to the world.

So I decide to do it. By the time Julius announces my name and I walk onto stage, I know it will be the second poem of my set. And it is. And all I could do is shake my head, smiling inside, when an audience member laughs at its emotional climax. Another part not meant to be funny, but is to certain people. I decide to take refuge in the fact that other people's laughter in my case may be a difficult thing to escape. And I guess that's not the worst thing one cannot escape.

Johannesburg, South Africa, Day 3

2007-10-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

6:00am

When Teba calls my hotel room to say he is downstairs in the lobby, this time, I am ready. I have a TV appearance on a talk show, Morning Live, South Africa's equivalent of Good Morning America. Back to the SABC building I have grown to know so well. Back in the make up chair I go.

I tell the make up artist that I've worn more makeup in the past two days than I have in the past two years. This is not an exaggeration. I have these permanent dark circles around my eyes; i've had them since I was a child. I have grown to understand them as mine and here to stay. She blotted them out, penciled and smeared makeup heavy around the eyes, poked my eyeballs with her brush. Then she says (as if reading my mind) said, "you're a poet, so we must accentuate your eyes."

I am to perform a poem on the show, follow it up with an interview with one of the anchors, and close out the show with another poem. I try to trick my mind into forgetting that the show is live, that i have plenty takes if my tongue stumbles over the cracked sidewalk of a poem. After makeup I find a glass wall that I use as a mirror to perform in front of. I run the poems over and over again. This is something I never do: perform in front of mirrors. Ever. This time, it is all I have. At performances people focus on your words. TV cameras are all about the face.

It is time. First I am asked to perform my first piece. I have chosen "To a West Indian Woman with a Blade." I perform for the camera (and the camera crew) as if I am performing for a crowd of people. When the camera people clap, and I realize it is over.

I am then to be interviewed by Sherwin Bryce-Pease one of the anchors of Morning Live. He is sunny, like Florida and very sweet. I stare into his freckles; they somehow comfort me. I think of my parents back in Florida, and wished they could share this moment with me. Their youngest child is so far away from home, experiencing all of this on her own. It makes me feel strong and lonely at once.

Before the camera rolls, Sherwin mentions that he visited my website and read my blog. He gives me some constructive criticism on an aspect of my website, and I appreciate how effortless it comes out. I adore his openness. I like to know people's true experience when they visit anything that represents me: from a poem to a website. Constructive criticism is rare. This is a quality that I've adored about South Africans in general. It is a quality that reminds me of Trinidadian people as well. If you ask a South African how she is doing, she will not say she is fine when she is not. It doesn't mean she's going to then tell you all her business, but she won't lie either. If something you're doing isn't up to par, they will let you know. And all I can say to that is: Give it to me, Daddy!

The interview begins. Sherwin asks me about my perceptions of South Africa and I realize that though I've been here for 65 hours now, I haven't been able to see much of Johannesburg. Since I've been here, it's been back and forth between the hotel, tv station, radio station and the market theatre, where I performed. I haven't yet walked the streets, or talked to kids, or haggled at the market, or drive through the inner city. My experience so far has been very limited and I recognize this now as I speak.

The interview ends before it begins. I am left with so much more I want to say. But I am grateful, because I have one poem left, and it's only fitting that I let my poems say all the things I can't. At the end of the show, I perform "Signs." I felt much more comfortable this time around. I am able to harness the same energy I usually have on stage, in front of a crowd of people. I remember that I am not performing for just a camera and a crew. South Africa is watching. I know I nail the poem when the crew claps raucously at the poem's ending. Their energy is astounding and makes me smile.

When I return to the waiting room where the show just aired, Teba is beaming and holding my stuff. The room is buzzing. He says softly "That was divine. The show was focused on you." I didn't see it that way at all, but I'm on the inside of it all, looking out. He's outside, looking in. I've seen none of the footage I've produced. I have absolutely no idea how I come off on television.

Because I'm not a morning person, and a Saturday morning person at that, I assume that most people are in bed, snoring through Morning Live. I am wrong. For the rest of my time in Johannesburg, people of all ages would stop me in all the places i walk, telling me that they saw me on Morning Live, and how my poem touched them.

I am always grateful when someone tells me my work touches them. As confident as a performer as I've become I still make no assumptions about how people will receive my work. It is my general understanding that no poem hits every time in every situation and every poem can fall flat in any given situation. A poem's success is nothing I take lightly or for granted.

The next time someone asks me if I've been on Def Poetry Jam, I will say no, but I have been on Morning Live!

2:00pm

Teba, Ishle and I are at the Market Theatre. Ishle and I are buying necklaces from vendors. There are vendors everywhere, selling everything you can and cannot think of. Bowls carved from iron wood. Beaded chickens. Spears and spoons. They are there precisely to target people like me: the American consumer. The mentality of liking something and having to have it, having to take it home with you. That beast awakened within me and Ishle both. But another beast was alive in well...the beast at the pit of my stomach growling for food. I had to feed that beast first.

Teba is hungry also we decide to sit down in a nearby resteraunt and eat while Ishle continues shopping in the market square. Teba's been driving me around all over the place, and i know it has been difficult to carry on a deep conversation while trying to preserve our lives. When we actually get a chance to sit down and break bread, watch each other's eyes and talk real life, Teba and I connect and I know now that I have found a brother for life. He is the person I spent the most time with in Africa; in fact he was my introduction to South Africa. He was the one waiting right outside customs with a sign that said my name. If you know him, or if you ever meet him, you will know that I have been blessed to have such an introduction, such an escort. One can't ask for a better introduction to the African continent.

Our intense conversation at lunch makes me realize now what I must do while I'm here--to soak the people up. It is always less about the place and more about people, because the people make the place. I am here to connect with people, my people. My energy falls open like a trap door. I have fallen in love.

Johannesburg, South Africa, Day 2

2007-10-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

7:30am --Pretoria Hotel, The Wanderers

The hotel phone jolts me out of a stiff dream. I am stunned and bleary eyed. I had a devil of a time falling asleep. The night before, I had spent hours watching and analyzing British News and South African music videos, comparing them to the news and music videos back home. Perhaps not the best way to try falling asleep.

Teba is on the phone. He says he is downstairs in the hotel lobby. I am scheduled for an interview at SABC; we’re supposed to be there at 8am. I overslept. The alarm clock on my cell phone hadn’t gone off; I'd set it wrong. No worries. I'm downstairs in seven minutes.

8:00am

This is the building where all Johannesburg television and radio takes place. SABC-South African Broadcasting Company. I was to do a live interview on a show called 180 degrees—an arts and culture talk show. Jo’burg is cool this morning, similar to autumn in New York. An unusual cold front hovered over Johannesburg for the entire time I was there. Last night's rain washed every car clean.

Everybody on television wears makeup, yes, even boys. Cosi, the makeup artist goes light. She can tell I am not used to makeup, or even fond of it. She brushes back one of my twists and says, “You’ve started your hair. How pretty.” Her locks river down to her back. She receives a phone call on her cell phone—it’s a friend, wanting to chat. I’m thinking, at 8:15 in the morning? My friends know better. She rushes her friend off the phone and as if she overheard my conversation with myself and says: “I suppose because I am a morning person, I have morning friends.”

8:40am

Desiree, one of the hosts of 180 degrees shakes my hand when I approach the set. She says she will be interviewing me. She is pretty and clipped. All business. I am a bit nervous and tell her this. She doesn’t understand. “But you’re a poet,” she says, right before the film begins to roll. Her eyes scan the teleprompter as she reads in a speaking voice. Meantime, I'm wondering why poets aren't allowed to be nervous about things.

The interview is like lightning and fog. Quick and nebulous. Maybe I’m still back at my hotel with fluttering eyelids, carving out a dream. Maybe Desiree and I aren’t vibing so well. She asks me to spit a verse and I am caught off guard. I don’t think poets are allowed to be caught off guard either, but I was. I say a few lines that don’t represent me well, but they’re all I can think of. Desiree is unmoved. So am I. She made a strange comment about the poem, and before I know it the interview is over. We shake hands. Goodbye.

I wouldn’t say it was an unpleasant experience, just a rough draft. I am determined that I’ll be ready for them next time.

10:00am

I am told that I have a radio interview next with Metro FM. I am relieved. It means no makeup. I washed the gunk off from earlier that morning. The studio is sophisticated and comfortable. I sit down across from Azania, the host. She has been playing tracks on my CD for the past few days. She says my poems are on the mark and many words too spicy for the radio. She is incredibly warm, like my mother’s bread, straight out the oven.

Later, Teba tells me what the name Azania means. After Apartheid, there was a push to rename South Africa “Azania,” which means, “Black People’s Land.” The name change didn’t happen, but there are many females in South Africa named Azania.

Radio personalities and television personalities are like night and day; television is the day, and radio is the night. Maybe it’s the nature of having a camera in your face that makes that extra layer necessary. And on TV you just don’t get as much time, so everything is more rushed, condensed—it’s hard for them to dig. I don’t want to dichotomize the two, but they really are different. While Azania plays my poems and songs for the people, we are talking behind the scenes. Our conversations are intimate and stimulating. And our interview on air seems to be an extension of these conversations. Azania’s questions are real; I can rub them between my fingers. I open like a trap door.

Azania plays Crying Over Spilled Milk (the radio version). It’s a real experience to hear it after these years; after I put out CD’s I don’t listen to them—so I haven’t heard that track in about 4 years now. I remember recording that track with Doc D in Tallahassee in two afternoons. I remember reciting the poem for him and him just sitting there for two minutes without talking, deep concentration. Then he stood up suddenly and got to work, and I watched him carve the music for the track out of silence. Amazing.

Azania sees that my mind is in another place. I think she thinks it's THAT place. It's not. she asks me if I’m okay and I nod yes, because I am more than okay. Spilled Milk is my favorite track and after all these years I'm still happy with it, overall. After the poem ends, the phones begin to ring. People want to know where they can cop the CD, people want to know the name behind the voice.

4:00pm

We’re on our way to 3Talk with Noeleen, a popular talk show host in South Africa who is often compared to Oprah. In my hotel room there is a magazine with her on the cover.

Ishle Yi Park and I have not seen each other in about 2 years. We met once at a LouderArts event and we spoke for a bit and connected quite well. Soon after, she moved to New Zealand and now she’s back in Queens, where she grew up. Ishle and I are catching up, here in South Africa of all places. How you been girl? Ishle’s been a gypsy, traveling everywhere with her guitar slung over her back and a handful of Korean songs. Finula is also in the car with us, Finula, a poet from Capetown who is also part of the Arts Alive Festival. We are all to be on Noeleen’s show, along with other poets. When is Oprah going to have a bunch of poets on her show? Oprah's sleeping on us.

4:30pm

Back in the makeup chair. This woman lays it on thick. My skin groans underneath the weight of the brown powder she smears on. All of the poets of the Arts Alive Festival are to interview with Noeleen in pairs and spit a piece. We meet more artists there: Samm Farai aka Comrade Fatso from Zimbabwe and Lesego Motsepe, a poet and popular theatre and soap opera actress. Lovely woman.

Noeleen has a large presence. She has a big body, big voice, big smile, a big laugh. She’s sitting in her chair on set and interviews everyone in pairs. She’s good. She has that extra layer on her that TV personalities have, for sure. But, she's got good energy and has been briefed on everyone, clearly. Her questions are informed by everyone’s bios. When it is my turn to interview with Noeleen, they take a chair away and it is me and her alone.

Noeleen and I are vibing well. Her questions are engaging. I’m much more myself with her than I was with Desiree earlier that morning. I’m awake and enthusiastic. When Noeleen asks me to spit a verse I’m ready for her this time. I spit a few lines from an old favorite, Coffee Eyes. After the commercial break, I am then joined by Ishle and Lesego, who also spit verses. We end the interview with Noeleen asking me about my forthcoming young adult novel, Seventeen Seasons. I am delighted that I had the space to be able to talk about it. Plug!

7:00pm

We are rushed from Noeleen’s studio straight to our performance at the Market Theatre in Newtown. The show has already started. We are hungry (I personally hadn’t eaten since 10 that morning) and a bit cranky. I found myself fighting back bitchiness, what happens when I don’t eat. I wasn’t the only one. There was Zena Howard from the UK, who was also cranky. Finula was introverted. Ishle, annoyed. But we all got along because she shared in a common hunger.

I am not sure how I am going to be on stage feeling this way. My head feels like a beach ball, colorful but full of air. My stomach is growling like a dog tied to a pole.

Langa promises he will have food sent to the dressing room for us. By the time I have to go on stage, the food hasn’t arrived as yet. I fill my belly with water to trick it.

8:00pm

It’s interesting what happens when the announcer calls your name. Everything falls away and falls into place. My hunger propels my forward. I transform my hunger into a beautiful weapon. It is just what I need. I transform all nervousness into enthusiasm. It is just what I need.

I feel entirely comfortable on stage. I feel at home with this audience. It is a mature, warm and listening crowd. I am having a fantastic time on stage. Before I know it, the fifteen minute timer in my head goes off and I know it's time to do my last poem. I know how long each of my poems last so it helps me time my sets, leaving room for a little banter. I close out my set with Locksmith. When I return to the dressing room, it smells scrumptious with Ishle’s perfume and finger foods.

After the show, we drive to the Bassline to mash up some real food and enjoy each other's company. At the end of the night, we are wrung dry, exhausted. I have a full day ahead tomorrow--I have to be back at SABC at 6:30 in the morning to sit in the make up chair once gain for my interview with South Africa's Morning Live...our equivalent to Good Morning America. We return to our hotels, and sleep.

First Hours in Johannesburg

2007-09-27T11:18:00.001-07:00

Johannesburg, South Africa

I've never been on a plane so long in my life. I've been in South Africa for a grand total of 3 hours now and I'm just now beginning to get some feeling back in my lower half.

Though long, I think about the comforts we were afforded--beverages whenever we wanted, meals with small desserts that I didn't eat, blankets, pillows. They did everything to make the journey most comfortable.

I can't help but put this journey in another perspective: a slave ship. I peered out the window at the sea and clouds below and thought how? How did we survive that, those conditions, that length of time? I really couldn't stop thinking of all we've been through so that I can be on that plane, turning down chocolate mousse.

My heart is flopping around in my chest like a fish out of water, just being here. I was greeted outside customs with a sign that said my name, a brotha named Teba. We already have really good camraderie. I can tell he's an educator. With each mile we drive, he's teaching me something about Jo'burg and other parts of Africa. What a resource!

It's dark, but nothing right now looks unfamiliar, except that the driver's side is on the right, just like Trinidad. Leave it up to America to get things backwards! . There are BMW's and Toyotas. Everything is in English. Johannesburg is very developed from what I see: the buildings, the vehicles, the roads--it looks no different from driving in the Midwest in the dark. Here's the beautiful thing: all the people walking the streets are my people. This is a Black nation and how it feels to be in a Black nation.

I'm at the hotel. This place isn't f-ing around. There's an apple in each room, they say. I will be sure to ask what the significance of that is. The rooms are decorative and charming. Just for good measure, I took a bubble bath, something I haven't done in years.

My face is all over Johannesburg, they say, on flyers. Teba showed me one and I was so touched. It's me all right, laughing at a now-African sky.

Tomorrow I have to be up early for a radio interview. Then a TV show later on tomorrow afternoon. And then I perform. They're keeping us busy. I"m grateful for this evening to relax and rest. I am loving it, though I can't wait for the sun to shine on Johannesburg. Can't wait to sink my teeth into this place.

A Memory

2007-09-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Walking with Amina

Baraka in the blueback

cold. She tugs

a cigarette from the open

mouth of her purse

and lights it.

She mentions she didn't

sip a cigarette until

she was quite thirty,

never stopped.

I am amazed.

I am 26, have never

sucked that slim death

and pride myself

out of the woods.

Why did you start?

She points

to Amiri, shuffling

a few yards ahead

of us, fumbling

for his own pack,

and answers.

That mother

fucker right there.

Just In Time

2007-09-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

For the past few days I've been struggling with a hurricane of a cold, the worst storm to hit the shores of my blood in years. The storm is over now, and my mind and body are making sense of the wreckage.

I started feeling the cold coming down around the time I was anxiously waiting to hear back about whether my friend Kenneth would live or die. Even after I recieved the good news on Thursday afternoon, I kept feeling sicker and sicker, even while I rejoiced over e-mail, a few phone calls.

I saw many of my friends Thursday night at Martin Espada's 50th birthday celebration at the Bowery Poetry Club, just hours I found out my friend would live. I loved being there with my friends, who I haven't seen in some time, how withdrawn I've been. I did not rejoice outwardly
about my friend's life being spared. I celebrated inside. I found myself smiling clandestinely for no reason but that. I found myself touching the people I love, more than usual. I looked for stars in the New York night sky harder than usual. I couldn't see any.

I really believe this cold has been my body telling me to slow down. It hit me so hard I had no choice but to listen. I didn't go to work Friday and didn't leave the apartment, though I recieved a visit from my dear friend 13, who I really needed to reconnect with, dear heart. We spoke for hours, even though it really did a number on my throat. I didn't leave the apartment on Saturday either. Cancelled my plans with Aracelis. Saturday really sucked. At points I felt I couldn't breathe in deep without a dry cough that wracked my entire body.

It's something to be sick and alone. I am far away from most my family and my roommate went
galivanting with her friends to Connecticut, her guitar slung across her back. I think no matter how old you are when you are ill, there's a small need to have somone there to take care of you. And on the other hand, you don't want anyone around to see you miserable like that. I felt both of these things at once. I think this is the feeling that drives men to want to finally get married.

On the phone yesterday, Aracelis suggested that I chew garlic. The thought of that made me cringe. I threw some crushed garlic in a pot of rum and honey and watched it boil, poured it into a mug. Just the smell of the thing made me cringe but damn did it clear my sinuses. I tried to sip the concotion and boy was it unpleasant. My tastebuds were screaming at me: what the hell are you doing to us??? I chewed as much garlic as I could stand and within half hour I felt a vast improvement, after 2 solid days of feeling this way. It's the kind of improvement that tells you that it couldn't be anything but that garlic. Thanks for the tip, Ara.

I've felt more peaceful yesterday and today than I've felt in some months, I now realize. From being sick, I've had no choice but to be quiet, contemplative. Talking hurt. Laughing hurt even more, and that's usually a large part of how I relate to people. In my quietude, I realized wow, I'm going through a lot of changes. That's what these quiet times tell me most, that I'm changing, right under my own nose. That can only be a good thing.

This weekend couldn't be totally leisurely. I have the first draft of a book due on September 4, a guillotine swift deadline, considering I accepted the offer not three weeks ago. I recently got a book deal with Scholastic, writing a picture book about a famous singer. It's a great opportunity for me as an artist because I've never written in this genre before and it will give me wonderful exposure in this arena when the book drops. I want to write more of these books. Also, I wasn't familiar with this singer, though many, many people are. I'm just late, clearly. I've also been given total creative freedom by the editor, who hand picked me to do this project. An editor that lets you blow your afro out and run free? What more can a writer ask for?

As of Friday I only had a few lines down and the scope of the book was nebulous but I was too sick to be creative. Yesterday (Saturday) I sucked it up and started and made some progress. Today, the book has taken a strong shape in my mind and I surge forward. There is no stopping me now.

I'm not pressuring myself too much to have it all finished by Tuesday, however. I'm very good at putting pressure on myself. I take refuge in the fact that I may not have this project finished right on time, but trust I'll have it finished just in time.

Long Live Kenneth Foster!

2007-08-31T19:32:00.001-07:00

What a week it's been for me! Most of my emotional energy was mainly wrapped up in my friend Kenneth Foster, who has been on death row for almost a decade. Kenneth and I have been corresponding through letters for a couple of years now. He contacted me and asked me to send him some of my poetry. I did, and we've been writing each other since.

He was a much more diligent pen pal than I was, I must admit. I've been more on the sporadic side. I love Kenneth's letters. They are colorful and sprawling. They're filled with postivity, intellect and humor. They open my eyes to his world and my world. In many ways, he seemed to know what was going on in my world more than I even did.

Two weeks ago I got word that Kenneth's execution date was August 30. I started contacting everyone I knew to spread the word. I contacted lawyers, journalists, and every rabble rouser I knew. His case is innately sensational, it just needed national attention. People needed to get mad. And they did. Protests outside the Governer's mansion. A flood of faxes, letters, phone calls and e-mails to the Governor.

Kenneth has been serving hard time on Death Row (22 hr. lock down) for 8 years for a crime he didn't commit--and this fact is recognized both by his defense and his prosecutors. His friend Mauriceo Brown shot a man unexpectadly and 19 year old Kenneth drove the getaway car. This was after a string of robberies they performed that same night. These crimes certainly added to Kenneth's culpability but he didn't kill anyone nor was there any inkling that he planned a murder.

So if he didn't kill anyone, why was he facing this lethal needle? Texas has this peculiar law called the Law of Parties, which disintegrates any distinction between killer and accomplice who "should have anticipated" a murder would occur. Because of this law, Kenneth was tried alongside and with the same severity as his friend who physically murdered the white young law student. His friend was executed in 2006.

Kenneth is 30 now. Ever since he entered prison he's done nothing but research his case and write people and organizations. He formed alliances with anti-death penalty activists, and has dedicated much of his time to establishing as many connections to the outside world as possible. Because he's a poet, he made friends with poets whose work he admired, like me. Behind glass, he formed a movement. He organized non-violent protests in Death Row with other inmates, as they were being mistreated.

Thursday, the day Kenneth was to die by lethal injection, the Board of Pardons voted in favor of Kenneth and appealed to Gov. Perry, along with 13 Texas State Representatives, President Jimmy Carter and the South African president and thousands of people around the world. Five hours before Kenneth was to die, Gov. Perry granted clemency, reducing Kenneth's punishment to life in prison.

If Kenneth hadn't been so diligent, if he were like many of the other men on death row, uneducated and downtrodden, he would have vanished without a trace with the help of a slim, long needle. I don't think any one person saved Kenneth's life but Kenneth.

I sleep more soundly now, for the first time in two weeks. I go to sleep and wake up now knowing that my friend is alive.