POETRY MONTH FEATURED POET: SHARON BRIDGFORTH

Several years ago, I took a “Finding Voice” training by Sharon Bridgforth. That, in combination with mentoring by Terry Galloway in Actual Lives, is what turned me from a writer to a Writer and did, indeed, help me find my voice. Sharon had done this work for herself decades earlier. Her writing for performance is a national treasure. You should never miss a chance to see her work or learn from her. Below is one piece speaking to my life:

MY GOD

they say i do not deserve a child
say people like me should not
mother devilish influence
they say

my own mother say i'm gonn
die and burn in hell
gonn
die
and
burn in hell for what i'm doing

i say to her my own mother
since you ain't never been to my house/don't
know nothing bout my friends/ain't
had the pleasure of my lover's sunday
conversations what is it
you know bout
what i'm doing
thats so bad you would curse me/your
own child

she says it's a crime and a sin
punishable by god and man
to be homo sex ual

i say
then punish me

they say i do not deserve
a baby but i have one
and she is the most
perfect joy poopie diapers
and late night cries she
belches in my face/dribbles
on my clothes is always
on my hip/and i love her with
all my heart
i watch her as she sleeps/kiss
her when she wakes and/i knowing
a miracle when i see one would gladly
give my life for hers if God should
demand that exchange.

if two people a couple/share
this type of love for one of God's
babies does the gender of the couple
really matter?

i asked my God
and She said
naw.

© Sharon Bridgforth, from "Voices In The Dark", by Geecheee'd Out Press, 1992

Read More...

Summary only...

JUNE JORDAN: WORK THAT LIVES ON

(June Jordan at home in Berkeley, 2001; photo by Jill Posener)

Six years ago today, poet for the people June Jordan died in Berkeley, California after a battle with breast cancer. She published 28 books of poetry, essays, and fiction. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive and a prolific writer whose articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., Essence, the American Poetry Review, The Nation, and many other periodicals. She was one of the most widely published African-American authors, with her emergence in the 1960's and her homecoming among lesbian-feminists. She was founder and director of Poetry For The People, which to my direct knowledge has produced many other stunning poets and voices.

Poets all over the country still mark her passing on this day with deep loss.

"Jordan makes us think of Akhmatova, of Neruda. She is among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet." — Alice Walker

To hear a clip of her reading her poem "A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters", go to Poets.org.

"In political journalism that cuts like razors, in essays that blast the darkness of confusion with relentless light; in poetry that looks as closely into lilac buds as into death’s mouth….she has comforted, explained, described, wrestled with, taught and made us laugh out loud before we wept…I am talking about a span of forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art." — Toni Morrison

Read some of her poetry after the fold.


Below are three poems by June Jordan. The first one I read aloud at the annual memorial reading of her work held here in Austin a few years ago.






POEM ABOUT POLICE VIOLENCE

Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop

you think the accident rate would lower subsequently?
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
comes back to my mouth and I am quiet
like Olympian pools from the running
mountainous snows under the sun

sometimes thinking about the 12th House of the Cosmos
or the way your ear ensnares the tip
of my tongue or signs that I have never seen
like DANGER WOMEN WORKING

I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rapid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle
(don't you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue
and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again
(Again)

People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I'm saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won

sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
blots it out/the bestial but
not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop

you think the accident rate would lower subsequently

---------------------------------------

THE TALKING BACK OF MISS VALENTINE JONES: POEM # ONE

well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
your pleasure
see:
I wanted to travel and read
and runaround fantastic
into war and peace:
I wanted to
surf
dive
fly
climb
conquer
and be conquered
THEN
I wanted to pickup the phone
and find you asking me
if I might possibly be alone
some night
(so I could answer cool
as the jewels I would wear
on bareskin for you
digmedaddy delectation:)
"WHEN
you comin ova?"
But I had to remember to write down
margarine on the list
and shoepolish and a can of
sliced pineapple in casea company
and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa's
gaining weight and don' nobody groove on
that much
girl
and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before
the laundry hit the water which I had
to kinda keep an eye on be-
cause if the big hose jumps the sink again that
Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs
and brain me with a mop don' smell too
nice even though she hang
it headfirst out the winda
and I had to check
on William like to
burn hisself to death with fever
boy so thin be
callin all day "Momma! Sing to me?"
"Ma! Am I gone die?" and me not
wake enough to sit beside him longer than
to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/
his shirt and feed him orange
juice before I fall out of sleep and
Sweet My Jesus ain but one can
left
and we not thru the afternoon
and now
you (temporarily) shownup with a thing
you says' a poem and you
call it
"Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?"

guilty po' mouth
about duty beauties of my
headrag
boozeup doozies about
never mind
cause love is blind

well
I can't use it

and the very next bodacious Blackman
call me queen
because my life ain shit
because (in any case) he ain been here to share it
with me
(dish for dish and do for do and
dream for dream)
I'm gone scream him out my house
be-
cause what I wanted was
to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my
self so fully be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
not pity
be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
your love


From Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems, published by Thunder's Mouth Press. Copyright © 1989 June Jordan.

----------------------------------------

POEM FOR SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.


from Passion: New Poems, 1977-80; © 1980 June Jordan

(Poster by Ricardo Levins Morales at Northland Poster)

Read More...

Summary only...

CHORD SHIFTS AND BLUES NOTES

I know a lot of you out there don't live in the Austin area, but I still have to plug this event from the Center for African-American Studies at the University of Texas. I've had the chance to see Daniel Alexander Jones' work, and I can't recommend it enough. (One of his workshops helped me create my artist's statement and was a factor in the launch of my fiction writing.)

In addition, Dr. Joni Jones/Omi Osun Olomo is a bright and shining star across the country, and I had the opportunity to learning Sharon Bridgforth's Finding Voice method with Florinda Bryant, another stunning talent, so this is a convergence of genius as far as I am concerned.

Dr. Jones is the partner of Sharon Bridgforth, and I want to take this chance also to remind you all that Sharon's latest tour-de-force, the Love Conjure Blues text installation, is available for booking. If you haven't seen her, move heaven and earth to do so. Honest to g*d, you can't do better.

Read More...

Summary only...