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L-R -- La Familia Acentos: Sam "Fish" Vargas, Maria Nieves, Oscar Bermeo, Ed Garcia, Raymond Daniel Medina, and Rich Villar. Photo courtesy of Peter Dressel


Today's column is about the unstoppable, about what community, strong words and strong voices can do. We'll be talking to one of the louderARTS/Acentos collective, Rich Villar, but first let's take a look at the group and what they're committed to do.

The louderARTS Project is a not-for-profit arts corporation committed to developing constructive and challenging spaces for artists to create, critique, present, and teach poetry.

The louderARTS Project seeks to:

• create a literary and artistic environment for both its artists and audience by expanding perspective, voice and critical vocabulary.

• sponsor literary arts programming in underserved communities.

• encourage experimentation and growth by its artists by creating opportunities to craft and present collaborative, cross-genre work incorporating mixed media, music, dance, and theatrical elements.

• foster a deeper understanding, within its artists and audience, of the oral and literary traditions which underlie today's poetry.

• work in partnership with other organizations to maximize the strengths and expertise of each.

The louderARTS Project is dedicated to uniting the various worlds of poetry (writing and performing, traditionalist structure and slam form, study and action, personal and political, solitary and collaborative, genre-specific and genre-bending), in a way that is both altruistic and personally and artistically evolutionary.



ACENTOS BRONX POETRY SHOWCASE

"Acentos is one of the best audiences, one of the best venues, I've ever seen. The organizers do a great job, not only in terms of spreading the word, but also in terms of creating anticipation. I feel like I'm part of a community, part of a movement. Aquí estamos y no nos vamos." Martín Espada

The debate may rage forever as to who or what constitutes Latino poetry. Here, there is no such identity crisis. We are already here, writing the histories of our neighborhoods, following the traditions of our ancestors, as well as the poetic traditions that came before us. To paraphrase Baldwin, the poet's task as historian is to keep the story new, even when the telling is costly. This is the aesthetic we foster at Acentos. It is always about the word, the work, and it all begins here.

Poetry, we believe, provides the most honest witness to our world, and it is among the oldest art forms on earth. Each poet is a breathing history, and we invite each poet to ring out in his or her own distinctive voice. Acentos celebrates a diversity of voices, communidad both on the open mic and within the universe of Latino and Latina poets on our feature stage.

Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase is committed to maintaining a safe open space for the expression and enjoyment of poetry, no matter what the language, without translation or apology. Each reading is a celebration of our work as colleagues, friends, and family.

Proudly based in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, New York, at the Bruckner Bar and Grill (Corner of Third Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard), Acentos showcases nationally recognized Latino and Latina poets alongside emerging voices every second and fourth Tuesday of the month in a setting designed to foster an increased sense of community.

Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase
2nd and 4th Tuesdays @ 7:00 pm
The Bruckner Bar & Grill
1 Bruckner Boulevard (Corner of Third Avenue)
Bronx, NY
6 Train to 138th Street
FREE ($5 Suggested Donation)

For more information, write to:
acentos at louderarts dot com

For a full listing of scheduled features for Spring and Summer 2007, visit us on MySpace: myspace.com/acentosbronxpoetryshowcase

Describe your odyssey in becoming a writer. How does Puerto Rican identity and a New York sensibility influence your work? What would you say are your major influences, both personally and in a literary sense?

I attended fundamentalist Christian schools during my entire childhood in Northern New Jersey. Given that backdrop, my teachers encouraged me to read a lot of Bob Jones and Charles Dickens and write more poems about Jesus. But in college, a no-goodnik left-wing Literature professor taught me how to close-read poems and introduced me to the Beat poets and James Baldwin. I spent another few years writing occasional Allen Ginsburg ripoffs, and attending some poetry slams.

Two things happened in 2003: I came across the louderARTS Project, and I heard the work of Martín Espada. Martín was the writer who finally gave me permission to write about the things I cared about, in the language(s) I grew up with. The louderARTS Project and the Acentos reading series gave me the forum, the circle of friends, and the tough love I needed to stretch in my work. Coincidentally, Jesus started showing up in my work too, but he sounded far more conflicted than he did in my high school days.

I name the world through the lenses I see it with: my identities (Puerto Rican, Cuban, American, Latino), my family, my histories, my politics, my home. Any honest work I do must reflect these things one way or another, even when the poem is not explicitly about them. I am not a New York writer per se, but my experiences growing up and learning to write were not that different from the Nuyoricans in the Bronx, El Barrio, or on the Lower East Side. Reading Pedro Pietri really put that into focus for me. In the suburbs of Paterson, NJ, we didn't always sweat the rent or the heat, but we lived our own "Puerto Rican Obituary" under the thumb of the mortgage company and the credit card bills. My family is populated by viejitas like Pietri's "Tata." These are the real terms, people, places, and things which I find I MUST write for and about, in my own languages, in order to stay true in my writing and career.

I would say that my most important mentor thus far has been Martín Espada. He is far and away the most clear and steadfast example on why we must continue writing, how the successful writer must always be guided by principle, by comunidad. His friendship and leadership have proven invaluable to me and to his many brilliant students. The literary world is littered with too many established writers who make it a habit to "piss on the shoes of their disciples," (to quote the poet), and Martín is a much-needed oasis from that nonsense.

My creative influences are varied: Willie Perdomo taught me to be fearless in my use of language. Miles Davis and James Baldwin taught me that I must always keep it new. La Lupe and Celia Cruz keep my art unapologetic. Espada, Neruda and Mistral remind me that my writing can be historic. Chuck Close and Compay Segundo taught me persistence. The poets of Acentos and louderARTS are my backbone. My parents have supported me 1000% (even when they didn't know why). And I must say, there is no greater reminder of work ethic than when you are the daily recipient of love, spirit, and support from another poet: in my case, my amazing partner, Ms. Tara Betts.

How would you describe the significance of spoken word and slam poetry, compared to more 'traditional' forms?

I came from it. I think it's a great starting place for young poets. (Emphasis on STARTING.) I hate what it's become. But let me first speak to the tradition question.

Another poet, John Rodriguez, brought this point up the other night at an Acentos reading. Those of us Latino/a poets who come from spoken word and slam come from the tradition of hearing poems, more than we do from reading text. This is not to say we are not well read, or that we can't craft a decent poem on a piece of paper. For us, the poem is a communal experience, a shout, a humanizing music that needs to be heard out loud. In New York, this is nothing new. The "slam and spoken word tradition," so to speak, is significant in that it's really a Puertorriqueño tradition, an African-American tradition, the Nuyoricans, the Black Arts movement, and the tradition of much of Latin America. Spoken word and slam thus hearken back to poetry's root orality, a root unbroken since the Sumerians, yet one which we've forgotten somewhere along the line.

Many slam poets have gone on to careers in academia, bohemia, and back. Many do cutting-edge work with music, or work in the genres of sound poetry. And a few have even made viable careers out of being spoken word artists. It's fair to say that spoken word and slam serve well as breeding grounds for talent that wouldn't have come to poetry any other way but through the ear.

Having said that, I really hate what spoken word has become. The term is used with increasing abandon to sell out poetry to the highest bidder. It has become a world of back-slapping sycophants jockeying for what little money is out there on the college circuit. Of particular concern to me is the phenomenon of the spoken word pimp: the unscrupulous agent or manager who will gather a troupe of spoken word mavens and sell them as a package to colleges, often pocketing a big chunk of the fees. The talent, more often than not, is none the wiser. Maddeningly, some of them are kids, fresh from the world of teen slams.

Far too many of these young and emerging writers swallow the spoken word line wholesale, choosing not to push their visual art or publish their written art, relying on the antiquated standbys of poetry "for page" and poetry "for stage." Far too many choose not to read other poets, claiming to defend some ridiculous notion of purity in their art. And far too many entities on the college circuit or in the media lazily accept these definitions, paying thousands of dollars to perpetuate bad theater passed off as "performance poetry" or "spoken word." And don't get me started on how some critics tend to view it all as an offshoot of hip-hop, deriding otherwise promising young poets of color as mere "spoken word artists," rendering their work mute. Spoken word, once promising, is now a running joke, a cartoon show that the characters don't even know they're on.

Here is the end result. By selling themselves short as "spoken word artists," many otherwise emerging poets sacrifice any chance they have to improve in their work and move into something that pushes the forms. And for what? At the Grammys this year, there was a tie for Best Spoken Word Album between Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and Jimmy Carter. Obviously, none of these people are "spoken word artists ." Not even the recording industry is buying this nonsense. At the end of his or her shelf life as performers, the average spoken word poet is left with no real writing skill or experience, no real performance skill or experience, and no resume except for slam wins and tour stops. I submit that this American Capitalistic model of touring minstrelsy is no way to promote poetry to our youth, and to whatever extent that we as educators have the power to stop it, we absolutely should.

You're involved with louderARTS Project and Acentos in New York. Tell us about these, their goals, their audiences. What would you say are these projects' contribution to the local and national poetry scene?

The louderARTS Project started life as a weekly reading, open mic, and slam series called "a little bit louder," founded by three poets from the 1998 Nuyorican Poets' Cafe slam team: Lynne Procope, Roger Bonair-Agard, and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez. Their mission was to read, workshop, and perform their work with an emphasis on excellence; to improve the work and present it well. These core missions were expanded upon through public workshops, themed readings, and other public performances. They have managed to create a multicultural, multi-genre community of artists, writers, and educators from around the country, and many of them have come to view the reading series at Bar 13 in Union Square as the place to experience poetry as a transformative experience. The series will celebrate its tenth anniversary in April of 2008.

Building from the louderARTS model and from anecdotes of the old 6th Street Nuyorican Cafe, poets Oscar Bermeo and Sam "Fish" Vargas co-founded the Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase in March of 2003 (I came on board in June of that year). There were precious few Latino poets active in the downtown poet scenes, so the intent with Acentos was to bring Latinos and Latinas into a new venue, in the South Bronx, where one could share work without the need to translate every nuance present in Spanish, English, and Spanglish. Four years later, we've built the series into a staple of the Bronx arts scene, a space where poets and audience regardless of nationality can come in, feel at home, and share new work in an open and honest environment. We've featured Latino/a poets of every stripe, from all parts of the country, and four of our core members (myself, Oscar, Fish, and Jessica Torres) participated in readings and workshops all around the region spreading the gospel of Latino poetry.

Fish and I continue to run the series along with a dedicated cadre of emerging poets who have claimed the venue as their home. We are working this fifth year to expand Acentos' mission into a Foundation for Latino/a poetry nationwide, modeled on Cave Canem. We hope to have a yearly Latino writers' retreat up and running by summer of '08, as well as writing programs for Latino/a youth in the Bronx. Point blank, poetry by Latinos has gone largely ignored by the literary establishment. We want to do our part to change that, and the best way we know how is to create the spaces necessary for writers to stretch, develop, and distribute their work.

What's it been like working collectively to maintain these projects?

I would not be able to run Acentos by myself, especially with these new growth ideas, were it not for the support of the following poets: Oscar Bermeo, Fish Vargas, Maria Nieves, Jessica Torres, Eliel Lucero, Ray Medina, Aracelis Girmay, John Murillo, John Rodriguez, Urayoan Noel, and Raina Leon.

Likewise, the louderARTS Project would be nowhere without its resident louderARTISTS: Lynne Procope, Roger Bonair-Agard, Marty McConnell, Rachel McKibbens, Ray Medina, Mara Jebsen, Emily Kagan, Elana Bell, Fish Vargas, Abena Koomson, and Matt Siegel.

Not to mention the people that come in and out of our spaces on a daily basis, the audiences who actually watch this stuff instead of going home to watch Dancing with the Stars.

My work with Acentos and louderARTS is unlike any job I've ever had, and unlike any free time I've ever spent. This is work with purpose, with mission, and these artists have been my surrogate family. They have driven me to continue producing new work, to live the life of a poet and not that of an automaton. We listen to our guests, we read new work, we exchange ideas. While as colleagues we have our rough patches sometimes, I highly recommend the collaborative approach, especially when there are so many things that need to be done organizationally. You choose your mission, and you execute it with the right people. Punto. Plus, being in a circle of working artists is absolutely vital to guard against the "Organizer's Syndrome," in which you end up doing everything but write. I can't be uncreative when I'm surrounded by creative people.

How would you describe your connection to young writers as it relates to your creative life?

I am only 29 years old, and I haven't published a book yet, so I hope I'm still perceived as a young writer myself. Having said that, writing is ultimately an attempt to live forever. You write with the hope that what you say has meaning, that it will be archived, and that the writers who come after you learn from your mistakes, imitate your triumphs, and build upon both. So I'm connected to young writers in the abstract, as I should be. More directly, some of my best moments as a poet have come watching my students in workshop take some seed of direction and run with a new idea, along with the understanding that each one of them has a unique story that only he or she can tell. The most satisfying connection with a young writer is that mutual "oh, shit!" moment that comes with a brilliant line—one that the young writer came up with on his or her own. It's a small victory, but still very gratifying.

In regards to your own poetry, what would you describe as your major themes?

I write a lot about my family, because they've seen it all. Through their eyes I can deconstruct the politics of place, gender, and religion; the lies behind machismo; the tragedies of alcoholism. A lot of my work meanders between the city and the suburbs, as I have tended to do in real life. Music always makes its way into my work, and lately I've been experimenting with form to volley it back into the air. Technique-wise, I am interested in matters of language, translation, and wordplay, because there are some emotional landscapes I can only navigate in the chopped-up half-languages of Spanglish.

What are your core strengths as a writer.... where would you like to see yourself grow?

I am good at litany. I can make most people laugh in person and in my writing. I have learned (am still learning) how to render poetry from my everyday speech. My sardonic wit is pretty sharp. I need more formal training, more art-historical perspective, more of that book-learnin'. I've done a great of deal of work outside the classroom, but starting in September, I will be studying with Rigoberto Gonzalez and others at Rutgers-Newark's new MFA program.

Where do you see yourself in ten years, personally and creatively?

Writing, publishing, collaborating. Maybe writing more fiction. Hopefully with an active role in a vibrant community of Latino and Latina poets. Teaching somewhere, hopefully with my beautiful partner at my side. I'd like to own a house, but New York is crazy expensive, so we may have to invest in our own log cabin somewhere in Appalachia. Of course, if that happens, Betts and I will have to call Frank X. Walker and crew and hold Affrilachian poetry workshops on the front porch.

What's something not in the official bio?

If they ever made a movie out of the cartoon show Thundercats, I would literally drop everything in sight to be at a midnight screening at the Whitestone Cinemas in the Bronx. I am a thorough nerdlet for 80's cartoon nostalgia. I'm already geeked for Transformers.


POEMS BY RICH VILLAR



My Mother Responds to the Question, "So What Were You Thinking the Day After I Was Born?"

They gave me a yellow baby, with yellow eyes,
a needle because the hospital has rules, right.
No need to poison any other babies with my blood.
Bullshit, I thought, who the hell wants to do this again?
Three is plenty. I wanted a Ricky,
just because I wanted the name to jump,
jump down the crib and run around the house,
laughing, imagining, naked.
That's not poetry, either. I mean really naked.
You wouldn't wear your diaper. Ever.
Oh.
You mean the first day? Sorry. They let me stay quite a while,
not like now, they barely let you heal
these days. I realized you were not blind
when I held your father's Marlboros over your head.
You followed the small box, transfixed by red.
I tried other colors too, but red was always your favorite,
you didn't get that from me, or your father,
everything for me is green, was green: the kitchen,
the car, my clothes, your clothes. You always hated clothes.
I wonder why.
Yes, the first day. Hell, what do I know,
it was the first day, I was exhausted, your father was at work,
there were no cell phones in those days,
the neighbor took me to the hospital,
it was 8:30, on the dot,
when you were born. I wanted a Ricky,
I already had a Dooley and a Chrissy
and your father wanted one more chance, so he brought me
roses on Valentine's Day (he never gives me flowers)
and nine months later, here he comes, tromping into the room
with his best friend, smiling.
He used to put you in his shirt pocket, he said.
But yes. The first day was all injections and charts and nods
and your brother wasn't an alcoholic yet and your sister still
listened to me and your father and I were almost married
and every time I held the red box above your head,
you would peel back your gums and wail beautifully,
and I spent the first of three days healing.



Six Attempts to Get My Father To Speak About the Day After My Birth

I.

mira. mira.
aqui tengo tu poema.

oiga:

Este mundo es un relajo.
En forma de un gallinero.
Los que subieron primero.
Cagaran en los de abajo.
Pero si viene un guanajo.
No ligerito de peso.
Pue'ser que se quiebre el gajo.
Y los de arriba y los de abajo.
Se vayan to' pa'l carajo.

ah, ¿no te gu'ta?
pue', oye e'to.

Yo se que tú eres poeta.
y que del aire lo compone'.
Pon'te un farol en culo.
Y alúmbrate los cojones.


II.

en verdad. no recuerdo.
pipo, necesito un favor.
bú'came las carreras seis a doce de santa anita.
notalo en un papelito y trai'lo pa'rriba.


III.

¿que? pue' na'. me fui a trabajar.


IV.

i go to werk at five. i come back at two.
i no remembeh who call me, i think i'was ju seester.
my fren' come wi' me.
he giveh cigar to e' ri' body. y bueno, i donno. i go home and wait for ju mother.


V.

day afte'? i go home, i go to werk.
i ha' to makeh money. ju know.
i remembeh joo mother tell me ju okay, so i no worry too much.
i no believe i have anothe' baby. i no believe how moch ju look like joo brothe' gusti.
i no believe ju so leetle guy, and now ju so big guy.
i put ju in my pocket.


VI.

ju writeh poem how? ¿en mi voz?
pue'. oiga esto que te voy a decir ahora.
los poetas mueren joven, okay? bú'cate algo esteady, que nunca sabes que va pasar.
ay que buscar poetas cubanos, que son de los mejores.
¿sabes que martí fue poeta?
ay, mi'jo. ay un millón de poemas que tengo aqui, memoriza'o.
así se aprenda los poemas, ¿sabes?
ay mi'jo. un millón.



Burial Instructions

If they left it up to me, maybe I'd freeze him,
pickle him in a six-foot jar, label it with instructions,
a warning for my kids: This is

what happens when you live your life timidly.
You die of sleep apnea, untreated, your wife
mourns you from the road and your kids—

well. If you have any, they will spend hours
staring at television, their brains hooked into
some manner of electronics designed for

maximum interaction with two dimensions.
Air was a foreign language. His den, dark,
impenetrable. No one understood his poetry,

least of all me. I guess he fancied me his
confidant, the one woman who would stand
steadfast outside his room, wait for his kindness

to trickle from his cracked door. Lord knows
I tried. Lord knows these people accuse me,
even now, of not waiting up with him, the wife

they needed for him. Even now, there are eyes
trained on my hands as I close the gaping jaw,
as if I'd never done this before, like I signed away

all rights to his body with the divorce papers.
They are discussing the options: the proper
Christian thing to do, the monument, prices.

Proper is what we negotiate between ourselves
and our mothers. Don't ask me to bury him,
I've been explaining long enough.


More Acentos photos:


Poets and Friends of the louderARTS Project and Acentos gather in the Bronx for a reading by Martín Espada, October 2005




Lisa Alvarado

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The lovely photo is of an equally lovely and powerful writer, Tara Betts. (Not quite the plain brown wrapper...) It's been almost ten years ago that I was paired with Tara as her mentor in a City of Chicago arts program. To this day, I'm not sure what I taught her, but it has been my privilege to read her work, watch her develop and soar as a writer, a performer, and as a critical thinker. She is a person of crystal clear intent and ethics and it is that clarity and that moral compass that infuses all of her work. Tara is that rara avis who is able to dive into the canon, retrieve what she needs and resurface to the real world where the rest of us dwell. She knows her sestinas, her villanelles, her haikus, but she is not seduced by the prettiness of form over content. Her work is rigorously constructed, but framed with direct, clear language, unambiguous. Tara Betts knows where her loyalties lie --- the African American experience, femaleness, urban life, the place where class and race intersect, and as readers we are all the better for it. Take a close look at the pieces following this interview, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Describe your odyssey in becoming a writer. How does African American and female identity influence your work? What would you say are your major influences, both personally and in a literary sense?

My major influences initially were ntozake shange, Maya Angelou, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. When I was around 12 or 13, I kept a diary a little before this point, but began writing poetry shortly after I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I had always been a reader, but I didn’t always see books in the library that looked like they talked about people of African descent at all. When I was in high school, I worked at the Kankakee Public Library and learned the stacks better. Sometimes, I would sneak off and read. It was then that I aspired to be a journalist so Rolling Stone, Essence and U.S. News & World Report were also part of my obsession as well.

When I started attending Loyola University on the North Side of Chicago, I kept writing, indulged more and more in Vibe and The Source, and eventually did an internship in New York at BET Weekend magazine in conjunction with the New York Daily News office. It was an amazing summer too. It solidified that I had to keep writing, even though I was a student activist and editor for The Loyola Phoenix. It was in college that I read more about Hurston, the Negritude poets, Toni Morrison, Fanon and Cheikh Anta Diop.

Although I felt like these were eye-opening experiences, I felt like I was always challenged by the more conservative influences on a highly Republican, very Catholic Jesuit university that somehow managed to talk about social justice issues.

By the time I was in my second year at Loyola, I had started organizing poetry readings on campus. This was before poetry became trendy again, so I shared some of my favorite poets and collaborated with other student organizations to make the readings happen. I remember inviting Malik Yusef to campus and bringing Ramona Africa from MOVE Organization with help from Tyehimba Jess. Tyehimba and Malik were the first two poets I met on the Chicago scene. Shortly before I graduated from Loyola in 1997, Malik Yusef gave me my first poetry feature at The Cotton Club on Michigan Avenue. I started reading at Lit X, this jazz club called Rituals, Afrika West bookstore, Guild Complex and eventually Mad Bar, which is where I started slamming. I slammed once or twice at Green Mill, but it didn’t feel like an audience of my peers, even though I enjoyed the work from poets like Sheila Donahue, Cin Salach, Regie Gibson, Dan Ferri, Maria McCray, Marc Smith and most vividly Patricia Smith.

At this time, I was also exploring the feminist possibilities in my poetry. I performed with Sharon Powell, Marta Collazo and other women in a show about menstruation called “The Empress Wears Red Clothes.” I had sort of exited the hip hop heavy part of my life, even though I was still writing pieces here and there, going to shows, hosting a hip hop radio show called “The Hip Hop Project” with my good friend Lional Freeman (AKA Brotha El), meeting graf writers and admiring dj skills.

After leaving “The Hip Hop Project” and doing readings for about a year and a half, I started to slam at Mad Bar. I was on the first two Mental Graffiti teams in 1999 and 2000 with poets like Mars Gamba-Adisa Caulton, Marlon Esguerra, Dennis Kim, Shappy and Lucy Anderton. Although slam became a very stressful thing for me, I got to spend time with a wide range of aesthetics and personalities that I really loved and admired for different reasons. I also had the opportunity to co-host, curate and promote an all-women’s open mic and performance space called Women OutLoud with women like Mars, Lucy, Anida Esguerra and Krystal Ashe.

While I was slamming, I started getting more into a range of poets like Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Julia de Burgos, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Carl Sandburg, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stanley Kunitz and others. I also started workshopping with various poets through the Guild Complex. My first workshop leader was Sterling Plumpp. He pushed me to keep writing, read more sisters and just be persistent. He’s a master of the poetic line and very much a blues man. More people should be reading his work. I also went on to do workshops with Afaa Michael Weaver who pushed me to be honest, vulnerable and study a diverse range of writers. I really wanted to just read writers of color at one point, and he still reminds me of how there is so much to learn from everyone. Lucille Clifton and Quincy Troupe were also poets that I participated in workshops with and these experiences led to my real urgency to be a part of Cave Canem, a workshop/retreat for writers of African descent started by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. There are too many poets to name that I have met through this retreat that have fed, taught and inspired me.

The students at Young Chicago Authors were also a big influence on my writing. Through YCA, I began teaching writing classes. Since I had to teach what I was doing, I was more conscious of what I did or explaining why a certain work moved me. I also got to develop my own classes, like an author study on Neruda, Hip Hop Poetics, Poetic Forms by Communities of Color and Women Writers as Essayists. By the time I left Chicago, I had firmly rooted my voice that I think is always expanding and refining itself. I had started the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College (graduated in January 2007) and moved to New York. Now, I think I’m trying to read as much as I can in fiction, new poets, history and the classics that I need to catch up on. Wanda Coleman, Martin Espada, Marilyn Nelson are just a few of the poets who really move me these days.

You've written extensively about African American labor leader, Ida B. Wells. Describe her significance as subject matter.

It’s funny you would ask about the Ida B. Wells’ poems. I started writing about her years ago, and I’ve never quite finished the series that I set out to do. I read about her and her own books like A Crusade for Justice, Southern Horrors and The Memphis Diary edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis, and I started researching lynchings. This was around the time that Without Sanctuary, a book of photographs taken at lynchings, was released.

In 1892, one of Wells’ close friends Thomas Moss and the co-owners of the Black-owned People’s Grocery Store were basically lynched for offering better products and better prices to Black customers than the white storeowners. Wells had already initiated a public transportation boycott and filed a successful lawsuit that was eventually repealed when she had been thrown off the train for refusing to go to a smoking car. She refused so adamantly that she dug in her heels, and it took two men to remove her after she bit the conductor on the hand. In fact, she started her paper The Free Press in response to this ousting, and convinced record numbers to leave Memphis and stop taking public transit.

As a result, at a time when women were not even considered able to handle the strong material of journalism, Wells convinced people to do things with the facts that she gleaned. She also started the first suffrage organization for Black women in Illinois, helped start the NAACP, ran an organization for Black men that was similar to the then-segregated YMCA who would not house or notify Black men of employment opportunities, and initiated the anti-lynching crusade in the U.S. and the U.K. So, her radical scope really drew me to her, but also some of the things she did that were just hilarious. For example, her daughter Alfreda Duster describes how she went into a department store in Chicago and was waiting to be served. Of course, they acted like this Black woman was not even standing there, so out of exasperation, she drapes a pair of men’s boxers over one shoulder and starts to walk toward the exit. Then someone finally asked her what she was doing, and she told them “trying to buy these.” So, her ties to Chicago, her sense of humor and strength, and her need to document her place in history when so many women were forgotten, omitted and erased, has brought me back to her example again and again.

You made a strong connection to Latino poets, Latino poetry and culture. Can you talk more about that?

In my youth, I studied Spanish in high school, and I hardly knew any people from Spanish-speaking cultures, but when I went to college, I finally met more than Black and white people en masse. I really tried to support all people of color, so I learned a lot and tried to understand how our experiences overlapped and differed. I also took a class with Dr. Susannah Cavallo called Afro-Hispanic Literature where we read writers like Carolina Maria de Jesus, Jose Lima and Nascimiento’s Brazil: Mixture or Massacre.

I would have to say that Pablo Neruda brought the metaphor to life for me in a way that no other poet has. After him, I was drawn to so many others like Xavier Villarrutia, Gabriela Mistral, Cesar Vallejo, Daisy Zamora and anthologies like Martin Espada’s Poetry Like Bread and Stephen Tapscott’s Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry. I also read Chicago-based writers like Luis Rodriguez, Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros.

While I was living in Chicago, I got to read with so many Latina women who just wrote things that moved me. Some of them included Brenda Cardenas, the late Sulima Q. Moya, Susana Sandoval, Johanny Vazquez, Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, Katherinne Bardales, and of course, Lisa Alvarado.

In 2001, I had an opportunity to exchange with writers in Cuba at the now defunct Writers of the Americas Conference where my workshop leader was Jack Agueros, and we got to talk to writers like Junot Diaz, Maria Irene Fornes, Achy Obejas and Danny Hoch. While we were there, we met many local writers. One of them, Leo Navaro Guevara moved to the U.S., and his son Anton is my first and only godson.

Now, that I’m on the East Coast, it’s such an amazing experience to see the range of writers like Willie Perdomo, Magdalena Gomez, Tato Laviera, Sandra Maria Esteves, Jesus Papoleto among others. The Acentos series in the Bronx also gave me the chance to see a lot of these poets up close and to hear more of the type of work that I had only read.

What would you describe as your major themes?

History, family, politics, and love (mostly because we need to remember why we struggle in the first place).

You've had a lot of interface with spoken word, slam poetry, etc. How would you describe those genres v. 'literary' poetics and form?

Spoken word is an untapped wellspring of possibilities. Unfortunately, since people are catering to the lowest common denominator and writing pieces that will garner a shock, laughter or a tour through the spoken word circuit, there is not the same kind of interest in the work that I had before. Now, do I think that the slam offers young writers a chance to build their confidence and articulate themselves clearly in front of an audience? Yes. Do I think that it can lead people to read their work with feeling and internalize the meaning of what they’ve written? Yes. Do I think it can lead to people producing one-person shows, records, verse plays, books, creative collaborations and radical, through-provoking performance? Yes. And lastly, are there too many people competing for little-to-no-paying gigs for the big payoff of three-five minutes on television? Yes.

What most people don’t realize is that performance becomes a job. Even if you love it, you must maintain what will keep you working, and there are contradictions that compel people to ask hard questions about the growth and integrity of their work. Not enough people are asking themselves about that. I also think that if spoken word is continually pigeonholed as slam poetry and watered-down hip hop by wannabe emcees, then it will be relegated to the ghettos of forgotten poetry. There are too many good poets of color coming out of such performative experiences to be limited by this kind of categorization. Spoken Word is a category promoted by NARAS. Oral traditions across centuries and cultures have always existed, so we have to remind people that internalizing what we write and sharing it orally is not new. So, I don’t necessarily think there is a difference in the text, unless you’re a lazy writer who overcompensates through performance. Anything written can be performed, published or exhibited. It’s just about how it’s done.

What would you describe as your core strengths as a writer....where would you like to see yourself grow?

My core strengths. Now this is a difficult question. I think it’s been my willingness to always do what I feel like I need to do to grow. I haven’t always made many friends that way, but inevitably I wrote what I wanted and earned most people’s respect. I want to spend more time reading, trying to grow as a critical writer and write more prose. In terms of poetry, I’m intrigued with poetic form and how can we subvert with Eurocentric canonical notions that we have about it. I would like to collaborate with more visual artists and musicians since I’ve often been a solo writer sharing my work.

How would you describe your connection to young writers as it relates to your creative life?

My connection to young writers has kept me from being hyper-cynical/critical. They look at the world with new eyes, and when they have the breakthrough moments where they articulate something so honest and challenging for the first time. I live for those moments. Young writers make me always consider what it takes to keep writing new, how does writing work as an art and a disciplined practice. Sometimes, I think it’s only me who keeps me writing, which is true to some degree, but they are the ones who keep me writing.

Where do you see yourself in ten years, personally and creatively?

Ten years from now, I’m hoping to have published at least two or three books, not necessarily all poetry, maybe one of them is an anthology. I’ve thought I might have a Ph.D. in African American/Africana/Black Studies (whichever term people think they need to apply), American Studies or Women’s Studies by then. Teaching, traveling and balancing that with a family would be nice. Hopefully, I will be practicing yoga on a regular basis. I remember one time a student at Wright College asked me in a Q & A, what I wanted to do with my life, and I proceeded to tell her about all my professional goals and writerly aspirations when she cut in and asked, “other than that?” I felt like some inner voice had been plucked from my head and embodied in this girl. So, I thought about it, and yoga, having a garden, developing a spiritual life, staying politically responsible and critical and having good friends who could give a damn whether I write or not were my response to her question. All of that is still a work in progress.

What's something not in the official bio?

I always liked the fast, gravity-defying rides at carnivals and amusement parks. I recently freestyled on the mic with an all-female Afrobeat band in New York called Femm Nameless.



Not On the Menu

If Portugal was edible, could it be swallowed
like some country fruit, goosebumped as unripe
avocado, heavy with sweet guava wet
that lingers inside the cheeks?

Would Africa taste bitter and glitter
on the tongue from its ripe diamond seeds?
Would the silt of India be the truest curry
bursting a heat against the mouth’s roof?’

Every day an international hors'douvres platter
crosses so many tourist imaginations like
a hectic maitre’de.
There are Indian families in steamy kitchens,
Taiwanese men’s bicycles crisscrossing
Manhattan’s traffic-glutted streets,
Puerto Rican girls smiling for bigger tips
when offering mofongo,
and Cubans proffer mojitos
and freshly killed chicken
for that one night at El Hueco.

America, though, would distance itself
from its bitter Billie Holiday image in stalls
of worldly produce. America would be slick
with campaigns on its nutritional benefits.
America would be so shiny the shellac needs
cracking and peeling. Imagine.
America’s fruit, so sweet it eats the teeth
with its ache.

While movies ripen into
culinary pornography
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman,
Soul Food
Tortilla Soup
Like Water for Chocolate
The cinematic menu sounds
like a veil pulled across the face,
the sweaty thump of samba,
a pinprick protruding
from a map of exotica
where spare grain
of days remains unsampled
since the trees of America
require so much tending.


There Goes the Neighborhood
for Maxine Kumin

Aerial shot omniscient view bent above
asphalt playground. Sidewalks become
concrete football fields where Brooklyn
accents weigh down boys’ tongues
that count like girls circle one another.

They bend clothesline, extension cords,
double helix style rotations beneath
spinning jumping sneakers.
Speakers turned walls claim
the street as official block
party bidness. Metal drums split
open with orang charcoal guts plead
for red meat, then sizzle relief.

Brownstone stoops fill with girls
clinging to gossip like the new neighbor
holding his golf club bag as if announcing
shift change for baggy pants & oversized
shirt-wearing boys who stand too long on
the corner. Count each baby
in mad math that’s called living.
Take a breath when change claims
one more before you blink.

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