Is Poetry Audiovisual?

I completely missed National Poetry Month (April) but in cleaning out my aggregator I came across this lovely lady Bassey Ikpi (H/T WriteBlack):



Which reminded me of this, passed along to me by Littlest Sis a few weeks ago. Embedding is disabled but her name is Zora Howard, she is performing at the Urban Word NYC Teen Poetry Slam and you can also find here here in this short film by Lisa Russell.

To me these are two interesting and different examples of how poetry can speak. Bassey's poem is powerful spoken. But I would have also liked the time and private space to read it on the page, digest it with my eyes, ruminate and return to this line, or sit back and reflect on how that word fits into the entire stanza and the page. Whereas Zora's poem could possibly be read. But then you lose the power of this little dynamo, the energy of her breath, the movement of her body and the physicality of her "bi-racial hair." Just as reading Bassey on the page you could remove her--slight, black, roundly and delightfully pregnant and singular on the stage--from sight.

If read, the audience/reader stops being confronted with Bassey's body and the immediacy of the poem, the black baby boy soon to be born, recedes. Or at least, our assumption of immediacy--because, of course, that poem could be old, that boy could already be born, he could already be grown, that could actually be a daughter, or it could even be a baby suit which would make it a complete farce and the visual becomes just another prop, a part of the performance of the poem.

If spoken, we lose the opportunity to consider Zora's historical anecdotes. She deserves footnotes.

I love both versions--page and stage.

Still, what do we (the audience) gain and lose in each version? Are there poems that work well in both forms regardless? Are there forms that work better for women (of color) than for men? And how should we (the artist) navigate the intricacies of whichever form we choose?

InaDWriMo: Success!

Success!

InaDWriMo is over and I can officially say I hit my goal of 20,000 words and then some. I didn't even bother to count because with several fellowship and grant applications in, at about 8000 words each, there was no point. I smashed InaDWriMo!!!!

::bowing to roaring aplauso::

Of course, I'm not really a success because of the special month. It is a recession, I need funding, and the applications just needed to get done. InaDWriMo did get me started though. And setting a monthly goal was a good way to get research done, get reading, and get writing at the same time. Public accountability is the spice of life.

So I'm going to try to keep it going. I'm going to call it Kismet's Push It, because "Push It" is the word I think in my head whenever I want to stop reading what I'm reading and watch Tivo'd re-runs of True Blood instead.

Push it.

Push it I will.

My Push it goal for the month of December--20,000 words again. Several new applications are due the coming months. And same deal as before: follow the progress (or lack of) at Nunez Daughter.

As an aside, I'm going for three blog posts a week here at W2S. I think I leave you guys alone too long. Gotta feed the people.

Feel free to knock on my door and remind me that I owe you goodness: kismetfour[nospam]@gmail.com.

And CONGRATULATIONS to K.Iris for finishing the first draft of her novel! She did her own NanoWriMo and didn't even try :) Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

Survival, Violence and Fear

Early in the course I presented “A Litany for Survival” to the students and slowly but surely they began writing their own poems, testifying to and hoping for their own survival in the face of violence. I realized that teaching on a campus that condoned and ignored sexual violence enacted upon and by its students made the act of standing to lead a lecture or sitting to lead a seminar discussion even more scary than my fear of public speaking provided for. And though Audre Lorde’s poetry and essays are often read in isolation (like the rest of literature in the academy) as brilliant products of a brilliant mind, it changed everything for me when I realized that while Audre Lorde was writing the poems that I needed about violence and difference and survival and fear she was a teacher. And she wasn’t teaching just anyone. Audre Lorde was the first black teacher in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York from 1970-1979. This meant she was teaching police officers in full uniform including loaded guns during the most visible period of racist police violence in the history of New York City. No wonder she was an expert in the permutations of fear. Reading Audre Lorde and teaching about trauma at Duke University during the lacrosse “scandal” taught me that teaching, being accountable to a volatile and vulnerable audience of students changes everything. Honesty in that setting requires a poetic act of faith every single time.

UBUNTU focused a large amount of energy on nurturing the stories of women and especially women of color at the colleges in our areas. After all, this entire movement was sparked by the bravery of a black college student who was brave enough to speak out against the violence she had experienced. At the same time, it was very clear to us, that while college classrooms and programming could make a difference in the lives of individual women, the college campus was not a non-violent space nor was it conducive to sustained healing.

Read ALL of it (please!) here.

InaDWriMo 2008

I, Kismet, will be participating in InaDWriMo 2008. It actually started November 1st, which makes me a couple of days late on this post but not on starting because...well...not much was accomplished the last two days. At least not in the realm of academic writing.

Participate by registering here (which basically means leaving a comment). Or cheer me on as I go. I will leave occasional updates at W2S but for quality writing/procrastination updates, hop on over to Nuñez Daughter and RSS/email subscribe.

If you aren't comfortable joining in on the fun after the party has started, leave a comment here or there. We can support each other!

My goal is 20,000 words.

::twirling:: Ok, so here we go!

ps. In case you want to nurse your literary side instead of your academic side, Tayari's got links to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and her custom creation NaFinWriNoMo. So no excuses! Get to writing--whichever way fits you best!

I Need to Write

"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice."

Octavia E. Butler. “Furor Scribendi.” In Bloodchild and Other Stories, 137-144. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2005. (emphasis mine)

Rape Fantasy Fantasy

I try to browse the scifi/fantasy sites when I get a chance. I don't always stay. With some exceptions, white hyper-masculinity is the norm in much of the mainstream speculative fiction net world. Big turn-off (although, at times, it can work; a lá Lord of the Rings).

I was still surprised when this popped up in my blog reader:

“Give me a girl,” the king said to me the night he caught me, the wizard-woman of the wood, by trickery and might.

I said no, I mustn’t.

::cringes immediately and backs away from the computer::

{{trigger warning}}} but if you want, read the rest here. And full disclosure that I'm not a survivor, but I was still triggered, if that is the right word, in the vicarious trauma sense.

I mean...

...whoa.

Scifi/fantasy/horror already suffers from heavy doses of homophobia, racism, sexism and has Eurocentric colonizing tendencies.

We're adding rape fantasies to the mix now too?

I managed to read (very lightly) the rest of the story. It didn't get much better. And although the ending was supposed to be redemptive....

I'm not impressed.

There wasn't anything empowering in it for me.

But I'm me. And you are you.

Read it (heed the trigger warning) and let Waiting 2 Speak know what you think.

Mariposa, "Diasporican"

H/T Sofrito for Your Soul

Favorite line: "Yo no nacio en Puerto Rico/Puerto Rico nacio en mi." It's got a Julia de Burgos swag to it.

I Challenge You, K. Iris!!!!!!

From SF Signal's Mind Meld series via Pat's Fantasy Hotlist (where I came across it):

As a reader, can you enjoy a story that is pushing an opposed viewpoint from one that you hold (religion/politics)? If the author is prone to holding, and writing about, views opposed to yours, can you enjoy their works or do you stop reading them?

Respond at your convenience.