Poéfrika poetry prompt 300409

Use this picture to write a poem. In your poem, use the three words (1) mask or masks, (2) folks, and (3) one of the colours (light blue, red or green). Leave us a link in the comments section so we can visit.

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Chinua Achebe speaks

Poéfrika interview with Opal Palmer Adisa

1. Did you move into writing poetry gradually, or did any one thing push you over the edge?

It was a dance from when I was a child, a kind of secret that I didn’t know how to share, until my dances got longer and louder and would not be silent anymore. The essay, "Laying in the Tall Grasses, Eating Cane: How I Became a Writer," in my collection Eros Muse (Africa World Press, 2007) goes in more details about my development as a writer, and perhaps more effectively chronicles how I found my voice... but I would have to say now on recollection, that in many ways my life was poetry, so capturing it was not only easy but inevitable.
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2. Do you work on just one poem at a time, or do you work on several at the same time?

I'm always working on several things at once, not just poetry, but prose and essay and stuff. If I don’t my head will explode. Ideas come at me like bullets on a battle field, and sometimes my head does feels as if it has been blown open, brain and matter spilling everywhere. However, there are times when one poem and one poem alone demands space, freedom to roam and romp and run free and I have to allow it so it, the poem, can exhaust itself, then and only then am I able to capture it... which is taming it.

In order to write the poem, the poet has to tame it, to render its life meaningful to others, but never fully to the poet. Whenever I know and understand the inside out of a poem, then I know I have written a mediocre poem. There always must be some surprise, some discover for me the poet of the poem, each time I revisit it, read it... At every reading I must be surprised at it, must say to myself how did I arrive her at this poem? I must continuously undress the poem. Because my poetry is a free flowing dance, I almost never spend a long time labouring over one poem, but rather a few at once.

I allow the rhythm and beat of one to lead me to the next and so on, just like in a dance, never really staying in one place very long, moving all over the floor, feeling the tempo, allowing the melody and innuendos of the poems to dictate where I glide. In this dance of creation, the poem leads and I, the poet, follow, although sometimes, I usurp the lead and make sudden turns, and because the poem wants a life more than anything else, it acquiesces and allows me to lead, but we, the poem and the poet, know, its success, depends ultimately on its tyrannical nature to lead.
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3. Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. How do you balance this with family life? Where do you get time from to write?

What is time? I have been trying to find and capture it. Making time to write is never a choice, rather a necessity. Certain things don’t get done. Friends and lovers get neglected. Being a writer and being a regular human being is often challenging, especially being a single mother like I have been for the past thirteen years, but you manage. It is easier to have your children invested in your work and you as a poet than a partner.

The level of competition for your time is less intense and dwindles as your children get older and form their own friendship; they don’t take it personal if you are late picking them up from school because your poem held you captive, or if dinner is late and is a little burn; they don’t get peeve, together you all laugh it away as just mommie’s quirk, part and parcel of her being a writer. All of that aside, it is a challenging, juggling act and you end up getting very little sleep, but you do it, because you must, it will not let your rest.
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4. What makes you laugh?

I often laugh at myself. My children will tell you I am very silly. I laugh at the most serious things, especially catastrophes, danger, impending doom, I crack up, fall out on the floor, stomach in stitches. Laughter as many know is an antidote. It is very good medicine; it feeds the soul. A man who can make me laugh takes my breath away. I swoon before him. My son is funny and he makes us all laugh. I can’t say what specifically, just life and its odd and uncanny way of humbling us, making us really look at ourselves and say, "it just isn’t that serious." My children make me laugh. I love them now as young adults. We have a great time together. Travelling always makes me laugh.
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5. Is there a particular goal you seek when you write? Awake others? Entertain them? Tell the truth?

I am after the truth, first and foremost for myself, then to share that with others. Poetry is about sharing, what you know, feel, sense, observe. I want to awake people, educate, incite, make them think. Comics entertain, and that is not my line of work. Mostly I want to move people, hear an agreeing nod, "I Hear you!" or a reflective, "I have to think about that!" or "Sure you right!"
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6. How do you know when a poem is ‘finished’, and do you stop work on it then and there?

A poem is never finished, even after you encounter it again, years later you will always see something you can change, add, omit. A poem is like a fruit, that can be enjoyed in many stages, green, ripe, overripe and made into preserve. So many factors depend on when you release it and in what stage; it really is subjective. There are some mangoes, suck as Blackie, that are more tasty green, with a sprinkle of salt, but a Julie is best enjoyed ripe, and Bombay makes great preserve.

Which poem is given green, or ripe or overripe sometimes has to do with the subject matter. Often, narrative, political poems that attempt to capture and make commentary on a time-sensitive topic are presented green, but not always, love is often the over-ripe/preserve category… Usually I know a poem is done, when I am tired of working on it, or can’t figure out what to do to improve it, which as you can discern, might not be the best indication that it is done, just that me, the poet, it done with it… as with a lover or clothes, or anything else that is an intimate part of your life that you get bored with...
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7. You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a "writing prompt" out of your own experience, or out of something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Very short and simple.

List poems are often easy: five things you like strongly and the smell and person you associate with those things.
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8. What writers, living or not, have influenced you the most?

I am not sure I know what this question means anymore. Every book and poem I have read have influenced me, some on more profound ways than I can speak to and in more subtle and unconscious ways. Two staple poets, but I don’t think my work in any way resemble theirs, are Pablo Neruda and Louise Bennett. I am a great fan of their works, but I don’t try to imitate or model my poems off theirs. I am ultimately ego driven, and have always wanted to sound just like myself and on one else. In my newest collection, I Name Me Name, poems and prose, (Peepal Tree Press, 2008), There is an announcement, "Who I Read Then, Who I read Now," that provides more details to this question.
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9. How do you write? Drink coffee, wine? Listen to music? Type, scribble? What atmosphere do you feel out of place not writing in?

This too has changed. These days I demand total silence, but writing in a specific place, my office by the window, is not so important -- well I am not sure that is true as I am in my office by my window responding to this interview. Place is very important to me, but I find I can commander a space to write wherever I travel, and with a laptop things are more flexible. I cannot write in cafes too much outside noise and distraction. I love nature and it stimulates me.

Sometimes I drink herbal tea, on rare occasions I might have music, but usually when I am working on prose. I almost never write in long hand, apart for the fact that I cannot read my handwriting, I no longer have the rhythm in my hand unless my fingers touch the key-board. However, when ideas come to me, lines mostly, I jot them down, than transcribe them as soon as I can on the computer. It has been many, many years since I have written a poem by hand -- it almost feels archaic.
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10. Here's an on-going poem. Please add to it.

They stood before me that night
With clenched fists and blown pupils,
Shadowed by leafless branches of a cotton tree,
The moon as bright as the moon and no metaphor

For which image can serve? What simile
Makes sense enough? The ghosts that guard
the tree nod yes, though I’ve not said a thing.
One shade uncurls and crooks a bony finger, calling me.

the voices rise up like be-headed trees
i stumble forward fear at my heels
how did this night arrive and where is wisdom’s heed
"gone my child is your clothes -- face now this thing."


_______________
Jamaican born Opal Palmer Adisa is a writer, poet, and storyteller. She won the 1992 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for her poetry collection, "Tamarind and Mango Women." "It Begins with Tears" is her first novel, which has received several notable reviews. Her forthcoming books are a novel, "No Regrets", and a poetry collection, "Caribbean Passion". She received her Ph.D in Ethnic Studies Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Presently, she is Associate Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies/Cultural Diversity Program at California College of the Arts and Crafts.

Britain needs a black poet laureate

A non-white laureate would be a role model and a deterrent for the protectionistas of British publishing.

by Peter Beech
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 April 2009 19.00 BST

Over at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, slightly panicky discussions have been taking place as to who should be Britain's next poet laureate. The government usually banks on going through this only once a generation; this time, Andrew Motion has decided that 10 years' toadying for a measly £5,000 a year is quite enough of a career boost. He leaves on 1 May.

[...]

Black and minority ethnic poets don't always behave in the expected way for poets; that is, they don't always sit down and write in standard English about Greek myths. Perhaps that's why they struggle to get into print. In 2004, writer-critic Bernardine Evaristo discovered that fewer than 1% of those published by mainstream poetry presses were non-white. In response, the Arts Council England commissioned the Free Verse report to assess industry prejudice. A mentoring programme was concocted. Five years on, however, little has changed besides a smattering of token anthologies. Those in the know whisper that the whole Free Verse initiative was nothing but a PR exercise for the Arts Council.
[continue there...]

Walcott's "The fist"

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.
© Derek Walcott

[source 1... and source 2...]

Top ten Caribbean Theatre Classics

Top ten Caribbean Theatre Classics

Cheryl Williams, an English Literature teacher working with adolescents and the CSEC English Literature syllabus, has asked me to assist her in compiling a Caribbean theatre “list of classics.”

Similar to the “Name Your Top Ten Caribbean Novels,” this survey will be conducted in two rounds.



Round One will run May 4, 2009--May 15, 2009. Readers will be asked to submit the names of 12 plays that they consider to be classics of Caribbean theatre.

Round Two will run May 18, 2009—May 29, 2009. Readers will be asked to vote on the results of Round One.

The “Top Ten Caribbean Theatre Classics” will be announced on June 1, 2009—the start of Caribbean-American Heritage Month.

In order to make this as representative as possible, please spread the word by linking and/or e-mailing this post to your colleagues.

1Love,

Geoffrey

Toi Derricotte's "In Knowledge of Young Boys"

i knew you before you had a mother,
when you were newtlike, swimming,
a horrible brain in water.
i knew you when your connections
belonged only to yourself,
when you had no history
to hook on to,
barnacle,
when you had no sustenance of metal
when you had no boat to travel
when you stayed in the same
place, treading the question;
i knew you when you were all
eyes and a cocktail,
blank as the sky of a mind,
a root, neither ground nor placental;
not yet
red with the cut nor astonished
by pain, one terrible eye
open in the center of your head
to night, turning, and the stars
blinked like a cat. we swam
in the last trickle of champagne
before we knew breastmilk—we
shared the night of the closet,
the parasitic
closing on our thumbprint,
we were smudged in a yellow book.

son, we were oak without
mouth, uncut, we were
brave before memory.
© Toi Derricotte

[source...]

Stephen Bess's "Liquid Lunch"

Click on the book cover for more. I discovered blues-inspired poetry with "Liquid Lunch", which I recommend. Many thanks to Stephen for putting it together. He blogs at Morphological Confetti.

Kwame Dawes's "New Day"

A poem by USC poet-in-residence Kwame Dawes commemorates Barack Obama's inauguration. The eight-part poem, titled “New Day,” soars from Africa to Chicago to South Carolina, tipping its hat along the way to Dizzy Gillespie and Abraham Lincoln.

1. Obama, January 1st, 2009

Already the halo of grey covers his close-cropped head.
Before, we could see the pale glow of his skull, the way
he kept it close, now the grey - he spends little time in bed,
mostly he places things in boxes or color coded trays,
and calculates the price of expectation - the things promised
all eyes now on him: the winning politician’s burden.
On the day he makes his speech he will miss
the barber shop, the quick smoke in the alley, the poem
found in the remainder box, a chance to just shoot
some hoops, and those empty moments to remember
that green rice paddy where he used to sprint, a barefoot
screaming boy, all legs, going home to the pure
truth of an ordinary life, that simple place where, fatherless,
he found comfort in the wisdom of old broken soldiers.


2. How Legends Begin

This is how legends begin - the knife slitting the throat
of a hen, the blood, the callous pragmatism of eating
livestock grown for months, the myth of a father, a boat
ride into the jungle, a tongue curling then flinging
back a language alien as his skin; the rituals
of finding the middle ground, navigating a mother’s
mistakes, a father’s silence, a world’s trivial
divisions, the meaning of color and nation-negotiator
of calm, a boy tutored in the art of profitable charm;
this is how legends begin and we will tell this, too,
to the children lined up with flags despite the storms
gathering, children who will believe in the hope of blue
skies stretched out behind the mountain of clouds;
and he will make language to soothe the teeming crowds.
[continue there...]

American sentence: "Volt"

You electrify me the way you lean, your blouse the very nipples.

For De Beers: A Diamond is Forever (by Dennis Brutus)

Dennis Brutus: "This poem was started two years ago after I saw a movie, Blood Diamond. I finished it this week, thanks to my good friend the Argentine Marxist Claudia Martinezmullen. There were other relevant memories: I was in a recent march against Anglo American to protest the way they were taking over the land in Limpopo Province in search of platinum.

A second memory is of a Thursday afternoon, September 17, 1963, when near 44 Main Street in Johannesburg, I was shot in the back trying to escape apartheid police, outside the magistrate’s court. I collapsed and looked up at the front entrance to Anglo’s headquarters."

For De Beers: A Diamond is Forever

A diamond is forever

It is forever
a diamond is forever
it is so final
death is so final

it is forever
a diamond is forever
DeBeers says
“To us, there’s nothing
more precious than the
health of a nation”

We do not talk, do we
of Blood Diamonds?
We do not talk do we
of displaced peoples?
of stolen land?
of sweated labour?
of bloodied labour?
bloodied diamonds?

for blood diamonds, too,
are forever

22 March 2009, Durban
For Claudia
© Dennis Brutus

[source...]

Poéfrika Interview with Pam Mordecai

1. Have you always been "poetic"? An interview at Geoffrey Philp's blog dates your first poem back to when you were 9. What was the first poem you placed in a magazine? Did that/those "first" poem/s make it into any of your books?

Always, if that means seduced by rhyme and rhythm and the power of images. My father didn’t read us bedtime stories – he read us poems from an anthology called THE BEST LOVED POEMS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Some poems told stories, and some of those were fit for children, like “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat”, but others were very grown up poems, like Longfellow’s “The Day is Done”. Shortly before his death, I read his favourites back to him from the same book, weeping the whole time. The first poem I published was in BIM, an important literary magazine founded in 1942 in Barbados by Frank Collymore, which has just recently been revived. There were very few publishing outlets for us in the region at the time so many of us in the Caribbean, poets and prose writers, cut our teeth there. No. Those first poems never made it into any of my books. I didn’t publish a first collection until long after that.
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2. Some writers are poets, slammers, some are prose writers: fiction, documentaries, and so on. What do you call yourself when you're alone: a poet, a writer, or something else?

These days I only call myself one thing when I’m alone – Grandma! I have had ‘writer’ as my occupation in my passport for a while, as that’s how I’ve earned my living for a while. I have no other job or source of income.
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3. Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. They never stop going to school. So, where's the money?

I wish I could be like Rustum Kozain or Geoffrey Philp and see the money in the reward of the work, but this is it, so the money’s got to be bread money, or dunny, as we say. In Canada, journals pay for poetry, so there’s a little money for publication in that venue. And if one were to get something in the NEW YORKER, I imagine that would mean good money! (Yes, I’ve sent poems there, and will probably continue to do so. They ‘allow’ you two submissions a year.) One gets a little money for use in anthologies too. I get good permissions fees for my children’s poems – I’ve been paid as much as ƒ500.00 for one-time use of a poem. It’s higher than any advance I’ve had for an entire poetry manuscript! However, my new daydream is: write a great poem, devise some hit music, and record it! That’s the jackpot! I’d get paid every time it had airplay!
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4. One of your poems is about the death of your dear brother. I have admired the way you deal with the (gratuitous) killing of a loved one. And, I have questions: Did this poem come to you, or did you have to go and get it? Once it was done, did anything change? Perhaps my question is, Can art help humans overcome adversity?

I’m glad you like the poem. (They’re actually two, but I think you mean the dub one, yes?) You understand what it feels like to lose someone near to you by arbitrary violence, I know. I don’t think I went and got any of the poems in that final section, called “The True Blue of Islands”, which is also the title of the book. Once the poems were done, I felt that I had witnessed to my brother’s life, affirmed, blessed, anointed him. It was a kind of ritual. That wasn’t all there was to it, of course, but overall, I was in a better place when I was done. As for the power of art over adversity, I’ve believed for a long time in art, what I call in one poem, “the comfort of making,” as a way of keeping evil at bay, as the last refuge of grace, goodness, God. I feel that through the creative act an artist can arrive at a kind of wholeness that absorbs even dread experiences and can share that peace-inducing process. (It seems that there’s now evidence of this. See “Real Bodies: Write it all down. You'll feel better” at http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/real-bodies-write-it-all-down-youll-feel-better-1118135.html ) I don’t believe in ‘closure’, perhaps because I’m not interested in closing anything. I want to keep it all open until I really close, finally, in death. Till then, I want to gather my experiences and make sense of them, make something good of them, including those occasions when I have been stubborn, dumb, foolhardy, even wicked. I write to share the good things that I hope I make.
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5. A university teacher of mine (Elizabeth, one of the reasons I'm here busting my..., well... my things to try and write) told me that if I ever got a poem published in a prestigious magazine, she'd go back and turn my grade into an A+. No matter when that happened. Question: Was that a good or a bad move on her part? Would you do something of the sort if you were a varsity teacher?

I think it’s a good move on her part, and I hope that I would do something like that, yes. I don’t think she meant to convey the idea that poetry is only worthwhile if it’s published in a prestigious magazine. Rather, I think she wanted to show that she sees the acquisition of these creative skills as ongoing, as a trajectory which she wants to be part of even after her students walk through the university’s gates. So I see her giving you this undertaking, less as motivation, more as a sort of magical reward to look forward to, according to which you would be twice recompensed when you wrote your prominently published poem. It’s as if she would complete a circle, a pact, when she went back into your records and changed the grade.
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6. I grew up listening to Reggae, Bob, Peter, Burning Spear and (yes) Afrikan Dreamland (when I was in the U.S.). We as Lesotho teenagers in the late '70s and early '80s identified with this music, as Africans, and, of course for the music's own sake. Do Jamaicans hold African music in any such light? Do you listen to African music?

I think many Jamaicans love the various musics of Africa. I do, though I confess that one great tragedy in my life is that I have listened to less music, of all kinds, than I would have liked. I’ve been a fan of Miriam Makeba since my teens. I still like her songs. In the 70s, when you were listening to Bob Marley, Jamaicans were listening to Makeba and Hugh Masakela, but there wasn’t a lot of ‘African music’ on the airwaves, and the only records available were by people like those two, who had English or American recording contracts. For myself, I like Fela and Femi Kuti: they are so familiar they could be in a calypso tent in Trinidad! I think Ladysmith Black Mambazo are great. I very much enjoy the work of instrumentalists like Hugh Masakela, instrumentals like, say, the sounds on Simba Wanyika’s “Shilingi”. I like the traditional music too. The missa luba is superb and I enjoy the choirs. I’m not pretending that I listen to African music a lot (as I say, unhappily I don’t listen to music enough) but I do like it.
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7. You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a "writing prompt" out of your own experience, or out of something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Very short and simple.

Pick an animal, famous for a particular characteristic (e.g., lion for bravery, elephant for long memory, etc.) Write, as a poem, what you, the animal, think and/or say when you wake one morning to discover that this defining characteristic has gone.
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8. What position do four-letter words hold in your work? Do you sometimes resort to profanity?

I often begin my readings with the comment that I’m a wild woman, ‘Certifiable!’ – it’s the title of my third collection of poetry. I tell them that I’m politically incorrect, so they should expect anything, and certainly ought to expect to hear ‘bad words’. I’m a Jamaican. We have a rich vocabulary of cuss words. I’m not profligate with them, but I use them when I need to, in both prose and poetry. I don’t think of it as profanity. Profanity is what offends God. Curse words like raas are our vulgar response because sex frightens us. And if it is something to which I resort, I do so to render the frustration and upset of those whose distress I’m representing...
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9. What do you do for inspiration? Do you go somewhere, read something, listen to something?

I’m, like I say, a crazy lady, with a lot of years under my belt, on my face. Most times, inspiration is only a memory, one phrase, one good or bad feeling away. I’m reading all the time, too. Right now, the poetry I’m reading is Derek Walcott’s Omeros, which I’ve read most of (in fact, I’ve read the first part again and again) but up to now have not managed to complete. My writing feeds off what I’m reading, whatever it is. That’s of course true for every writer.
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10. Here's an on-going poem. Please write the fifth verse.

They stood before me that night
With clenched fists and blown pupils,
Shadowed by leafless branches of a cotton tree,
The moon as bright as the moon and no metaphor

For which image can serve? What simile
Makes sense enough? The ghosts that guard
the tree nod yes, though I’ve not said a thing.
One shade uncurls and crooks a bony finger, calling me.


_______________
Pamela Claire Mordecai (born 1942 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican writer, teacher, and scholar and poet. She attended high school in Jamaica and college in the USA, where she did a first degree in English. A trained language-arts teacher with a PhD in English, she has taught at secondary and tertiary levels, trained teachers, and worked in media and in publishing.

Mordecai has written articles on Caribbean literature, education and publishing, and has collaborated on, or herself written, over thirty books, including textbooks, children’s books, and four books of poetry for adults. She has edited several anthologies. Her poems and stories for children are widely known and have been used in textbooks in the UK, Canada, the USA, West Africa and the Caribbean. Her short stories have been published in journals and anthologies in the Caribbean, the USA and Canada.

[source]

The 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize

We're also proud to announce Knockout's new poetry contest, the 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize, a new poetry contest in honor of poet Reginald Shepherd, who left us on September 10, 2008. For more information on Reginald Shepherd's work, visit his blog at reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com. One of Shepherd's previously unpublished poems will appear in Knockout's second issue, due out December 2008.

Here is the essential contest information, but DO NOT submit to the contest without reading the entire contest submission guidelines.

Download them here: 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize Submission Guidelines.

The contest will be judged by Carl Phillips.

The entry fee is $12 and all entrants will receive a copy of Knockout with their entrance fee.

The first-place winner will receive (1) a $300 gift certificate to Powell's Books, (2) publication in a forthcoming issue of Knockout, and (3) five copies of the issue in which their poem appears.
The second-place winner will receive (1) a $50 gift certificate to Powell's Books, (2) publication in a forthcoming issue of Knockout, and (3) two copies of the issue in which their poem appears.
The third-place winner will receive (1) a $25 gift certificate to Powell's Books, (2) publication in a forthcoming issue of Knockout, and (3) two copies of the issue in which their poem appears.

Submissions to the contest will be accepted beginning Wednesday, October 15, 2008, and ending Saturday, August 1, 2009.
Winners will be announced on Knockout's website (knockoutlit.org) by Wednesday, September 30, 2009.

Submissions must be sent in ONE SINGLE Microsoft Word document file attachment (.doc NOT .docx format) to knockoutrsprize@gmail.com with a cover email including ONLY (1) the contestant's name, (2) postal address, (3) email address, (4) phone number with area code, (5) a numbered list of the titles of poems submitted and (6) proof of payment of the entry fee [EITHER (a) the 16-digit PayPal receipt ID number associated with their entry OR (b) the check number or money order number associated with their entry]. Send submissions to: knockoutrsprize@gmail.com

For more information, please see www.knockoutlit.org/rsprize.htm

[source...]

Hassan Najmi's "The exiled"

To Abbas

Their palms are coffins
and their heads are hats for distant clouds.
And behind them there is time
without flowerpots
or arms

They had left.
And leaving itself returned.
And still they did not come back.
© Hassan Najmi

from A Crack in the Wall: New Arab Poetry
translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa

[source...]

The Arabic version is from Poetry International.

Stafford's "The Well Rising"

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through the deep ground
everywhere in the field —

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer —

The swallow heart from wing beat to wing beat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.
© William Stafford

{Thanks, Nancy, for bringing this can-poetry-save-the-earth poem to my attention}

[source... please visit the site to read the background article]

Chris Abani's "Break a leg"

Poéfrika Interview with Rustum Kozain

1. In your opinion, are the times we live in good or not for literature? If not, what do you do to "make it"? If so, in what way?

I'm not sure. From a writer's perspective, one's own time is one's own time, meaning, I live now and can't compare, in lived experience, to another time. Having said that, I imagine all times are good for literature from a writer's perspective - all times must have in them the stuff, the grist for the writer's mill. Have the past 20 years then been good for writing, especially for the monkish art of poetry? I think so, especially as we face a world from which it is probably better to withdraw if you're a poet, into your cell or tower, which is exactly where the writing happens.

As to the production side, I don't know. In SA, big publishers publish less poetry, but small independents still have heart and courage to do so. Literature in general seems to be booming - books are published, reviewed etc. Lets forget the lack of space for good reviewing, I guess boom times are interested in quantity. In that sense, it seems a good time for literature, if not perhaps for poetry.

At the same time, people are reading less, or spending reading time on the internet where, in general, the reading experience happens in short, sharp shocks. And it apparently has cognitive results - attention spans get trained down, etc. (And I'm already nervous that this answer is too long). Of course, there are equal amounts of good, long serious reading to be found, but in general, the production tends to the twittering end of the scale. This should be a good time for the short short-story, the short poem. One can become fabulously popular - and quite possibly rich - by inventing trends in this regard - the e-novel in Japan, published via cellphone; there's been some version in SA as well, etc. I am sure someone has already invented the 'twitku'. I think this can work for prose and poetry, but I would still wish to maintain certain guild-like views for poetry because people (readers, potential, aspirant poets) in general tend to think of poetry as a part-time, instant thing: that it amounts to quickly scribbling a few lines and voila, a poem. Twittering before twitter was invented. That sounds perfect for the times and the media. But I mourn the fate of the long poem, when even a sonnet cannot hold the attention. And I mourn what people believe poetry should be in this regard, and it probably impacts on the publishing industry as well, on poetry becoming a stepchild.

So, there's tremendous activity - writers write, publishers publish. It must be good; but there is certainly some not so good aspects, just touched on above.

2. What mistakes did you make when you were just setting out to write?

Oh, all the normal adolescent mistakes all young poets - I am sure - make: too much dependence on adjectives and adverbs, gushing, crazy images (and calling it surrealist). And writing those anguished love poems to the girl who sat next to me in Physics class, many phrases cribbed from the too much Khalil Gibran I was reading as a teenager. Later, I also liked using the word 'history' too often, whether it was history's gaze or history's doubts or history's resolve. And rebelling against poetic tradition without really knowing what I was rebelling against, yet using the word 'history'. Oh, there are many more.

3. Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. So, where's the money?

The money's everywhere: in the perfectly weighted line, in the soft chime when you happen on an internal rhyme, in finally getting a whole piece equal in temper to that first line that came to you on the train or the mini-bus taxi or while walking to the store. And in the surprise when you find what it is that you wanted to say. That's the money.

4. How long did you work on "This Carting Life"? With hindsight, was that long, short, just right?

It wasn't a book until, like Geoffrey, I gathered what had been accumulating in my folders for a over a decade. Of course, I always wanted to publish in book form, but what I'm trying to say is that I didn't set out to write a 'book' of poetry. I just wrote poetry, published them in magazines, grew envious as peers and elders published yet another book. I just kept on writing poetry and getting a few published here and there. But I just wavered in getting a manuscript together, even after two different publishers (2001) had asked me to consider sending them a manuscript. Eventually, a friend in the US got me to get one together and submitted it to a competition on my behalf, where it won publication (2002) but I once again let it slide. In the meantime, I was still writing new stuff, publishing in magazines and editing, always editing, the existing manuscript. Again, a cousin and friend forced me to get a manuscript together (2004) and she herself (bless her) delivered the manuscript to one of the publishers who had approached me before. By this time, of course, the poems in the manuscript had been through much editing and it was a large manuscript. Several poems had to be dropped.

At the time of publication, the oldest poem in the book was 12 years old, the newest 2 years old. But that was a reflection of the process. One reviewer remarked that it is normal, but not good practise, for writers to want to include everything they have written. I have to agree; yet, there was a biographical impulse to include everything and I'm glad I did it.

The length of time it took is half due to a slack attitude, to not being a disciplined writer, to being a Romantic in that I write when it comes to me. It suits me. So, I have to say that the lengthy process - including not getting the manuscript together - suited that particular book. I also wonder about rushing out books for the sake of getting the next one published; I think that that conscious, deliberate approach can easily lead to rushed, formulaic books, especially in a context where few of us can be truly full-time writers and have to depend on other sources of income. I trust in the material finding its way out.

For example, I've been fretting over a years-long dry spell after This Carting Life. Then poetry coming in bits and pieces, but nothing seemed like enough to base a book on. Now, six years after submitting my first manuscript, I look at my folders and it seems I might have a manuscript in there.

5. A university teacher of mine (Elizabeth, one of the reasons I'm here busting my..., well... my head to try and write) told me that if I ever got a poem published in a prestigious magazine, she'd go back and turn my grade into an A+. No matter when that happened. Question: Was that a good or a bad move on her part? Would you do something of the sort if you were a varsity teacher?

Who knows how these motivations work? Wanting to prove yourself is a good dark driving force. I agree with Geoffrey that it can set up the writer for despair, but I also agree with Michelle that if it is a driving force, then it's all good. One of my university teachers suggested that when submitting, start high (prestigious magazine), then work your way down. In that way, you have a way out and forward, towards publication of some sort down the line. If a small mag turns you down, where do you go afterwards? No use in aiming low. It can be as despairing.

And yet, I have to say, that I am happy to have my poems published in a journal that has a small local subscription, and to read at small, local groups, because the money remains in the line of poetry.

As a teacher, though, I wouldn't have (had) that kind of audacity to throw down a challenge like that. I come across many of my past students - many - who outstrip whatever expectations (high or low) I may have had of them. I would have had to change many grades.

6. Where's African poetry at this stage? What structures are in place in southern Africa to help aspiring poets?

Sometimes I despair that there are no structures, sometimes I realise that there may be structures and I just don't know about them (SA does have an arts grants service), and sometimes I despair at the welfarist approach to something like poetry. Yes, I would like to be able to live off my poetry (I live frugally, so it wouldn't cost much), or get a grant from the arts council (if I can just get my applications in on time!), but, even while I am struggling economically, I get irritated by the idea that poets need "support structures". All it takes is pen and paper. Steal a pen, recycle paper. And join a public library.

If support structures mean community, well, start your own. Poetry blogs, for instance, make up self-started communities and support structures. Poéfrika, for instance, didn't need support external to your own needs and drive to become your own and others' support structure.

To aspirant poets I would thus say, steal a pen, recycle the paper, and find friends of similar bent to talk poetry. And there's no easy answer to development - the only way is by trial and error. If, however, you imagine any kind of material support to be your automatic right, then try something else, like Pop Idols.

7. You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a "writing prompt" out of your own experience, or out of something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Very short and simple.

This is from a former university teacher: Write a poem about heat, without using any words that directly connote heat or temperature, etc. E.g. while you may use the word 'sun', you can't use the phrase 'the sun burns down'.

8. What position do four-letter words hold in your work? Can a poem be good despite its use of profanity?

Of course it can. Even in general use, profanities are just words, and I laugh at people who use euphemisms for some prudish notion, like saying 'jeepers' when they mean, say, 'Jesus'. 'Jeepers' stands in for 'Jesus', but it means the same, like a synonym. So if you're wanting to say 'jeepers', but don't want to blaspheme, rather use a different word. And we use euphemisms for swear words all the time: 'frigging' instead of 'fucking', etc. We may as well be using the swear word.

Of course there are times when swearing and cursing are bad taste, but I don't think swear words deserve the bad press. We have developed them for very human reasons, and they express the thing only they can express, otherwise we wouldn't have them, they wouldn't exist. And it's naive to pretend they don't exist.

In poetry, swear words for the sake of swear words are of course adolescent and don't work. But they can also be used to push the boundaries (of taste, in this case), which is what good art normally does. But the right to use them should be earned: in other words, the poem should earn the right to the use of swear words in the poem. Like both Michelle and Geoffrey indicated, the poem's qualities do not depend merely on the absence or presence of a swear word.

Secondly, in this regard, I come from a family of auto-mechanics, working class. I grew up with swearing all around me; I don't feel particularly damaged by it. And it's in my vocabulary. It's bound to pop up in my poetry.

And poetry is about everything; it's not about a certain kind of 'poetic' language, nor about 'pure' thoughts expressed in 'pure' language. People who blanch at swear words in poetry probably suffer from a misapprehension about the aesthetics of poetry, and should read some Chaucer.


9. Is there a "right" number of poems per book? How many poems are in "This
Carting Life", and why that number?

I haven't counted the number of poems in the book. I feel the book is the right length for what it does - gathering together poems from a span of over ten years. It's a weighty volume by SA standards, but I hope readers also feel it's the right length for what it says. Also, I favour the long poem, so, page length would be a better way to put it: 100 pages of poetry. 10 pages per year... that seems okay.

I don't know how to quantify the right length for a book, but I do want poetry books to be meaty.

10. Here's an on-going poem. Please write the fourth verse.

They stood before me that night
With clenched fists and blown pupils,
Shadowed by leafless branches of a cotton tree.
The moon as bright as the moon and no metaphor

__________
Rustum Kozain was born, raised and schooled in Paarl, Western Cape and studied English Literature at the University of Cape Town. After ten months on a Fulbright Scholarship in the USA (1994-1995), he returned to UCT where he eventually lectured and taught in the Department of English until 2004.

His debut collection of poetry, This Carting Life, was published in 2005 (Kwela/Snailpress) and collects poetry written over a span of ten years. It was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize in 2006 and the Olive Schreiner Prize in 2007. Other prizes include the Thomas Pringle Award (2002) and the Philip Stein Award (1997) for poems published in journals, and a runner-up in the Mondi Award for food journalism (1997).

He has recently compiled and edited an anthology of short stories, South African Short Stories Since 1994, and an anthology of poetry, Voices from all over, both for use in high schools and published by Oxford University Press Southern Africa, 2006.

He now lives in Cape Town and works as a freelance editor and writer.

Rita Dove's "Dawn Revisited"

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits--
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.
© Rita Dove

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[listen...]

Black Eyed Susan sez...

1) Post a poem by a woman of color. Your choice must be a poet who has written in the last forty years. Do your best to avoid the most anthologized, popular poets unless poetry is new terrority for you. In that case, check out why the popular poets are well loved.

2) Tell us why you like the poem you chose. Don't worry about the technical aspects of writing poetry, devices or forms. Give us your reader's response. How does it make you feel or what does it make you think about? What questions does it raise for you?

3) If you are a poetry reader and you can recommend a contemporary woman poet of color, who do you recommend and why? I would really love to hear about emerging or lesser known poets. Introduce us to poets from around the world.

Please remember to provide citation for the work you post. Provide links and interesting trivia if you like. Be creative.

For those of you who need a jumping off point, google these poets: Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, Naomi Shiab Nye, Sandra Cisneros, Toi Derricotte, Lucille Clifton, Merle Collins, Maxine Kumin and Marilyn Nelson. I am purposely leaving off the one poet most of us know- Ms. Maya Angelou because if we know any famous black woman poet, we know Ms. Angelou. Remember the aim here is discovery. I realize I gave you a time frame, gender and limited it to women of color. Rather than see these terms as limits, consider it a focus especially if you have no idea where to begin.

Please create a post on your blog and leave a link here. Do check out other participants' posts and comment. You have a week. Looking forward to hearing what you enjoy.

Happy reading.

Okay, S. You asked for it. I post Pam's poem, "Sunflowers". I know you have already read and enjoyed this poem, but the aim here, as you said, is discovery. For you, for me, and for our readers.

You asked for a poem by a woman of colour. I don't know where Pam fits in colour stuff, but her poem fits everywhere.

I like her poem for several reasons. The first one is probably the bull's eye effect it has on me. After reading it, I am somewhere, I have reached a destination, I have aqcuired something that I did not have before reading the poem.

I wonder if the fact of being familiar with, and liking van Gogh's painting, helped my relationship with the poem. I doubt it did much of that, however, because knowing about the painting doesn't help love the poem for itself, but just the poem+painting equation, without which 'Sunflowers' still exist and will continue to exist.

I like the poem because it's for everyone. Who has never felt the pangs of disappointed love? I like the poem because it rocks, makes the reader feel normal, welcome, belonging.

We both needed a man to stay. Haven't you ever?

Check out Pam's place.

SUNFLOWERS (by Pam Mordecai)

Vincent Van Gogh, the sunflower man
cut off his ear when Paul Gaugin
wouldn't stay to paint with him
in southern France.

I burnt my veil and wedding dress
scarred both my cheeks
tattooed rosettes
along my arms with cigarettes.

We both needed a man to stay.

You think it was
loneliness? I don't
think so. Madness
has always been my guess.
© Pamela Mordecai

Learn more:
-- geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2006/10/in-my-own-words-pam-mordecai.html
-- www.pamelamordecai.com
-- literaturealiveonline.ca/content/authors_database/pamela_mordecai.php

Silvio

"They should see it like a weekend of camping."
~Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister, trying to mollify the thousands of Italians who have been rendered homeless by the earthquake that rocked the Abruzzo region on April 6

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Kwesi Brew's "The mesh"

We have come to the cross-roads
And I must either leave or come with you.
I lingered over the choice
But in the darkness of my doubts
You lifted the lamp of love
And I saw in your face
The road that I should take.
© Kwesi Brew

Poem-A-Day: subscribe now...

Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Return to Vienna

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me...
~The Heiligenstadt Testament

Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness

I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward—
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning—
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.

At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed—
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s
home-toward-evening song—rushed in, and I
would rage again.

I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly—I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it… It is impossible

to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I’ve named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.

I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can’t you see that I’m deaf?—
I also cannot stop listening.
© Rita Dove

[source...]

Poéfrika Interview with Geoffrey Philp

1. In your opinion, what is the worst thing that has happened to writing in the past ten years?
That is such a general question. I wouldn't know where to begin. The world is so big. I know some good things are happening in Caribbean writing. More authors are being published, and that is something about which we can all give thanks.


2. If there were one thing that the 'learning' and 'beginning' writers should do, what would it be?
There is a Buddhist story about full cups and empty cups. Be empty.


3. Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. So, where's the money?
The riches are in the kingdom of heaven...


4. How long did you work on your first book? Do all your books take about the same time to "finish"?
My first book took me about ten years to write. Then, I began to write steadily. Hurricane Center took me one year to write because I purposely set out to write a poem a week. Made my wife crazy, but I did it. That was the only time I worked on a themed book. The other books have grown by accretion. I write and write and then at the end of five years or so, I figure out what I've been thinking about for the five years, the general themes, and try to arrange them into a manuscript. At least, that's how my latest collection DUB WISE came into being. I've been meditating on Reggae, my thirty years of writing, and what I've learned from being a part of the Boomer "Reggae" Generation.


5. A university teacher of mine (Elizabeth, one of the reasons I'm here busting my..., well... my head to try and write) told me that if
I ever got a poem published in a prestigious magazine, she'd go back and turn my grade into an A+. No matter when that happened. Question: Was that a good or a bad move on her part? Would you do something of the sort if you were a varsity teacher?
Although many of my favorite poets are published in many "prestigious" magazines, I don't think that should be a motive for publication or for working on a poem. It sets up the poet for all kinds of despair that s/he doesn't need. Writing poetry is hard enough. Why add to it? Better to coax the student to think about the intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards of writing--clarifying one's ideas and living as an actualized human being.


6. Do you read Asian poetry (or Asian literature in general)? If you don't, why not? If you do, please say a word about it.
It depends on what you mean by Asian literature. Does Thich Nhat Hahn count?


7. You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a "writing prompt" out of your own experience, or out of
something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Very short and simple.
Write a Chaucerian Ballade from the viewpoint of an unborn child speaking to his/her mother.


8. What position do four-letter words hold in your work? Can a poem be good despite its use of profanity?
In poetry every word must count. If the word conveys the feeling or idea, it is justified.


9. What saddens you? I know many of your happy poems. Have you written any that you consider sad?
A recent poem, "Mule Train" saddens me. It is filled with such despair and it's written from the point of view of a woman who believes she doesn't have many choices in life, so she becomes a drug mule.

What saddens me is when people think that they have no control over their lives and so become victims. We can be victimized, but we should never adopt the psychology of victims.


10. Here's an on-going poem. Please write the third verse.

They stood before me that night
With clenched fists and blown pupils,
Shadowed by leafless branches of a cotton tree


_______________
Geoffrey Philp is the author of a children’s book, Grandpa Sydney’s Anancy Stories; a novel, Benjamin, My Son; a collection of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien, and five poetry collections, including Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, hurricane center, xango music, and Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas. His next book, Who's Your Daddy?: And Other Stories will be published by Peepal Tree Press in May 2009. He lives in Miami, Florida.

Kay Ryan on reading and writing

The first time we read a poem, Ryan says, we're not really reading it, we're deciding whether to read it. If you can understand a poem on first reading, "either you didn't really read it or it isn't really a poem."

Learning to read poetry — much less write it — takes a huge amount of practice. "That's what our wonderful literature courses are for. You don't have an education unless you have an education in the history of literature. Read the great poets, read everything, just read, read, read."
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Harlem Book Fair 2009

Friday, July 17th, 7pm
The Wheatley Awards Honors Our Poets
Location: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Program and Awards - $10.00
Awards Dinner Reception, Program & Awards - $20.00 (By reservation only)

Invited Awardees:
Cornelius Eady
Yusef Komunyakaa
Nikki Giovanni
The Last Poets
Posthumous Award: John Hope Franklin, Author and Historian
Flora Mwapa African Literature Award: TBA

Masters of Ceremony:
Haki Madhubuti and Helena D. Lewis

Program:
(Per) Verse Poets: Spoken Word On Center Stage (Performances by Invitation Only)
Music by Atiba Wilson & Songhai Djeli

Saturday, July 18th
Harlem Book Fair Outdoor Exhibits & Author Panel Discussions
Time: 11am-6pm
Locations: West 135 Street btw Malcolm X & Frederick Douglass Boulevards; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Countee Cullen Library; & Thurgood Marshall Academy

ALL PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Check the QBR websites for updated, detailed program information.

Sunday, July 19th
Schomburg Panel Discussions
Time: 11am-4pm
Location: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

ALL PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Check the QBR websites for updated, detailed program information.

See you in July...

Tiffany Newton, Program Director

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Vusi Mahlasela Recommends

I first met Nigerian author Chris Abani at a conference in Tanzania and was immediately captured by his amazing ability to tell a story and by his gift for finding a balance between good and evil– for finding the silver lining in bad situations. Abani has a lot of insight from his own experiences growing up as a refugee in exile and this insight is evident in his writing. He is one of the greatest authors from Africa and his voice should be heard throughout the world. I really recommend all of his novels, especially Graceland which I read last month.

http://www.chrisabani.com/

by Vusi Mahlasela
[source...]

Two books

Her voice is candid with a hard edge and a clear love of words anchored in African-American culture. "I’ve had a life-long love affair with poetry," she says. "My sisters and I were introduced to library cards at a young age and spent hours at our local public library. We discovered Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and other Harlem Renaissance writers. Later, [it was] the poetry of the Black Arts Movement: Don L. Lee, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka and others whose writing cross literary movements, including Gwendolyn Brooks."
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Poet Laureate of Lesotho?

The Poet Laureate of Lesotho: a dream of mine that Rose clearly knows about. I'm a chapter in her book. Thanks, Rose.

Poéfrika Interview with Michelle McGrane

Born in 1974 in Zimbabwe, Michelle McGrane spent her childhood in Malawi, and moved to South Africa with her family when she was fourteen. Her third poetry collection is forthcoming in 2010. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and blogs at peony moon. Here's what was said:

1. Will you share some of your memories of Malawi with us?
   My memories of Malawi remain a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells and tastes. I remember going to the Saturday morning market in Limbe with my mother: the glowing pyramids of fruit and vegetables set up in rows on concrete slabs, the yards of tiny dried fish, kapenta, laid out in the sun, the heaps of colourful spices in yellow enamel bowls, bunches of ripe bananas. Baskets of all shapes and sizes. Straw brooms. Wooden carvings. Miniature wire cars and bicycles. Brilliant bead jewellery. It was an Aladdin's treasure trove.
   
   There were hot weekends spent at a cottage on the shores of Lake Malawi. We slept with white gauze mosquito nets over the beds. I remember steep hikes up Mount Mulanje, camping overnight in log cabins and falling asleep with the smell of Mulanje cedar smoke drifting through the window.
   
   There was no television, no video or computer games, no cd players. We spent our time outdoors. I feel privileged to have grown up in a relaxed environment with friends of different backgrounds and cultures.



2. If there were one thing that the 'learning' or 'beginning' writer should not do, what would it be?
   We're not all 'beginning' writers, but hopefully most of us, however long we've been writing, are still 'learning' writers. I'm wary of dispensing advice particularly having stubbornly ignored most counsel I received when I began writing. One learns more from failures and mistakes than from successes.
   
   I think I would say: "You'll make mistakes. Everybody does, it's an ongoing process. And, if you learn from them, that's how you will improve. Don't be in a rush to get published. Don't measure your progress, your success, by your publishing rate. Persevere. Read. And, most importantly, enjoy writing each line."



3. Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. Where's the money?
   If you're writing poetry for money, give it up.
   
   
4. How long had you worked, and worked, before your first piece got published?
   I was very lucky to have the first poem I ever submitted accepted in Fidelities, a publication edited by the South African poet, Kobus Moolman. Unfortunately, Fidelities is no longer in existence. When I dropped the envelope containing the poem in a postbox, I wasn't "writing poetry". It was a one off thing. A little poem, five or six lines I think. And don't let this fool you a bit, I've written countless pages of drivel...



5. A university teacher of mine (Elizabeth, one of the reasons I'm here busting my..., well... my head, to try and write) told me that if I ever got a poem published in a prestigious magazine, she'd go back and turn my grade into an A+. No matter when that happened. Question: Was that a good or a bad move on her part? Would you do something of the sort if you were a varsity teacher?
   A quirky teacher! I don't feel qualified to answer this, but think that if it motivated you to improve your writing, to put in the extra hours, then it was a good thing.



6. Do you read African poetry (or literature in general)? If you don't, why not? If you do, what's wrong with it, if anything?
I do read African literature. Unfortunately, I can only read it in English, which is fine if it's written in English but not ideal if it was originally written in one of the many beautiful African languages, and then translated. Translations are better than nothing, of course. I don't believe enough literature is currently being written and published in indigenous languages.


7. You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a "writing prompt" out of your own experience, or out of something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Short and simple.
   Write a ten line poem using all five senses: touch, sight, smell, taste and sound.



8. What position do four-letter words hold in your work? Can a poem be good despite its use of profanity?
   I've used profanities in poems. Not recently and not uncontrollably, but I have used them. Certainly, I believe a poem can be good despite its use of profanities. Swearing in a poem doesn't negate its qualities. I don't think swearing has anything to do with whether a poem is well written or poorly written. Used sparingly and in the right place, I think it can be effective. This is my personal opinion. It's also very much an element of some people's vernacular, their everyday speech. If you're writing a poem from a specific character's perspective, cursing may be an authentic part of their speech. I don't think there should be hard and fast rules.



9. What makes you laugh?
   Laughing at myself keeps insidious literary pretensions at bay.



10. Here's an ongoing poem. Please add a line.
    They stood before me that night
    with clenched fists and blown pupils