Let Freedom Wring
Wring: the act of squeezing or twisting something; the art of wrestling, and reckoning, and teasing something out. What is freedom? An illusion? A glass of water? A table of spilled milk? A statue in the middle of a river and a passport, a birth certificate, the ability to walk outside a home – or have a home at all – without the fear of being discriminated against, oppressed, or shot? Or is it speaking truth on the steps of a national memorial, the “Birthplace of American Government,” in front of a statue of a country’s praised...
read moreWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Curating “The Unexpected”
What we now know about spaces is that they carry a resonance beyond perceptibility. What we also now know about public spaces is that we are in an ever changing dialogue with them. Perhaps we’ve learned that we must respect the air between us in those spaces. It seems the body remembers what we’ve tried to logic our way out of remembering: our interconnectedness that transcends time and thought. We try to honor and respect the spaces we inhabit and respect the spaces between us and if we show honor spaces the spaces bend and shrink between...
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When the world tilts in your favor: Poetry in Unexpected People.
“We’re going to meet at 2pm in Fowler Square in Fort Greene (on the corner of Fulton and Lafayette). We’ll plan some logistics together, then we’ll do a set there, and then a set at the monument in Fort Greene Park… Just have a poem or three ready to go.” The date and time were set, the locations secured. Throwing the required materials of a 21st century poet in my backpack (notebook, pen, CONDUIT by Khadijah Queen, iPhone), I felt like some kind of spy, arming myself with supplies to complete a mission off the C stop at Lafayette on...
read moreKara Walker’s ‘a Subtlety’… a Pop Up Poets’ experience
Yesterday, I was honored to finally participate in a Pop Up Poets event at the Kara Walker installation at the old Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg. Little known fact about me? I really don’t enjoy performance as much as I should. I’m good at it but usually terrified the entire time. So I’ve avoided taking part in these phenomenal live performance installations that the Pop Up team curates but I couldn’t avoid this opportunity when Syreeta McFadden asked a couple of weeks ago. I was already hyper aware of the work....
read more#ThatPUPMagic
Below is a short video of poets and performers of PUP for your viewing pleasure.
read moreBAM’s Gonna Be Poppin’
Not so unexpected, we’re super excited to bring #ThatPUPMagic to BAM’s Harvey Theater this Friday night, as part of the Poetry 2014: Birth of Hip Hop Nation event! We’re joining a rock star collection of poets and performers which include Carlos Andres Gomez, Aja Monet, Carvens Lissant, Will Power! This ish is gon be F R E S H. Will we spot you in the...
read moreLOVEKISS (The Change of Human Things)
I do recommend you listen to Beyonce’s XO when you step off the 7 train at the Willet’s Point stop. You’ll walk down a boardwalk that leads into the great green expanse that is Flushing Meadows Park. It makes you feel possible and electric. To your right, you’ll see Arthur Ashe Stadium and Tennis Center where every September one or both of the Williams sisters achieve excellence clinching the title of best in the nation. That realization will become clear to you just as Yonce deep Houston drawls, ‘this diamond....
read moreBeing The New PUP
I first met Samantha Thornhill at AWP Boston. Excited to meet a fellow Trini poet, I decided to keep in touch. I don’t remember when exactly I heard about PUP but I know I was immediately excited. I had often wondered, taking the subway home from NYU, why people never performed poetry on the trains. They sang, they breakdanced, sold paintings, even lip-synched in drag— but never did I hear anyone recite a verse, theirs or someone else’s. Was this, I wondered, why people didn’t know poetry was a living thing? Over dinner one night I had to ask...
read more“The air feels different.”
We, as a public, even as a literary public, are not always in a state of preparation, so frames matter. One cannot always be ready to be moved. Its true that soldiers have been known to keep poems in their breastpockets. Captives have been known to feed off of memorized poems for survival. So we know that a work will live anywhere, anyhow, if it is so sorely needed. But most of us, who do not live so clearly on the edge, need a little help if a poem is to find its way into our daily business.
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