Genre: Poetry

Party Time: Sin Muros Festival

United States of Writing
2.18.20

Last week we took a little break and I hope you enjoyed my list of things to check out. Beginning this week, I want to highlight the big events: conferences and festivals. As many of you know, we are gearing up for a massive conference, the annual AWP Conference & Bookfair, run by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, taking place in San Antonio, Texas in March. Poets & Writers and the literary outreach coordinators—Justin, Kelly, and I—will be there so come say hello if you’re at AWP!

Keeping that in mind, I’d like to dedicate some time in this blog to celebrate the literary festivals and conferences that take place here in Houston, including Sin Muros, Comicpalooza, Fade to Black Play Festival, and Zine Fest Houston.

First up, Sin Muros! Now in its third year, Sin Muros: A Latinx Theater Festival is a community-led playwriting festival focused on Texas-based Latinx voices and stories. The festival is put on by Stages, a nonprofit organization and historic theater in Houston, and offers a ton of access to literary craft for emerging artists. In Spanish, sin muros means “without walls” and the festival embodies this theme through its events.

Stages works with community leaders—playwrights, dramatists, poets, and activists—to put together a four-day festival for the public with many free events. Two plays (which are a part of Stages’s regular season) serve as anchors to a series of play readings and poetry readings; a generative, writing workshop (any genre is welcome); a professional development workshop for theater teachers; a children’s play; a town hall meeting focusing on issues Latinx artists face; and a poetry tent filled with booksellers, local literary organizations, and poets. Stages works with several literary and performance organizations to put the festival together, including Tintero Projects, Gente de Teatro, and TEATRX. Some of the work is in English. Some of the work is in Spanish. All of the work is Tejano.

This year’s festival over this past weekend was a great success. Every year it gets larger and larger, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Lupe Mendez is the literary outreach coordinator for Poets & Writers in Houston. Contact him at Houston@pw.org or on Twitter, @houstonpworg.

Truth

The Time Is Now
2.18.20

“Truth can be lazy because it becomes satisfied with itself, and it is often so tethered to time and space that to demand one truth can often invisibilize another’s truth,” says Natalie Diaz in “Energy,” an interview by Jacqueline Woodson in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “When and where does truth begin, and whose truth is it?” Think of an issue in your life that you feel conflicted over, an idea or state of being that you have long held to be true, whose solidity you have begun to question. Write a poem that attempts to demand more from this perceived truth, exploring how it entered your belief system. To whom is it tethered?

Grover Easterling on the Detroit Literary Scene

United States of Writing
2.17.20

Grover Easterling is a poet, activist, and educator currently living in Detroit. Grover and I were both students in the after-school program Citywide Poets organized by InsideOut Literary Arts, so naturally we became friends and writing partners. After we graduated from the program, we attended classes together at Wayne State University and led a student organization called WayneSLAM (aka Wayne Student Literary Arts Movement). The organization offered a space for artists of different genres to showcase themselves in a monthly open mic. Grover and I led the series from 2013 to 2016. I had an opportunity to catch up with Grover last week and asked him a few questions about his experience with WayneSLAM and the literary scene in Detroit.

What impact did WayneSLAM have on you?
As an artist it gave me the opportunity to help other artists get paid to share their art, to put money on the table for young writers of color. The series also showed me many different styles of poetry and the varying levels of where folks are at in their art.

As a youth, your family settled down in Troy, Michigan. What differences did you notice when you sought out the literary scene in Detroit?
I wanted to invest in Black art and what made me feel seen, and that wasn’t present in Troy. When I visited Detroit, I was exposed to various cultures and their art scenes. In Detroit’s literary scene, people are more willing to be radical in their writing. People are more comfortable with their Blackness here.

How have Detroit’s artists and writers influenced you outside of your writing?
They help me stay innovative. Being around poets has given me tools to sharpen my skills as a political and environmental organizer.

Recently, Grover released a video titled “Change the Climate 2020” featuring newsclips mixed with a reading of his poem “All Be Green” in an effort to bring awareness to environmental issues in Michigan as the 2020 presidential election approaches.

Grover Easterling.
 
Justin Rogers is the literary outreach coordinator for Poets & Writers in Detroit. Contact him at Detroit@pw.org or on Twitter, @Detroitpworg.

Postcolonial Love Poem

Caption: 

“The rain will eventually come, or not. / Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds…” In this Mellon Foundation video, Natalie Diaz reads the title poem from her forthcoming collection, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). A Q&A with Diaz by Jacqueline Woodson appears in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Genre: 
Poetry
Tags: 
Natalie Diaz
Postcolonial Love Poem
2020
Graywolf Press
Mellon Foundation
March/April 2020

Angela So and Monica Sok

Caption: 

At Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Angela So and Monica Sok read from their work and talk about displacement, what it means to be children of refugees, and the search for home. Sok discusses her debut poetry collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), in “First” by Rigoberto González in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Tags: 
Monica Sok
A Nail the Evening Hangs On
Copper Canyon Press
2020
Angela So
Brazos Bookstore
March/April 2020

Poets Laureate of New Orleans

United States of Writing
2.12.20

What’s the history of poets laureate in your state or city? New Orleans doesn’t have a poet laureate but the state of Louisiana makes an appointment every two years. For Black History Month, I’m highlighting the past and present African American poets laureate of Louisiana. Through their poetry and service, these poets have led the way for the next generation of New Orleans writers and beyond.

Pinkie Gordon Lane (1989-1992)
I did not have the opportunity to meet Pinkie Gordon Lane before she died in 2008, but I have great admiration for her. Lane was the first African American poet laureate of Louisiana. Born in Philadelphia, Lane moved to Baton Rouge in the 1950s and became chair of the English Department at Southern University. Lane was also the director of an annual Black poetry festival in the 1970s that was a destination for writers such as Toni Morrison and Nikki Giovanni. Lane’s second book of poetry, The Mystic Female (1978), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1979. Her influence on New Orleans writers is unmeasurable.

Brenda Marie Osbey (2005-2007)
Of this short list, Brenda Marie Osbey is the only New Orleans native. I’ve met Osbey and heard her read several times in town. She captures New Orleans history with detailed precision in her writing. Summoning Our Saints: The Poetry and Prose of Brenda Marie Osbey (Lexington Books, 2019) is a new book of essays about her work and career edited by John Wharton Lowe. In-depth analysis of Black writers is not always readily available, and the essays in this collection thoroughly examine Osbey’s place in African American and Southern writing.

John Warner Smith (2019-2021)
John Warner Smith is a Cave Canem fellow, as am I, but we didn’t meet until we were both featured readers at the state’s library a few years ago during National Poetry Month. Smith is the first African American man to be appointed Louisiana poet laureate and I interviewed him last fall for this blog shortly after the announcement. His latest book, Our Shut Eyes: New and Selected Poems on Race in America, was published by MadHat Press last year and he currently teaches English at Southern University. Smith has only been the poet laureate for a few months, but I look forward to seeing how he’ll utilize the position to implement poetry throughout the state.

Let’s keep the conversation going: What should the role of a poet laureate be? Find me on Twitter, @NOLApworg.

Kelly Harris is the literary outreach coordinator for Poets & Writers in New Orleans. Contact her at NOLA@pw.org or on Twitter, @NOLApworg.

Sweet Emotion

The Time Is Now
2.11.20

In the Cut, seventy-eight new emotions are introduced, inspired by a theory that emotions are not just objective, biologically measurable states but are constructed interpretations of sensations affected by our cultures, expectations, and language. Writers, including Greg Jackson, Sara Nović, and Bryan Washington, name and describe new emotions like jealoushy: “The feeling of being jealous of someone while also having a crush on them,” and heartbreak adrenaline: “The strange feats of strength that can be accomplished after a devastating breakup.” Write a poem that revolves around a newly named emotion of your own invention, perhaps involving love, lust, or heartbreak. How does giving new language to a feeling expand your perspective?

Pages

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