Poetry Will Occupy the Nation’s Capital

Split This Rock, a progressive literary festival, will convene March 22-25 to honor the tenth anniversary of poet-activist June Jordan’s death and rekindle the OWS movement in the nation’s capital.

The biannual literary festival has evolved from a decidedly local group of D.C.-based poet-activists (DC Poets Against the War) who spoke out against the double wars that began in the Bush administration. It has grown into a world-class literary festival that’s considered a leader in the progressive literary movement.

“With activists in the streets all over the world,” says Sarah Browning, director of Split This Rock, “what better time to remember our sister-in-the-struggle, the visionary, revolutionary poet June Jordan, who died too young–10 years ago.”

Imagine Woodstock, only more urbane and diverse, instead of music (though some poets would argue that their verse is in fact musical) there will be poems of provocation and witness being mouthed from one of the most diverse poetry offerings–anywhere. The festival is multicultural, openly political, queer-friendly, and situated in handpicked facilities that are wheelchair accessible.

The complete article is published on Ms. magazine’s blog.

By the Way, Sanaa Lathan is Back on Stage

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Sanaa Lathan has fashioned an enviable acting career going back to the 1990s. All hands down, her most beloved movie is Love & Basketball. Since then she’s amassed an impressive resume with a diversity of characters in film, television, and theater. Theater has been the recent focus of her career, a throwback to her training at the prestigious Yale School of Drama, which earned her a Tony award nomination for her portrayal of the sassy Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun.

theGrio spoke with Sanaa Lathan about her recent hiatus from films to focus on once-in-a-lifetime roles in theater, what its like being a black actress in Hollywood today (setting the record straight about a couple of things), and what she’s working on next.

By the Way, Meet Vera Starks is playing at Second Stage Theater in New York City. The play which opens on May 9th, pokes fun at Hollywood while paying homage to black actresses like Theresa Harris who had so much more to give Hollywood but spent her career playing maids in mediocre films rather than playing leading ladies that their talent deserved. By the Way, Meet Vera Starks was written by Lynn Nottage, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her play Ruined in 2009.

TheGrio: How did you come across the role of Vera Starks? It seems almost handwritten just for you?

Last year I was in London doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Lynn was there doing a play. We talked and she offered me the workshop for the play. I was excited to play the character from the moment I read it. What a great character to play that deals with real issues that we deal with even today and in the industry.

How did you prepared for this role — emotionally, physically, spiritually? I know this is a historical piece, any research you had to do?

We watched a lot of 1930s Foucault movies. There’s a great one called The Flame of New Orleans. There’s an actress named Theresa Harris who plays in this movie. Like Vera Stark, she made a career of playing maids. We watched a lot of 1930s screwball comedies. Thank God for YouTube! A lot of Ed Sullivan type shows with divas like Lucille Ball, Pearl Bailey, Judy Garland, and Betty Davis. 

 So what’s it like working in Hollywood? For the most part Hollywood seems pretty segregated. I saw many parallels with the play and the situation of black actors in Hollywood today.

All you have to do is look at what’s being put out there to see that Hollywood is like the last frontier. There’s definitely is a lot of inequality in Television and Hollywood. The one thing I’d love to see when I go to the movies is to see movies that reflect the world that I live in. Now when I go to the movies, I don’t see that. All I ask is that movies start telling the stories of the entire experience of America.

Read the full interview on theGrio.

Tyler Perry Vs. Spike Lee

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark!

Searching for the Old Erykah

For the better part of the past 48 hours, I’ve been consumed with listening to Part II of the New AmErykah trilogy. Listening for what is being said, how it’s put together, how it differs from the previous albums. Trying to figure out what I feel about the “Window Seat” video. (I dig the song, by the way.) Measuring all of this into what’s suppose to be a review of the album. I feel that the whole album is now eclipsed by the video.

I decided to let my draft of the review sit for a while and I’ll come back to it tomorrow morning. The important part is that I do what I feel any culture writer (I dare not use the word critic) should do–to see and contextualize, search for meaning, implications, etc.

I pray that’s what I’m doing. It’s very difficult to write objectively about things you’re passionate about. We’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I’d like to say for the record that I miss the headwrap wearing Erykah. The down to earth one. The one who kept her clothes on. The one who’d break out into a chuckle out of shyness. I guess I miss the less eccentric Ms. Badu.

Has anyone heard this song, Annie Don’t Wear No Panties?

I’ll post the review for TheRoot once it’s all final.

Erykah Badu

I just got an e-mail from Erykah Badu’s publicist. There seems to be a lot of hype surrounding her latest project: New AmErykah, Part Two: The Return of the Ankh. I can’t wait. More than the album, I can’t wait to meet Ms. badu in person. I wrote about Ms. Badu for The Root back in the day.

Here’s a clip from Ms. Badu on Def Poetry Jam.

Haiti On My Mind. . .

 

Passing this along from Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week Archive:

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

they took off
with our torn branches
beheaded our future
stuck our breath up on pikes
for all the world to see

we are a living dead example
of what happens to warriors who―
in lieu of fighting for white men’s countries―
dare to fight
for their own lives

during carnival
we could care less
about our bloated empty bellies
where there are voices
we are dancing

where there is vodou
we are horses
where there are drums
we are possessed
with joy & stubborn jamboree

but when the makeshift
trumpet player
runs out of rhythmic breath
the only sound left is guts
grumbling

& we sigh
to remember
that food
& freedom
are not free

is haiti really free
if our babies die starving?
if we cannot write our names
read our rights keep
our leaders in their seats?

can we be free
really? if our mothers are mud? if dead
columbus keeps cursing us
& nothing changes
when we curse back

we are a proud resilient people
though we return to dust daily
salt gray clay with hot black tears
savor snot cakes
over suicide

we are hungry
creative people
sip bits of laughter
when we are thirsty
dance despite

this asthma
called debt
congesting
legendarily liberated
lungs

- Lenelle Moïse

Lenelle Moïse hailed “a masterful performer” by GetUnderground.com, is an award-winning “culturally hyphenated pomosexual” poet, playwright and performance artist. She creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about Haitian-American identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality and resistance. In addition to featured performances in venues as diverse as the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations General Assembly Hall and a number of theatres, bookstores, cafes and activist conferences, Lenelle regularly performs her acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show WOMB-WORDS, THIRSTING at colleges across the United States.

····
Moïse will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism – four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

This poem is reprinted from Split This Rock’s blog–where you can find other great poems and poetry news <http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com>

January is Here…

It’s been a while since I had time to sit and give this blog the attention it deserves. But here are a few things that are going on:

• Split This Rock Poetry Festival is hosting a fundraiser on Jan. 18th. R. Dwayne Betts will be headlining the event along with the DC Youth Slam Team. Hope to see you there.
• I’ll be reading poems at Bus Boys at 14th and V on Sunday, January 17th at 4pm. This will mark the fourth year of the Sunday Kind of Love reading series. The cast are all twenty-something DC area poets. I’m delighted to be reading with Danielle Evennou and Adam Pellegrini.
• This month also marks the release of the new anthology of DC Poetry: Full Moon on K Street edited by Kim Roberts. I’m very honored to be a part of this anthology of such distinguished writers. I believe I’m the youngest poet listed in the anthology as the content is in chronological order by birth year.
• The Hurston/Wright Foundation will be hosting a very special event on Friday, January 15th at 6:30 pm at the Charles Sumner School. It will be a discussion of MLK’s landmark speeches and their relevance for today.
• Finally, I joined a writing group today. I was suspicious of writing groups for a long time but I’ll keep you posted on my progress. (I won’t be focusing on poetry in the group; Instead, I’ll be flexing my muscles at nonfiction and fiction.)

Obama’s Speech on Unemployment

In October, I left my job or I was fired. My position was terminated. However you slice it my future was uncertain. Surprisingly, I was clear-sighted through it all. I remember it was the tail-end of October. The trees were shedding much like the big and small companies around the nation. I was grateful that payday was the following week so that November’s rent wouldn’t be a concern. As a child, I moved around often. Being jobless didn’t scare me as much as having to telephone my landlord and explain what I had hoped to be a private moment of shame.

As soon as I collected my things from my office to begin my new life as a twenty-five year old with more time on my hands than I ever had in a long time, several questions popped in my head. What will I do about health insurance? What if my five year old gets sick? What if I get sick? What if I didn’t find anything? Did I have the stamina to go through the whole process of applying for unemployment or worst, social services?

As President Obama gears up for his speech on unemployment, here are some items I’d like to see included in the discussion:

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