Breathe

So I just returned from Chicago for the 2012 AWP Conference, and I’d love to do a full review of the trip but, alas, time to play catch up. But in a nutshell, here it is: I enjoyed seeing folks both near and far that I hadn’t seen in at least a year. Though I was ill for half the trip, I got to spend some necessary time alone. I think I may have went temporarily mad with all of the stimuli. I ran into a surly Walter Mosley. Attended Patricia Smith’s book release which was off the hook. Spent some necessary time with a new friend, fellow poet, grad student.

Chicago was absolutely beautiful with is slanted high rise buildings. The way the streets bleed from tourist to vernacular bluesy culture. Had one of my favorite meals in a place called a chicken shack. I loved the bubbly energy of the city. In fact as I arrive, there was a massive demonstration. Construction workers handed me leaflets on why I shouldn’t stay at the hotel I stayed at.

More than all of that, I got to see my peeps doing their thing–winning book prizes, leading and participating on panels, doing it big. I was on a lovely panel of current grad students talking about various ways to improve the MFA system. One of my favorite panels included a group of veteran music journalists who talked about the business and craft of music journalism. I really enjoyed it. I took notes.

Though I had a lot of fun, it feels to good to be home in D.C. where it’s considerably warmer, where I feel a lot more in my element.

Summer is Here

My spring semester concluded right before May 1st. All and all, my first year of graduate school was successful. The thing of it is that with so many deadlines and competing deadlines I found myself unable to get inside the right headspace to discover, play, and write the things I wanted to write. So, here I am with some money in the bank, lots of time on my hand, and opportunity.

It occurred to me the other day that having a lot of free time can be a dangerous thing for me. While I crave freedom, I work well within some kind of structure. Thus, I’m creating my own writing projects and deadlines. I’m also looking for an easy part-time job to bring in some extra dough.  But as for production I have an ambitious list of things I want to do this summer:

1. Work on a couple poetic sequences

2. Rewrite my play about Nina Simone

3. Research on fatherhood

4. Get steady work from online and print magazines

5. Get physically fit.

Things sounds like a lot, huh?

5 Things I’ve Been Thinking About/Doing

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted something. I’m so grateful for those of you who still read this blog. I can see that there’s a steady stream of visitors everyday.

Here are some things I’ve learned/done/or am working on since the last time I’ve posted (which was back in January, yikes!)

1. I’m trying so hard to learn to be patient with my writing. I believe in our click-of-a-mouse paced world, we all want to hurry up and finish something and sent it off. I’ m learning to be okay with this NOT being the case for my writing.

2. My editorial internship with The Root will conclude at the close of April. I can’t believe 5 months have gone by so fast. I’ve learned a number of things that I know will enrich my flirtatious relationship with journalism.

3. I’ve been thinking a lot about Father’s Day. My daughter turns 7 this year. Though the journey is hardly over, I can’t believe it’s been almost 7 years.

4. I’ve learned to be grateful for everything I have. It’s so easy to complain but it’s really amazing to wake up with a sense of purpose and to do exactly what I wanted to do since I was a little boy.

5. I’ve been tweeting. You can follow me @abdulali_. There are lovely film strips from 1988 of me, compliments of my Uncle Martin.

Fall is Here

First, hear is one of my favorite tunes about autumn. It’s a cover that Miles Davis did in ’64.

There’s a lot going on at once. The goal is to surrender myself (or my literary voice) to do some new things. Yet, I’m interested in working on a continuum, if that makes sense. It’s been heartening to get to know a few of my colleagues outside of the workshop. There’s so much experience that we all bring (or leave) on/off the page.

I need to be work on an ekphrastic poem. If the rain slows, I may go see the Basquiat indie film.

Here’s something I did recently. It wants to be a sonnet. Here’s the first stanza.  What do you think?

Greatest Hit

        Tupac Shakur 6/71-9/96

My belly pressed on the speakers before

you were born. It was seventy-one, Ike

& Tina howled Proud Mary. I was Mary

you were proud, bigger than salvation.

A colleague of mine and I had a lengthy conversation last night about the need to challenge each other to write the poems we’re afraid to write. In any earlier poem, I mentioned how torn I feel in so many ways. One of the things I mentioned was the way I was raised to be a ‘respectable Negro” a credit to my race while simultaneously supressing the urge to do something absolutely wild and inappropriate like run out into the streets screaming motherfucker. So I was challenge to write a poem where I engage that other side without regard for the workshop since I won’t be presenting it in the workshop setting. It’s moments like these that I’m so grateful.

I’ve also resolved to pay more attention to form. Not necessarily traditional forms but form in general. As form can help you get to the what you are trying to say because the how is already decided.

Looking for Poetry Outside of Poems

One of my favorite professors at Howard University, whom I’m still in touch with, once said that I should never look for poetry in poems: go out into the world and discover something that stimulates you. I try to live by this maxim. The entire week I was in New York, I carried my notebook with me and created a breathing ticker tape. Anything and everything that caught my attention I wrote it down, forcing myself to give it a name. This is the work of a writer, particularly a poet: to give names to things that aren’t obvious.

This is what I wrote my first day as I was staying with my pops who has a place on Far Rockaway Beach:

waves crashing

rain, wind

sea salt

music, grafitti

home

white castle

water running through earth

cemetaries crowded with chipped teeth…

This is what makes writing so interesting to me. How do I name something that is the result of two different worlds colliding?

I asked my Dad to accompany me to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and it was one of the most stimulating museums I’d ever visited. There were about four floors. There was modern art, of course, but also avant-garde experimental work that I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

 See for yourself:

 Is this art? And what are the standards these days?

Two Women Staring at Each Other

To see the rest of this post, click here, Tidal Basin Review Blog

Framing 2009, Envisioning 2010

Tzyna Pynchback, one of my good writer-friends and I decided to have a conversation about 2009 in all of its beauty and ugliness. We examine the personal and the public and what I think this blog is all about–interrogating culture. What it all means and what can we gather from the music, films, and books that build our cultural lives. This will be the last post for 2009.

abdul ali:  Tzyna, thanks so much for talking to me about 2009. We’re less than three days out of this year….decade!

 Tzynya:  and i want to say good riddance, but with love and respect for all the decade has taught us

 aa:  what are some of those things this almost decade have taught you? I’ve learned so much about faith–not so much in an institution but in the divine and how we’re a part of that spirit world. We have the power to manifest our visions

 t:  this decade has been one of personal transformation. i think it’s important for individuals and for artists to be aware of their ability and need to be a changeling, and to embrace reinvention.

 aa:  can you speak more on the idea of changeling?

 t:  at the start of this decade I was a messy twenty-something– half wife, half mother, leftover daughter–even worse, I was a messy writer without focus.

 aa:  I always feel like a messy writer without focus

 t:  at the end of this decade, I am a better writer because I better understand who I am and who I am not.

 aa:  that’s awesome…

 t:  tell me, do you feel 2009 was a profound ending to this decade or just more of the same?

 aa:  hmm…well as my friend says, 2010 is the actual bookend to the decade but I think there’s always the changing same. There was so much hope and excitement around Obama and it’s difficult to see so much of that waiver. But, I’ve always felt that New Years offers a sense of possibility

 t:  I think 2010 will be the birth of some collective awareness for people globally (and now I sound like a new age wanna-be guru).  I started to feel this way at the year’s half way mark.  2009 was ripe with tumult: hope riding shotgun with fear, despair, and longing.

aa:  I suppose it’s what we make it (or don’t make it) i the end. But, you have to admit there were so serious things that happened this year. Michael Jackson’s passing was huge and it was interesting to reflect on why it was so huge.

 t:  his death came around the time I reconnected with my first love from high school.  I learned of MJ’s death via txt message sent from a friend in St. Louis, just as I had been found by a former lover on Facebook. That first night of his death, I sat up most of the night singing all the songs from his Thriller album with my brother.

 t:  I remembered sitting in the living room of my parents house waiting for the world premier of the music viedo Thriller, I remembered my brothers, my excitement at being the only family on the block to record that video on VHS.

 aa:  What does his songs mean/represent to you? For me, they signal the slow co-option of black culture by cultural forces. That’s what his life reminds me of. But his music celebrates life. I really enjoyed it. Still do. He was a genius.

 t:  MJ’s songs were the soundtrack of my tweens–that wonderful time when you just aware of everything around you and everything is still beautiful. MJ reminds me of being 12 years old and having a crush on the boy across the street and daydreaming of my first kiss, before I understood this world is not safe.

 aa:  I remember black and white. Thriller was played on TV when music videos began to take off but what I recall most was how lavish his lifesyle was. He seemed bigger than anyone, even himself. I wonder was that the media’s doing or his own orchestration?

t:  Maybe both? There has to be a comfort hiding behind spectacle.

 aa:  ha ha. MJ reminds us of the images of black people on and off the camere.I continue to be unimpressed with what’s happening with Black Cinema, at least as far as American black movies go. Skin was an indie film about a South African situation that was compelling.

 t:  Recently I saw the film Yesterday, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film (note:  i will check the exact award title) amazing story of a woman in a small African village living with AIDS and trying to get her young daughter into school.

aa:  Why is it films about black folks in other spaces seem more compelling than what’s happening here in the states?

t:  I am underwhelmed by what passes as Black Cinema in this country.

aa:  Absolutely, by why is this? Black Americans are a dynamic people. Why isn’t our film showing this?

t:  I watched The Jefferson’s the other night on television, and George replied to another character, “Nigga please!”, I was shocked, and then suddenly I was not.  So much of what is on television, in fiction, on film today is a high-tech rehash of the same outcry from three decades ago.

 aa:  I’m not so bothered by “Nigga please! I am, however, disturbed to see improvements in so many aspects of black American living but with our art it seems as it it’s frozen, stuck in a time machine. I rarely see myself reflected in film. In fact, I see more of myself in the films like “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader” that have no black people in the film. This is painful to admit.

 t:  I look at performers like George Lopez and consider the arc of his comedic career and what that reflects for Mexican-Amercians.  Lopez’s new late night show is the spin on the Arsenio Hall show from the 90′s, almost twenty years later how far has Black entertainment evolved?

 We talk about film often, the two of us, and so often the films we discuss, we love, are not Black films.

 aa:  Not very much. There’s been a paradigm shift. You cannot assume that just because you throw a script together with some black actors that ALL black people will love it.

We’ve become more sophisticated as an audience. I wonder if black writers and directors should eventually stop writing “black” stories as they’re so ridiculous.

 t:  Yes!

 aa: and just write good stories. which will mean we need more visionary casting directors so that a black actor can get casted in a script that calls for an actor not  black person necessarily

 t:  one of my favorite films this decade was “Closer” with Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Judd Law.  The dialogue is sexy and the characters and their relationships and interactions with one another are loving, and wretched, and loathsome–real.  I am so immersed in the film, and the characters, the fact they are not black is of no concern or consideration.  I see the faces of my friends, of myself in these characters and situations.

Often when I am watching a black American film, their blackness never leaves me, it’s always worn on the top layer of skin. Publisher’s Weekly recently had an article that speaks to that in publishing.

 aa:  do you mean that their humanity dosn’t show—only their blackness?

 t:  I think the writing formula for too long has been:  1)black; 2)woman/man/child/

 aa:  So, after all is said and don what do you think  as writers can do in our small way to contribute to the change we want to see?

 t:  There are too many stories on screen, on page where the emphasis is how, why, when this black man/woman responds to a particular catalyst.

Tell the stories we want to read.

 aa:  or maybe we should write the stories we want to read and see to quote Toni Morrison.

 t:  yes, you know i stole that quote from ms. Morrison lol exactly

Publishers Weekly printed a great article on AA Books in Today’s Marketplace. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6711430.html

t:  Highlighting what some refer to as the ghetto of publishing: major publishing houses with black imprints. books by, for, and about black people.

t:  I do think it comes down to change, reinvention.  Black art is ready, dying for reinvention.

aa:  I wonder if it needs to die in order to have a rebirth or renaissance…

 t:  a little death is not always a bad thing. it has not gone gentle into that good night, lol

Flashback Friday

Lately I’ve been working on a number of poems that deal with when I was a kid. Belive it or not, those are the most difficult poems to write. I just dusted off a poem that I started two years ago. Some folks liked when I read it a few times but inside I knew it wasn’t finished but I couldn’t figure out “what” exactly needed work. It turns out I hadn’t resolved a few things about growing up. And, I may never, really resolve some those things.

For instance, I really miss how religion or the institution of religion was central to my youth. Whether it was going to Church with my grandparents or selling Final Call newspapers as a junior FOI or taking my shahadah as a teenager. Those were some very formative and special times. But unfortunately, as I got a little older, I began to notice so many doubles that it became impossible for me to “belong” to any group who spends most of their time “seeming” righteous. I guess you could say, I’ve grown cynical. Yet, I consider myself a staunch “believer.”

I don’t know, I’m pretty sure there’s a happy medium. These days writing has almost taken the place of religion. It’s my opening to tap into the divine. So much of writing has to do with being a good person and growing and being courageous. (at least for me it does).

It’s difficult to be areligious, particularly when you have a uber-religious name as I do. At least once a week, I’m forced into a conversation about the middle east conflict or am I a practicing Muslim. Though, I love my name, I find it’s hard to put certain parts of my past behind when it has become so central to who I am. I’m reminded of the line from Erykah Badu’s song “Me” ,

Sometimes its hard to move you see

when you growing publicly

but if I have to choose between

I choose me.

I think the chief problem for me is that I can dismiss any of the things that gnaw at me or cause anxiety because I’m a sum of all of those things. I joked the other day that I can’t really be prejudiced towards anyone. I try not to participate in the “hate whitey” talks with my friends because my grandmother is of European descent, and my greatgrandmother is Jewish. And, though they didn’t raise my mom, I’m always curious about what if they did. Would that have mended some of the broken shelves inside this writer’s chest?

The poet Thomas Sayers Ellis once teased that I’m the Poet Laureate of family matters. Maybe I headed in that direction. I can’t be the only one with family issues.

Catching My Breath

It feels like a week since I’ve had time to post.  But there’s good reason, I’ve been busy. I started a new gig with Split This Rock working with Sarah Browning & company (Melissa, Katherine, Jaime, Alicia, and Reggie), activist-poets based here in Washington. Here’s a short interview I did with Sarah on a previous blog, Poetic Notes, some years back.

Aside from all of the enthusiasm associated with landing a new gig, I’ve been reading a lot. I must have five or six different books spread across my bed. There’s Carolyn Forche’s Country Between Us which is growing on me. I’m not sure if I’ve encountered a narrative poet with this kind of force and beauty and high drama in my reading life.

There’s also Michael Harper’s Dear John, Dear Coltrane. His poems are sexy, not all cerebral like so many “name” poets. I found his poems about the death of his son especially touching. For some reason, I’m drawn to poems written by male poets, especially black male poets, that we often don’t read or hear about. I like those vulnerable poems that we once thought was the exclusive soverign of female writing. Also, there are new and fresh subject positions that Harper creates for this voice. This is also important. So many poets are writing from their own voices and not necessarily creating voices in the traditional way.

Oh, and I finally read for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. Shange has an awesome ear and command of the language. Yet I found it a chore reading the text. The idea of this choreopoem is exquisite and it gave me some ideas for my own dramatic writing. I’d like to see this staged. Plays are truly meant to be seen up on stage. And since there are so few stage directions, the director has free reign in producing this work. It’ll be interesting to see what Tyler Perry does (or doesn’t do) with this play.

I also read most of Best African American Essays 2009. I found the collection to be satisfying, particularly the essay written by Walter Mosley about his mother, Gray Shawl; and I thoroughly enjoyed James McBride’s Hip Hop Planet.

 My reading gets scattered and all over the place but this is how it is when I’m not writing. I need to draw every source that comes my way. When I browse the shelves of my neighborhood library, I grab what catches my eye. And usually I strike oil between the pages.

I just started reading Tara Bett’s Arc & Hue and plan to post something in the next few days about the book as Ms. Betts will be in town soon. I’ve also solicited things from a few friends so stay tuned. If you’d like to write for Words Matter, drop me a line. The numbers have been really good. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to ensure more regular posts.

Thanks for your patience as I catch my breath.

Lots to Celebrate…

I just received my notification letter that I am one of ten recipients awarded the Artist Fellowship grant from the DC Commission on the Arts for Literature. 

To say that I’m ecstatic is an understatement. Nonetheless, there is this heavy feeling that I need to make good use of this award for the advancement of my craft but also in using my craft as a service to the various communities in DC. My proposal was to work on a manuscript of poems surrounding the lore of Washington D.C. I thought in working with different groups I could witness various stories from different angles via Washingtonian first-hand accounts and workshops. So this goes back to my idea of writer as anthropologist. This also builds on the work I’ve done with photographer, Mig Dooley, in our Washington Caravan exhibit that was on display over the summer at the American Poetry Museum. 

I’ll keep a ticker tape of what I’m doing and when. For starters, I would like to make a trip to the UK next summer to discover Literary Black Britain. This is something that I think would enhance my view of black writing. In addition, I can share some of my poems about Washington and my native land, New York City.

Lastly, I’d like to extend a big congratulations to all of my fellow writers who also won this distinction. I should be learning in the coming days who those writers are. Drop me a line if you’re reading.

Discovering Literary Black Britain

It all started with a postcard: “Think you know British Lit? Think Again” so read a  black-and-white photograph of a pensive bespectacled young man. A private conversation began with that picture. What do I really know about British Literature? And where is the black voice(s) in that narrative?

When Courttia Newland (www.courttianewland.com) was invited to Georgetown University to participate in the UK writer-in-residence program a few years ago, he’d authored of six novels, a short story collection, articles for magazines, and written for television and stage. After some research, it became clear that Newland is a star in the ever-growing constellation of black British writers. This writer isn’t at all like what one might imagine a black British writer to be. There’s a Caribbean cadence to his British accent and his gait has the swagger of an MC who just went platinum.  

Music for the Off-Key, a short story collection, is Mr. Newland’s most recent book. Kevin Le Gendre, a book reviewer for The Independent, a popular newspaper in London writes “while black characters are at the heart of each story, they are not confined to “standard” black contexts.”  

Mr. Newland’s current project is co-editing an anthology titled Tell Tales Volume 4: The Global Village (www.telltales.co.uk/)

I met Newland at a reading on the campus of Howard University; He was invited to speak to my class about his work and that of several others across the Black Atlantic. Since then, he and I have maintained a regular correspondence. When Newland returned home [London]  he got married to his Sharmila Chauhan, also a writer, and their son, Senenti, soon followed. 

What follows is an excerpt of a larger conversation Newland and I had about his life and the political consequences of being a Black writer in Britain.

Courttia Newland: I just want to say something about the whole black British cultural thing. We’re always a little hidden as a culture. If you watch The Wire, Idris Elba, a main actor in the first few series is black British. Also the actor in Spike Lee’s film Inside Man, performing beside Denzel Washington, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Melanie Brown (aka Scary Spice) of the Spice Girls.

We’re there. People don’t really know what it means to observe a Black British person. We’re quite diverse.

Q: Can you tell me a bit about what your initial reception to your visit at Georgetown and Howard Universites?

CN: I’d have to say every time I’ve been to the U.S., I found it brilliant…I [went] to a U.S. high school [Duke Ellington School of the Arts] talking about English slang, black British slang, trading words back and forth, and they were excited.. I read stories about working class black Britains and they connected. It’s amazing to me.

Q: What was it like growing up in London in the 1980s?

CN: By the mid-1980s, I grew up inner city London, Shepherd’s Bush, West London, where the BBC buildings are. W12′s the postal code. I was born in Hammersmith, West London. My mum moved me to a suburb, Uxbridge, which was predominately white. Then we moved back to Shepherd’s Bush when I was around 8 or 9. I loved growing up there; I spent my teenage years living in Shepherd’s Bush.

It was a really happy time. I lived through the Golden Age of hip hop. It was an amazing time. It was obviously a different experience than being in New York. It wasn’t that concentrated. But I remember when Eric B and Rakim first came out. And a lot of people came to London. A Tribe called Quest. Public Enemy.

 Q: In your younger years you visited Barbados where your mother’s side is from. They called you “British” and you said, “No, I’m not.” Tell me a bit about how you define your identity?

CN: It’s a strange thing. In the 70s and 80s there were no black British. I was Afro-Caribbean. I always called myself West Indian or Caribbean. It was only going to Barbados where my mum is from that open my eyes. This experience is shared by a lot of black British people. When you visit the West Indies they don’t see you as West Indian at all.  There was the shock of, wow. . . I’m actually not West Indian. So who am I? I think people are still grappling with that. Though I have to say, not all of us in Britain are from the Caribbean. Some are African, European, South American, etc.

 Q: Why do you believe many of us have heard of Zadie Smith but not necessarily you?

CN: The reason you hear about Zadie is largely because of promotion. And partly, because, in the publishing industry there’s only one black editor that I know of.  People who are published are mainly handpicked from the big universities, Oxford and Cambridge … They are deemed to speak to “other” people and they’re pushed for that ability.

 Q: So they are viewed as “cross over”?

CN: Absolutely. We have a black fiction section in London but Zadie is never featured in that section because she won’t talk about being black in that way. It’s better if you don’t talk about race over here. Things are different. They say we don’t see color in England, which is rubbish. England has a very difficult time dealing with its colonial past. Not to say, the States doesn’t have its problems but at least in the States you will say, this has happened. If you mention race or the like in the UK, you will be looked at as a troublemaker.

Q: What are some ways that American readers and art lovers can discover your work and the work of your peers?

 CN: It’s a weird time for black British writers in this country. In some ways, more of us are being published. But, it has a more commercial slant. Mid-1990s, it was in fashion so publishing houses were publishing a lot of writers. Of that wave of writers that came out in the mid-1990s there’s maybe two of us still getting published. It’s hard to follow writers when they stop at book two.

 I can give you a few names to look up, Alex Wheatle, Stephen Thompson, Leone Ross. A new writer, Gemma Weekes (her book is set in Brooklyn and London) whole genre thing. Some people make a difference between literary fiction and popular fiction; I think it’s all valid as long as it’s good.

Abdul Ali is the editor of Words Matter.  He resides in Washington, D.C.