I’ve just finished teaching my Urban Poetry workshop with Oakland Word and feel very grateful to everybody at Oakland Public Library, most especially Kenji Liu, for this chance to share my love of poetry with all these fine writers.

Our classes ended up being wonderful sessions of generative exercises, open conversation about poetics and city, and great talks with visiting poets Tara Betts (who came through one weekend between VONA sessions) and Barbara (who shed light on the publication process and her take on urban poetics). More than anything, through all these conversations about poetics, I was able to add a new personal definition for poetry: Poetry is generosity.

Yeah, some might say risk or truth or expression; some might even say language or song or act; and I might agree with some of those definitions but now the first thing that will come to mind is generosity. How poetry is a gift, passed from the page and meant to be shared with voice, to be given freely without asking for nothing more than a piece of time to help in the passing. Yeah, overly romantic for sure but I like when I feel this way about poetry.

Now I’m looking forward to switching roles and not being the instructor who talks so much but the student who is listening as the writers of the Urban Poetry class, Claire Light’s fiction & non-fiction writers, and Amir Rabiyah’s Intro to Poetry class share their work at the Oakland Public Library. C’mon through, it’s going to be great!

Oakland Speaks! An Oakland Word student poetry reading
July 29 · 6:00pm – 7:30pm

Join us at the Oakland Public Library’s Main Branch for Oakland Word’s final student reading as we celebrate the poets of our June-July free workshops.

Students from Amir Rabiyah’s Speak On It (Main) and Oscar Bermeo’s Urban Poetry (Chavez) workshops will be getting on the mic to share their poetry, and we’ll get to hear students from Claire Light’s workshop of continuing fiction and non-fiction writers.

…
Come through to support our new and emerging poets!

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FREE
Wheelchair accessible

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Free copies of Oakland Word’s In Your Ear anthology will be available, and possibly a chapbook of the June-July workshops’ poetry.

Five years ago I was in Albuquerque, NM, for the National Poetry Slam. I didn’t participate as a member of a poetry slam team but I did MC one bout, picked judges and handled scoring for another bout, and was on the Rules Committee which means I had a 360° view of what happens at poetry slam on the highest level. Stuff folks don’t normally see when attending a slam and shenanigans that surprised even some slam veterans and enough to confirm that I was ready to move away from slam. Not because I was sour on slam but because I saw what happened when writers decided to invest all of their creative energies towards the purpose of winning a slam (over and over again in some cases).

The good news is that despite the slam drama, I left Albuquerque in total love with poetry. I was surrounded by friends who came for poetic camaraderie and viewed the poetic competition as nothing more than diversion (which is what it really is). We saw some bouts, talked real talk, and shared on every open mic we could find. So that’s the picture you see here. Me going all out on the Latino Poets Showcase open mic, reciting poems from memory, and sending the signals out to the ether.

And here I am, back in ‘burque five years later gathering up those signals not for nostalgia’s sake but to take an honest inventory and see what I can keep from five years ago. It also means discarding the poetic baggage from five years ago: how I talked so much smack about getting published but had only sent out a few submissions; how I kept talking big about getting a book but not really working on a manuscript; how I thought poetry should bring all these things to my door solely because I wanted them. Yeah, to the curb with that.

On the good foot, I do remember a poet who thought a poem could make a change, who looked to gather like minded folks, who was real happy penning a successful line, a poet deeply in love with poetry itself. Five years later, I am still that same poet. Not perfect, still got a lot of work to do (notice the book thing still hasn’t jumped off) but more than anything, I’m more honest with myself about my process. I can identify my faults and am trying every day to be a better person and let the poetry follow.

It feels like I’m in some good company to do that with kind of reflection. CantoMundo, even in the few short hours we’ve been together, feels like it wants to keep an eye on Latin@ poetry’s past by honoring our pioneers and their work, celebrate our present accomplishments, and fuse both visions to create a better future for Latin@ poetics. I like it and feel incredibly blessed to be here at the forefront of necessary conversations with a focus on strong work.

Still, I can’t help but think of Oakland, the city that has taken care of me these last five years, and hope for the best. Right now, anarchists and vandals are tearing apart the Downtown region and moving steady north. Taking a justified anger and misdirecting it towards local merchants and residents. This is not Oakland. Those are not the residents. Not the Oakland I know. Not the one I live in everyday.

And can poetry do anything to stop this? I think not.

Can it change the future? Remind us we’ve fought this battle before and came out with not only our dignity but also a positive lasting change? Yes, poetry can do that.

Poetry can be the past, present and future of a beautiful struggle. At least I hope. That’s my reflection.

Pen Oakland: Hold The Light Fundraiser for Haiti, Chile and China

On Friday, April 30th from 6-9 PM at the Islamic Cultural Center, 1433 Madison Street in Oakland, Bay Area poets will gather in support of the men, women and children of Haiti and Chile.

For more information READ ON or contact Kim McMillon at (510) 681-5652

Deep Oakland is excited to announce the publication of several new chapbooks and projects, along with a release party on November 19, organized by Charles Legere, in celebration of Deep Oakland editions.

On Thursday, November 19, please join us at 21 Grand in Oakland, at 7:00 for short readings by:
Adam Cornford
Samantha Giles
Dan Thomas Glass
Javier Huerta
Charles Legere
Barbara Jane Reyes

We’ll also be projecting photographs from Meg Escudé’s collaboration with Charlie Legere, Dan Thomas Glass’s 880 series, and Rebecca VanDeVoort’s series focused on gas stations in Oakland. There’ll be a DJ in the 21 Grand house, Alex Benson. And you know what that means: dancing!

ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN & LATIN@ POETRY NIGHT
August 20th
8-10 pm
The Nest
200 2nd St
Oakland, CA
FREE!

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Mochi cuernos? Horchata boba? Soy chicken adobo? Tapatio maguro sushi? Teka ceviche?

What happens when we bring together 5 great Asian Pacific American and Latina/o poets in one room?

Find out as we enter the linguistic worlds of:

OSCAR BERMEO
MAI DOAN
KENJI C. LIU
BARBARA JANE REYES
VICKIE VÉRTIZ

Join us in The Nest with artist ADIA MILLETT, whose latest brilliant installation will be our environment.

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BIOS

OSCAR BERMEO is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest and Heaven Below. Recent poems appear in BorderSenses, In the Grove and Spindle, among others. Oscar is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own), IWL (Intergenerational Writers Lab) and VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation) poetry fellow. He lives in Oakland with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.

MAI DOAN likes mangoes and sticky things wrapped in banana leaves. Her experiences growing up Vietnamese/Mexican in and out of a Californian suburb known for its white supremacy has deeply influence the intent and content of her writing. She finds voice through her poetry and with it, seeks to break down borders and recreate connection, within and outside of herself. Her work can be found in the Spring 2009 Cipactli: La Raza Arts and Literature Journal as well as the 2009 Intergenerational Writers Workshop online anthology Flick of My Tongue.

KENJI LIU is a 1.5 generation Japanese-born Taiwanese American expatriate of New Jersey suburbia. He holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Arising from his work as an activist, educator and cultural worker, his writing explores the politics of identity, migration, race, gender, memory, history, mourning, joy and everyday small occurrences. Kenji’s poetry chapbook You Left Without Your Shoes is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. His writing has also appeared in Tea Party Magazine, Kartika Review, and the 2009 Intergenerational Writer’s Workshop Anthology called Flick of My Tongue.

ADIA MILLET: Deeply embedded in a series of metaphors and dark visual poetry, Adia Millett’ s changing installations suggest a story of a delicate transition from loss to potential love. Her works examine the beauty of impermanence, the power of the unknown, and the inevitable illusion of innocence. In the artist’s studio, symbolic gestures, objects and sounds convey an abstracted reality where the viewer is asked to fill in the blanks. Millett will be working on a short film project and a series of installations over the course of her two-month residency.

Adia Millett has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions at venues. She earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, 2000; and a BFA from the University of California, Berkeley, 1997.

BARBARA JANE REYES was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Reyes is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications. She is adjunct professor in Philippine Studies at USF, and she lives with her husband, the poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA.

VICKIE VÉRTIZ is a writer, born and raised in Los Angeles, whose work is largely informed by the urban magical. Vickie’s poems can be found in Mujeres de Maiz and in the 2008 Intergenerational Writer’s Workshop Anthology called, “I Saw My Ex at a Party.” She lives in San Francisco.

Culture Clash rocked it last night at the Oakland Museum. True theater artists, they didn’t let the fact that only two of the three troupe members were present (Richard Montoya wasn’t able to make the show) or that their new book, Oh, Wild West!: Three New Plays, wasn’t ready for sale keep them from delivering a great show for the standing-room-only James Moore Theater.

Giving us a sample of previous work, Culture Clash explored what it is to be an American living in Miami (Radio Mambo), San Diego (Bordertown) and Washington D.C. (Anthems). Each story coming from a new perspective of what the “ideal” America is and then that perspective shifting within the stories. Noe, a Salvadorian immigrant living in D.C., wonders what happened to the America from Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and why he’s living in the America of Good Times and The Jeffersons. wonders why he didn’t learn more English back home and why his (presumably American born) son is speaking in a whole different language (“Chill out, playah, I’m hangin in da crib.”) that is nothing like the English Noe sees on TV. We all know Noe, the put down immigrant who wants America to return to the status-quo of his imagination, refusing social change because he can’t find a place for himself and his family in that re-imagined America, this is why social reform in the community is an up-hill battle and Culture Clash gets to the heart of it in a three minute comedy skit. It’s only comedy cuz it’s true.

From those early stories, Culture Clash moved toward newer work that breaks from the modular structure and interview reliant personas to more fictional plays that take a deeper look into history. Tackling the birth of Dodger Stadium and displacement of local residents in Chavez Ravine and deconstructing the world’s most famous fictional Mexican, Zorro, with Zorro in Hell. They closed out with a cover of the classic Abbot and Costello routine, Who’s on First, a spot-on homage (Ric Salinas even working in Lou’s ticks and Herb Siguenza rigid as a flagpole as the straight man Bud) that seamlessly became ¿Quien es en Primer Base?

The Q&A afterwards gravitated towards Culture Clash being completely open to sharing their work with new theater companies and hoping new dramatists expand on their previous work by updating it with new language, current political situations and new urgency. (“We don’t consider our writing sacred.” “We think theater should be of the now”) Their was also curiosity about all Spanish work that could reach audiences in Mexico and beyond but Culture Clash doesn’t buy into the homogenization of Spanish speakers and prefers to focus on the Latino who grew up with Spanish but is more of a mixed language citizen. (“Our target audiences isn’t pure Spanish speakers.” “Univision and TeleMundo is so foreign to us.”) The temptation to have a broad Spanish distributor would also take away from Culture Clash’s commitment to be pioneers, to bring the stereotypes of Latinos and explore them through satire in the communities where those stereotypes are born, places that talk smack about Latinos cuz they’ve never really met Latinos. Much less a Latino theater troupe that is ready to bring all those misconceptions out into the center stage. (“We get it out of the universities and bring it to the lily-white theaters because that’s the people who need to hear it.”)

I wish I could have taken pics of the Evolution of a Sacred Space exhibit which has some amazing altars celebrating the spirits of women artists who have passed on with a figure of La Muerte in an amazing ball gown surrounded by the hand written names of past sister artists. A little girl on seeing the display yelled out, “I see Emily Dickinson!” as I’m looking at this brilliant depiction of death.

Another altar combined leather, suede, and horsehair to capture the ascension of a father lost to sea. Another one honored a friend lost in a mountain climbing expedition, the body was never found but a sculpture takes that place dangling on a gurney, wrapped in climbing ropes, with maps for skin, to help finish the climb. A jarring display of silhouettes honored the women taken away by domestic violence. The grandest altar showed the intersections of Mexican and Chinese traditions for the dead.

On the flip side, local high school students put the symbols of their lives on display with personal totems to celebrate their identity. This is the second display at the Museum I’ve seen that highlights Oakland teen arts in a manner that doesn’t talk down youth experience in that bullshit “This is SO cute that kids are doing this” tone but really pushes the artists to make museum quality art.

I’ll be sure to hit the museum up again soon to also soak more in from the LA Paint exhibit that was equal parts challenging (the faux-naive work of Esther Pearl Watson), outrageous (the psycho comix stylings of Robert Williams), disappointing (I really wanted to like Loren Holland’s work but couldn’t), and deeply satisfying (I love the installations from the Date Farmers!).

It’s been way too long between features for me and I was really excited about this chance to share work from the Palimpsest series with an audience that really didn’t know any of my work.

As you can see from the pics, the vibe was very chill and communal but definitely for grown folks thanks to the dope layout of the loft, great art all around, view to Laney College/E 8th Street/the 880, still-motion photo setup, good food (I contributed a lemon-feta pasta with baby spinach- yum!), and fly music.

DeWayne’s set was all kinds of fly as he read stuff from his forthcoming book. His poems highlight the ridiculous contradictions of public/personal policy when it comes to issues of blackness/gayness in a time of war economy with a poetic speaker who is unafraid to put those contradictions out in the open. DeWayne’s craft comes in his ability to stay true to that voice’s genuine pain without resorting to sermons-to-the-choir or Wikipedia history lessons.

I was up next and came through with this set-list:

• Palimpsest: B-Boy Prayer
• A Bodega on Anywhere Avenue
• Palimpsest: Ghazal
• Fire Escape
• #3, from The Wooden Horse by Clemente Soto Vélez
• Psalm for Public Housing
• Palimpsest: The Break

Light on banter, and almost no explanations in this set but I still felt like I was connecting with the room (about 40 folks in a nice size space).

Notes on my performance:
• I still get nervous before a reading. Like really nervous and real edgy.
My voice was shaking for the first poem.
• “Fire Escape” is a brand new poem written after Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Hidden Door.” Still have to actually finish the poem as I was still writing it about three hours before I actually performed it.

With all that said, my true reality is that I have to get started on revising the Palimpsest poems so that I can get a new chapbook out there in the world, and (hopefully) get more readings.

EASTLAKE SESSIONS
chapter three- summer heat!

a loft party for the people-
food, film, poetry, song, and a proper dose of booty shakin’ too

SATURDAY, JUNE 28
7 PM on …

EASTLAKE LOFTS
1018 4th Ave
Unit 305
Oakland, CA

(cross street, east 10th-
facing Laney College’s football field,
a five minute walk from Lake Merritt BART)

you and yours are cordially invited
to an evening of arts, culture, and family vibez
as we celebrate summer’s onset
and welcome you to the Town’s newest arts space and event
…

EASTLAKE SESSIONS

7 PM- DINNER SERVED

(Feel free to bring a dish or some drinks, to add to the night’s potluck mix, or simply come through with your own appetite ready …)

9 PM- STORY CIRCLE

(Hosted by Raphael Cohen, of Play In The Margins Press, this portion of the evening’s an opportunity for storytellers of various mediums to share their work. We’ll be featuring several special guest poets to start (DeWayne Dickerson, Aimee Suzara, and Oscar Bermeo), then opening the floor for folks in the space to speak, sing, strum, etc. Whether you’re a seasoned performer on the spoken word and music scene, or whether you’re an emerging artist, sharing your work for one of the first times, come through to test out your material in front of an intimate, supportive audience. Collaboration and experimentation encouraged.)

10 PM- ON & POPPIN’!!!

(DJs Diet and Snacks take over the wheels of steel, bumpin’ a summertime assortment to get you shakin’ your ass. Expect everything from hip-hop to afrobeat, classic funk to deep house. Accompanied by visual installations from DG Gonzalez, photographer extraordinaire. Do yourself a favor, and make sure you’re here by then.)

Free admission!

SATURDAY, JUNE 28
7 PM on …

EASTLAKE LOFTS
1018 4th Ave
Unit 305
Oakland, CA

www.connectingarts.com

Today started with a bummer of a headline: 101-year-old Oakland newsstand to close tonight.

Coupled with the news that Cody’s closed down, and I was feeling real down on the future of print here in the East Bay.

Yeah, I was all set to grab the camera and go down to De Lauer’s to take some last minute pics to document the passing of another landmark… but keep hope alive, said the man, and hope responds back.

Oakland newsstand to stay open, for now, after support pours in
Nice! I still plan on taking some pics of the still-alive-n-kickin’ De Laurer’s and buy something. I’m not sure what, but at least a little sumthin’ sumthin’.