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!

—

FREE
Wheelchair accessible

—

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

Intuitive Intertextuality - The online poetics journal of Oscar Bermeo

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.

Intuitive Intertextuality - The online poetics journal of Oscar Bermeo

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.

Intuitive Intertextuality - The online poetics journal of Oscar Bermeo

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!

Intuitive Intertextuality - The online poetics journal of Oscar Bermeo

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

—–

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.

—–

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.

Intuitive Intertextuality - The online poetics journal of Oscar Bermeo