Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

The Newness: Making a City


Playground Monster
Originally uploaded by Travis Gray

When I was a kid, my favorite playground was the one on the corner of 174th St and Jerome Ave, sandwiched between the #4 train and Grand Concourse, with a busy exit/entrance to the Cross Bronx right along side. It was pretty standard for a city playground: two slides, some swings, a structure we could hang off of, and a padded area to run around in. Hmmm, actually it was kinda crappy. No monkey bars, no water fountain in the summer (there was one but I don’t think it was ever actually on) and no merry-go-round thingy. I know it musta been boring because I would get more thrills running outside it and hanging by the highway entrance, picking a car to chase for a minute down the ramp and then coming back up again to wait for another car. This I know cuz my Dad would warn me not to play by the highway cuz it wasn’t safe and a paliso would come my way if he caught me disobeying him. (Of course, I did catch a couple of beatins.) So that’s the playground of my little years. The one where I caught some of my first head stitches (different story for another day) and where I’ve set this poem in. The poem is a first draft so any commentary is appreciated.

Make Me A City

[Poem was here. Soon to be published in phat’itude Literary Magazine]

Acknowledgment: Community


01 – Community
Originally uploaded
by Samuele Storari

For about three years, I could count on three sure things in my poetry life: louderARTS at Bar13, Acentos at the Bruckner and synonymUS at the Nuyorican. These were the touchstones of my poetics, the places where I could hear the poetry of new voices, my contemporaries, and literary heroes. Sometimes back-to-back-to-back!

It was also where I could test out my own work: play with a longer line, focus on recitation & memory, or go off on an entirely new tangent. The results, for the most part, were unpredictable. A poem I thought would be too esoteric would hit all the right chords. Or a poem I thought was zeroed in on one sure marker would miss by a mile. It didn’t matter since no matter what, I would be back again soon to see where else my voice would travel on the mic.

Since moving out to the Bay, I haven’t had the same opportunities to be on stage. I’ve had a good number of co-features and a couple of full features but there is no real stage out here that I can claim as a home base. On my lesser days, I hunger for a stage where I can try out some new verse and see how it reverberates off the walls and what the reaction of a fresh crowd is. But the majority of the time, I’m real happy to have a smaller community of poets and really excited that the work is reaching them via print and not by the mic.

Now don’t get it twisted, I love the orality of poetry and feel there is no higher art than being able to seamlessly interchange between the written text and spoken word of poetry. The key is balancing the two, like shifting gears on a manual transmission. Sometimes, you want to cruise on second and then speed up to fourth in rapid succession until you see a tight turn and then you downshift on the curve and let the machine and gravity take over. For me, the machine is the paper and the gravity is the voice. But when I was a regular on open mics, I know for a fact that not was I relying heavily on my voice but I was also using my banter and personality to help carry the poems.

With a reliance on poetry journal submissions, residencies, social media (this blog, my Flickr, YouTube and Twitter accounts) and self-published chapbooks, I’m letting the text take more and more control over where my poetic vehicle goes. The results have been dynamic and well worth the trade of leaving a stage poetry community. As stated before, I do miss it at times. But if I hadn’t quit that part of my poetic development, I’m not sure I would be as satisfied with my growth.

This is all a rather long winded intro to some great acknowledgment my work has gotten this week. This attention has come from poets who first “met” me through the page and the potential of my writing. It’s all very humbling and has added some fuel to the tank that I’m trying to ride to the publication of a 48+ page poetry manuscript.

Shout Outs (and Shouts Back!)
• Anisa Onofre has posted “A Century of My Writing” on her Tumblr page. Anisa does some great work highlighting Latina/Latino poetics on Xican@ Poetry Daily and it’s an honor to have her mention my work.
• Francisco Aragón speaks on my Progress as a Poet on the Letras Latina blog. Francisco had been motivating my work for years; the first time I ever seriously put together a full collection was to submit for the 2006 edition of the Andrés Montoya prize. Since then, he’s giving me some great opportunities and I am very thankful for it all.
• Barb is teaching Poetry, Politics, and Prayer: The Litany at Foothill today and is using “I’m Jus Askin” as one of her teaching text. Having my poems in a class setting has been one of my constant goals, I hope the poem inspires some good writing from her students.
• C St Perez launches the Crazy Poet Spotlight and I am the first featured poet. Yes, that is me dancing like a fool on my 39th birthday and if you ask “Why you so happy?” I will tell you that it was because of the amazing company I was with that day. Poets, writers and teachers who keep me striving to be a better person and then let the writing follow. The one thing the picture doesn’t show is Craig beatboxing me on. Dude is sicker than Doug E Fresh!

June Readin’


Oscar and Willie
Originally uploaded by geminipoet

As you can tell from the accompanying picture, I’m still feelin the post-VONA glow.

I’m also feeling the “back in school” glow with some good feedback on my submitted work from both instructors and peers. To keep going with what works for me, I’m goin to start puttin the writing into one document and see if I can get another chapbook out of it. I say writing cuz I have the idea for at least one three-page play goin on in my head and I’m going to see if I add some fiction to the mix as well. Helping me through this is my course textbook: Heather Sellers’ The Practice of Creative Writing. I’m enjoying Sellers voice–she avoids being prescriptive with her exercises, leaving room for experimentation and fun.

A short but really eclectic list of readin this month with everything being a real joy. I know, that’s not too critical of me but I call em like I see em. All these books made me hungry to write something in their vein and to read more.

• Poems From Prison by Etherdige Knight
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• Vatos by Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit by Seth Godin
• Winter Stars by Larry Levis

VONA 2009: Putting together the fragments


10 Years of VONA
Originally uploaded by geminipoet

Just wrapped up a week-long intensive at VONA, The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Voices Workshop.

This is my second go around with VONA, my first experience being a Poetry workshop facilitated by Willie Perdomo back in June, 2007. I came into that workshop with the 19 pages of poetry from my first chapbook, Anywhere Avenue. I left with a couple of rough drafts (three of these drafts eventually led to poems in Heaven Below), positive feedback mixed with spot-on critique of the Anywhere Avenue poems and (for the first-time ever) a sense of who my ideal reader is. All these things combined to give me enough encouragement to keep at it and develop a full length poetry manuscript.

This time around, I have 73 pages of poetry and take another workshop with Willie: Building the Poetry Collection. I walked out with a whole new set of priorities and questions than two years ago. This go around, I’m coming to the realization that having a unique voice, an urgent story to tell and a handle on my poetics isn’t reason enough to get published. Ego check moment: There are some damn talented poets out there who are working just as hard (if not harder) than I am to get their story out there in the publishing world. I need to want it even more than ever. This means revising the whole manuscript, changing the order around so that every page builds on the last and from start to finish my reader has a sense of exactly where Anywhere Avenue is. To bounce off that, my workshop cohorts clued me in on the fact that there needs to be more faces on Anywhere Ave. What’s a neighborhood without the people? Not much. And the portraits need to be vivid and detailed. No half-stepping with broad brush strokes. I also need to get past my attribution poem phase. I’ve imitated and borrowed form from a variety of authors but I need to risk more and trust in my voice.

The good news is that my workshop cohorts were diggin a good number of the pieces and really wanted to know more about Anywhere Ave. Hearing the feedback was great (especially the critical noted) and really has me looking to revamp the manuscript. I’m also dedicating myself to talk stink, a Pidgin expression meaning to talk bad on folks. Our workshop took that to mean that we will talk stink on the issues that need to be talked on. Not pulling punches in the work or how we comment on the work.

A serious highlight of the workshop was having Paul Flores, Barbara Jane Reyes, Roger Bonair-Agard, Ruth Forman and Suheir Hammad talk about their manuscript process. Barb has a great breakdown over at her blog.

And I was able to complete a new poem that began with a writing prompt from the workshop I took with Anthem Salgado at the KAPWA Conference. The prompt: 50 words that describe you. (Based on Barb’s “101 words that don’t quite describe me”.) I spent the whole week writing down some more words that describe me but then decided to shift it over to words about my poetics. Open admission: I’m always nervous when I read and doubly nervous when I read the new shit aloud for the first time. So why would I start penning a poem at 5pm, have it done by 6pm, and read it before 100+ of VONA writers and instructors at 7pm. Cuz VONA is all about safe space. And what good is a safe space if you can’t exercise some risk in it?

So here is the newness. Dedicated to Willie P and my classmates at VONA. Talk stink!

A Century of My Writing
100 words on where my poetry’s at, where it’s been and where it’s comin from

[Poem was here. Can now be found at Crate.]

Icon: Michael Jackson

The King of Pop has passed. You could say he died a few years back when reports of his life outside of music became even more sensational than his legendary live performances. Over a decade ago, I heard a comedian quip that if MJ had passed away right after the Bad album he would have been remembered as the greatest of all time. Bigger than Marvin Gaye, bolder than James Brown, brasher than Rick James. Let’s see if that’s true. Can the legend eclipse the man’s failings? Can the music live on after the headlines have gone away? If all the buzz I’m hearing from folks in the street-their sadness, their shock, the music slippin from their lips-is any indication, the King of Pop will always live.