poeta y diwata

Here is info on the first of two events I will be participating in this evening at New Langton Arts:

Panel Discussion
Artists Amanda Eicher, Jennifer Wofford, and Barbara Jane Reyes in conversation with project participants.
Thursday 01 May 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008, 7-9 pm Free

Presences is a community project and a collaboration between artist Amanda Eicher and New Langton Arts. With the goal of opening the gallery to include the community around it, a series of oral history workshops and a panel discussion will draw attention to women’s presences in the diverse South of Market community.

Tied to Langton’s recent feminist art exhibition Small Things End, Great Things Endure, and Book It! (a one-day alternative publishing fair), the project seeks to extend the feminist inquiry of the gallery into the streets, asking women to share their stories of home, self, migration, and survival in conversation with one another, in workshops, and during street interviews. Participants learn oral history interview techniques by interviewing each other and neighborhood residents to unearth women’s presences and experiences that shape the community around New Langton Arts. The resulting interviews and materials will be collected into a chapbook, to be released Thursday, May 1, as a part of the panel discussion.

Presences takes its shape from the participation of artists, community members, and most of all women in the South of Market neighborhood; it is also supported by the engagement and effort of Bayanihan Cultural Center, Manilatown I-Hotel, The Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Bindlestiff Studio, Jennifer Wofford, Barbara Jane Reyes, Ana Hortillosa, Chelsea Heikes, and students at USF and SFSU.

* * *

I might be the only one interested in the fact that for neither of the two events am I reading poetry, and that both of these events are meant to be “practical,” the New Langton Arts event’s project of linking community with artists, and the City Lights event’s offering practical measures of resistance in an age of “disaster capitalism.”

I keep thinking of whether poetry that is practical is poetry that is accessible. I think then of what is academic poetry (commonly perceived as the opposite of accessible poetry), what are the purposes of poetic/literary tools such as irony, and under what conditions audiences decide to “get it,” or not.

Let me first step back because I think there is also the audience’s set of expectations when coming into an event as it is advertised. If an audience expects to be politically enlightened as a result of said event, then what kind of poetry do they expect to hear? I feel like despite how solid my performance and how solid I and others perceive my writing to be, I did indeed recently (within the last year or so) flop at one reading in which the audience (and organizers?) and I never did have a common understanding of what “political poetry” means.

I am articulating these things now because I am wondering exactly how “practical” my poetry is to audiences, and whether what I am perceiving as a schism between practical/”street” and “impractical”/”academic” poetry really exists or if it’s all in my head. I feel like, with all the college and university students I have been speaking to in the past couple of years, if my work reaches them most effectively via professorial mediation, this must mean something.

Finally, I am wondering if “political poetry” necessarily always equals “protest poetry”? And even then, does “protest poetry” always have to be “masses rise up” poetry?

OK, enough of this. Busy evening ahead, so I suppose it’s better I brain dump all of this now and get on with it.