Poetries

[Some edits below.]

Alas, I feel as though I’ve been directing e-traffic for the past few days. I’d been lamenting my lack of time for blogging lately, wondering if I should blame Twitter for this. Truth is, it’s not Twitter. I’ve actually been doing a lot of poetry work which has cut into my time to blog about poetry.

As I have previously blogged, the PAWA Arkipelago reading went quite well. It’s gratifying, that the series I am co-curating and co-hosting is being received positively. I’ve been talking with a few different poets about the kind of refined and polished poetry brought by our authors. Now, in some circles, saying that the poetry is polished and refined, saying that it’s very professionally presented can be interpreted as a diss. To some, if not many in our communities, that refinement means the opposite of “raw,” means lack of “edge,” means lack of “authenticity.”

There’s that stereotype and reductive binary again, which is why in our reading series we actively bring authors into accessible community spaces. I am glad to know that the authors themselves really enjoy reading in these community spaces. (Speaking of accessible community spaces, how about that Barbershop Reading Series?)

Not trying to be negative here; just pondering some recent points of discussion about community versus academic spaces. I think now, this is why the post-reading Q&A is important; the audience has the opportunity to demystify the poetic process. Penélope Flores asked Kristin Naca about the ekphrastic poem written in the Museo del Prado. Oscar Bermeo asked Randall Mann about whether there is a racial consideration in his writing. Oscar’s tocayo, Oscar Peñaranda who is a retired secondary school educator, asked Randall about the process of writing a poetry teaching textbook. Another audience member (whose name I never got) asked Mariano Zaro about the process of writing between two languages. Kevin Simmonds, who is a Cave Canem fellow, asked Mariano about writing Thailand, where the poems of La Casa de Mae Rim take place. I asked Debbie Yee about the particular “critters” who populate her poems. This was an audience of educators, writers, and authors in various stages of their writing and publishing careers.

My reading at Foothill College with Justin Chin and Scott Inguito, was another one of those readings in “official” “academic” spaces, though Foothill is a community college with a very accessible writers’ conference, so that boundary is blurry. The formal and informal Q&A afterward was also quite substantial, and I realized, regardless of how tired I was from my full day of teaching, that as an author, I really welcomed that opportunity to hear and answer readers’ and audience members’ questions. What do they think about when they read or hear poetry? What do they want to know from us about publishing/publication? For sure, people always want to know about the publishing industry for poets, perhaps because they are wondering how to find a way in themselves, or because they are curious, given all of these doom and gloom articles about the death of print, the death of the book, the disappearing poetry readership. This was an audience of students, aspiring and emerging writers, and so hearing Justin talk briefly about zuihitsu, which is a form crucial to his collection, Gutted, was very appropriate and appreciated.

Let me add to this mix of poetries the recent Oceania/Pacific Islander poetry reading at Pegasus Books (Oscar has pics and video here). Indeed, it was quite a mix of aesthetics, from poets at different places in their poetic education/development. Most notable to me about this reading was how well-attended it was, with so many different kinds of folks: community members of Fui and Loa from One Love Oceania (OLO), colleagues and teachers of Craig and Fui from UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies graduate program, local poets and writers, family members. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that Craig’s long-ish prose poem, “Preterrain,” has a rather Nate Mackey “Song of the Andoumboulou” vibe, pacing, flow, and “we” about it. And this whole reading seemed to be made possible by Maile Arvin and the Pegasus Books readings curator, who heard Maile read for KSW’s Intergenerational Writers’ Workshop, and enjoyed what she heard there.

So. This is just to say. Poetries. I believe in poetries, and I do not believe in the death of poetry, nor do I believe in its lack of relevance to our communities. I believe that our communities are multiple and intersecting. I say this having moved in and out of these poetries spaces rather intensely in the last week, culminating with my reviewing Nick Carbó’s Chinese, Japanese, What Are These? for Hyphen magazine’s blog here, which is not typically a verse culture crowd, but is definitely an indie crowd.

This is where I am today: Poetries thriving, contain multitudes.

Tags: PAWA Inc.