Alice Nkom

Coming Out in Cameroon

One of the human rights activists featuring in the 2009 documentary Cameroon: Coming Out of the Nkuta is Alice Nkom. The film sketches the daily struggle of young gays and lesbians in Cameroon. Nkom was in The Netherlands this week to talk about their fight.

 For a longer talk by Nkom (in French), here she is speaking at conference late last year:

 

 

Cleveland, Texas and

Gender Jim Crow

William Jelani Cobb

March 29, 2011  

In the three weeks since the New York Times broke the story of a child’s rape there, the events in Cleveland, Texas, have morphed into a category-five media storm. The Times piece, which echoed and amplified currents of victim-blaming in the town, generated a tide of criticism. Yet beneath the outrage was a parable of modern media. Aside from the familiar and incendiary themes it contained, the Times article seemed an object lesson in what happens when cash-strapped newspapers parachute a reporter into a complex situation hoping for coverage on the cheap. In-depth coverage requires resources and the time to do the deliberate, painstaking gathering of facts that were in short supply in James McKinley’s article. “The New York Times,” as one friend put it, “can no longer afford nuance.”

Add to that equation the fact that Twitter-orchestrated protests, web petitions and Facebook posts pushed the Times to apologize (or at least come close to it), and our understanding of the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl becomes yet another front in the battles between old and new media. Even the way the assault became public knowledge—digital images traded around on cellphones—seems to be part of the narrative of modern technology and information.

Yet for all this modernity, the most troubling aspect of the ongoing fallout from Cleveland is the way it resurrects themes of race, sexual violence and provincialism long interred in American history. Some weeks ago I taught students in my civil rights history class about the plague of lynching, which claimed the lives of more than 3,000 African-Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beyond the horror of the organized murder of black citizens, students were most troubled by the recreational nature of it all: the images of smiling white citizens, fathers and sons, upstanding Christians gathered in fellowship around the smoldering ruin of a black body—all preserved on postcards.

If you asked any of these people in the abstract if it is right to hang a person, set him on fire and then riddle the body with bullets, they would likely have called those actions illegal and sinful. But there is an asterisk: unless that person was black; unless he had demanded his wages, or been to slow to vacate a sidewalk when a white person walked by, or been “unpopular” (these are all actual reasons cited for lynching). These are actions of people who have been given a moral escape clause, an asterisk in which upstanding Christians can sate the demonic appetites of their collective id. Thus an act of abomination becomes a moment worthy of commemorating with a photograph.

I thought about that discussion of lynching again as news spread that the alleged perpetrators were so utterly secure in the righteousness of their act that some of them snapped pictures or recorded footage on their cell phones. We have, in 2011, reached a point when the public display of charred human remains is no longer acceptable. But the response of some of the citizens of Cleveland, Texas, to this horrific assault has brought us face to face with a kind of gender Jim Crow. Here the asterisk is not failure to conform to racial etiquette but the lax adherence to an equally stringent gender code, one where “innocent” is a relative concept and rape, like lynching, can be elevated nearly to the level of civic responsibility.

The rape, which allegedly took place in a filthy trailer, has been mitigated by qualifiers on the child’s innocence—and necessarily, the guilt of the accused. It is, as an abstract idea, wrong to force a preteen child to have sex with a dozen and a half men. Unless she was “fast,” or dressed like a much older woman, or had slack maternal supervision. Add enough exceptions and even the unconscionable begins to look like a six-in-one-hand undertaking. It is the bitterest of ironies that African-Americans in Cleveland have been the most vocal proponents of this warped ideal. We of all people should understand how the moral exception game works. (For those who believe the fact that the girl is Hispanic has colored the responses to the crime, rest assured, “fast” 11-year-old black girls are seen as every bit as disposable within the black community.)

It is worth remembering that in the age of lynching, as now, new media technology served as a kind of antiseptic, airing rancid behavior in forums much larger than the moral echo chambers of Deep South counties. Southerners were, on some level, stunned by the national firestorm that the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till created. They were incapable of understanding why a single murder of a black man—an act that had been Southern business as usual for decades—unleashed torrents of criticism and outrage nationwide. The behavior was the same, but exposing it on television created a completely new dynamic. In the face of this new circumstance, Southerners retrenched and expanded their contempt to include media and all other such “outside agitators.” They excavated the Confederate flag and elevated it to a place of honor as a symbol of their recalcitrance.

Among the bitterest ironies in a situation filled with them is that the tradition of lynching is, on some level, connected to the victim-blaming and asterisk-brandishing afoot in Cleveland, Texas. The wrongful convictions and killings of black men for bogus charges of sexual assault remain deeply placed in the historical memory of many black communities. And anyone who knows of the Scottsboro trial, the Central Park jogger case or Tulia, Texas, where forty African-Americans were arrested on false drug charges, is necessarily skeptical of mass arrests involving African-Americans—especially those involving sex crimes. But history cannot absolve what is voiced in Cleveland now, a nightmare cliché born of those lynching galleries: the victim had it coming.

It’s likely that the feelings of some residents of Cleveland are a curious echo of what those Southern partisans of a bygone era felt. Rancid behavior in their town—and more important, the values that undergird it—has been given a national airing. Outside agitators have assailed their views—140 characters at a time. But would that these kinds of views were confined to a small outpost in East Texas. None of us who saw fans rally around R. Kelly during his pedophilia trial or heard the bullshit rationales given for Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna could feel secure in pointing a judgmental finger at Cleveland, Texas. Gender Jim Crow is a national concern.

We have yet to appreciate that in Texas and beyond—whether we are talking about murder or rape or any of the myriad violations of human dignity that happen every day in communities across this country—there are no asterisks, only excuses. And sorry ones at that.

===

William Jelani Cobb

William Jelani Cobb is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Rutgers University. His most recent book is The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress.

 

Music Break

Remember the Belgian-Congolese project Héritage? It took them a while to record a video for one of the featuring songs. The two singers on this track are Stefy Rika and Nina Miskina. You’ll recognize the infamous Africa Museum’s diorama in the first part. It gets interesting halfway through.

Filastine shredding the U.S and E.U

February 16, 2011 - Posted by wizraeli

 

Last Saturday, I got a call from my homeboy and fellow music enthusiast about some free tickets to a show down in Boulder. Who is playing I asked and to my surprise and content he told me that Filastine was the opening act for Heavyweight dub champions. Are you for real I asked, because this is not a name you’d expect to just swing by. Grey Filastine played a live AV set that totally reminded us how skillful and rhythmic this guy is. With two laptops and heaps of controllers, mics, and drums he rocked both audio and video in perfect synchronization. Check out some clips I captured for ya’ll:

His album dirty bombs (and the remixes) has been a favorite and it got some heavy play on my worldbeat radio show and at dj gigs. The mix he posted online about a year ago is very impressive and mui bombastic

Download it here: http://bit.ly/bphjpA

 

We Are Experiencing Turbulence (Insurrectionary Bass Music Sin Fronteras mixed by Filastine) by Filastine

 

I caught a word with Grey after his set and he told me that he signed with an American booking company and here he was in America where usually he tours Europe and Asia. My next question of course was about new material to which he replied that yea he is working on a new epic album and video footage. As you might know the guy is a heavy traveler and at the moment he is living/recording in Indonesia with a local super-talented activist MC. The word is that we should expect a new bomb to be dropped by Filastine in the last quarter of 2011, so until then, don’t miss the opportunity to catch him on the tour, and be sure that we will cover the release right here on GB.

 

• 
  

  

  the official word ( read and learn):

Grey Filastine is a producer/musician based in Barcelona, but more often found traveling with his nomadic studio: studying trance rhythms in Morocco, recording rappers in Indonesia, and gathering street noise from everywhere to compose a dense transnational bass music. It’s a sound that collides the deepest frequencies of dubstep with syncopated beat science, acoustic instruments and voices of many tongues.

Best known for his hectic live performances, Filastine triggers riddims and synchronized video from a heap of electronics and an amplified shopping cart, expertly fusing digital elements with live percussion.

From a hip-hop concert in Borneo to a soccer stadium in Casablanca, from a car-mounted guerrilla soundsystem to a junk raft floating down the Mississippi, he has played in every type of venue imaginable, with prominent billing at festivals such as Sonar (ES), Transmediale (DE), Shambhala (CA) and Sydney Fest (AU). Performances often feature guest cellist Amélie Bouard or vocalist Nova Ruth Setyaningtyas.

Filastine recently dropped his second album Dirty Bomb (2009), a gritty soundclash recorded in 16 cities with 15 collaborators. “Awesome and delicate… hybrids so fluent they defy classification” Pitchfork, “the prototype of globalized urban sound… It will devastate your subwoofer” -Prefix Mag. Like the music itself, its distribution is rhizomic and decentralized; the album was released simultaneously on four regional indie labels: Jarring Effects (France/EU), Romz (Japan), Soot (Americas/UK), Uber Lingua
(Oceania). Dirty Bomb hit with a hundred-date tour, three music videos, and heavy radio play charting at #4 on the French Feraliste, #7 on CMJ’s RPM in North America.

Filastine first went public in 2006 with the album Burn It on DJ Rupture’s boutique imprint Soot Records. “Filled with both jagged edges and moments of sad sweetness… Burn It is sure to win fans across multiple scenes” -XLR8R. Next came a pair of dj mixes, The Mud, Blood, & the Beer: a Fistfight with the Near East (CD,Tigerbeat6), and the heavily downloaded free mix La Pistola Mas Rapida (Blentwell.com podcast #7 & CD).

Before going digital Filastine founded the Infernal Noise Brigade, a 20-piece marching band formed for the “battle of Seattle” that went on to become the soundtrack for a decade of globalization protests. The Infernal Noise Brigade was purpose-built to bring music to political movements in the street. Filastine now
does the reverse, pumping the immediacy of the street through sound systems.

2010 began with a sonic intervention at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, a 12″ of remixes Extra Dirty Bomb, and the new dj mix We Are Experiencing Turbulence. Expect to find him anywhere, shredding the instruction manual of music, crashing borders, and transforming friction into beauty.

 

The 2011 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize will accept entries from March 16th 2011.

The £30,000 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize is awarded to the best eligible published or produced literary work in the English language, written by an author under 30.

The deadline for enties for the 2011 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize is the close of business, May 31st, 2011.

Dates for the Longlist and Shortlist announcements will be announced in June 2011.

The winner will be announced at the final awards ceremony in Swansea, Wales on November 9th, 2011.

From 2011, the entry form has been added to the Prize rules as a single document. The entry form and rules can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here.

 

Treasure Map Mystery

     Image by:© Maximmal | Dreamstime.com

1st Prize: £200.00

2nd Prize: £150.00

3rd Prize: £100.00

4th Prize: £75.00

5th Prize:  Writing Course to the value of £65.00

Closing Date: 1st May 2011

Entry Fee: £3.50

 

Can you craft a superb mystery tale involving a newly discovered treasure map?

If yes and you fancy writing a story that would give Indiana Jones a run for his money, then you could be in with a chance of winning our top prize of £200.00

Your story must be original and previously unpublished and be written in a maximum of 3000 words.

We are looking for a compelling and fast paced story that offers tension, excitement and oozes adventure.

Your submission must be with us on or before the 1st May to be in with a chance of winning.

We prefer submissions to be sent by email to info@creative-competitor.co.uk and please add your name, address and contact telephone number to your email in case we need to contact you to tell you that you have won.

If you live in the UK and prefer to pay by cheque and post your submission, click here

 As our writing competitions are for money, writers must be 18 and over to win a cash prize.

 

Please note that it can take some time for our writing competitions to be judged and the winners announced. The length of time is dependant on the number of submissions received. We take the judging process very seriously and ensure that the best submission wins. This means that each submission is read and re-read to build up a high quality short list and then the process begins again.

Entry to this or any of our competitions implies acceptance to our rules.

NEW! The inaugural C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize!

Poetry International is pleased to announce its first annual C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize. The purpose of the C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize is to honor a great poet of the 20th century by publishing the best possible poem we can find on annual basis. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in an upcoming issue of Poetry International. All finalists will be considered for publication, as well. The editorial staff of Poetry International will judge.

DEADLINE: Feb. 15th, 2011. $15 entry fee for up to three poems; you may include additional poems, for a $3 reading fee per poem.

Please mail your submissions to:

C.P. Cavafy Award
Poetry International
Dept. of English and Comparative Literature
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Dr. San Diego, CA 92182-6020

The C.P. Cavafy Award winner will be announced on our website and blog in the spring of 2011. Please refer to our contest guidelines below.

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Poetry International Prize

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Poetry International is given annually for a single poem. The 2011 judge is Steve Kowit. The deadline for the 2011 Poetry International Prize is May 30th. Submit up to 3 poems with a $15 entry fee. Contestants may submit additional poems for a $3 reading fee per poem. The winner will be announced on our website in the fall of 2011. Please mail your submissions to:

Poetry International Prize 2011
Dept. of English and Comparative Literature
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Dr. San Diego, CA 92182-6020

Please refer to our contest guidelines below.

A Note to Previous Poetry International Prize Contestants

You are welcome to enter this year's contest, whether or not you won a prize in the previous year.    

Information about the winner of the 2010 award:   

Our winner is Rochelle Hurt, an MFA student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her poem, "Helen's Confession," was chosen by judge Bruce Boston for publication in an issue of Poetry International, and a $1000 cash prize.

Information about the winner of the 2009 award:

Congratulations to Rebekah Stout, winner of the Poetry International Prize 2009! Stout's poems 'Midas' and 'In the Garden' will appear in Poetry International 17. Sandra Alcosser judged. Kudos to finalists Melissa Stein, Ann Struthers, Noreen Ayres, Sierra Nelson, and Michael Lee Phillips.

Information about the winner of the 2008 award:

Winner of Poetry International Prize for 2008 is Sasha Parmasad for her poem, Memory of Sugarcane-worker Off Duty. Ms. Parmasad has received the prize of $1000, and her poem will appear in the next issue of Poetry International.

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Guidelines for Poetry International Contests

• Provide your contact information & titles of all poems submitted, on the title page.

   

• Author name and information should appear only on the title page.

   

• No handwritten entries, please.

   

• Please make your entry easy to read--no illustrations, fancy fonts or decorative borders.

   

• Simultaneous Submission Allowed: You may submit your poems simultaneously.  Please contact us if we need to withdraw your poem(s) because they have been accepted elsewhere.

   

• Poems translated from other languages are not eligible, unless you wrote both the original poem and the translation.

   

• No SASE necessary. We will announce the winners on our website and blog. All manuscripts will be recycled."

IN MEMORY OF

AKILAH OLIVER

Donations – We Need Your Support

The family would like her legacy to continue. If you would like to contribute, we are raising funds for legal representation. Please click the Donate button below to donate via PayPal.

If you have any questions, please call us at (646) 820-5079, or email marciaoliver@akilaholiver.com.

Thank you in advance.

 

 

Bio

March 13, 2011 | Author Akilah Oliver's Family

Akilah Oliver was born in 1961 in L.A. In the 1990′s she founded and performed with the feminist performance collective Sacred Naked Nature Girls. For several years, Akilah lived and raised her son Oluchi McDonald (1982-2003) in Boulder, Colorado where she… was a teacher at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Recently, in New York City, Akilah taught poetry and writing at Eugene Lang College, The New School, Pratt Insitute and The Poetry Project. She was a PhD candidate at The European Graduate School and a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative. Akilah Oliver’s books include A Toast In The House of Friends (Coffee House 2009), the she said dialogues: flesh memory, a book of experimental prose poetry honored by the PEN American Center’s “Open Book” program, and the chapbooks An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet (Farfalla, McMillan & Parrish, 2004), The Putterer’s Notebook (Belladonna 2006), a(A)ugust (Yo-Yo Labs, 2007) and A Collection of Objects (Tente 2010). She read and performed her work throughout the country as a solo artist and with a variety of musicians and collaborators including Tyler Burba, Anne Waldman, and Rasul Siddik. She was a artist in residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles, and received grants from the California Arts Council, The Flintridge Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Among her many other projects, she was writing a book-length theory of lamentation.

 

 

Akilah’s Obituary

March 14, 2011 | Author Akilah Oliver's Family

AKILAH NAYO OLIVER
Mother, Poet, Performer,
Activist, Professor, Life Changer
April 18, 1961 – February 23, 2011

Akilah Nayo Oliver (Donna Lynne Oliver) was born in 1961 in St. Louis, MO. to Donald and Melvaline Oliver. Akilah Oliver was raised and lived in Los Angeles, California with her siblings Marc G. Oliver, Marcia D. Oliver, Mandisa Y. Bobo (Dedra Y. Oliver) and Kimberly D. Oliver.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, poet Akilah Oliver grew up in Los Angeles. As a child, she traveled around the country and throughout Mexico with her father and sisters in a motor home, visiting Acapulco, Vera Cruz, Mexico City, Baja, and Tijuana, as well most of the continental United States. She attended the University of California-Berkeley where her love of performance and poetry first took shape, performing with jazz musicians around Berkeley and Oakland.
Her son Oluchi McDonald was born in 1982 and to continue her undergraduate studies, Oliver transferred from UC-Berkeley to New College of California where she received her bachelor’s degree the following year. She attended graduate school in New York and moved to Los Angeles where she was involved in the then emergent multicultural arts movement there. She was artist-in-residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center where she taught poetry and multicultural performance arts workshops while also teaching public school. During this time in Los Angeles she co-founded the avant-garde feminist performance group The Sacred Naked Nature Girls whose work has been the subject of critical work by Coco Fusco, Meiling Cheng and others. In 1993 she moved to Colorado and taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Naropa University for many years
Akilah was preceded in death by her brother Marc Oliver, her father Donald Oliver, her son Oluchi Mcdonald and her mother Melvaline Oliver.
Akilah is greatly cherished by her great aunt Lela Mcspadden, Aunts Peggy Joiner and Velma Bobo, Uncles Lucius Bobo and Charles Oliver, Step-Mother Candis Navarette, sisters Marcia Oliver, Mandisa Bobo and Kimberly Oliver; nieces Marqueta Oliver, Myesha Oliver, Laini Deskins and Tamu Deskins, nephews Thulani Deskins, Jesse Teule Deskins and Calvin Blockman, great nephew Andrae Blissett, and great niece Mandla Deskins and a host of cousins, friends, colleagues, and loved ones.
Akilah Oliver’s books include
A Collection of Objects (Tente, 2010)
A Toast In The House of Friends (Coffee House, 2009),
“a(A)ugust” (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2007)
The Putterer’s Notebook (Belladonna Press, 2006)
An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet (Farfalla Press, 2004)
The she said dialogues: flesh memory,(Smokeproof/ Eurudite Fangs, Press, July 1999) which received the PEN Beyond Margins Award,
Tales of Taliba (Black Madonna Press, 1983)

Excerpts from Tales of Taliba 1983 by Akilah Nayo:
taliba is a queen, taliba is a pauper…taliba holds out for herself…taliba is a sad purple woman…taliba is the earth. is one with the gods. one with the music of the gods. she answers the call, when the dancers call on the spirit. the healing spirit. she is the spirit healing herself… she dances back in space. back to herself a sad purple woman. she dances through herself to her next self. she is an egyptian goddess holding up the sky. taliba rises…

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to
www.akilaholiver.com

 

 

St. Louis Memorial

March 13, 2011 | Author Akilah Oliver's Family

Sevices were held in St. Louis, Mo. for Akilah on Saturday, March 5, 2011 at St. Matthew Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Kirkwood, Mo. Rev Renee T. Johnson (Akilah’s First Cousin) presided over the services.

It is always good to be around family. It was truly a “family affair” Aunt Lela Mcspadden got things started by sharing words about Akilah.
A farewell poem was read by Dana Payne (first cousin), Gerald Jones(cousin) followed with a song. Calvin Blockman (nephew) read words from his Grandmother Candis Navarette (Akilah’s stepmom and dear friend) who could not attend the services. Marqueta Oliver (niece) and Mandisa Bobo (sister) both shared words and each of them read one of Akilah’s poems. Marcia Oliver (sister) also shared words and read a poem dedicated to Akilah.

Then Reverend Johnson (cousin) bought it home with a poignant, soul searching message, leaving this thought and question with the family “What time is it Family?” We then shared a meal and reminisced about our dear sweet loved one.

Ending with everyone over cousin Glen’s and cousin Lynne’s homes, where family gathered together until the wee hours of the morning.

Akilah we love you and miss you!!!!!!!

 

 

New York Memorial by Rachel Levintsky

March 6, 2011 | Author Akilah Oliver's Family

Akilah Oliver Memorial was held Thursday 3/3/11 at Middle Collegiate Church (thank you to MCC & Erica Hunt). We had a table of offerings and many flowers thank you NS. Her two sisters Marcia and Mandisa and her niece Marqueta spoke of their life with her. Amiri Baraka came to pay his respects and he read a poem he wrote for Akilah, who he’d been with at Summer Writing Programs for many years, Anne W. performed a work of Akilah’s with her son Ambrose playing the piano that was so clear and true it broke me down rather completely. Julie Patton and David Henderson sang, and so did Steven Taylor and Tyler Burba. Erica Hunt and Anne Waldman presided. Laura Meyers and I read pieces we wrote about our work and friendship with A, Hannah Zeavin read the Frank O’Hara poem Having a Coke With You and Tonya Foster, Feliz Molina, Sabrina Calle and Bethany Spiers read and played her work. Marty Ehrlich improvised from Julius Hemphill acknowledging his and Akilah’s mutual roots in St Louis and Latasha Diggs read a poem and sang a spiritual. We played a tape of her Segue Reading from 2009. And erica kaufman organized photos into a slide show that were gathered, some which were from her early days performing with Los Angeles Poverty Department. Afterwards we all went over to St Marks Church Parish hall to have a spirited meal organized by the magnificent Julie Patton with the help of Nathaniel Siegel, Anna Moschovakis, Sophie Prevallet, Miranda Torn and Anita from Planet One who made it delicious. It was beloved community and I felt like Akilah loved it.

 

 

Please consider a donation

March 1, 2011 | Author Akilah Oliver's Family

Please click the Donate button above to donate via Paypal. Thank you in advance.

__________________________

 by BOMB Magazine on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 10:50am

Photo by Theresa Hurst. Courtesy Coffee House Press.

I encountered Akilah Oliver’s most recent book A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House Press 2009) with a bit of trepidation as I read “An erudite, gripping manifesto of grief” on the back cover. However, what I found was a joyful book despite the obvious presence of grief’s ghost. Oliver’s poetry bridges the gap between performance and written poetry. Her writing effortlessly transitions from lush prose to more sparse pieces, from repetitive chants to theoretic questioning.

Akilah Oliver’s previous books include The Putterer’s Notebook (Belladonna, 2007),a(A)ugust (Yo-Yo Labs, 2006), and the she said dialogues: flesh memory (Smokeproof/Erudite Fangs, 2009). She collaborated with Ambrose Bye and Anne Waldmanto create the CD Matching Half. She is the recipient of the PEN Beyond Margins Award. Oliver was curator for the Poetry Project’s Monday Night Reading/Performance Series and co-founder of the avant-garde feminist performance group The Sacred Naked Nature Girls. She has been artist-in-residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles and is on the faculty of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University. She currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn.
 

Susie DeFord: On the back of A Toast in the House of Friends the book is described as “An erudite, gripping manifesto of grief” which made me a little concerned that I was about to read a depressing book. Yet the poems don’t seem to suffer from the bleakness associated with grief, many seem hopeful. Can you speak about this?

Akilah Oliver: Grief is a complicated emotion but also an inadequate word in many ways. Maybe it isn’t so much that the term fails to encompass a range of emotional states, but I think also death itself, as an event, as a limit, as a field of investigation, is too many things at once.It’s solid and it’s slippery. For me what I’m doing in A Toast is using language to walk through that field to find out about love, the collapsible body, what it means to be human, all of that. Also, I think that I am trying to transcribe rapture. I mean that in the ecstatic sense of the word. The opening poem, “In Aporia, ” is taken from Jacques Derrida’s exploration of the limits of a border, language’s inability to capture the tension of this impasse, death. The poems in the first section of the book are written directly from that impossible field where nothing seems grounded. I am in a state of seeking. Grief is a part of that seeking, but so is redemption and anger, the forgivable and the unforgivable, this ecstasy of being in a kind of light, the simple astonishment of the impermanence of absence. This book is dedicated to my brother who died when I was very young, and he was very young, 28 years younger than I am now, so in some ways he has passed into myth for me, which is another kind of symbolic being-ness. It’s also dedicated to my son who died when he was 20, so there is that grappling with the loss of the body who has come through my body, a kind of intimacy that is almost indescribable. And it is also dedicated to my mother, who is still alive and kicking at 74, and the recognition of myself as the beloved body too, who has passed through another beloved. So there is this elegiac intent here as well. I am trying to trace the mystery of the bodylife, a term I’m borrowing from Cherríe Moraga. So there’s hope in these poems of course. I want the reader to enter A Toast as investigatory poetics, and perhaps it’s not finished, since investigation requires ongoing query, which could be a hundred year project as my friend the poet Anne Waldman likes to remind us all!

SD: Some of your poems that use a lot of repetition—“Hyena” and “An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet” almost beg to be read aloud as performance pieces. As someone who has performed a lot with the Sacred Naked Nature Girls and otherwise what are your thoughts on translating performance into the written form?

AO: These sections of the book were written with the consciousness of the page as a score for voice.So in these sections I’m interested in the primacy of the language, that it has to work on the page too, but I also want the potential for the reader to hear the words as a performative gesture, to invoke a sense of ritual. So my performance text serves several functions: lines can be marking time, or setting a sound quality, or indicating the speaker’s gesture to the beloved (“beauty boys girl beautiful/ beautiful girls boys beautiful/ I am extending to you this ahhhhh”). The “An Arriving Guard of Angels” section in the book was originally published as a chapbook and CD (from a performance recorded at Naropa University in 2004). I should just put the CD online, since it’s out of print and that was a pretty decent collaboration captured on the CD. I’ve had the privilege of performing this section with multiple voices and musicians over the last few years, and part of the fun of collaboration for me is playing with vocal arrangements (the text as a movable score, something that begs to be cut-up). And it’s really a pleasure for me, hearing what a guitarist or trumpet player or saxophonist might hear, and just playing with how all that works with my voice, or 10 voices. Some of the musicians I’ve collaborated with are Steven Taylor, who is a musicologist in addition to being a founder of the poetry rock group The Fugs, my longtime collaborator and friend Tyler Burba, who plays every instrument, but usually with me, guitar (we just did an improvisational cut-up of “An Arriving Guard” at the Bowery Poetry Club on August 8th). I just collaborated in May in Paris with the great jazz trumpet player Rasul Siddik whose work with the Now Artet is seminal in jazz. So, each musician brings a different sound and energy to the work, which allows for me to restage the text each time it’s performed.The piece has been performed as high dirge, as full out concert with up to ten voices and six musicians; as post-funk afrodelicious electronic with the conceptual sound artist Latasha N. Diggs.Working with the Sacred Naked Nature Girls was quite a different process. We were a theater-based group, but the spirit of structured improvisation that SNNG worked from certainly influences my collaborative performance work now.The other thing I consciously use in my performance practice are the principles derived from “flesh memory,” a working methodology and concept I developed through my stage work with SNNG, which privileges the body, the voice, and text as multi-vocal, generative sites of production.

SD: The structure of A Toast in the House of Friends and its various sections was interesting to me. You have long poems like “An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet” which is highly meditative, interior, and somewhat chanting that then explodes into “The Visible Unseen” your theoretic piece about graffiti and ghosts, which includes beautiful color photographs of the graffiti. It gives the feel of the outside world intruding on the inner poetic monologue. Can you speak about this?

AO: The color photos are of my son Oluchi McDonald’s graffiti artwork. So I wanted to take this documentation of his art and play around with the intersections of public “outlaw” art, graf writing as partially elegiac, and as a way to mark absence. What I love about how graf marks absence is that presence always intrudes. I’m thinking of the title of that film about Jack Johnson, this documentary, I saw it on PBS, called Unforgivable Blackness. Graffiti is like that, in your face, naming itself as never an “other,” but always as itself. Unforgivable in that sense, you know, in that it upsets easy notions of identity, resists type, even though the form itself has been codified as if it were only representational of a particular voice–the way the “invisible” are reduced to easy categories of erasure. Anyway, this critical, creative piece is about disrupting that erasure by looking further into it. I still like outlaw aesthetics. The other reason this section is important to me is that I really struggled with referentiality while thinking about how to talk about this book, and of course the “Visible Unseen” is about problematizing referentiality, so I got to do it my way. So this section for me is a collaboration with Oluchi’s work and an opportunity to “tell” something about who he was, the core space from where he worked, what he loved, while doing critical work on graffiti. The outside world and the inside world, you know, they’re not that separate, but the way of knowing and telling them can be.

SD: Your work deals a lot not only with the body but also with memory. Flesh Memory, and now it seems exterior memory such as that of graffiti. Why this fascination with memory and where it is held?

AO: I don’t know, but I do know I’m continuing this love affair with memory and the body! My new manuscript is an anti-memoir, The Putterer’s Notebook, and it’s backing into memory as disjuncture, the body as a shifting I. So, another way of looking at story making.

SD: Your series of “Fib” poems, which are somewhat list poems of the things happening around you, made me think of the idea of false memories. Are you playing with the subjectivity of memory and how that may not be the factual historical experience?
 

AO: Yes, and I am playing with this idea of useful fiction, which is similar to the idea of memory, not as false, but perhaps more as conditioned by multiple subject positions, or multiple experiences of our own experiences. I’m also playing with dreams, so dream lines are dropped in there. I wanted the sexual body, the desiring body, to speak too, so it’s in there, sex and sexuality as a source of play and discovery, as central to the idea of the embodied self. The lines are purposely fragmented and bumping against each other, like narratives do, at least in my life.

SD: How did writing Toast in the House of Friends transform you?

AO: I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but I think it’s made me more human.I think what I mean by that is, I now want to know more about little g God. Thanks to Fanny Howe’s work for helping me think about little g God and the loveliness of bewilderment. I’m thinking here about Howe’s book, The Wedding Dress. This book has been a sly and gorgeous influence on my thinking and teaching practice lately. One of the (many) things I like about little gGod is that you can have a vodka tonic while you talk to little gGod, sing along to Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans,” and hum Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” though maybe not all at the same time. This what I was perhaps trying to intimate in the poem, “wishes”: “I could couldn’t i/ temper heresy with a friend of mine/…irrationally content alongside the girning rain.” I’m still trying to figure it out.

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APRIL SIGNINGS FRIDAY, APRIL 1 6PM 86400 LAVAILLE LAVETTE Lavaille Lavette is an educator, author and a woman on purpose...86,400 seconds is all the time we have in a day...but if we are living on purpose, in the now, and honor time those precious seconds--indeed one Day is all we need to maximize the life we have. She tells us how...   SATURDAY APRIL 2pm matinee DIE FREE CHERYL WILLS @ Page to Stage in Conversation with the cast of The Whipping man Our Page to Stage Program began with Terry McMillan at Fela...We loved it and loved its potential for our authors and the interconnectedness of the works that pertain to our stories on Broadway...so we are back with another amazing show and author.  The Whipping Man staring Andre Braugher is about a confederate Soldier and two slaves...Die Free by Cheryl Wills is about her great-great Grandfather Sandy Wills  who was a soldier in the Civil War.... 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SATURDAY, APRIL 9 4PM BUTTERFLY RISING TONYA WRIGHT This beautiful smile and beautiful face is accompanied by an equally beautiful spirit.  You might recognize Tanya from the role she played as Theo's girlfriend on the Cosby Show or now on HBO's True Blood where she appears in the role Kenya on the super popular series  A graduate of Vassar this Diva is a playwright, author and has just directed her own movie based on the book Butterfly Rising....   SUNDAY APRIL 10 4PM FIRST VOICES DADDY I AM THE MAN YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KEVIN HOLMES What they see is what they'll be is the Motto of the 100 Black Men. Kelvin Holmes was determined to break prove that motto wrong.  As a child he learned firsthand from a father who was---a man without a plan---what not to become.  With conscious choices Kevin chose to look at the glass as half full instead of half empty......   WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13 6PM LIVING IN THE VILLAGE RYAN MACK Ryan Mack is a financial commentator on CNN and is dear to our hearts her in Harlem because he "speakie" our language.  He understands the money game and the conversation we are spearheading all over our community...individuals who have control of their finances and understand the power of money will benefit their communities in enormous ways.   This is the 21st Century conversation for African Americans and other ethnic communities with trillions of spending dollars that they control...what will you be? Consumer or financial Juggernaut who can then be a community empower-er?  THURSDAY, APRIL 14 6PM RUDE BOUY JOHN ANDREWS DEA meets Traffic....A diabolical and hard hitting story of the underbelly of a world saturated with corruption, deception, duplicity and inequities of all kinds...this spellbinding novel will keep you on the edge of your seat...Can DEA Rude Buay save his paradise Island from the Dragon Cartel? SATURDAY, APRIL 16 8AM to 4PM off-site at Aaron Davis Hall SISTER TO SISTER: One In the Spirit Celebrates its 10th Anniversary with a wonderful day of empowerment and inspiration and great Women of Power and Influence. Judge Karen Mills, Cheryl Wills, Elaine Meryl Brown, Rhonda McLean and Marsha Haygood will be guest speakers at this powerful all day long conference.  These great authors will also be signing books at the Hue-Man Bookstore on site at the Aaron Davis Hall.....there will also be a health expo and many vendors.  Vendor opportunities are available by calling...212-281-9240...Thanks Yvonne Davis for this gift. SATURDAY, APRIL 16 4PM LOVE AND OBSESSION A WOMAN"S TOUCH BILLIE GREENE Dr. Williams had it all.  A successful pediatric practice...a husband who she thought the world of until she finds out he has a life of his very own. Turning to her friend whose sympathetic ear turns into something else..A Woman's Touch...Williams abandons everyone to be with her new found lover only to find out that her lover has a Pandora's box of her own. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20 6PM CAMO GIRL KEKLA MAGOON Kekla writes the stories young adults want to read. Set in Las Vegas, the story of Z the odd kid out is one one of loyalty and friendship.  Z is great but unpopular. Ella is practically Z's only friend who doesn't seem to mind that she is black.  When Billie, another black kid comes to school he becomes popular and he can make Ella popular too but only if she promises to ditch Z.... THURSDAY, APRIL 21 6PM BLACK ORCHID BLUES PERSIA WALKER Oh what a peek into the a fantasy 1920's Harlem.  Walker's Harlem Renaissance novel (her third..Harlem Redux) bring us up close and personal with performing sensation Queenie Lovetree, a six foot three drag queen...who is taken at gun point from the club right informant of Harlem Chronicle society columnist Lanie Price...Ohhh drama, and more drama, then intrigue and more intrigue...yes..this is a good, good page turner... SATURDAY, APRIL 23 4PM License to Live: THE UNDERDOG OVERCOMES ELVIN DOWLING Was the former Chief of Staff of the national Urban League...gives you a "License to Live....Elvin Dowling came from the Florida Ghetto, wound his way though savvy moves to Capitol Hill and ended up on Wall Street.  He saw world and those who ruled it up close and personal.  Most recently the former Chief of Staff of the Urban League Edwin Dowling words and pearls of wisdom are worth hearing.... TUESDAY, APRIL 26 6PM JUSTIFY MY THUG WAHIDA CLARK Revisit the sage of the Clark's favorite couple...in their Hip-Hop tug of war life on the streets. 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