I have some changes and updates planned for my website, so please bear with me as I try to keep up with this thing alongside everything else in my life.
Thanks for your support for the faithful who come here looking for info about me and my work.
Gratitude #0
Over the years it has been so cool to see the work of so many poets who are friends, who I have met or whose work I just love on The Academy of American Poets website (and Poetry Foundation too).
To quite honest, I never thought anything I had written would find itself there. So you can imagine how beside myself I am with gratitude and jot that 2 of my poems Austerity and Currency are now on The Academy of American Poets’ website.
One of those poems, Currecncy is included in The Next Verse Poets Mixtape Volume One: the 4 X 4 (Central Square Press) which you purchase here.
Long time…
It’s been a long time since I have posted an update, but that is going to change soon. As many of your know I have been selected to serve as Carrboro’s Poet Laureate, soI am trying to figure out how to reconfigure this space to best keep you all informed and engaged about stuff that I am doing.
Stay tuned…
Thinking about James H. Cone
I have a recording of James H. Cone (Rest in Peace) and a bunch of other scholars and clergy speaking at Rankin Chapel for the book release of The Cross and the Lynching Tree, but I think I was between jobs at the moment and did not want to get the hardcover. Last week, I picked up a copy at my church at started to read it in preparation for my church’s pilgrimage to The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. I would have to go back to that time in my life and really reflect on my thinking, but Cone’s work is one of the main reasons why I am still a Christian or feel comfortable describing myself that way. His work gave me permission in a way to redefine and broaden how I conceptualized and lived my faith
While I am looking forward to the trip, I am approaching it with a certain amount of reflection and perhaps a bit of hesitancy, as I recently have also been reading a studying the book called My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, which calls attention to the epigenetic and somatic effects that racialized trauma is having on us.
I am not sure I have much more to say other than I am ruminating on these works while also trying to handle the rush of the creative energy that I have been experiencing lately; so I just have to sit with where things are going and try to prepare for what’s next…I hope you will join me for the ride…Stay tuned
website issues part deux
I just fixed a long-standing issue I had been having with the Contact page, but I think I got it all worked out now.
I apologize if you have reached out to me and I did not get the message.
Website issues
Hey y’all
I am having some issue with my website. The Center For Poetic Thought section is not opening and my url redirects are not working bear with me as figure out what is going.
If you have any questions about what The Center is just hit up the Contact page.
updates
I know updates have been scarce…what can I say except, soon come. In the meantime head over to BOOM FOR REAL Bamako and check out a few updates over there.
ICYMI: For your visual arts education edification and listening pleasure
The National Gallery of Art in DC has a really nice series going called The Collecting of African American Art . They are up to Episode XII (a conversation with Artists Leonardo Drew and Jennie C. Jones with Pamela J. Joyner, collector.) right now, so get your binge on if you have not been fortunate enough to be in DC or to have already heard.
Random Hip-Hop & Poetry Thought 01
I have had the privilege of knowing Bro. Yao ( Hoke S. Glover III) for quite some time. I don’t really remember how long it has been, but I do remember the conversations we used to have at the Karibu Books that was in the Landover Mall. We did not learn that we were both poets until a bit later.
Today on Rattle’s website‘s, Bro. Yao’s poem “PUTTING THE NIGGERS TO REST“ is the poem of the day. After reading it, I immediately thought of The Roots song 75 Bars (Black Reconstruction) ( I also thought of DuBois’ Black Reconstruction in America, but that is a much longer discussion for another time), from their 2008 album Rising Down; on which Black Thought uses both Nigger(s) and Nigga(s) repeatedly in punctuating his lines.
Right of the top, in Yao’s poem, I do notice various types rhymes and sonic pleasures that Yao layers into the poem.
I am going to spend some time with these two pieces to look for similarities beyond the repetition of Nigger(s)/Nigga(s) and the strikingly similar distribution of the word throughout, but I couldn’t ignore both poets’ use of Nigger(s)/Nigga(s) , perhaps as a way of pointing to some other layered meaning …….
Other Links to check out:
Bro. Yao’s (Hoke S Glover III) new book, Inheritance
Mos Def and Black Thought rhyming 75 Bars (Black Reconstruction)