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.
updates
Gratitude
As usual, the end of the year puts me an introspective mood, which sends my mind all over the place. Very often I find myself thinking about the future, what the next move will be for me, my art and my family. But quite often before I dive into the future, I find myself thinking about the year that has passed, what I have lost, gained, learned or even what I am going through at the present moment.
As those thoughts pass through my mind, I am in a mood of gratitude in general , but also because of some recent good news…
A few months ago, one of my poems was accepted by The Editors (Mahogany L. Browne and Amanda Johnston) for the #blackpoetsspeakout issue of Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture (click here & here for more info). Needless to say it is an honor to be a part of the sea of poetic voices speaking up for our people as we face the crisis of state sponsored and sanctioned violence, through police and law enforcement who are supposed to be serving and protecting. Because I am living abroad, it hard to watch and to hear about all the things going on and not to be present to be a part of protests or to help out in someway. But I also realize this is a global issue and that the work I am trying to do with empowering Malian (and other West African artists) is a part of that struggle too.
Because of the vision of the guest editors, that this issue of pluck! was intended to be used as “a personal amulet, a tool in the classroom and a hammer in the streets. Get it either way, but carry it forward.” Editor Amanda Johnston goes on to say “Because this work is for the people and these poems have work to do, pluck! issue 13 is now available for FREE online. Click here to read now.”
Here is how you can get a print copy for you or your institution:
Pluck! $15/copy mail to:
pluck!, 1215 POT
University of KY
Lexington KY 40506
$30/subscription for individuals
$100/sub for institutions and organizations
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Secondly, I am grateful that Sarah Browning accepted a few of my poems for a forthcoming issue of the Delaware Poetry Review that will be out Spring of 2016.
And…
Last, but most definitely not least, I just found out a few days a ago that a small dialogue that I recorded with Kwame Dawes ( find him here & here) will be included in the final cut of Furious Flower III. I cannot even explain the kind of honor this is, mostly because even though I have been to thelast two Furious Flower Conferences and other tributes and events in between, I still walk around kind of starstruck to be among some of my super accomplished peers and folks whose work has shaped and continues to help me shape, my own work. So to be in the video presentation really means a lot me.
I am beyond grateful, thank you to Dr. Joanne V. Gabbin, for grabbing me by the hand that day back in September “to go with her to talk to Kwame” and many thanks to Judith McCray, of Juneteenth Productions for crafting Kwame’s brilliance and my babbling into a really nice dialogue (I almost sound like I know a little something).
I also want to thank the few of you who take the time to read my random and often infrequent thoughts on this and my other web presences. Please know that it is EXTREMELY appreciated!
Onward & Upward…
***I am also super thankful for my parents, The Joiners of Bowie coming to visit The Joiner of Bamako for 5 weeks and for our upcoming trip home to the States for the holidays, this is the first time we will all be home together for the Holiday Season.
A Pan-African 40th Birthday Meditation…
I started writing this on the day after my birthday, but got caught up with family, putting together my thesis, planning our trips to Paris, Boston and DC. So I know that this is way belated, but I wanted to post it anyway as way to try to kickstart my blogging again. I hope you all will enjoy reading this nonetheless.
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I have learned a lot about myself in these past almost 2 years I have been living here in Bamako. Although it is easy to type or perhaps even to say, it is no small thing for African American like myself to make such a bold claim and internalize its weight in the face all that may be trying to tell me the opposite.
Last year, after hearing Lorna Goodison, Kwame Dawes and Brenda Marie Osbey speak at Furious Flower 2014, things become a lot clearer for me, in listening to what they had to say.
I was particularly struck by Kwame Dawes’ presentation, in which he spoke about his “absence of angst”, “absence of divideness” , “absence of struggle and identity crisis” , with regard to who he is and where he comes from.
Hearing how clearly and resolutely he spoke really affirmed a lot of what I have been feeling and trying to articulate lately.
Later that same day I got a chance to sit down with Kwame Dawes to be filmed for the Furious Flower Archive, it was really an honor and privilege to talk with him. I hope some portion of that will find the light of day. After our conversation while walking back for another session, I started ruminating on the following quote by Kwame Nkrumah:
“I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me.” -Kwame Nkrumah
This quote nailed it for me. I know some will find this problematic, or that perhaps that the Pan-African spirit that is undergirds what Nkrumah said is archaic and does not fit today’s reality, but I disagree. I think today more than ever we have access to so much more information about who we have been and who we are and that information used correctly can be empowering and perhaps build the kind of bridges necessary for Africa and America.
I have never felt more “African”, than I do today, despite being a “American” from the United States, by blood on the soil & by passport, despite difference, despite being called “white” sometimes (in a non-pejorative way…I think),despite only speaking one language fluently (our American dialect , not English), despite boarders, tribes & ethnicities, despite those who will not claim me, nor allow me to claim myself…I steal a/way, despite those who will claim a spot in my place, despite the magnetic black hole of the middle passage, where clocks run backwards, & the ark of bones left in that wake where time stands still…
I am clear. I am African
Below as Above
A few days ago I found out my poem was chosen as the winner for The Divine Comedy Poetry contest at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.
The contest is one the events connected to the new exhibition, The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists.
b. 1953, Mali
Dance of Kayes from La Danse series
2008
Textile, each: approx. 246.4 x 170.2 cm
(97 x 67 in.).
Collection of Saro León
My poem was in response to Malian textile artist, Abdoulaye Konate’s 2008 Dance of Kayes from La Danse series, as seen above. Read the poem here.
I choose Konate’s work not only because he is Malian, but because his exhibition at the Institut Francais of Mali , was the one of the only art of a Malian artist I had seen other than Malick Sidibe, Seydou Keita, Alioune Bâ and a few others – all photographers. Painter, Amadou Sanogo, was the other Malian artist’s work that I had seen, aside of the famous Malian photographers.
I also chose Konate’s piece because of the cool colors he chose to represent Kayes are not what I expected given that the Kayes region is one of the hottest places on the planet, so the contrast was quite striking.
I was asked to read the poem at the Museum’s Divine Poetour this summer on July 2. Split This Rock’s DC Youth Slam Team and NMAfA’s Teen Ambassadors, will be reading their works that engage the The Divine Comedy exhibition. So come out and support the DC Youth Slam Team and NMAfA’s Teen Ambassadors. Peep the flyer below…
I am excited to be a part of The Divine Poetour, it looks like it will be similar to a project that I did afew years back as a collaboration between The American Poetry Museum and The Phillips Collection.
Happy Mother’s Day…
Being 4500 miles away from your family really makes you appreciate them so much more. Even though this is Mother’s Day, I also want to take a moment to big up my Father as well, while wishing my Mom a Happy Mother’s Day.
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I was probably just a twinkle in my Mom’s eye in 1973, when my Dad recorded this song with The Intruders, there is apart of me that wonders what was going through his head when he was recording this song. Perhaps it was just one of the many recording gigs for Philadelphia International Records, or maybe he was just in whatever mental state it takes to be a part of creating timeless art…Perhaps I will ask him when I see him this summer on our visit to the States.
What I am certain of however is what this song means to me at this moment in my life as a new parent and African American man. In a way the song is an artifact of my own past that I am re-discovering and it is also acts as a timeless double tribute to both my parents, who have done so much for me. I am honored and privileged to have parents that lived lives that I can be so proud of.
So here’s to you Mom (and Dad)…Happy Mother’s Day to you, from The Joiners of Bamako (Freddie, Melanie, & Naomi)
Random Art stuff from Bamako
This is art inspired by “Le Force Noire” or “le Tirailleurs ” who were instrumental troops in aiding the French in their military initiatives in the early to mid 20th century. There was a group of these soldiers called the “SenegaleseTirailleurs”, who were particularly lauded for their, bravery, intellect and skill as soldiers…Wikipedia has a long, yet incomplete (and perhaps even biased) entry on the the Senegalese Tirailleurs , check it out for a primer, but I will post some more info about these soldiers that were instrumental in saving France more losses.
Obviously my favorites are the ones that use poetry or other stylized text to compliment the power of the image…
half note #001
Sometimes it’s a good feeling to know that you are not alone or at least to know that someone else is thinking what you are thinking.
About 2 years ago i wrote this piece called “Mel Bochner: In the Tower…or in the mix?” . It was a brief meditation on Mel Bochner’s exhibition in The Tower of the National Gallery of Art in DC and what was going on my my head at the time. In the piece, one of the things i talked about was visual poetry, in particular what I suggested was Bochner’s render of a “visual sonnet” based on the structure of the the Thesaurus paintings. I further suggest that these poems are connected to Stein, Boultenhouse , Apollinaire lineage starting with Stein’s “word portraits” to Boultenhouse’s “Poems in the Shape of Things” to Apollinaire’s collection of visual poetry Calliagrammes.
Just a few weeks ago I came across this article entitle “Apollinaire ‘s Visual Poetry” on MoMA‘s Blog INSIDE/OUT. AIf felt good to know that the same type of language and thinking that I had used to frame the poetic qualities of Bochner’s work was being used to by a curator at MoMa to talk about Apollinaire’s Calliagrammes. I know it seems like such a small perhaps even insignificant thing, but as a part of my creative process, it is important to create and find community where I can for encouragement, particularly with the experience of living in a new place where you don’t yet have community to plug into and to be a support.
Anyway, that is my half note for now…more soon…
INSIDE/OUT Blog Archive on Poetry related stuff click here .
What’s been on my mind
So many thoughts come to me as I move through my day, exploring my little corner of this vast Continent, trying to keep 3 languages (English, French and Bamanakan) straight in my head, trying to stay creative and nimble, etc
But there are some thoughts, observations, ideas that keep coming back, things that won’t leave you alone. Over the past few months I have been thinking about money, currency, cash, moolah y’all…how it functions in the world, its behavior, the behavior of those who handle it, define it, worship it, and those that are under its foot, caught in its crease. A recent article from SiliconAfrica has made me think even harder as I attempt to come to grips with my own complicity which has made ask and attempt to answer some tough questions for myself and the way I move in the world.
I have always been interest in Africa (I will post more about that soon my my other blog BOOM FOR REAL BAMAKO), even from a very young thanks to late Uncle Clemson “Russell” Joiner and my parents efforts to make sure I understood that there is more to African American history than enslavement (rebellion and victory) and the Civil Rights Movement.
I have been fortunate enough to have people around me from an early age to explain to that Africa and its influence on all American life is not some remote dead thing of the past, but that it is still with in a lot of ways… not as retentions but as things we have always done. I was reminded of this just a few weeks back when the The Daily Beast posted pictures from Martin A Berger’s newly published Freedom Now!: Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle where this photo taken by Don Cravens in 1955 caught my attention:
which in turn immediately made think of the picture I took during my first week here in Bamako in 2013, which I call Royalty.
Although I was not surprised to see women carrying things like this in Bamako; I must admit, despite my Low Country/Gullah roots, I was still surprised to see this. I see women like this everyday walking around Bamako, I marvel at them, how they are always in motion, always at work, always serving.
Because these things have been repeatedly going through my mind since I have been here I have been trying to make sense of them the best way I know how…by attempting to make poems. I am not quite ready to share them yet, but you will see them, if I am blessed you may see 1 or 2 of them in print.
See you soon.
Brief thoughts on Langston and Africa
I thought about Langston Hughes all day today, thinking about what he meant to me, how much I still don’t know about him and his work…I also thought about what it means for me to be here in Bamako, Mali, a poet and trying to make sense of myself here.
I came across this poem doing what I do with a good portion of my days, surfing the net, reading, researching etc and I came across this on ChickenBones:
Africa
Sleepy giant,
You’ve been resting awhile.
Now I see the thunder
And the lightning
In your smile.
Now I see
The storms clouds
In your waking eyes:
The thunder,
The wonder
And the new
Surprise.
Your every step towards
The new stride
In your thighs.
– Langston Hughes
This poem resonates with me as look at out into what is now early morning Feb 2nd and think about the future of Africa. Although things are dire in many countries, there are many countries where the people are thriving, that energy is palpable. I feel it when talking with people about their country and I see it in all of the building that is going on. I also saw and felt that creative spark in talking to the young people at the American International School of Bamako, who I had the opportunity to spend the day with a few days ago.
This Hughes poem despite its age does what so many good poems do, it speaks to its reader where that reader is found. It takes a poet of extreme vision to simultaneously be timely in one’s own day and transcendent 47 years after your death…
Thank you Langston Hughes, you give us all who claim to poets something to strive for.