Poet Laureate of Carrboro, NC 2019 -2022 / 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow
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.
Kinetic: Conversations in Contemporary Art Series with Titus Kaphar
Friday, November 6, 6:00-8:30 p.m.
AU Museum
A dynamic lecture series sparking critical dialogue about contemporary art and creative professional practices. Generously sponsored by Dr. Darryl Atwell. Free and open to the public.
Titus Kaphar’s ‘The Vesper Project’ is a massive sculptural statement—an encompassing installation, in which Kaphar’s own work is seamlessly woven into the walls of a 19th century American house. The culmination of an intense five year engagement with the lost storylines of the Vesper family, the project was “birthed in a state of extended disbelief,” according to Kaphar. As the artist’s muses, the members of the Vesper family and their histories are intertwined with Kaphar’s autobiographical details, and layered with widebased cultural triggers of identity and truth in the context of historical accounting. In ‘The Vesper Project’, period architecture, gilt frames, a vintage typewriter, a neglected wardrobe,and old photographs act as seemingly recognizable elements, but by employing every tool of his trade, Kaphar insinuates doubt and transports the viewer into a disrupted mental state. As the house fractures,so does the viewer’s experience. In so doing, Kaphar compresses times, conflates the continuum of history and postulates new powerful realities.With many of Kaphar’s interventions present in the installation including slashing, silhouetting, and whitewashing, this singular work is a complex map of overlapping timetables and collective genealogies. By obliterating the distance between the viewer and the work, ‘The Vesper Project’ is comprehensive,experiential, and it is the artist’s most ambitious expression to date.
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.
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.
Here we are me and Naomi, standing in front of the now removed collaborative piece for CoDM featuring Don Camp’s images an and excerpt from my poem Seven Ways of Looking at Black Flowers.
I was told that piece would be relocated to Union Market, so any of you DC folks happen to be in the area let me know if you see it in the area.
Early this morning (Nov. 4th), the Ceremonies of Dark Men, posted an brief explanation as; to why the piece the Camp/Joiner collaboration was removed, it said the following
“A member of JBG Companies, a real estate development firm, had enough clout to render the agreement between them and the DC Commission null and void and had the piece by Camp and Joiner removed. Evidently, they took issue with Joiner’s poem.”
In addition to the the above explanation, CoDM posted a beautifully done video montage of the a gentleman named Frank X reciting my poem in its entirety, mixed with images by Don Camp. Although it would have nice to have read the poem myself, I am pleased with the outcome. Thanks to A.M. Weaver , Kelli Anderson, Frank X anyone else involved in making that happen!
The reality of this piece being removed and why it was removed may speak to larger issues around public art, who owns it and who gets to say whether it stays public or not.
That said, I would like to give a super shout out to developers who do not censor artists and who seek to understand art without projecting their own rigid and perhaps even racist views onto a piece of art.
Shout out Arch Development Corporation in Anacostia, in the many years that I have worked with them, I have never felt censored or creatively stifled in anyway. They have always allowed me or the artists that I have worked with the liberty to say what they want or need to say; so I am thankful for Arch Development for all that they have done and continue to do for art, artists, Anacostia and for DC overall.
Shout to Bozzuto, although I am new tenant in the Monroe Street Market and I have not been “working” with Bozzuto a long time, it appears that they open to trusting their partners (Cultural DC) to select quality artists to occupy their spaces and then letting the artists doing what they do best, create. That said I hope that I am not speaking prematurely, because if “a member of JBG Companies” had enough clout to lean on the DC Commission, perhaps he/she will have the same kind of influence on their fellow developer. Who knows, I guess we will find out…
I do hope that the billboard will be remounted somewhere else in the city, I am putting my bid in for Brookland or in Anacostia, since those are communities that I am connected to through The Center for Poetic Thought and through my long standing work with Arch Development
Stay Tuned
Update 8:32AM (UTC) Nov.5th 2014
The quoted paragraph above
“A member of JBG Companies, a real estate development firm, had enough clout to render the agreement between them and the DC Commission null and void and had the piece by Camp and Joiner removed. Evidently, they took issue with Joiner’s poem.”
has been removed from the statement made by CoDM on early in the morning on Nov 4th. I am curious as to why…
Well, not quite, but maybe censored is more like it.
I am/was honored to be chosen by curator A.M. Weaver to be a part her 5 X 5 Project , Ceremonies of Dark Men (CoDM), for the DC Comission of Art and Humanities especially with such an amazing group of visual artists (Donald E. Camp, Larry Cook, Isaac Diggs, Stan Squirewell and Michael Platt) and poets (Major Jackson, Kenneth Carroll, E. Ethelbert Miller and Afaa Michael Weaver).
I still have not gotten all the details, but A.M. told me shortly after my our piece (Don Camp and myself) went up the company that owns and/or manages the building were very displeased by the excerpt of my poem, so much so that they wanted them remove immediately. Here is the excerpt:
excerpt of Seven Ways of Looking at Black Flowers By Fred Joiner
A.M. warned me that they were threatening to take it down that weekend before the official opening of 5 X 5, but fortunately that did not happen. However they were not sure how long it would be allowed to remain up.
So a few days ago, while cruising Art Whino’s Instagram feed I noticed the our piece was taken down, because Artwhino’s new mural project was in progress. I asked the moderator of the Instagram handle what the deal was and he said that they were planning this for over a year, which makes me beg the question, Why would they put our piece in the first place if it was supposed to be up until Dec, if they had already promised the space to someone else…Sounds kind of fishy to me, but at least they will have some other nice art up and a ready made “scheduling mistake” rather than censoring a piece of art they did not care for.
Anyway, since they (JBG) did not bother to read, understand or reach out to me to to get clarity on the ENTIRE poem, I have posted it below.
I was told that A.M. and the CDoM project may post an official an update about what happened with the piece this week, so I am anxiously awaiting more details. For now all I have to go on is their decision to remove our piece because they thought it was divisive and would incite (or perhaps offend) viewers. The irony of that is on the day Melanie, Naomi and I went to go check out the billboard we came across at least 3 or 4 people who loved the billboard and did not think it was racist, divisive or inciting at all…go figure.
Anyway, I will post more details when they are available, in the meantime go check out Art Whino’s project and the ghost of mine at 51 N St NE (right near the NY Ave Metro and the ATF).
Seven Ways of Looking at Black Flowers By Fred Joiner
XIII
What is more beautiful than black flowers,
Or the Blackmen in fields
Gathering them?
– Raymond Patterson, Twenty-Six Ways of Looking at a Blackman
I
In what mellow tone
Do black flowers
Sing their blues?
II
Black flowers like black
Hands – colored: reaching toward
A mystery. Up South.
III
Black flowers, the gift
Of open palms
Facing North, but
Rooted South
IV
A man and a woman
Are one
A man and a woman and black flowers
Are dust
V
Against a sky white
Like a fists full of Sea
Island cotton the sky raining
Blood on black flowers
VI
In our world/ The tongue speaks
Only a binary song, always a black
Flowering problem, against a white
Canvas —blood in between
VII
The sound possibilities of black flowers
Were choices made by the hands, breath
And brass of a gifted man
Looking inward, blood on his lips
after
Gene Davis’s painting
Black Flowers, Raymond Patterson’s poem,
Twenty-Six Ways of Looking
at a Blackman, and Wallace Stevens’s poem ,
Thirteen Ways of looking
at a Blackbird
Today is the birthday of Sterling A. Brown, a folklorist, poet and literary critic who spent over 40 years teaching and mentoring at Howard University. I will always remember Amiri Baraka telling the story of being in a group of students going to a room in Brown’s house with wall-to-wall recording of jazz and blues, then Brown proclaiming to the group “This is your history!”
Despite growing up in a musical and arts exposed houshold, I still feel like i came late to Sterling A. Brown. I was in my early 20’s and had just started frequenting the open mics poetry sets in DC from the MUG to Mangoes , Bar Nun to Black Cat and Kaffa.
I am honored to have the opportunity to open The Center for Poetic Thought in the Brookland neighborhood that Brown called home so many years while teaching and mentoring at Howard University. The Center is in large part a dedication to Sterling A. Brown and our interests in trying to expand on the tradition of innovation in poetic thinking that poets like Sterling A. Brown helped to build.
Please stop by and see us. The Center for Poetic Thought is located at 716 Monroe Street NE, Studio #25, part of the new Monroe Street Market in the Brookland neighborhood of NE DC.
Hurston/Wr
Crank-Shaped Poems
This workshop will explore the possibilities and the uses of cultural attitude and the percussive behavior known as
poetic swag. Goals of the workshop new sense and new music; lyric poetry with an eye toward and against tradition.
Workshop Leader: Thomas Sayers
Ellis is a photographer and poet, and the author of Skin, Inc: Identity Repair Poems. His first full collection, The
Maverick Room was awarded the John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Ellis cofounded the Dark Room Collective in
Cambridge Massachusetts in 1988, and his poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The
Best American Poetry. He teaches in the low-residency Creative Writing Program at Lesley University and he is on the faculty of Cave Canem.
Weekend Writing Workshops
The Hurston Wright Weekend Writing Workshops are open to Black writers working in the genres of fiction, poetry,
nonfiction and memoir.
Join an intimate group of writers for a weekend of intensive writing and discovery that will stretch the bounds of your imagination and your writing. Working with award winning authors who lead each workshop, you will be mentored and find and create a nurturing community of support.
Saturday and Sunday, August 2-3, 2014
9am to 3pm (lunch included)
at the The Hill Center in Washington
D.C.’s Historic Capitol Hill Neighborhood
Tuition: $369.00
Deadline for applications
is April 18th.
Click here & here —> Hurston-Wright TSE workshop
(Pulitzer Center X Tarfia Faizullah)/ E. Ethelbert Miller = Great (Reading)
∑ n = (B(cause) ->This) + ( B(cause) -> This + This)
 American Gothic, ( 1930) painting by Grant Wood |
 American Gothic, (1942) photograph by Gordon Parks |
 Capricorn, model 1948, cast 1975 (sculpture) by Max Ernst |
So M and I were at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) a few years ago and although I had been to the NGA many times before, we decided to take their “Introduction” tour. While on that tour one of the pieces that they highlighted on the tour and that really caught my attention was Max Ernst’s Capricorn.
It hit me on a few levels, mostly because I am always looking for the presence of “African design intelligence” or an African aesthetic in art, literature, etc and this piece in particular felt like it had an organic feel to it, in the same way that some many of the African works that I have been exposed to, especially in the sculpture world….I am not sure if it was the fashioning of animals in human “positions” (i.e sitting and standing) or just a kind of symmetry and balance that I feel in looking at all of these works.
In looking at the Wood and Parks pieces and considering the titles it is clear that the two works are in “conversation” with one another, even if that conversation is oppositional or confrontational, it is there.
The Ernst piece, Capricorn immediately caught my attention because it appeared that it, too, was a part of this visual conversation; its balance the composition, what was depicted all suggest at the very least a thread of a connection. The other thing that made me think that they was the timing. Both Parks’ piece and Ernst’s piece were completed very close in time, Parks piece in in 1942 the year of Grant Wood’s death and Ernst a few years after in 1948. I cannot help but think particularly around the time of Wood’s death that engaged artist like Parks and Ernst would not have something say about it in their work.
When I come to a piece of art I am always thinking about its DNA, not just process, materials and aesthetics , but the real lineage of the piece…who, what, where, why or when spawn it…what other ideas or works of art is it connected to, not just movements and manifestos