>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
>> Rob Casper: For sticking around.
I'm Rob Casper, I'm the head of the
Poetry and Literature Center here
at the Library account
Congress and I would
like to welcome the
participants in our second panel
of the afternoon Organizing
Founders.
The panelists are Michael Datcher,
Toi Derricotte and Sharan Strange,
and our moderator is Joanne Gabbin.
Just a reminder, please turn
off all your cell phones
and electronic devices and please
note this event is being videotaped
for future webcasts at the library.
So if you spin participate
in the Q&A session
which I promise we will have, you
give us permission to include you
in free audio and webcasts.
And as you can hear outside,
there is some books for sale
and some folks signing those books.
We'll do the same for
you after this event.
So without further
ado, please join me
in welcoming the participants
for this panel.
[ Applause ]
>> Joanne Gabbin: Thank you
so much for that introduction
and thank you also for being here
for this panel called
Organizing Founders.
It is my pleasure to be here with
old friends and with new friends.
I just met Michael Datcher
today and so happy to meet him.
I knew him through his work,
but I got an opportunity
to meet him in the flesh.
And to my wintergreen
women, my beautiful sisters,
Toi Derricotte and Sharan Strange.
It's just wonderful to be here.
I'm Joanne Gabbin and
I'm the director
of the Furious Flower Poetry Center.
And, you know, I was sitting here I
was listening to Marita [phonetic]
and I was thinking I too am
old enough to have been touched
by not only Cave Canem, but
also the Black Arts Movement.
In fact, the people who
nurtured me nurtured the people
who are the architects of
the Black Arts Movement.
And I want to spend a moment
to just raise their names.
Hoyt Fuller of the black world.
Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Burroughs
who was the founder
of the DuSable Museum.
Sterling Brown who was the first
Poet Laureate of the District
of Columbia right here
in Washington, DC.
And George Kent who was my mentor,
who is one of the finest scholars
of the last hundred
years who encouraged me
to study Gwendolyn Brooks and
Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown.
So these were people who
nurtured the people we now know
as Sonja Sanchez and Haki
Madhubuti and Amiri Baraka
and Etheridge Knight and
the list goes on and on.
But I want to get right into these
introductions so that you can hear
from these fabulous people, hear
their poetry, hear their comments
and then we want to have enough
time at the end to engage you
in a conversation with them.
Michael Datcher did his
undergraduate work at UC Berkeley
and his graduate work at
UCLA and UC Riverside.
He also just completed
his PhD at UC Riverside.
He is the author of the critically
acclaimed historical novel Americus
and he's also the author
of the bestseller,
New York Times bestseller
Raising Fences.
Fortunately that book has
film rights on it optioned
by actor Will Smith's
Overbrook Productions.
He is the coeditor of Tough Love,
the Life and Death of Tupac Shakur.
He also has a play by
the name of Silence
which was commissioned
by the Getty Museum.
He is the cohost of the weekly
public affairs news magazine
Beautiful Struggle that is heard
on 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles.
His writing is widely
anthologized, including appearances
in what makes a man
brown sugar, soul fires,
testimony, and another city.
He has also curated and/or
participated in the Brooklyn Museum
of Art, the Museum of
Contemporary Art, the Hammer Museum
and other art institutions.
We are especially interested in
hearing about the World Stage,
a literary organization
that sponsored the
Anansi Writers Workshop.
So you will hear from him
first, let's welcome him.
[ Applause ]
>> Michael Datcher: Thank
you all for being here
and supporting black
letters and black excellence.
I'll begin my comments with
an excerpt from an interview
by the founder of the World
Stage, the cofounder Kamau Daaood
who was speaking about his
understanding of the role of poets
and poetry inside of communities.
Daaood is a veteran of
the Watch Writers Workshop
that you may have heard of as a
part of the Black Arts Movement.
He was also a part of the
Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra,
which was led by the great composer
and pianist Mr. Horace Tapscott.
He was the lead poet in
that particular organization
and this is the quote about
again the role of artists
and poets in communities.
Quote, I am a devout poet.
I believe that right words offered
in the right way can be
music holding us together
when we can speak the language of
essence, we will be able to commune
in the space miles above
dogma in the confines
of individual traditions.
And we can develop into
evolved human beings capable
of radiating profound love,
light and service to others.
I believe wholeheartedly that
art in a community is noble work
that fosters beauty and
meaning into our lives,
that art is vital and necessary.
I believe in the sacredness
of breathing.
I'll now read a poem developed
in that writing workshop
which meets every Wednesday night.
This poem is one of my own,
it's called the execution
of Michael Brown and
dot dot dot one.
Unarmed white men don't catch
gunfire from riffle armed cops,
instead their empty palms wave
and pick winning raffle tickets
from the policeman's ball.
But black hands are magic, wallets
transform to firearms in the blink
of a whaling mother's eye,
in the enchanting flash
of a service revolver.
Black fingertips spin two 45's like
an old-school ballistic DJ flight
of hand too exquisite
for the veiled eye,
only visible in the cold of silence.
But come Sunday pistols are
missing imaginary planks in the eye
of the beholder of the bash.
If you a speck in a brother's eye
it must be a glint from a handgun,
pluck it out, ask questions
later at the inquest.
Let his unborn son cross-examine
the city's executioner,
let the womb question the
state, the Constitution.
Let his unborn son ask will black
magic make me disappear too.
Ferguson is [inaudible],
a slave schooner
in a recycled Hennessey bottle.
Sails are raised hands of surrender,
a loaded badge finds him guilty
of harboring illegal dreams.
The bottle's waste constricts into
an hourglass meat grinder flips,
Michael Brown slides and tumbles
down a tunnel of no return.
Time only moves backwards
when historians connect dots
like drunk demonologists or when
a sunken face mother whispers,
I wish the magic bullet
would've hit me too.
Thank you.
At the World Stage we try to
follow the spirit and dictates
of Mr. Kamau Daaood
who is our founder
and also his cofounder
Billy Higgins.
If you are jazz fan
you may know the name.
Billy Higgins was the house
drummer in many ways for Blue Note,
the great jazz label here in New
York or Manhattan [inaudible],
around the way in New York
[inaudible] oftentimes.
And so in many ways
we really are trying
to address the present
historical moment
and this also links us back
to the 1960's movement.
As we know that in this time
of really virulent
anti-blackness we can imagine,
if you can imagine animus scale as
Mel White does where there's kind
of a hierarchy of aliveness
or animus.
At the very bottom there may
be a rock and then some algae
and the maybe a cat or a dog or
reverse if you're a dog person
on up, you know, to people.
And the lower part of the human
animus scale are probably black men
and black women.
We have the least power to create
and produce change to alter this.
And at the very top we
probably find white men.
And at the surface --
at the current level
of animus black folk
can be killed by someone
and the killer can
suffer no consequence
because our lives are devalued,
we have so little animus,
a little aliveness and respect
in this modern present
historical moment
that our lives are embodied
subjects don't matter enough
to even require the shooter,
the violator to go to prison
or to even have a trial oftentimes,
which is really very
frustrating and ridiculous.
And so we believe that art can
make a change, art can change that.
Through art and through literature
in particular that we can use art
to elevate the animus of people.
When you begin to tell your
own stories about your family,
about your mother,
about your mentors,
about your children you write
yourself into existence.
And the power of writing own
narrative imagine any bookstore,
a Barnes & Noble or Borders or
Library of Congress when you
and you pour that book from a shelf
or all those books
are someone's stories.
It could be a nonfiction narrative,
it could be a book of poetry,
it could be an imagine narrative.
What if you could tell
your own story?
What's implied about having so many
books in a library for example,
like ours here at the
Library of Congress is
that those lives were
worthy of documentation,
worthy of a of a memoir,
worthy of a book of poems.
What if black folks who
have a lower animus begin
to tell their own stories
and that's the power
of art we find in Los Angeles.
When I got involved in 93 we began
to find creative ways to use art
to reach people in our
neighborhood, in our community.
So we would -- I live in
LA and we live right off
of Crenshaw Boulevard, there's a
neighborhood called Leimert Park,
it's the center of black art and
political organizing in Los Angeles.
It's also, you know, it's a
black working poor neighborhood
so we have gangsters, many of
them, we have drug dealers,
many of them, we have black drama.
So we would go every Friday night
in the beginning especially in 93,
we'd go to a corner on 43rd off
Crenshaw with a few poets, a drummer
and a milk crate and we would
get up and we would do poetry,
we called it guerilla as in G-U-E-R.
Guerilla poetry live, we
start playing our drums
and kicking our poetry on the
street of Crenshaw Boulevard.
And of course invariably we
would have a drug dealer come by,
this is in 93 when
crack was ramped in LA.
Who are you people they
would kind of sweat us,
but we would say we're poets,
we're beginning a poetry
workshop, please come.
And over a course of months of doing
this they begin to actually come
to a writing workshop
featuring poets.
So try to imagine in LA gangsters
and folks who are engaging
in underground illicit commerce
coming to your poetry workshop.
It was for us, it was a time to not
dehumanize and make enemies of those
who look like us because
oftentimes in black neighborhoods
who are drug dealers or the
gangers are the outsiders
for everyone in that neighborhood.
So we try to find a way to
bring them inside the community
by using art and by using poetry.
So we know the power of art
and poetry to transform lives.
And my own personal narrative,
I went to undergrad at Berkeley
and my mentors were June
Jordan and Barbara Christian,
the great scholar and theorist.
And I was in a very corporate track
as an undergraduate because I came
from a very, very poor family,
I wanted to go make money
for my family and I took as a lark,
as an elective I took
Jean Jordan's poetry
for the people course one semester
the same quarter I Dr. Christian's
course on literature.
And being in those courses
literally changed my entire view
of myself, but also life itself.
One day Barbara turned to
me, I would go to her house
and she would send me to go buy rum
which is probably inappropriate,
but to go buy rum.
And we would go to her house
and we'd talk politics late
into night almost every
single weekend.
And she turned to me one day
and she said, she shook me
and she says Michael, you are going
to be somebody with such conviction,
with such a force, I mean she shook
me you're going to be somebody.
But I actually believed it myself.
I began to believe it
myself, so I know the power
of someone believing in you.
And you can believe in folks who
may be doing in your neighborhoods
that are not progressive
or productive,
but you can still find
a way to believe in them
if there's an access route.
And our access route
was art, it was poetry.
At the World Stage we offer
a seven days of program.
We have drumming, African drumming,
we have poetry, we have jazz,
we have a jazz [inaudible] for kids,
we have -- it's a crazy program.
Go to the worldstage.org
for more information.
And use these really inexpensive
five bucks per workshop
for like the top people
in the world.
Marcellis comes through,
all those cats come through,
Pharoah Sanders is
always coming through.
The biggest names in jazz
because we have Billy Higgins
as our founder come to the
World Stage and kick their work
and of course the poets as well.
As my time probably is wrapping up
here where's my -- how am I doing?
We're doing great.
And so we believe in the
power and the efficacy of art
to actually impact neighborhoods.
Too often as we know when
there's a financial crisis,
when there's a budget constraint
what gets cut first, the arts?
That is a horrible shortsighted way
to approach living in a society.
Because when you begin to take art
from neighborhoods you take
imagination from kids' lives.
Imagination from adults' lives.
When you lack imagination you go
to the lowest common denominator
which is violence, which is
misogyny, which is homophobia,
which is trying to
imagine being a man
and a definition that's
this narrow right.
It's not an expansiveness when
there is a lack of imagination.
So we believe that through art,
through jazz, through literature,
through poetry, through
children being exposed
to poets in their everyday life.
If you can make for
children in particular,
if you can make art
attractive or in our vernacular
if you can make art cool right.
So we thought a lot about how do we
make art cool enough for a gangster
to come to our workshop, for the guy
selling literally our corner crack
cocaine literally.
How do we make it cool enough
so we can get together?
So we begin to all wear
black leather jackets.
It was a small thing, we're
searching for straws right,
we're just -- let's all get
leather jackets and we'll go
out to the corner and
we'll kick our poetry.
I know very simplistic,
very kind of yeah,
not really sophisticated,
but it helped right.
And so to be able to walk
and talk and be around folks
in the neighborhood who are just
open to us as other members living
in that neighborhood who happens
to do poetry it allowed poets
to have certain type of
respect in the neighborhood
where we weren't getting shot, which
happened a bit in our neighborhood
or robbed, mugged or
approached to buy cocaine
from our fellow neighbors.
But I'll say lastly in closing is
that if you can imagine a world
as Dr. Edwards, one of my colleagues
has a great quote about her vision
for literature and
she says oftentimes
that as you relate
literature to imagination.
She says that, her
name is Dr. Edwards,
she says literature is a repository
for conscious stories
and alternative visions.
Narrative is a dialogic site
for reimagining possibilities.
So her whole goal was to try to find
a way to reimagine the possibility
for the drug dealer,
for the gangster,
for the rolling 40's
Crip in our neighborhood.
And we thought our best route is to
use what we know best which is art
and to find a creative way to
make it cool, make it attractive,
but most importantly
make it excellence.
We found that when you write
in an excellent fashion.
[Inaudible] a rigorous workshop,
a component people
are going to feel it.
So in our workshop we have
an hour workshop first
where people bring works in progress
in a very intense tough
resolve like environment.
Then we have a featured reader,
someone who has a book out
or famous poet comes into
town flies in for a half hour
and the last hour is an open mic.
But in that first part
of the workshop all the poets bring
their work first to the workshop
and get some very, very tough love.
Even my poem I read today was a
workshop in that particular workshop
and I got lots of tough
love believe me all right.
Even today going to my own workshop
I am nervous climbing that stage
because people are
so -- I'm not joking.
People are not playing and
if you come with a poem
that is offensively not
crafted people talk bad
about you and your parents.
Thanks for listening.
[ Applause ]
>> Joanne Gabbin: Well Michael,
we're not going to talk bad
about you, but we are going to
talk back at you because we want
to know more and so
save your questions
for the question and answer period.
You remind me of something
that Gwendolyn Brooks did
back in the late 60's.
She had a workshop with
a black peace donation.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: In Chicago.
Yes indeed.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Next speaker.
My sister, Sharan Strange, founding
member of the Dark Room Collective
and for several years the co-curator
of the Dark Room Collective
Reading Series.
For many years she was also the
contributing editor of Callaloo,
the Journal of African
Diaspora Arts and Letters.
Her honors include the Rona
Jaffe Foundation writer's award,
the Barnard New Poets Prize, also
her first book Ash was selected
by none other than Sonia Sanchez.
She has served as Bruce McEver
ever visiting chair in poetry
at the Georgia Institute of
Technology and guest faculty
at the Center for Contemplative
Mind in Society, as well as writer
in residence at Fisk University,
Bennington College, Wheaton College,
University of California at Davis,
California Institute of Arts,
the University of Tennessee, and now
she is teaching at Spelman College.
>> Michael Datcher: Nice.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Her poems and
essays have appeared in journals
and anthologies, you
will find her everywhere
so I will not list all of those.
I will say here Sharan Strange.
>> Michael Datcher: Nice.
[ Applause ]
>> Sharan Strange: You
don't need to cut it short.
Thank you so much Joanne.
I love Joanne Gabbin.
Thank you so much to the Library
of Congress, to the Folger.
Good to be back in DC I lived
here for many years and I miss it.
I miss the DC that I
lived in I should say,
you all know what I mean.
But anyway, it's so wonderful to
be here and to see old friends
and new friends and just to be able
to have this opportunity to talk
about the Dark Room Collective
and there's so much to say
that I couldn't possibly say it
in 10 minutes, but I have notes
so that I can try to
get in as much as I can.
We were asked to share a meaningful
poem or quote or prose excerpt
as some kind of an epigraph for
our presentation and it was hard
for me to choose just one.
So I'm going to share a few brief
things without comment and trust
that you will see how they relate
to my remarks today
about the Dark Room.
I wanted to read this
Gwendolyn Brooks poem
and I think it might take a little
too long so I won't read it,
but I'll just for those of you
who are familiar with the poem
that I feel that it is fitting
for what I wanted to share today.
And actually if there's
time later maybe I will,
it's called A Boy Died in my Alley.
But instead I'm going to share Young
Soul by Amiri Baraka and of course,
you'll hear the echoes of
Brooks in these opening lines.
First feel then feel then read
or read then feel then fall
or stand where you already are.
Think of yourself and
the other selves.
Think of your parents,
your mothers and sisters,
your bent slick father then
feel or fall on your knees
if nothing else will move you.
Then read and look deeply into
all matters come close to you.
City boys, countrymen make
some muscle in your head,
but use the muscle in your heart.
[ Applause ]
And then I'll just read an
excerpt of his poem Ka Ba.
Our world is full of sound.
Our world is more lovely than
anyone's though we suffer
and kill each other and
sometimes fail to walk the air.
We are beautiful people with
African imaginations full of masks
and dances and swelling chance with
African eyes and noses and arms.
Though we sprawl in great chains
in a place full of winters
when what we want is sun.
We have been captured and
we labor to make our getaway
into the ancient image,
into a new correspondence
with ourselves and our black family.
We need magic now.
We need the spells to
raise up, return, destroy
and create what will
be the sacred word.
And finally, this brief
excerpt from Ruminations
and Reflections by Sonia Sanchez.
The most fundamental truth
to be told in any art form,
as far as Blacks are concerned
is that America is killing us.
But we continue to live and
love and struggle and win.
I still believe that the age for
which we write is the age evolving
out of the dregs of the 20th
century into a more human age.
Therefore, I recognize that my
writing must serve a dual purpose.
It must be a clarion
call to the values
of change while it also
speaks to the beauty
of a non-exploitative age.
[ Applause ]
With Black Lives Matter we come back
to the old and persistent framework
of black ontology in
the United States.
The glaring reminder of
what do boys characterize
as the Sisyphus syndrome.
It continues to be for
us a question of being
and nonbeing quite literally so.
Not a matter of whether we exist,
but of how viable is that existence
if it is always framed by the
question of whether we ought to
and for how long and on
what contingent terms.
Black Lives Matter extends
the implicit declaration
of our viability found in the
slogan, we shall overcome.
But it also worries that basic
presumption when the onus
of legitimizing that viability is
thrust onto us Blacks circling back
to the tropes of an earlier age
is chastened in our language even
as we grapple with the continuing
onslaught of white racist aggression
as the boulder comes down
upon our heads once more
and we push it up yet again.
We've moved from the solidity
authority of black power which said
to us Blacks, no matter who else was
listening here it is and it is ours
and let us see what it has
wrought and might yet produce.
Almost 30 years ago when a
small group of aspiring writers
and artists came together
in a project called the Dark
Room Collective we were operating
under the spell of a devotion to
black lives and voices and art cast
by those literary elders and
ancestors who had paved the way
with not just their works, but the
consciousness to be boldly in love
with blackness and cognizant of
the social and political demands
of history and the contemporary
moment on black lives.
We meant the Dark Room to be a
space that celebrated the ways
in which we could be free of our
constrictions, meaning ourselves
and our audiences alike
in such a way
that at the very least we can begin
to see each other more clearly
and support the ground,
a non-exploitative ground
upon which to relate.
A yearning toward total life, the
language we put to it borrowing
that phrase from Clarence Major.
We didn't profess so much of
politics of blackness so much
as a politics of community
built on acknowledgment
of our literary forebears
and forging bonds
of generational dialogue
and mentorship.
As the official Dark Room
history goes James Baldwin's death
or more specifically, our pilgrimage
to his funeral was the
genesis of the Dark Room.
But Amiri Baraka really was the
prompt as it was he who urged us
to go to Baldwin's funeral.
In an essay I wrote many years ago
for Mosaic Literary Magazine I
said this about that experience
of attending Baldwin's funeral.
Our sorrow was suffused
with a kind of energy,
a desire to make something positive
out of loss and so we resolved
that we wouldn't let another of our
literary elders get away from us.
In traditional black culture elders
are always teachers, role models.
Through his writings and
activism, his humanism
and his vision Baldwin
had given us an example
of passionate engagement with life.
Like the reels of West
African culture he
and other black writers bear witness
to our collective struggles
and survival.
And like countless other writers
before them they have made vital
contributions to American literature
and the African-American
artistic tradition,
as well as the global
literary tradition.
We wanted to affirm the
sustaining value of the commitment
and acknowledge our debt to them.
My housemate Thomas Sayers
Ellis and I began to make plans
to formally connect with and honor
other still living black writers
whom we dubbed our
living literary ancestors.
We were already involved
in a project
of building an extensive library
of writings by black authors
of the diaspora, including
first editions
and out-of-print publications.
We had named it the Dark Room
a Collection of Black Writing
because it was housed in a
former photographing darkroom
on the third floor of the
old Victorian house we shared
with other artists and students.
The words were already
emblazoned on the door
and we liked the pun it provided
on a room full of black books.
The metaphor of a darkroom was also
apt a place where images develop,
brought forth in darkness
into light, incubator womb.
Only afterwards did we realize the
affinity with the dark tower named
after County Collins'
poem The Gathering
of Harlem Renaissance Artists
in A'Lelia Walker's salon.
So in truth and in many ways
unconsciously too we had tapped
into a continuum of historical
and contemporary experiential
energy rooted in a consciousness
of the beauty of our existence
and the commitment to Harold
and take sustenance from it.
In terms of the Black Arts
Movement we have an ethos
of African centered consciousness
by which to dispel the misconception
of self, the psychic homelessness
as philosopher Lewis Gordon puts it
concerning the existential condition
of Blacks in Western culture.
Here I think too of Baraka's
language in referring
to the importance of the
image in black consciousness.
He refers to having the integrity
of those captured Africans.
And also I think of Sonia
Sanchez's discussion of the artist
as a creator of social values.
So with the Black Arts Movement
we get this will and this sense
of responsibility to create and
to create within a space of home.
So that became I think the
framework for how we thought
about the black literary
tradition in the Dark Room.
How the project became meaningful
to us in terms of placing ourselves
in relationship to the writers
who had paved the way for us
or as my cofounder colleague
Thomas put it, who we owed
and how we could extend their reach.
In our mission and methods
we were emulating their ethos
of fostering community.
So for us the Dark Room reading
series had to be homegrown
and grassroots, so to speak,
independent of settings
such as academic institutions
of bookstores even
and initially it was.
We held a series in our living
room, we opened the doors
and invited the community in and
it was publicized pretty much
by word-of-mouth and small flyers
and later go-go style posters,
which is an homage to
Thomas's DC background.
But we put them up all
around town in barbershops,
in libraries, in stores, etcetera.
In other words, we wanted
to have it in our home
so that people could
feel comfortable,
they could feel at home in our home.
We acknowledged the
generational bonds of community
by pairing elder establish
writers with emerging ones
and through this we aim to
highlight the implicit dialogue
between the two readers'
works as well.
This was important too because the
pairings were meant to acknowledge
and promote too we hoped the
inherent mentorship of the elders
that we have within
Afrocentric tradition.
Often the direct influence
of the elder writer's work
on the emerging writer was the basis
for pairing the two
in the reading series.
Also significantly we
added elements as hallmarks
of a specific cultural understanding
of ourselves and our audience.
As a matter of cultural
specificity we added a jazz band,
the Roxbury Blues Aesthetic.
Roxbury along with
parts of Dorchester
and Mattapan being the heart
of Boston's black community.
Along with incorporating music
into the series we displayed art
by local black artists, students,
as well as more established artists.
Bringing us all together and
often sharing meals together
after the readings solidified
a sense of community,
family even that happened
on both sides.
And I'm thinking now
specifically of the time
that we hosted Ntozake Shange
at the Dark Room and she came
in travel weary and went
straight upstairs to take a nap.
But before she came to
town she had asked us
to find an old friend whom she
wanted to drum at her reading.
She gave us one name, his
artist name that he'd been known
by way back in the day and my
cofounder colleague Janice Lowe,
who is also a musician as well,
took on the task of finding him
and it wasn't easy because we didn't
know whom to ask or where to look.
But she found him and
that made us so happy
because we didn't want
to let Ntozake down.
And then several years later when
the collective had starting going
on the road to read together
and forge connections
in other communities with other
tribes of writers we were invited
to read at the Painted Bride in
Philly in Ntozake's neighborhood
and she put us all up at her house
and there must've been
at least five of us.
But she put us all up at her
house and she introduced us
to the Painted Bride audience.
And it was like this
beautiful moment of community
and mentorship coming full circle.
It was also wonderful to
be invited as a collective
to Furious Flower One in
1994 by Joanne Gabbin.
I remember the warmth
and enthusiasm.
Yes.
[ Applause ]
The warmth and enthusiasm of
that watershed event and again,
as with Baldwin's funeral, the
heady feeling of being participant
or witness to this historic moment.
It also felt like being at a huge
black literary family reunion
where you reconnected with relatives
you hadn't seen for a long time
or met cousins, aunts, uncles
you didn't know you had.
The Dark Room Collective was
given a place at the table
with our literary elders, mentors
and other peers and it felt
like real affirmation of our work
of creating literary community
and our voices as poets.
The conference was
dedicated to Gwendolyn Brooks,
one of my literary
heroes and it turned
out to be the last time
I saw her in person
and heard her read her
work before she died.
One of the rituals we incorporated
into the collective readings
on the road was to open our
readings by sharing a poem
by a literary ancestor or elder
before we read our own work.
I think of it now as a riff
on the pouring of libation.
Again that acknowledgment
of who we O-W-E-D and O-D-E
if I can make ode a verb.
So I'll conclude with this response
to the question of what we see
as the value of our endeavors
or at least how I hope
that our work will be recognized.
The Dark Room affirmed and
perpetuated the vital notion
of community among artists of color,
writers, visual artists, musicians,
filmmakers, as well as the
enduring power and significance
of our cultural traditions.
We foster relationships among
artists across differences
in career, status, generational
affiliation, geography, poetics.
We advocated making room for more
voices, as many voices as possible
in the national literary landscape
and particularly more room
for marginalized voices.
And we especially supported
exploration and celebration
of the black literary tradition.
Varied and multifaceted as it is and
we catalyzed others to do likewise.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Joanne Gabbin: You know,
I do remember that in 1994
when they came as babies.
Can you imagine and they came
under the title fisted reading
and if nothing else they were
channeling the Black Arts Movement
by fisted reading and look
what they have become.
Sharan Strange, Thomas Sayers Ellis,
Kevin Young at Emory
curing a whole archive
down there and writing books.
And Natasha Trethewey who
was the past Poet Laureate
of the United States
and Major Jackson.
They were so young that I had
the nerve to title their section
of the documentary the [inaudible].
You remember that's
-- you were out there?
>> Sharan Strange: That
was so meaningful to us.
>> Joanne Gabbin: You were out
there yeah and it was amazing to see
and it's amazing to see the growth.
But now since we are all
as Eugene Redmond said,
slipping into elderhood
we put the elder last.
This amazing woman.
Yes mam. This amazing woman Toi
Derricotte who is the author
of the Undertaker's Daughter
and four earlier collections
including Captivity, Tender.
Tender was the winner of the
1998 Patterson Poetry Prize.
Her literary memoir,
the Black Notebooks,
received the 1998 Anna Steele
Wolf Book Award for nonfiction
and was a New York Times
notable book of the year.
Her honors include so, so many,
I'm not going to list them all
you have some of them there.
But we know her as the cofounder
and mother of Cave Canem.
She'll tell you about how
Cave Canem came to be,
so I won't tell you that.
But I must say I was honored early
on to be on the organizing board
of Cave Canem, to see it grow
for at least eight years
they kept me on the board.
And I could see how
these young people.
>> [Inaudible] let you go.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Who were
coming into Cave Canem
as fellows were leaving
with motivation,
were leaving with inspiration
to go on and do great things.
And all you have to do is read the
list of books in poetry in America
and you will see their name.
So let's have a rousing applause
for our elder Toi Derricotte.
[ Applause ]
>> Toi Derricotte: Oh
what a beautiful city,
oh what a beautiful city,
oh what a beautiful city,
12 gates to the city, hallelujah.
There's three gates in the
north, which way is the north?
There's three gates in the south,
there's three gates in the east
and three gates to the west.
That makes 12 gates to
the city hallelujah.
Come on oh, oh, oh what
a beautiful city, oh, oh,
oh what a beautiful city.
Oh, oh, oh what a beautiful city
12 gates to the city hallelujah.
Gates, these are the gates
and I think that, you know,
like Lead Belly in 1912
or whenever that was.
For me as I get to be an
elder I'm really an elder,
but not until my next book comes
out which is called I
didn't -- oh wait a minute.
I didn't know how to be, I
didn't enjoy being beautiful
until I was an old woman.
So yeah I'm getting to that.
But the older I get the more I
see this process as not a movement
and by the way, when I
saw that we're listed
with the Black Arts
Movement I was like what,
Cave Canem is on the same bill
as the Black Arts Movement
like the Harlem Renaissance.
It's like what, it's amazing because
certainly we didn't start out,
you know, we just wanted
a few people to sit around
and help each other
be poets, you know.
But I see it more and more as I
get older as a circle and I see us
as all 12 gates, you know,
gates to that circle.
Maybe we're around Congo
Square, we're in New Orleans
where all those slaves on Sunday
could get together and drum
and that was where
the music came from.
They didn't necessarily
speak the same language,
but that communication.
And so okay for me it started
really, it's all about love.
It's about moving toward what
loves you and what you love,
that's what the journey is about
for me and figuring out who that is.
And, you know, I didn't grow
up in Harlem or New York,
I never read a black poet in
grade school, high school.
I was in Detroit, we
were a factory town,
we were a middle-class black family.
I had a hamburger with Langston
Hughes when I was 15 years old.
I didn't know who Langston
Hughes was.
Oliver LaGrone who was a sculptor
in Detroit I became his friend,
his daughter, Joy LaGrone,
arrived from where --
she had run away from home when
she was 14 and came back to Detroit
with the Flowers of Evil
under one arm and high heels
on and she looked gorgeous.
And we became close friends
and Langston used to stay
at Oliver's house when
he came in town.
And I just remember Joy and I were
like this we've got to get going,
we got to get out on
the street, you know,
and it was beatnik
time for us, you know.
And Oliver made us hamburgers
and Langston and we --
I just remember very clearly
that he liked whole-wheat bread
because he said that
was really healthy.
And, you know, in Detroit we
didn't know from whole-wheat bread
at the time, you u know, so I
really paid attention to that.
You know, so but that
was mystical for me okay,
somebody touches your
life boom, you know,
you don't have to know, it happened.
And then so on from there, you know,
there was Billie Holiday, you know,
I'm 14 years old and I'm
wondering if I'm the only person
in my universe, you
know, for those 14 years
and then I hear Billie Holiday sing.
And I say there's somebody out
there that speaks my language.
I'm not alone, I mean she was Billie
Holiday on a record, but I knew,
you know, if I just kept
looking there'd be somebody
out there like Billie Holiday.
And I looked for that all my
life and I found it, you know,
especially in Cave Canem
because the circle.
Okay so just to tell you this
because we don't have forever,
but the lives that have
touched me to get me
to Cave Canem was getting --
when I submitted my first book
getting an actual letter or note
from Dudley Randall that
said, I really like your book,
but I'm not publishing anymore,
send it Naomi Long Madgett.
I was like what.
Then, you know, sending it to Naomi
and Naomi not only accepted my book,
but she was in a traffic accident
and in those days you set type,
linotype or whatever
by hand and she was
in traction setting my book
okay, that's Naomi Long Madgett.
It was meeting Gwendolyn Brooks
and writing Gwendolyn Brooks
and saying how good
it was to meet her
and she wrote me back welcoming me
into the poetry community,
Gwendolyn Brooks.
Okay, I had a some kind of
an aunt she was the sister
of my mother's second husband
and she's very beautiful,
Mary Jane Hewitt, and Maya,
Maya's not alive anymore,
but she was Maya's best friend.
And she came to stay with me and
she said, I'm going to take you
to Maya Angelou's for
a cocktail party what.
So I got this cocktail party and
I'm like hiding in the corner.
There's Baraka there,
there's, you know, Haki,
there's Raymond Patterson, there
are all these great writers
that I had just, you know,
started to learn about in New York.
And I was so shy and I remember
Baraka just like hey sister,
you know, and he was so formidable,
you know, and scary to me.
You know, because I don't
like to argue so, you know,
just like okay please don't
yell at me or something.
And he was so kind, truly
compassionate, you know,
he was always that way on
a personal intimate level.
He was just a compassionate
kind man.
So Audrey Lord she was
my mentor, you know,
when I was writing the
Black Notebooks and it was
such a scary subject to explore,
you know, self-loathing and fear
and stuff and relating it to
being a light-skinned black woman.
Audrey Lord said, you
write that book girl,
you know, do not be afraid.
And if you have one person, you
know, you can go forward, you know.
Etheridge Knight one time he came to
a reading I was doing at this dive
in New York and he walked in with
Galway Kinnell and Robert Bly
and I was the next reader.
And I was like oh my
God I'm the next reader
and there they are
sitting in the front row.
And the guy before me Sean Ferrer
[assumed spelling] said I'm here
to introduce Toi Derricotte,
but first I'm going
to read a few of my poems.
And he read for 45 minutes and
they got up and walked out.
But I did get to meet Etheridge
later, he used to come to New Jersey
and hang out with my
friend, Madeline Bass
and was truly loving and kind to me.
Nikki in my first reading
I won a little prize
and I was the warmup act
for her at the new school.
And she read Nikki-Rosa and,
you know, it changed my life.
But the best thing I ever did with
Nikki Giovanni is played bidwiz
because she's like, she's on that.
I swear she's not here, I swear
I beat her at one hand I swear,
but don't tell her I said that.
And then the Dark Room
Collective invited me,
I said why are they inviting me,
you know, and you were so kind to me
and you really understood my work
and really asked me questions
that made me know these
people really studied it,
they took it seriously.
You know, I was like and of
course, Joanne and Wintergreen
which I told her at the time
had shifted the universe
because then there were all
kinds of black people there.
It was like whoa there's so many
poets, different kinds of poets,
you know, and how are we all going
to get along, you know,
and everybody.
So okay, so Cave Canem I've
got two minutes to tell you.
I never read a black
poet in college.
Whenever I would teach I
was always the only one.
At a place I was teaching Squaw
Valley I met Cornelius Eady.
We started talking about being
the only one, being marginalized
and what it felt like and what
it was doing to our writing.
When I was at NYU in 1985 I told
Galway Kinnell that I was black.
I really hadn't said anything, you
know, in the big literature classes.
Why would I tell anybody anyway,
but my counselor had also said
when I said why haven't
we read any black people?
He said because we
don't go down that low.
So it was like these
are the kinds of things
that just kind of barrage you.
But only, I told Galway I said how
can we get some black people here
and he said you think of something
and you come and tell me and I did.
I said well I was teaching in
the poets in the school program,
so I said can we bring
some high school students
in during the summer.
He said yeah sure.
So we went and spoke to the
head of the English department
and of course it didn't go, but
he really defended the program.
But I had that in my mind.
And then when I met Cornelius
and Sarah we were doing
a workshop together
and at the workshop I had
a few of my black students
and the workshop went south
and the black students
and the white students started to
sit in different parts of the room.
And I remember walking into
that room and seeing Sarah
and Cornelius walk over
to the black students.
And I say yeah, these are my guys,
you know that trust was there.
And then we started talking about
more things and we had a vacation
that next year and when we were
in Capri I asked him Cave
Canem was only an idea.
If someone hadn't said yes it
would've still been an idea today.
So it wasn't like a monument
it was just a tiny thing.
When he said yes the ball started
rolling because then immediately
where are we going
to have it, you know,
where are we going to get the money.
Sarah said let's do it
out of our own pockets.
I said where can we have it and
then I remembered my friend Father
Francis had a monastery
and he said come on up
to the monastery, call him Italy.
You know, how mystical and
so that's what I want to talk
about the mysticality of black
connections and the circle.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Joanne Gabbin: Since
I'm on camera
and I have this opportunity
I want to tell you
where the seed was planted.
The seed of the idea because
Toi called me two weeks
after Furious Flower in 1994 and
she said, Joanne do you understand
that these young people
stayed up all night
in what was a Howard Johnson's
remember you told me that?
Howard Johnson's hotel and they
were reading to one another
and they were supporting
one another.
>> Toi Derricotte:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Yeah, yeah
and I want to document this.
>> Toi Derricotte: yeah, yeah.
>> Joanne Gabbin: And she
said we have to do something,
we have to do something to
give these young people a forum
in which they can talk to one
another about their poetry
because it's not happening really
in some of our MFA programs.
>> Toi Derricotte: Oh yeah.
>> Joanne Gabbin: You said that
and we talked for about two hours
and then in 1996, Cave
Canem is born.
It wouldn't have happened
without Cornelius Eady and Sarah.
>> Toi Derricotte: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Micklem.
>> Toi Derricotte: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Who were
there in Italy to say yes,
we can do this financially.
But what was in her head.
>> Toi Derricotte:
Working for a long time.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Had been working
for a long time and she had sort
of said, this is what we need
to do and it came to fruition.
And so in 1998 when she asked me
to be on the board I reminded her
that yeah, I was there
when it all started.
>> Toi Derricotte: Well, you know,
and it's that too I just want
to talk about, you know, who do
you go to talk about your ideas.
Who helps you with your
vision, you know, and Joanne,
if you ever need help
with your vision,
what's your phone number Joanne?
>> Joanne Gabbin: All right,
now you all get ready.
In honor of Sonia Sanchez
who could not be here today
because of a family issue we
have to remember that at the end
of every presentation she would say,
especially after the
powerful presentations
that we heard before this one
and these powerful presentations
of organization that in
this particular time we have
to assume Rachel and Tony
an attitude of resistance
and Marilyn's back
there and Marilyn.
We have to assume an
attitude of resistance.
So to get us ready
for the question-and-answer
period I want you to say
as Sonia would say, resist.
>> Resist.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Resist.
>> Resist.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Resist.
>> Resist.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Resist
and I want you to remember
that Lucille Clifton would say,
every day something has tried
to kill me, but has failed.
>> Michael Datcher: Right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: And
I want you to remember
that Gwendolyn Brooks would
say, we are our business,
we are our harvest and our bond.
Wouldn't she say that?
>> Michael Datcher: Indeed.
>> Joanne Gabbin: So in these times
we have to remember those things.
We have to remember those
strong women who every day
through their poetry, through
their lives help us to keep going.
Another strong woman said Sharon in
this wonderful poem I'm just going
to read a little part of it.
In praise of wisdom that was written
in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks
and it ends like this, with
untamed hunger for the harvest,
unafraid of no astute aboriginal
who penetrates still the chaos
and them clamor, who
crafts our mutual estate.
What I want to start with is
I want each of you to look
at what is this harvest that
you see that we can reap now.
Even now when our country seems
to be more embroiled than ever
in the chaos of dysfunctional
politics and the clamor
of the unjust and hate filled
people what is it that poetry can do
in honor of the resistance that
we have been taught by people
like Sonia Sanchez and Nikki
Giovanni and Amiri Baraka
and Etheridge Knight
and Haki Madhubuti.
What is it, what is the harvest?
And I know -- that was my last
question, but you all did so well
in your presentations I don't have
to ask the first few questions.
I want to start with that and
then I want you all to get ready.
>> Michael Datcher: I'll start.
I just want to comment
-- echo Toi's comment
that it's all about the love.
I was thinking about the earlier
panel and then our panel tonight
as people were commenting
upon folks we impacted them.
Toi talked about Langston Hughes,
Sharon talked about Shange,
I talked about Barbara Christian,
Tony talked about [inaudible]
and then Miss Nelson talked
about Etheridge Knight.
We have all been impacted by people
who loved us enough to make a stand
for us, to reach out
to us, to do something
and to take some action, you know.
Love for me is a verb it's an action
word and the folks in our lives
who were mentors, folks who
took their busy time to reach
out to those who were
not quite as developed,
not quite as well-known
or even talented.
But they loved us enough to do
something and that to me seems
to be how we create, expand
and harvest that which is
out here is us deciding to be that
mentor, that concerned citizen,
that concerned neighbor and to
love ourselves enough to love those
who look like us and those
who don't, but who are allies
to reach a helping hand in the
spirit of love and in fellowship.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Beautiful.
Yeah Sharon.
>> Sharan Strange: I like to talk
to my students about the notion
of bearing witness that that's what
art does right, that's the function.
And what to bear witness
though sometimes
as Brooks again, I'll quote Brooks.
That art urges right,
it urges voyages,
but also it hurts she
says art hurts.
And so you have to be open and
courageous in terms of that process
of bearing witness and so
when you said the harvest,
I was like the harvest
like you said, it's love
but it's the heart right, it's not
losing connection with the heart
and even when it's painful.
We have to be courageous enough to
remain vulnerable to one another
in our barest most elemental
state of being human.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Sharan Strange: Because if we
lose that we've lost everything
and I think that's the problem
that the oppressor has
yet to recognize right.
That they've lost something most
fundamental no matter how powerful
they may seem, no matter
how powerful
and enduring their systems may seem.
And so we bear that responsibility
as artists in giving witness,
but we also expose ourselves
in the most frightening
ways, you know, to that hurt.
But it's that basis of
connection as well because empathy
without empathy right,
there is no love.
>> Joanne Gabbin: That's right.
>> Sharan Strange: And so I think we
have to keep that ever most in mind
that the real harvest
is love as you said,
but the path to that is empathy.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Beautiful,
beautiful.
[ Applause ]
>> Toi Derricotte: I think
for me I was thinking why now,
why are these great poets writing
all these books and why this fury
of desire to write and
write poetry and articulate.
This certainly wasn't
felt in my growing up.
I had a friend, a white friend,
a very close friend we were
at a coffee shop and
there was a canister
of biscotti clear on the counter.
And I ordered my cortado and I was
standing looking at the barista
and he was facing me
and I knew this barista,
I knew this particular
barista was mean.
And people were like scared of him.
Have you ever met a barista, it's
like oh you might be scared to ask
for a cup of coffee from him, you
know, like really give it to me.
It was like you had to
pass a test or something.
And the friend, my white male
friend, as we were talking he turned
around and opened the
canister of biscotti,
pulled out a biscotti
and started eating it.
And I was looking at
the face of the barista.
His face started to
go through this --
I thought he was going to
bust, you know, his brain out.
He was like and then I saw him
look at the man, the man's back
and then he composed his face.
If that had been me he probably, you
know, he would have jumped all over.
But he saw this was
a tall white man.
So but what I want to
say is that I saw that
and I think that's
double consciousness.
He was totally not aware,
it could matter less to him.
That man didn't matter what he got
his thing and that's how life is,
you know, he gets his thing.
But what I thought
is that, you know,
women for many reasons some people
have to just walk around thinking,
you know, can I get this thing
out of this jar or, you know,
how am I going to get that
thing out of that jar.
And it's really sad, but I
think the thing that's good
about it is there's maybe a
complexity that I can go home
and sit down and write about
and maybe that's why
writing is important to me.
Because I can look at things
and add dimensions that
and I really think that's one
of the reasons why black people
right now are writing these great
things they're writing
because they're just looking
at things from their ancestors.
You know, they're carrying a vision
of a very complex American scene
and that's coming out
in the work now.
I think my mother had it, it's
nothing new that double vision,
but for some reason and I really
don't know why the language
and the poetry is there now
in a way it never was before.
>> Sharan Strange: I was also just
going to add too in terms of talking
about that harvest because I think
when we're talking about love,
you know, we're talking about
it in the context of liberation.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Sharan Strange: So I just wanted
to be clear that that's the context
that I'm talking about and that
it's understood in that way
so that we have more and
more writers producing
and black writers producing.
And it feels like there's something
even as the again, you know,
that metaphor of the Sisyphus
syndrome, even as more
and more comes down
upon our heads right,
there's at the same time this kind
of opening up, I think this kind
of bursting forth of this energy.
And, you know, so that
counterforce of the quest, the urge,
the thrust for liberation
I think is that harvest.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Yeah.
>> Sharan Strange: Yeah
and that will free us all.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Exactly
and there was that feeling
in 1970 at Roosevelt University.
I was a new PhD, no I
was a new PhD candidate,
but I had just gotten my
Masters and they wanted someone
to teach a course called
Revolutionary Black Consciousness
and I signed on.
And green out of the
University of Chicago.
So three months in and I'm teaching
Black Fire edited by Amiri Baraka
and Larry Neal and I'm Xeroxing
everything I can get my hands
on just like Sonia did five
years before out in California.
So I go get lunch at the faculty
cafeteria and so a colleague comes
up to me and says, are you
that teacher whose teaching
the black literature course
and I said yes.
He said to me well, you know, we
almost got Gwendolyn Brooks to come
to Roosevelt University and
I said whoa what happened,
could you not pay her what
she wanted or whatever.
And he said no, the
faculty turned her down.
This was in 1970, she had
already won the Pulitzer,
first African-American to
win the Pulitzer in 1950.
And my heart sunk.
I said I'm sitting in this
place, I'm speaking to students,
25 or so students and she couldn't.
So I made it up in my mind
that every time I transferred
to a college or university I would
invite Gwendolyn Brooks to come.
So that's why she went to
Chicago State and she read there.
When I went to Lincoln University
I brought her there in 1977
and we sat down, she and Dudley
Randall and [inaudible] roots.
And in 1986 just one year after
I got to JMU she came again.
So you can see how love, the
love that deals with liberation
because I knew that was the
political act of slavery.
They were keeping her in her place
even though this is a renowned woman
and she was also poet
laureate of Illinois.
So if any of you want to know
how Furious Flower happened,
it was because I decided in 1993
that I would invite her
[inaudible] one more time
and she said she wouldn't come in
1993, but she would come in 94.
>> Toi Derricotte: Oh I remember.
>> Joanne Gabbin: So what happened,
all these people just said okay
if Gwendolyn Brooks is
coming I want to be there.
So the young people Sharon and Major
and Kevin and the older people,
Eugene and Michael Harper.
In fact, Michael Harper rest
in peace Michael is the one
we've most recently lost.
He says Joanne, what
are you trying to do,
set off a cannon or something.
You're going to have all
these people who don't
like each other coming together.
I said Michael this is
about the love the poetry,
this is about the love of people
being free, this is about the love
of people mentoring other people.
And what do we when we
got to Furious Flower
in 1994 we had a lovefest
around poetry.
Yes we did.
All right, you ready?
Okay, who wants to speak first?
Yes mic, someone has a mic.
Yes.
Okay here, we have one
over here, one over here.
Stand up and say your name please.
>> Hello, hi I'm Evelyn.
My question I think is
mostly for is it Toi?
Have you ever considered
having like an online component
of Cave Canem like because I know?
>> Toi Derricotte: Would
you like to be on our board?
>> Yes I would.
>> Toi Derricotte:
We're talking about all
that because it's a very
different organization
than it was 20 years ago
when we were all sitting
around Cornelius Eady's
coffee table.
We have an office in New York,
we have 400 graduates all
over the country, including
people like Rachel Eliza
and other Cave Canem fellows
would you stand up today please.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Kamilah Aisha
Moon, Anya, oh my goodness.
All right, fabulous.
>> Toi Derricotte: I mean
people are changing the world
and so there you have those
circles again, you know,
because you have a person that
goes there, but then they go
and they do what you're
doing, you know.
And that's the way it works.
So yeah, but we need
the money to do that.
Got a check?
You know, but that's the thing we
are totally reorganizing now I'm
just making a joke.
I didn't really, well I
did sort of mean that.
But we are rethinking what our
goals should be right now and so
in some ways we sort of
did our mission, you know,
because these guys, you know, it'll
never stop, it'll always be circles
and circles and circles
you can't stop it.
But so what do we do
now and so thank you.
There's the president of our
board right now is Jackie,
so we were talking about this
and we'll figure it out right.
Thanks so much.
Why you would take
a class like that?
Hey, would you pay for it?
Now the thing about Cave Canem is
you get a scholarship when you go
and the reason why we did that
is because we didn't want people
to be able to buy their way in.
So you only -- we get
like 300 applicants a year
for like 20 spaces, it's
really hard to get it in.
We didn't design it that
way, but it just turns
out people really want to be there.
But it was always about the work,
I mean but how you can do the work
without love and a
place to talk, you know.
So it's a great idea.
Chalk that up, thank you.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Jackie, stand up.
The now director of.
>> Toi Derricotte: The
president of our board.
>> Joanne Gabbin: The president
of the board of Cave Canem
and I met Jackie so long ago,
absolutely fabulous poet so yeah.
>> Toi Derricotte:
And a fiction writer.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Let's
recognize Jackie.
[ Applause ]
[ Inaudible Comment ]
>> Michael Datcher: In
love, it's tough love,
there's always tough love
there, it's always in love.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
Yeah we do our best for sure.
Sure, thank you Jackie.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Yes
over here please.
>> Thanks, thank you everybody
for everything that you hear today
and special thanks to my new
colleague, the Smithsonian attorney,
Vicki Brown, for telling
me about this program.
I had the ticket for this evening,
but I didn't know about
this presentation.
I'm going to make this quick, it's
going to sound like a commercial,
but I'm a historian and
it won't be a lecture.
I'm editing a journal and a call
for submissions has this title,
the revolution is now being
televised and tweeted.
Black protest preaching
and re-presentations
from the Black Arts Movement
to Black Lives Matter.
And I just felt compelled to do that
because by far my favorite decade
of the 20th century is the
1920s, pushing it to the 1930's
for the Harlem Renaissance,
but it's young women especially
who are forcing me to rethink
how I see myself as an educator.
It's especially in this digital age.
And I got to tell you I had to
go back and revise the language
in this call for submissions
because say her name.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Say her name.
>> I realized that in this
I hadn't mentioned the name
of a single black female
writer last week.
I had to fix that because I
didn't want Nikki Giovanni
to take me to task this evening.
But I'm so glad are you here Rachel?
I'm so glad that Rachel included
the video in her presentation
because I'm from Cleveland, Ohio.
I have a 12-year-old son,
grandson that is, his dad is 31.
But he lived in the same
neighborhood as Tamir Rice.
And every time I watch
that video online okay
because I'm not a big television.
Every time I watch that video
it does something to me.
But in this digital age we
need that online community
and it's young women
who are teaching me
that you don't need money for that
you need a twitter account maybe,
you need a Facebook page perhaps,
maybe you need a blog,
a word press blog.
But there are a lot of things that
people can do to build community
and I think at the same time
to share the power and the love
that the arts happen to
foster in the academy and also
in the surrounding community.
So I'm just wondering am
I the only one, you know,
who felt that conviction?
You know that it's young women
especially in this day and age,
not just with Black Lives Matter and
what's happening to young black men,
but also that we have to
say her name and understand
that it still matters to be
black and female in this society.
So I'm just wondering if there
are any reaction from the panel.
>> Toi Derricotte: Amen.
>> Michael Datcher: Amen is right.
>> Sharan Strange: Yeah.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Well, you know, I
think it's really important to speak
to that and I think
that you are on it.
You know, if you use the
digital resources that you have,
then you bring women and
girls into the dialogue
because of course they're
on their phones,
they're on their devices
like everyone else.
But certainly that particular
theme is really so apropos
and I really hope you
have good success with it.
I'm just forced to
tell this story just
because you brought up Tamir Rice.
I cannot help but tell this
story, it's like that albatross
around your neck, you know.
But I was in Cleveland and I had
the day in Cleveland just a free day
and I was on the subway
going back to my hotel
and I saw these little boys and
they were playing in the subway.
And one was clearly the
leader of the other three
and he was 17 I found out.
He sort of looked like Malcolm X, he
had his coloring and his read hair.
And after and it was
really the two days
or three days after Freddie Gray.
And I had gone out of Baltimore
which was under curfew and it was
on my mind that our black
boys are under attack.
And so I just went up to them
and I just started talking
about basketball and apparently
they liked me and they said,
well which way are you going mam and
I said I think I'm going your way.
So they were jostling
the set next to me.
And so one sat next to me and
the oldest one sat next to me
and he said as we were
riding, Miss did you hear
about Tamir Rice and I said yes.
He said I'll show you
where he was shot.
And as we were going down on
the train he says right up there
and then he looked at me.
And Michael, I will
never ever forget it
and it makes me work harder in
terms of what we do as poets.
But he said to me, why did he bring
that toy gun in the playground
and he said that was his friend
and he was blaming his friend
for having a toy gun
on the playground.
And that look Toi of resignation
in his eyes just killed me
because our children are growing up
feeling responsible for the hatred
and the violence that
they are receiving.
So it just makes me
cry to think about him.
And so when Gwendolyn Brooks talks
about the harvest that's
what she's talking about.
We have to reclaim
these young people
and reclaim them through the word.
We have time for one more question.
>> Michael Datcher: I just want to
respond to that just for a second
because it was so powerful, wow.
As I was saying earlier about this
animus scale and who has children,
by a show of hands
who has kids here?
If you're a parent you know
that kids learn primarily
through what they see.
You can talk to your kid until
you turn blue in the face,
but a child for the most part is
going to learn by what they see.
And because the adults
so often do not feel good
about their positioning
on that animus scale
that our children see it and
begin to value their own lives
in a less way, in a way
that is counterproductive.
So a young boy who is talking
about a 12-year-old kid playing
with a toy gun who is shot within
two seconds of an officer arriving
at a park in a state that's an
open carry state where it's legal
to carry a gun in Ohio,
it's an open carry state.
You can have a gun shown in
Ohio right, you can carry it
in public it's an open
carry state so to say.
But there was no asking for
a permit to carry a gun.
There was no hey, do you have
a permit for that gun sir.
It was I drive up and I
kill you in two seconds.
And for another young black
boy to know that story
and to have seen the video
I'm sure many, many times,
but to blame the victim it shows
you the lack of respect in honoring
that person [inaudible]
a young child is seeing.
And the adults this goes back
to my reoccurring theme for us,
how do we begin to make the
harvest better and more effective.
It begins at home in our own
lives doing the internal work
of valuing ourselves.
However, you do that whether you're
meditating, praying, doing yoga,
writing poetry or riding the bus
and talking to young black kids.
Do something to work on yourself
because when your kids see you
they know that black lives matter.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Beautiful.
We have time for one more
question or one more,
yes one more comment or question.
Yes.
>> Thank you all of
you this is wonderful.
This question first is for Michael,
but it's also for everybody.
I have been a witness to the work at
the world stage for many, many years
and it's true that in that
room everybody is there,
everybody from the
community is there.
And because of that spirit of love
and that sign that's on the front
of the podium, which I can't
believe you haven't talked
about basically it's
like no BS basically.
Because of everybody being called
to be authentic there's a
spirit of family in the room.
>> Michael Datcher: Absolutely.
>> And an honesty in the stories
that are being shared and learning
and understanding of people you
might not know, might not really sit
down and talk with and
that space was created.
So for me it's a magical
space because the walls seem
to make room for the love.
And when I leave I'm always changed.
So my question for all of
you is how has this work,
how has this founding work
affected not only the communities,
but how has it affected your lives?
>> Joanne Gabbin: Beautiful.
>> Michael Datcher: I'll
let someone else speak first
because I spoke last.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: How has
it affected your lives?
I'll say one thing and
let Toi start after that.
In Cave Canem on the very
first night that they're there
for the weeklong workshop they all
introduce themselves in a circle
and say why they are in this space
and what this particular
space means to them.
And it's so moving it makes
me choke up, you know,
to hear that for the first time
in their lives they find a protected
space in which to do their work.
So Toi.
>> Toi Derricotte: Yeah and
I remember the first year
as we were going around a man said,
this is the first place I've ever
been able to take off my defenses.
>> Michael Datcher: Wow.
>> Toi Derricotte: In my life
and it just like, you know,
like he was in a bulletproof vest
that suddenly dropped
to the floor you know.
For me I'm so proud and I'm so in
love and I sort of feel I've done,
I know I've done something
really surprising.
And something that, you know,
makes me very joyful, very joyful.
When I'm with the Cave
Canem people I'm happier
than I am in any time in my life.
But I still struggle with
depression and self-hate,
these are still things
I deal with every day.
You know, but in another
way, you know,
when we think about these
circles in our lives, you know,
sometimes things wouldn't
happen unless you had to fight
and figure things out and
invent things you know.
And so I don't know why I
think about people like Lucille
who suffered so much in her life.
You know, but hey look at what
Lucille did with it, you know.
So this doesn't all mean your
problems go away, you know,
but it means that, you know,
you get love and you get
to do your work and, you know,
and that's what it's all about.
>> Joanne Gabbin: That's
beautiful, that's beautiful.
>> Sharan Strange: I would just say
that the experience
makes you remember
that you are part of
something larger.
That the work is about something
larger, something greater, you know,
working within collectivity
you have to as Baraka says,
think of yourself and
the other selves.
And when Baraka came to Spelman
in 2008 he asked just a couple
of questions of the students.
He asked them to think
about their history
and what is their relationship
to that history
and then what is their
relationship to their community
and what ultimately do
you intend to become.
And so I think doing this kind
of work collectively raises
those questions, you know,
raises the question of
the larger, the greater.
And so it makes me crave community
and as a teacher it also challenges
me to have my students think
in those terms too because
the vital, the vital work,
the vital human work
is collective work.
It's self-work, but
it's also collective,
ultimately it's for the collective.
So that work I think keeps me
centered in that kind of ethos
and having that as a kind of
standard to know when I have failed
and to know that I need to keep
challenging myself and keep working.
>> Joanne Gabbin: I want
you to have the last word.
>> Michael Datcher:
All right, thanks.
Thank you Ruth for that question.
And you're right being around
the world stage is a very
rewarding experience.
And for me I just fall
in love with black people
and the black experience and I
need that because so much of life
as we know if you're an
African-American walking
around in black skin
is very complicated.
If I walk into a room, I'm
a professor of English,
I have primarily as you can
imagine white colleagues.
When I walk into a room the
room changes every time.
I could tell you so many disturbing
stories, it's so damaging,
it's so damaging that you have to,
I have to work really
hard to love myself.
And when I see beauty in black
environments like the World Stage,
although it could be a very tough
space to be honest when it's
about the craft because
people are very,
very serious about
their craft there.
Although it can be very tough it's
such a beautiful space to see people
from across the spectrum
of the black community.
I mean literally gangsters,
prostitutes, professors,
everyday people having high level
discourse about life and beauty
and humanity and politics.
It's very invigorating because
it says that you are alive.
Folks who are saying to us
that you're less a human
or that you somehow
are less valuable.
Being there I see that it's a
lie, we are beautiful and I need
to be reminded that
we are beautiful.
>> Joanne Gabbin: And you
have been just an absolutely
beautiful audience.
I challenge you to go out and
organize in your own community.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Organize
your own literary groups.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Organize book
clubs, organize writing workshops,
organize political meetings,
organize and that's the message
that Baraka always gave, organize.
You can be the architect
of your own movement.
>> Michael Datcher: That's right.
>> Joanne Gabbin: Your own group
that will do something
positive in your community.
I'm talking about everybody and
because really that's the legacy
that we have inherited as children
of the Black Arts Movement.
So thank you for being here.
>> Michael Datcher: Thank you.
>> Joanne Gabbin: I
enjoyed it so much.
Give our panelists a rousing
applause, rousing applause.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.