Harriet

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Kwame Dawes

CALABASH 08—IMAGINE—Festival Dispatches

Calabash 2008 – Sunday May 25th
Calabash Sunday manages, somehow, to become something of a church service. Of course, the entire festival is about the word, and the spoken word and the received and given word and people at the festival like to talk about spirit and vibe and heart and such the like. But Sunday is Sunday and it is hard to shake the feel of Sunday morning in Jamaica. Early in the morning, in the silence before the sound system kicks into gear in the tent area, you can hear choruses and hymns carrying over the acacia bushes and zinc roofed houses—the rituals of prayer and grace. Some Calabashers want to have a real service at the festival on Sunday. They pull me aside each year, and pitch this ecumenical service for all who will come. I suspect it could happen, but I realize also that in the throes of the festival, I can only think that it would be another brilliant idea to be managed. And we have many brilliant ideas. We don’t try all of them. We simply can’t. But the suggestions will always come. These are not to be seen as criticisms. They are the gestures of those who see the festival as their own and they would like to see it embrace something of their own image. I think, though, that there is so much open beach at Treasure Beach, and praying people do not need the stamp of Calabash to make something happen. Calabashers have been known to turn a simple gathering at the beach into a service to music and dance, or a service to political discussion, or an improvised outdoor hotel, and much else.

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05.31.08 | COMMENTS (2)

Linh Dinh

More YouTube Pleasures

Tao Lin at the KGB Bar in NYC, 2007:

04.29.08 | NO COMMENTS

Linh Dinh

YouTube Pleasures

Angela Rawlings in Reykjavik, Iceland, 2007:

04.17.08 | COMMENTS (4)

Stephen Burt

prosopagnosic poetics, or facing up to oneself

What do these three things have to do with one another?
1. Lat week I gave a reading in a black box theater on the campus of a great university in a small state. I liked the students a lot– I even liked all their questions (Q&A periods are inherently flattering to the answerer). One student wanted to know (I paraphrase) whether I considered myself a performance poet, or felt any connection to slam conventions, since (she thought) I read with such drama and verve. I told her I was flattered– and I was– but I didn’t think of my own work as connected to performance poetry at all. Why do I remember that particular question?
2. I received this weekend a new book of poetry by a Michigan writer who also writes essays and stories: the new book of poetry has to do with becoming a stepmom in a blended family– I recommend it highly to anyone with a particular interest in that topic– but the accompanying material revealed that the author is also at work on a book about living with prosopagnosia, the medical condition in which patients– whose vision and cognition are otherwise fine– cannot recognize people by their faces. Why does this strike me as an appropriate disorder for a poet to have?
3. It’s Thanksgiving! My wife and my son and I (but not our cats) are at my parents’ house, where, by nightfall, we will have met a few dozen of our relatives, including some people we see once a year at most, and perhaps some people I’ve never seen. What does that have to do with poetry? What does a black-box theater have to do with a prosopagnosia memoir-in-progress? And what do they all have to do with Martin Buber? Read on and find out…

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11.22.07 | COMMENTS (6)

Patricia Smith

Kudos to the culprit.


I I don’t know when this video was filmed, although it looks to be about 10 years ago. What I do know: this is Marc Smith, inventor of the poetry slam, devil or angel, miracle worker or madman, love ‘im or hate ‘im. This is what he does that made me do what I do.
I’m positively weepy watching this.
Enjoy.

07.31.07 | COMMENTS (2)

Patricia Smith

I’m working really hard. Really. I am. Really.

I am sitting in the living room of one Mr. Garland Thompson Jr., who at the moment s a very, very busy man. He is a one-man whirling dervish, a battery-operated bulldozer, a little-bleary eyed at the moment. He is pretty much single-handedly organizing the 10th anniversary version of the West Coast Poetry Slam Championships, and just watching him is making my head pound.
It’s a massive undertaking. Ten teams, a few errant slammers with unbridled egos, posters, ID badges, brochures, newspaper coverage, food vendors, a DJ, travel arrangements, finding campsites for the teams, staging, lanyards, competition rules. And as it gets closer to to the big day (today, in fact), Garland gets a little snippy. His eyes glaze over a little. OK, a lot.
I’m in awe. I’ve always enjoyed the fruits of the festival organizer’s labor. I get my all-access pass, nibble on cheese in the green room, get on the stage when someone says “Get on the stage.” So, staying with Garland for these couple of days, I”m learning a lot. He’s a madman. He has to be.
First, the details, just in case you’re in Cali and want to have a huge amount of fun: The show’s today and tomorrow from noon to 6 at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. Yes, that’s BIG SUR, the lush and luscious jewel of th California coastline. It’s such a cool event that it’s worth logging off right now, getting a last minute flight and winging your way there–here–just so you can hang out and party with the po’ people and say you did.
That’s it from the sun. Garland’s going on about badges right now. Should be a kickass show.

07.20.07 | NO COMMENTS

Patricia Smith

What Robert Frost Can Teach Performance Poets

Please. Please. No more. I can’t take another earthy diva bellowing an ode to her ample hips. No mores slithery temptresses urging loverboys to traverse the landscape of their bodies. Let’s do away with rotund wordsmiths defiantly extolling the joys of foodstuffs and fatback. Can we finally bid adieu to every minority—little people, black Republicans, Dick Cheney’s hunting buddies—whimpering about his or her miserable lot in life? And why are poets so angry? Black people mad about being marginalized, poor people mad about having to stand in long lines for handouts, minorities mad about being racially profiled, Asians mad about being stereotyped, women mad about disparities in pay, teenagers pissed off about curfews, Republicans mad about their rapidly waning power, Democrats mad at themselves for failing to take advantage of the Republicans’ rapidly waning power. And everybody’s writing a poem and looking for a stage and a hot mic.
So much…enthusiasm.

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07.03.07 | COMMENTS (3)

Kwame Dawes

Calabash, The Third Day

I have been writing this final entry on Calabash for four days. Having returned to South Carolina to finish teaching my short semester course, “Love African American Style”, a close look at romantic black fiction, I have had to fit in the bits and pieces of the final day of the Bash between everything I have to do. It has been good to think about the festival, about what it all means, but mostly, I write this to complete the circle.
So, we are on day three of the festival. It all begins early in the morning…

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05.31.07 | COMMENTS (2)

Patricia Smith

Why has Patti been so quiet?

Almost every day at Calabash, I’d grab my laptop and head down to a lounge chair at the edge of the sea (sorry) to commune with Harriet. Then, fortunately and unfortunately, I would happen upon the copious, deftly crafted musings of Kwame Dawes. Each day he wrote with such unbridled exhilaration. He wrote about the festival with the love of a father.
By the time I’d finished reading his posts, I didn’t feel there was anything to add. It was all there–the celebration, the community, the camaraderie, the rain. And I’m afraid my planned entries were going to be a little (OK, a lot) less insightful:
I saw a really big crocodile!
I totally like saltfish!
My granddaughter Mikaila beat a really smart man (initials Terrance Hayes) at Scrabble!
I thought it was B.J. Honeycutt and it was!
I’ve never had an audience like this!
I drank (mineral water) at a bar built right in the middle of the sea!
I’ve heard Michael Ondaatje giggle!
I’m in Jamaica!
OK, so I’m not as tender and exhaustive as our prolific Mr. D. Maybe it’s just enough to say…
…my life has been changed.

05.29.07 | COMMENTS (4)

Kwame Dawes

Calabash–Arrival

We leave Montego Bay at about one o’clock. I warn novelist Joe Meno and his wife Koren who are in the car with me, my son and Cavell the driver, that this is going to be a long two and a half hour drive. We are going to drive south across the western end of the island, and then make our way from the North Coast down through two parishes and across one, into St Elizabeth where Treasure Beach is tucked away. I ask the driver whether it has been raining a lot. I am worried about another flooded Calabash. We have had two of those early on in the annual cycle. Some who were there that year assured us that those storms were aberrations. Of course they had their use. Calabash was named by a few writers in the media as–”The Woodstock of literary festivals” . Woodstock? Stars. Lots of drugs. Lots of mud. Free love. We had mud. There may have been drugs but I can’t say, though I do know that the haze over the outskirts of the crowd may not have been fog. I can’t speak for free love, but the audiences gave the writers mad love. But there was mud and there were star writers. And from the first year, it was special. But I always ask about rain. He offers that while it has rained steadily in Montego Bay, it has been extremely dry on the south coast. The farmers are understandably unhappy about this, but I am happy at the news.

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05.25.07 | NO COMMENTS

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