What are you working on?
For about seven years now I’ve been working on a collection of poems, anecdotes, original folklore, mythology, sermons and a short play titled the year we turned dragon, which, of course, began in the year of the dragon. The titular poem was written as a reflection on living in one of the larger slaveholding states (Louisiana) that also saw one of the largest rebellions organized by enslaved persons. I began to see the establishment of the U.S. as a commune with decidedly colonial histories. The poems and prose in this collection are written, primarily, in a third-person we-narrative in order to illustrate the ways in which leaders of communes often worked to eradicate people of their individual identities in favor of a shared ideology and way of being. This we-narrative also provided me with an opportunity to re-think gender constructions and to challenge readers to re-think gender constructions. While the majority of communes in the United States were, in fact, led by White men, the United Society of of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (the Shakers) stands out as an enjoined gender commune that, one could argue, deeply believed in a dual gender or transgender God. It’s a long process to write this book, as entering into the we-voice requires a particular silence. Last year, I began constructing individual I-voiced poems, to provide the Leader with a backstory. Part of the book was published by Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs in 2016. I hope to have it completed by 2020.
Showing posts with label Metta Sáma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Metta Sáma. Show all posts
Monday, 18 March 2019
Monday, 11 March 2019
Metta Sáma : part five
How does your work first enter the world?
In my head. As visual fragments that are unconsciously stored away. Sometimes lines enter but I think of them as poem lines which inevitably means they will be willfully destroyed. In other words, anytime I imagine that a certain phrase or sentence is “poetic”, I immediately distrust and thus destroy it. For me, the poem has to be purely organic, unconscious, received. (I know this will piss some people off, particularly those who love to give advice and whose advice all ends with “Don’t wait for the Muse! There is no Muse!” and that’s fine for them, but it is not my way of construction.) One of my poet-teachers, Herb Scott, once said that he could see me “percolating”. We were sitting in a coffeehouse and I was surrounded, literally, by dozens of poetry manuscripts that I was reading for a book contest. Herb stopped by to chat with me about my own work, and as I sat there, smelling the coffees, feeling the art above my head penetrate my scalp, watching Herb’s scratchy voice enter my eyes, thinking about Aretha Franklin and how I had lived for so many years without a deep deep deep reverence for her voice, until then, tasting the metallic blue ink slipping from my pen, Herb said, “I can see you percolating” and I erupted into laughter. My professor had just called me a pot of coffee and I thought of that image for weeks. And yes, he was right about me, as Aquarians tend to be, I was percolating, I do percolate before I entrust one line to a page.
In my head. As visual fragments that are unconsciously stored away. Sometimes lines enter but I think of them as poem lines which inevitably means they will be willfully destroyed. In other words, anytime I imagine that a certain phrase or sentence is “poetic”, I immediately distrust and thus destroy it. For me, the poem has to be purely organic, unconscious, received. (I know this will piss some people off, particularly those who love to give advice and whose advice all ends with “Don’t wait for the Muse! There is no Muse!” and that’s fine for them, but it is not my way of construction.) One of my poet-teachers, Herb Scott, once said that he could see me “percolating”. We were sitting in a coffeehouse and I was surrounded, literally, by dozens of poetry manuscripts that I was reading for a book contest. Herb stopped by to chat with me about my own work, and as I sat there, smelling the coffees, feeling the art above my head penetrate my scalp, watching Herb’s scratchy voice enter my eyes, thinking about Aretha Franklin and how I had lived for so many years without a deep deep deep reverence for her voice, until then, tasting the metallic blue ink slipping from my pen, Herb said, “I can see you percolating” and I erupted into laughter. My professor had just called me a pot of coffee and I thought of that image for weeks. And yes, he was right about me, as Aquarians tend to be, I was percolating, I do percolate before I entrust one line to a page.
Monday, 4 March 2019
Metta Sáma : part four
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
I’m not sure that any poets have changed the way that I think of writing. I’ve never thought, for example, that there are subjects that don’t belong inside of a poem, nor have I ever thought a poem cannot have movement, cannot have shape, cannot have a sonic landscape that is larger than the flat page. Nor have I ever thought that a poem needs to have a consistent “narrator” or single voice or that certain subjects cannot be broached in certain formal structures. There have been poets who have worked with structures, using basic computer skills, for example, to help their poems do the work their poems intend to do, such as Douglas Kearney and a former student, Morgan Christie. And poets such as Maria Damon who have embedded poems into textiles and Anne Carson who has reimagined what a book of poems can do. They have each shown me that the worlds I imagine are possible, as long as I have the skills to pull off the work.
I’m not sure that any poets have changed the way that I think of writing. I’ve never thought, for example, that there are subjects that don’t belong inside of a poem, nor have I ever thought a poem cannot have movement, cannot have shape, cannot have a sonic landscape that is larger than the flat page. Nor have I ever thought that a poem needs to have a consistent “narrator” or single voice or that certain subjects cannot be broached in certain formal structures. There have been poets who have worked with structures, using basic computer skills, for example, to help their poems do the work their poems intend to do, such as Douglas Kearney and a former student, Morgan Christie. And poets such as Maria Damon who have embedded poems into textiles and Anne Carson who has reimagined what a book of poems can do. They have each shown me that the worlds I imagine are possible, as long as I have the skills to pull off the work.
Monday, 25 February 2019
Metta Sáma : part three
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
This morning I was talking with one of the cooks at my child’s daycare, Wanda. We have a lot of conversations about writing, and, for a long time I’d been very intrigued by her. She was never able to tell me what she did, creatively, but she kept asking me for help to do the thing she does. One night, she came to my home to get a lawnmower; as a thank you gift, she gave me a CD of her reading “stuff” and a book of her “stuff”. It was a published book and CD set of her POETRY. She kept calling it “stuff” and “just little things that I think about” and it reminded me of my mom, who also calls the poems she writes “little thoughts” or “little sayings”. But they’re not aphorisms or anecdotes; they’re poems. So, this morning, as I was chatting with Wanda, who was once again talking to me about “things” she “makes”, I was left baffled as to why she wouldn’t call her work poetry. We were speaking about plays, specifically, writing plays, and I was telling her that plays feel more natural to me, since I’m a visual person, so I can see the play in my head. The tough part is getting the words out, to transform the visual to the written. She works in an opposite way: she sees the words in her head, writes them out and at the end of it, people read what she’s written and can see the images. We had a great conversation and it was one of the times that I recalled Paul Guest saying that he had a facility for language and I thought well golly what must that be like! It occurs to me that, for my mom and for Wanda, they don’t think of their poems as poems because writing them is effortless. Writing is difficult for me. As I said to Wanda, I’m not a word person. I’m a visual person. So, the translation of the visual to the word is quite tedious and I never believe I’ve gotten it down right. Because, of course, I haven’t.
This morning I was talking with one of the cooks at my child’s daycare, Wanda. We have a lot of conversations about writing, and, for a long time I’d been very intrigued by her. She was never able to tell me what she did, creatively, but she kept asking me for help to do the thing she does. One night, she came to my home to get a lawnmower; as a thank you gift, she gave me a CD of her reading “stuff” and a book of her “stuff”. It was a published book and CD set of her POETRY. She kept calling it “stuff” and “just little things that I think about” and it reminded me of my mom, who also calls the poems she writes “little thoughts” or “little sayings”. But they’re not aphorisms or anecdotes; they’re poems. So, this morning, as I was chatting with Wanda, who was once again talking to me about “things” she “makes”, I was left baffled as to why she wouldn’t call her work poetry. We were speaking about plays, specifically, writing plays, and I was telling her that plays feel more natural to me, since I’m a visual person, so I can see the play in my head. The tough part is getting the words out, to transform the visual to the written. She works in an opposite way: she sees the words in her head, writes them out and at the end of it, people read what she’s written and can see the images. We had a great conversation and it was one of the times that I recalled Paul Guest saying that he had a facility for language and I thought well golly what must that be like! It occurs to me that, for my mom and for Wanda, they don’t think of their poems as poems because writing them is effortless. Writing is difficult for me. As I said to Wanda, I’m not a word person. I’m a visual person. So, the translation of the visual to the word is quite tedious and I never believe I’ve gotten it down right. Because, of course, I haven’t.
Monday, 18 February 2019
Metta Sáma : part two
Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
When I first began writing poems, I had maybe read one or two poems prior to writing poems. I don’t recall ever reading any poems in (grade) school and we didn’t have poetry books in the house. My dad had pens made up with lines from “Invictus”: “I am the Master of my Fate/Captain of my Soul” and I didn’t know where those lines originated. So, my understanding of poem making was nil. As a college student, I thought that “great” poetry was written by White people, because these were the only poets we read. Actually, scratch that: I thought poems, period, were written by White people, great or not. In the years since then, I met poets such as Sean Hill, who was a student at the time that I was a student, Adela Najarro, Blas Falconer, Mike Perez, Helena Mesa, all students at the time that I was a student, and later Jericho Brown, who was entering a program as I was exiting, and Srikanth Reddy, who was on a fellowship at the same time that I was on a fellowship. So, I began to see and have conversations with poets of color and during my time in a PhD program, the poet Maria Gillan introduced us to working class poets, so poetry expanded for me. These were living poets, celebrated poets, forgotten poets, and some, of course, were no longer alive but their works were alive, forever; poets such as Audre Lorde, Wanda Coleman, Lorenzo Thomas. Even later, when I moved to New York City, I met poets such as Amy King, Rachel Levitsky, Saeed Jones, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Tony Medina, Muriel Leung, Ekere Tallie and the great poet-quilter, Jacqueline Johnson. And these poets weren’t all working towards the epiphanic, image-based ending or the purely imaginative narrative that I saw clouding the works of White writers, particularly those in academic programs, and they weren’t all working in stanzas and some, like Adela, were talking back to the Canon. Every step of the way, my consideration of poetry has expanded and deepened, from the teachings of the great poet, editor, mentor Herb Scott to the living room class teachings of Patricia Spears Jones.
When I first began writing poems, I had maybe read one or two poems prior to writing poems. I don’t recall ever reading any poems in (grade) school and we didn’t have poetry books in the house. My dad had pens made up with lines from “Invictus”: “I am the Master of my Fate/Captain of my Soul” and I didn’t know where those lines originated. So, my understanding of poem making was nil. As a college student, I thought that “great” poetry was written by White people, because these were the only poets we read. Actually, scratch that: I thought poems, period, were written by White people, great or not. In the years since then, I met poets such as Sean Hill, who was a student at the time that I was a student, Adela Najarro, Blas Falconer, Mike Perez, Helena Mesa, all students at the time that I was a student, and later Jericho Brown, who was entering a program as I was exiting, and Srikanth Reddy, who was on a fellowship at the same time that I was on a fellowship. So, I began to see and have conversations with poets of color and during my time in a PhD program, the poet Maria Gillan introduced us to working class poets, so poetry expanded for me. These were living poets, celebrated poets, forgotten poets, and some, of course, were no longer alive but their works were alive, forever; poets such as Audre Lorde, Wanda Coleman, Lorenzo Thomas. Even later, when I moved to New York City, I met poets such as Amy King, Rachel Levitsky, Saeed Jones, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Tony Medina, Muriel Leung, Ekere Tallie and the great poet-quilter, Jacqueline Johnson. And these poets weren’t all working towards the epiphanic, image-based ending or the purely imaginative narrative that I saw clouding the works of White writers, particularly those in academic programs, and they weren’t all working in stanzas and some, like Adela, were talking back to the Canon. Every step of the way, my consideration of poetry has expanded and deepened, from the teachings of the great poet, editor, mentor Herb Scott to the living room class teachings of Patricia Spears Jones.
Monday, 11 February 2019
Metta Sáma : part one
What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
For pleasure, I’m reading Linda Ashok’s Whorelight, which the poet, Ravi Shanker N. described as: “[P]oems [that] come from a mind that reacts to sensations like chlorophyll in a leaf”; Fatimah Asghar’s If They Come For Us, which I saw at a big box & was so excited to see poetry books on the shelf that I almost left it there hoping a non poet would snag it!; TC Tolbert’s Gephryromania, which I’ve been slowly reading for nearly a year, unwilling to let the book go & Maria Melendez’s How Long She’ll Last in This World (“Breath is my first language, “American” second”). For classes: Craig Santos Perez’s [saina], Chen Chen’s When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities, Morgan Parker’s There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, Shara McCallum’s Madwoman, Bianca Stone’s Mobiüs Strip Club of Grief, Trista Mateer’s The Dogs I Have Kissed, Luther Hughes’s Touched, Hazem Fahmy’s Red Jild Prayer, Morgan Christie’s Variations on a Lobster’s Tale, Raquel Salas Rivera’s poemas necesarios y otras malas mañas/necessary poems and other bad habits and Natalie Eilbert’s Conversations with the Stone Wife.
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