Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Tribute to Satyendra Srivastava

My friend and colleague Satyendra Srivastava passed away during the summer. I met Satyendra through my work as editor of After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, an anthology of 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations. Satyendra’s poetry graced those pages with elegance, irony, and his knack for quiet figurations. After corresponding for years, I finally met Satyendra in person during the inaugural International Reading Festival at the Morgridge Center at the University of Central Florida in April 2010. I had invited him to a panel I hosted there and to a reading with poets Marjory Wentworth and Susan Laughter Meyers.

Satyendra was born in India, literally a child of the Ghandi revolution for independence. He moved to London in 1958, received his Ph.D. at the University of London, and taught at the University of Toronto and at Cambridge. He published in both English and Hindi, and he traveled the world for his readings. That world has lost one of its shining poets. His surviving widow, Munni Srivastava, has published a remembrance in Ambit Magazine, where Satyendra was a contributing editor for many years. Read it at: Satyendra Srivastava’s Life and Poetry

Here’s the title poem from his collection published by Ambit Books, London. The poem appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events.

“Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother”
by Satyendra Srivastava


Sir Winston Churchill he knew India
He knew
Because India was to him the Kohinor
Of that Empire on which the sun never sets
Sir Winston also knew the town
Which his people had built for their comfort and ease
Cutting and carving it from the Himalaya’s lap
– That child of the icy summits – that town
Which is called Mussoorie
Sir Winston knew where that town was and why
Because he had walked its long street rising and falling
Which had reminded him – somewhere somehow –
Of Princes Street in Edinburgh, another
Extremely beautiful town in the British Empire
And Sir Winston knew this too that
Also in the town called Mussoorie
A wave had risen
Shaking the foundations of Britain’s Empire
The kind of wave that would seem to him
Just the folly of that crazy naked fakir of
India’s national struggle
And Sir Winston knew this too that
In India some women who
Worshipped that same naked fakir as a father
Had laid down one day in the town of Mussoorie
In rows in the road and prevented the units
Of soldiers of the British Empire from going further
And among them had been some women who
Heavy with child could have given birth at any moment
Therefore exactly for this reason I
Went to Hyde Park Gate as soon as
I reached London
Stood in front of Sir Winston’s shut house
Bowed respectfully, then spoke out loudly
‘You, Sir Winston, knew my mother
Pregnant in her eighth month
Having received my father’s blessing
She too laid down in
That road in Mussoorie
From where the army units had to return –
I am the son born from that mother’s womb
And Satyendra is my name
And I have come to tell you
That I have now arrived in England.’

Copyright © 2006 by Satyendra Srivastava. Reprinted from Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother (Ambit Books 2006) by permission of the poet. Appeared in the anthology After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events.

Satyendra Srivastava was born in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. He studied at the University of Poona from 1953-57, and the University of London from 1962-77, receiving his Ph.D. in history in 1978. He lectured in Indian Studies at the University of Toronto from 1968-71 and at the University of Cambridge from 1980-2003. With many published collections of poetry in Hindi, as well as plays for the stage and radio, he has also been a columnist for various Indian Publications. He writes in both Hindi and English. He has traveled widely to read his poems: from the U.S., Japan, and Russia to South Africa, Israel, and Egypt, among many other nations. His collections of poetry published in English are Talking Sanskrit to Fallen Leaves (Peepal Tree Press 1995), Between Thoughts (Samvad 1998), Another Silence (Samvad 2003), and Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother (Ambit Books 2006) from which three poems were reprinted in the anthology After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events. He has received several awards for his writing. He lives in London and Cambridge and frequently travels back to India.


An Interview with Satyendra Srivastava from past blog posting

How did you come to write “Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother”?

This is a political poem. My mother was very politically conscious and a great follower of Mahatma Gandhi. Early on she became involved in demonstrations against the British Government in India during the country’s Independence struggle. The poem portrays a lady who, on one hand, was a very traditional Hindu wife and mother, but, on the other hand, was also proud of her beliefs and anxious to take part in her country’s fight. In the poem, Sir Winston Churchill becomes a symbol of Imperialist Britain. Like millions of people, I respect Churchill’s stand against fascism but, needless to say, totally abhor the ideal of imperialism he espoused. The poem reflects the plurality of feelings the man evokes in me and in many Indians of my generation.

Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped this/these poems come to life?
To go through such deep feeling, where even all suffering and pain becomes academic, but poetry absorbs all the suffering. As for me, poetry is a unique medium talking directly to anyone—heart to heart, and allowing one to share and invoke view and feeling, especially the deep feeling which is always with me in the presence of my memories. It comes alive even politically, as is the point with “Sir Winston Churchill Knew My Mother.”

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Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Rachel Tzvia Back Translates
Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner,
Voice of Holocaust Generation


The Hebrew Union College Press, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Press, has just released the first collection in English of an important voice of the Holocaust generation: In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner

The volume is translated, annotated and introduced by Rachel Tzvia Back, whose own poems appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events . See her full bio below.


The disasters of the 20th Century swept Ruebner from Europe to Israel, from German to Hebrew, from the familiar to the strange. Despite his truncated formal education, he became a poet and man of letters in Israel’s fledgling intellectual community, alongside other Jewish immigrant-refugee-survivors like Ludwig Strauss, Lea Goldberg, and Dan Pagis, eventually gaining international esteem as professor of comparative literatures at Haifa University and as renowned translator. For his fifteen poetry collections, from The Fire in the Stone in 1957 to Last Ones in 2013, Ruebner has received awards and accolades in Israel and Europe.

Ruebner’s poetry offers an exquisite and indispensable voice of the 20th Century. His little sister, murdered in Auschwitz, and his youngest son, who disappeared in South America, wander unceasingly through his poems. Beyond the personal losses, the devastation of the century informs all of his work. Textual rupture and fragmentation echo historical rupture and fragmentation. The wonder of Tuvia Ruebner is that, after a lifetime of loss and tragedies, he remains open to the possibility of happiness. This openheartedness accommodates the many paradoxes and conflicts of life and infuses his poetry with an enduring and encompassing compassion for both the lost and for the living.

Sample of poems from In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner.

MOONLIT NIGHT (2)

I know it’s nothing
but a dream
and as a dream will flee
but this small hope
this small foolish unceasing
hope
that one day we’ll meet
on the dark side of the moon
pain does not appease
the darkest thoughts
now it’s night and you are missing
tomorrow will be day and you’ll be missing
your wisdom is missing, your voice missing
your love a weeping deeper than tears wept
but the day is not far off when I’ll be
beyond this, and the dream
lingers
you and me
on the other side of the moon
we’ll be with you and with me
you and me as one
forever
my son, my son

WONDER

If after everything that has happened
you can still hear the blackbird,
the tufted lark at dawn, the bulbul and the honey-bird –
don’t be surprised that happiness is watching the clouds being
     wind-carried away,
is drinking morning coffee, being able to execute all the body’s
     needs
is walking along the paths without a cane
and seeing the burning colors of sunset.

A human being can bear almost everything
and no one knows when and where
happiness will overcome him.

MY SISTER

1
I went to find for you a form,
tenderness with no body,
sorrow with no hands no forehead,
I went to find for you
spring, a bird seeking a cage,
I walked a long way to find
your footsteps,
constellations for your long hair,
sanctuaries for your eyes.

2
Always when the full moon rises
my sister’s face darkens,

sad-eyed bird in the branches
abandoned by its orbit.
Always when the moon is renewed
my sister’s face darkens,

empty unblessed lips
muttering bird-words.

Oh these lofty skies,
how much we’ve asked of them!
Soon their image will be fully blurred,
bearing no tears.

Poems from In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner reprinted by permission of the translator Rachel Tzvia Back. The title is linked to Amazon.com to buy. Also available at University of Pittsburgh Press.

Rachel Tzvia Back’s graceful translations of select poems representative of Ruebner’s seven-decade poetic trajectory are ever-faithful and beautifully attuned to the Hebrew originals, even as they work to create a new music in their English incarnations. Her comprehensive introduction and annotations supply the context in which these poems were produced. This first-ever bilingual edition, published as Ruebner marks his 90th birthday, gives readers in both Hebrew and English access to stunning poetry that insists on shared humanity across all border lines and divides.

Tuvia Ruebner
Tuvia Ruebner is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Haifa University, winner of the Israel Prize, and translator of the works of S. J. Agnon, Goethe, Ludwig Strauss, and Friedrich Schlegel. Rachel Tzvia Back is a poet, translator, and professor of literature at Oranim College, Haifa, Israel.


Rachel Tzvia Back – poet, translator and professor of literature – lives in the Galilee, where her great, great, great grandfather settled in the 1830s. Her poetry collections include Azimuth (Sheep Meadow, 2001), The Buffalo Poems (Duration Press, 2003), On Ruins & Return: Poems 1999-2005 (Shearsman Boks, 2007), and A Messenger Comes (Singing Horse Press, 2012). Back's translations of the poetry of pre-eminent Hebrew poet Lea Goldberg, published in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (Toby Press 2005) represent the most extensive selection of Goldberg's poetry in English and were awarded a 2005 PEN Translation Award. Back has translated into English poetry and prose other significant Hebrew writers, including Dahlia Ravikovitch, Tuvia Reubner, Hamutal Bar Yosef, and Haviva Pedaya. Back is the editor and primary translator of the English version of the anthology With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry (SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions, 2009) – a collection named "haunting" and "historic" by American poet Adrienne Rich. Ms. Back’s poems have been anthologized in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events .

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Poems from Overtipping the Ferryman
A New Collection by R. G. Evans


Month without a Moon

Any night I like, I can rise instead of the moon
that has forgotten us, not a thought of our sad lot,
and roam the darkened oblongs of the dunes.

Once you said the moon was some pale god
who turned away his face to cause the tides,
and once you said that, I of course believed

that you were mad. Now the ghost crab guides
me to the edge where land is not land, sea not sea,
and all the sky above is one dark dream.

This is the month with no full moon. You
were its prophet, and I am standing on the seam
between belief and what I know is true.

I gave you a diamond. It should have been a pearl.
It should have been a stone to hang above the world.


Smoke

What is smoke? my daughter asks
beside a campfire I can’t quite get to flame.

I know it’s not a liquid, she says.
Is it a gas? Is it a solid?

Simple. Straightforward. Something
I should know, I’m sure.

I start to say it’s what’s left
when the wood gives up the ghost,

but then I think of ash—
I always think of ash,

how it’s something but nothing,
what’s left when something’s gone.

There was a woman, then there was ash
her husband and the men she loved

scattered on the beach. The wind
wouldn’t let her stay there where she wanted.

My mother, seeding cancer, more ash
than paper dangling from her Lucky Strike.

What is it? my daughter says.
Nothing, I respond.

No, she says, what is smoke? I say
It’s what I make instead of fire.


Experts on Mortality

She makes her first announcement—I awake—
then springs out of her crib just like a toad.

Something in the trees, some movement,
some violence, makes it hard to forget

today. The chase is on. Daddy Death
rumbles down the stairs right behind his little

skeleton-in-waiting, out the door and into the wind—
she's gone. But no, she's there behind the hemlocks

giggling under branches that creak and groan
like everything alive. She points up in the air

says, Look! Look!—and there it is at the end
of her invisible string, the only thing she has,

all that he can give her:
a sky-blue kite in a kite-blue sky.


Reprinted by permission of the poet from Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Press 2014).



For an interview with Evans, listen to this podcast from Ron Block’s Writers’ Roundtable from Rowan University.
R. G. Evans on Rowan University Radio

Evans has been invited to read from Overtipping the Ferryman at the Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, NJ, in October.

R.G. Evans’s poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in The Literary Review, Pif Magazine, MARGIE, and Weird Tales among others. His book Overtipping the Ferryman won the 2013 Aldrich Prize and was published by Aldrich Press. He writes, teaches, and sings in southern New Jersey.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Path to Recovery Precarious
in poem by R. G. Evans



Many Feet Going
by R. G. Evans

What they don't tell you
is that it's a tightrope walk
and you will be nude, body
all counterweights and pendulums.
They give you a parasol
(too small, a little frayed),
a bright red nose that makes you easy
to track, and a time limit (too short).
If you find the rope is slack,
that's normal. Keep going.
You're young and strong.
Don't be distracted
by the piles of bones below
(Boob! You thought you were
the first?)—but they are:
waxy winged, chained to rocks,
gnawed through the ribs by raptors.
Your rope has been greased
by the soles of many feet going
one way, all the while
believing they have a choice,
believing they might make it.

"Many Feet Going" reprinted by permission of the poet. Appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, an anthology of 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations.


Interview with R. G. Evans

How did you come to write “Many Feet Going”?

The image of the tragicomic clown gingerly navigating his way on a tightrope over the abyss came to me after reading Beckett’s great Waiting for Godot. As I said at a reading in support of After Shocks, I didn’t realize “Many Feet Going” actually was a poem about recovery until I submitted it to the anthology. Now, I can’t see it any interpretation for it other than a way of looking at that precarious path.

How did writing this poem affect your recovery?

Well, as I said, the path is precarious. In the poem there are two primary images: the clown on the tightrope and the bones below of those who tried unsuccessfully to make the passage before him. Sometimes I’m the clown, sometimes I’m the pile of bones.


Photo of R. G. Evans by Mark Hillringhouse

Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped "Many Feet Going" come to life?

Once I read Godot, the image of man as a tragic hobo-clown became firmly lodged in my consciousness. Then I began to imagine how we often try to achieve goals that are just beyond our reach or forbidden to us in some way (hence the bones of Icarus and Prometheus lying under the tightrope in the poem), and the tightrope walk proceeded logically from that premise.

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?

I always return to the classics: Shakespeare, Yeats, Rilke, to name a few. Contemporary poets whom I admire greatly are Stephen Dunn, Sharon Olds, Charles Simic, and Russell Edson. I recently discovered the twin poets Matthew and Michael Dickman, and highly recommend them, especially to adolescent readers.

What are you working on now?

Since the very recent publication of my collection Overtipping the Ferryman, I’ve been working on a collection of poems inspired by Cyril Connolly’s book An Unquiet Grave. I felt a very personal resonance with that book in the same way I did when I first read Waiting for Godot and its epigrammatic style really lends itself to writing prompts for poems.

R.G. Evans’s poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in The Literary Review, Pif Magazine, MARGIE, and Weird Tales among others. His book Overtipping the Ferryman won the 2013 Aldrich Prize and was published by Aldrich Press. He writes, teaches, and sings in southern New Jersey.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Majid Naficy
Iranian-American Poet
Profile of Idealism, Tragedy
and Renewal


It's no surprise that Majid Naficy begins his biography with the reading of a poem, but the poem's horrifying significance becomes clear only has his life story unfolds in the Voice of America Portrait, now available with English subtitles.

Eight paces from the gate,
Sixteen paces toward the wall.
Which scroll speaks of this treasure?

Oh, earth!
If only I could feel your pulse
Or make a jug out of your body.
Alas! I'm not a physician.
I'm not a potter.
I am only an heir, deprived,
wandering in search of a marked treasure.

Oh, hand that will bury me,
This is the mark of my tomb:
Eight paces from the gate,
Sixteen paces toward the wall.
In the Cemetery of the Infidels.

Majid started writing poems at 10 while living in Isfahan, Iran, and gave his first book of poems to his older brother Hamid on his 21st birthday. It contained “Elegy of Myself” inspired by Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” His brother showed the poems to Iranian poets, who brought the young boy into workshops, and soon he began publishing in Iranian journals, with the blessings of iconic Iranian poets F. Farrokhzad and A. Shamlou.

Majid became known as one of The New Wave poets in Iran and critics called him Iran’s Arthur Rimbaud.

He published poetry, criticism, and a children’s book The Secret of Words on the origins of language, which won The Royal Book Prize in 1971.

He joined the Iranian Students Confederation and became a devoted Marxist, and wrote poetry and essays under aliases bent to reform Iran, which at the time was ruled by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi.

Majid met his wife Ezzat Tabaiyan in a coffee shop near Teheran University, where they both were students. They were married in 1979.

They were both involved in the Revolution that brought the new regime to power with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, invading the headquarters of the SAVAK (secret police of the Shah) and conquering Evin Prison, where political prisoners were held.

However, they soon ran afoul of the new regime, led by Ayatollah Khomeini. They were both members of an organization called “Struggle for The Liberations of the Working Class,” which took two very critical stands against Khomeini: they objected to the taking of American diplomats as hostages after the revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy Teheran in 1979 and they voiced opposition to the Iran-Iraq war of 1980. Ezzat was executed by firing squad on January 7, 1982 with 50 men and one other woman, all buried in unmarked graves in Khavaran Cemetery, known as the Cemetery of the Infidels. Families were obliged to determine the burial locations by measuring paces.

The poem above recounts those graveyard searches, and is entitled:

Marked Treasure
             in memory of my late wife Ezzat Tabaiyan

“She gave her life for freedom,” Majid says, “and freedom is always a precious pledge for me, which I will try to live up to, for myself, for people in the United States, and for people of Iran, my birthplace.”

The revolutionary tribunals also condemned his brother Sa’id and brother-in-law Hossein to the firing squads.

A year after his wife’s execution, he met Esmat, his second wife, and together they escaped to Turkey in 1983, just steps ahead of his own arrest, and eventually, after a brief stay in France, made their way to Los Angeles.

Majid Naficy

The grief and stress of those horrifying years caused an emotional crisis during which “poetry invaded me like a waterfall.” During this time, he wrote 111 poems in 4 months, producing a collection of poetry, After the Silence and many anthologized poems in both Persian and English. He realized he had become the voice for “my fallen comrades in that stolen revolution.”

A stanza of his poem “Ah, Los Angeles” is engraved on a wall along the pathways in Venice, California, along with 15 other poets who’ve written poems about the city.

Ah, Los Angeles!
Let me bend down and put my ear
To your warm skin.
Perhaps in you
I will find my own Sanjan.

He says that the stanza—from a much longer poem, posted in full in the blog item just below this one—represents a question: Can Iranians create a as strong a community in Los Angeles as the one created by Persians in Sanjan, India, after Persia was invaded during the Muslims Conquests of the 7th Century.

In the profile, Majid opens only a small window to his writing process. “For me, writing poetry comes from the subconscious. Most of the time, I first write my poems in Persian, and then I translate them to English. Only after that do I start to edit them.

“I have run 12 consecutive LA marathons, and always reached the finish line for all of them. Always, during the running, poems come to me. Parallel to by body perspiration, I have a mental cleansing as well. Many of my new poems come to me…when I’m pedaling my stationary bike on my balcony.”

Who are his favorite poets?

”I still read Walt Whitman now and then. He inspired me to write poetry when I was 10 years old. I also like to read classical Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Sa’di, Hafez Nezami, and Khayyam as well as contemporary Persian poets such as Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, Forough Farokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri.”

“Majid’s poetry is becoming an exception in Persian literature,” says Poet and critic Parto Nooriala. “He creates modern poetry relying on deep emotion and deep knowledge about classical Persian literature.”

“I consider myself part of that global movement in which people seek freedom and social justice,” he says. “This movement is not defined by any ideology or religion.”

His son Azad was born in Santa Monica. [Azadi is the Persian word for freedom.] Majid cultivated roots in this second homeland. His son Azad writes hip-hop lyrics and there’s a fine example of one of his raps in the video.

The profile closes with a view from Majid and Azad of the father’s slowly degenerating vision, which became evident when he was very young, diagnosed as degenerative spots on his retinas by U.S. physicians. It had been controllable, until he climbed Mt. Whitney in 2001, and altitude sickness caused the condition to worsen. Majid is nearly blind, though can get around on foot and via public transportation.

“My eyesight impairment is an obstacle,” he says, “but its challenges polish my spirit and lead me to new possibilities. Blindness has made me humble, and brought me to understand the injustice to others, religious persecution, women under double oppression, or the homeless and poor.”

To a Snail

Little wanderer!
Were you not afraid of my big foot
Crushing you?
Last night, in the rain
You crept into my sneaker
To find shelter.
Today
You return to your green birthplace
And I am jealous.

Majid Naficy, the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry, fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife Ezzat Tabaian, his brother Sa’id, and brother-in-law Hossein in Tehran. Since 1984 Majid has been living in West Los Angeles. He has published two collections of poetry in English Muddy Shoes (Beyond Baroque, Books, 1999) and Father and Son (Red Hen Press, 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation at UCLA Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature (University Press of America, 1997). Majid has also published more than twenty books of poetry and essays in Persian. Majid Naficy's poetry has been anthologized in many books including Poetry in the Windows edited by Suzanne Lummis, Poets Against War edited by Sam Hamill, Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature edited by Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Lounge Lit: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and Rhapsodomancy, Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians around the World edited by Niloufar Talebi, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo, Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing edited by Ilan Stavans, Revolutionary Poets Brigade Anthology edited by Jack Hirschman and Mark Lipman, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi.

Majid is one of the six poets featured in the film Poetry of Resilience directed by the Oscar-nominated documentary film-maker Katja Esson. He was the first writer in residence in Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica in 2009-10, and the judge for Interboard Poetry Community contests in 2009. Majid has received awards in two poetry contests, Poetry in the Windows sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective as well as Poetry and Recipe organized by Writers at Work in Los Angeles. His poetry has been engraved by the City in public spaces in Venice Beach and Studio City. His life and work was featured in LA Weekly, February 9-15, 2001 written by Louise Steinman, entitled "Poet of Revolution: Majid Naficy's Tragic Journey Home".

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Two poems by
Iranian-American Poet
Majid Naficy

To the Children of Prison and Exile

After the silence of firing squads
Still it burns in our hearts
And we carry their corpses
On our broken backs.
I want to turn this death into life.

How many companions,
Who in these years of defeat and execution
Created life from an embryo?
I am talking about the children of prison and exile:
Cheshmeh, Roza, and Sulmaz.

I want to turn this death into life
That like a jug of water
Becomes filled with the freshness of Cheshmeh,
And like a red rose
Blooms from the lips of Roza,
And like the word sulmaz
Becomes evergreen.
I will sift, grind, and soften this death,
Until the children of prison and exile
Mold it into playdough.
I am calling you,
O newborns of years of pain,
The crocodiles in your painting
Have no teeth,
Because the names of their friends
Never crossed their lips.

I want to turn this death into a poem,
That can be read like magic
When the corpse of a butterfly
Carried by ants
Makes you remember the dead ones.

I want to turn this death into life.

NOTE:
The names Cheshmeh, Roza, and Sulmaz respectively mean: "spring", "rose," and "everlasting."

Ah, Los Angeles

Ah, Los Angeles!
I accept you as my city,
And after ten years
I am at peace with you.
Waiting without fear
I lean back against the bus post.
And I become lost
In the sounds of your midnight.

A man gets off Blue Bus 1
And crosses to this side
To take Brown Bus 4.
Perhaps he too is coming back
From his nights on campus.
On the way he has sobbed
Into a blank letter.
And from the seat behind
He has heard the voice of a woman
With a familiar accent.
On Brown Bus 4 it rains.
A woman is talking to her umbrella
And a man ceaselessly flushes a toilet.

I told Carlos yesterday,
“Your clanging cart
Wakes me up in the morning."
He collects cans
And wants to go back to Cuba.
From the Promenade
Comes the sound of my homeless man.
He sings blues
And plays guitar.
Where in the world can I hear
The black moaning of the saxophone
Alongside the Chinese chimes?
And see this warm olive skin
Through blue eyes?
The easy-moving doves
Rest on the empty benches.
They stare at the dinosaur
Who sprays stale water on our kids.
Marziyeh sings from a Persian market
I return, homesick
And I put my feet
On your back.
Ah, Los Angeles!
I feel your blood.
You taught me to get up
Look at my beautiful legs
And along with the marathon
Run on your broad shoulders.

Once I got tired of life
I coiled up under my blanket
And remained shut-off for two nights.
Then, my neighbor turned on NPR
And I heard of a Russian poet
Who in a death camp,
Could not write his poems
But his wife learned them by heart.

Will Azad read my poetry?
On the days that I take him to school,
He sees the bus number from far off.
And calls me to get in line.
At night he stays under the shower
And lets the drops of water
Spray on his small body.
Sometimes we go to the beach.
He bikes and I skate.
He buys a Pepsi from a machine
And gives me one sip.

Yesterday we went to Romteen’s house.
His father is a Parsee from India.
He wore sadra and kusti
While he was painting the house.
On that little stool
He looked like a Zoroastrian
Rowing from Hormoz to Sanjan.

Ah, Los Angeles!
Let me bend down and put my ear
To your warm skin.
Perhaps in you
I will find my own Sanjan.
No, it’s not a ship touching
Against the rocky shore;
It’s the rumbling Blue Bus 8.
I know.
I will get off at Idaho
And will pass the shopping carts
Left by the homeless
I will climb the stairs
And will open the door.
I will start the answering machine
And in the dark
I will wait like a fisherman.

NOTES:
The Parsees are the descendants of Zoroastrians who emigrated from Iran to Gujarat, India during the Arab conquests. In 1599, Bahman Key Qobâd, a Gujarati Parsee, wrote an epic poem in which he depicts such a migration on a ship from the Straits of Hormoz in the Persian Gulf to the port of Sanjan in India.
The sadra and kusti are special tunics and belts worn by Zoroastrians after puberty.

Both poems reprinted with permission of the poet. Both poems appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.

Interview with Majid Naficy

Majid Naficy

How did you come to write these two poems?

One of the three children whom I have named in “To the Children of Prison and Exile” is my niece Cheshmeh who was born in Evin prison in Tehran after his father was executed in winter 1983. By writing this poem, I wanted to honor her father and make life out of his death. In “Ah Los Angeles” I wanted to accept my new identity as an Iranian-American and after ten years in exile express my appreciation for Los Angeles.

How did writing these poems affect your recovery?

By writing these two poems as well as similar pieces I have been able to survive after so much personal loss back in Iran and facilitate the process of passage from self-denial to acceptance as an exile in the US.

Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped these poems come to life?

I did not do any thing special. They came on their own. I only made some changes later.

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?

I still read Walt Whitman now and then. He inspired me to write poetry when I was eleven years old. I also like to read classical Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Sa’di, Hafez Nezami, and Khayyam as well as contemporary Persian poets such as Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, Forough Farokhzad and Sohrab Sepehri.

What are you working on now?

I am making some changes in a poem which I wrote for my son Azad in 1995 in order to give it to him as a gift for his 24th birthday. It was first published in my collection of poetry Father and Son (Red Hen Press, 2003). I have renamed it from “We Are Sitting Next to Each Other” to “Haircut.” I wrote it when Azad and I went to Supercuts.

Majid Naficy, the Arthur Rimbaud of Persian poetry, fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife Ezzat Tabaian and his brother Sa’id in Tehran. Since 1984 Majid has been living in West Los Angeles. He has published two collections of poetry in English Muddy Shoes (Beyond Baroque, Books, 1999) and Father and Son (Red Hen Press, 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation at UCLA Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature (University Press of America, 1997). Majid has also published more than twenty books of poetry and essays in Persian.

Majid Naficy's poetry has been anthologized in many books including Poetry in the Windows edited by Suzanne Lummis, Poets Against War edited by Sam Hamill, Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature edited by Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Lounge Lit: An Anthology of Poetry and Fiction by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and Rhapsodomancy, Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians around the World edited by Niloufar Talebi, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo, Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing edited by Ilan Stavans, Revolutionary Poets Brigade Anthology edited by Jack Hirschman and Mark Lipman, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi.

Majid is one of the six poets featured in the film Poetry of Resilience directed by the Oscar-nominated documentary film-maker Katja Esson. He was the first writer in residence in Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica in 2009-10, and the judge for Interboard Poetry Community contests in 2009. Majid has received awards in two poetry contests, Poetry in the Windows sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective as well as Poetry and Recipe organized by Writers at Work in Los Angeles. His poetry has been engraved by the City in public spaces in Venice Beach and Studio City. His life and work was featured in LA Weekly, February 9-15, 2001 written by Louise Steinman, entitled "Poet of Revolution: Majid Naficy's Tragic Journey Home".

A documentary portrait of Dr. Naficy aired January 2014 on VOA in Persian and now is available with English subtitles at You Tube: Video Portrait of Majid Naficy.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Excerpt from Martha Collins
New Collection Day Unto Day


from OVER TIME

      October 2004


1

Not much. Less. Slip
of a finger, diminished
interval, maybe third

of three or two.

Water mirrors house with high
green door opening out (no

steps) into pure air.


2

Air pockets three
hawks. Cat got
the bird got the cat.

Overflown. A habit
of flight. Worn cloud
on the edge of edge.

Wisps. Little tongues.


3

Tongues at work. Talk Today

She could did for an hour or more.
My first her, who gave me words.

Then at the end, before, merely Oh!

A moment of . . . of more, perhaps.

Oh sweet and blessèd could be.

Oh my soul


4

Soul slept, called in sick.

Late sun clouds
the lake with clouds.

Katydid down
to –did –did.

Nothing to be done.

Little sun, quarter moon.


5

Moon covered, un-
covered, covered again, cold.

Cold and hot, very and both.

Disturbed the Sea of Tranquility.

Distributed by the Moon Shop.

Distributed self in pieces.

Oh my broken.


6

Broken down, or out, as in
war, or into, soon: my own him.

How much we carry around
under our skins, many
we were, girls and boys

Now now

And then then.


7

Then gone and then to come:
all the time, except the split
second, except—

All the time in the world.

And out of this world?

Oh little heart on my wrist,
where are we going?

Reprinted from Day Unto Day (Milkweed Press) by permission of the poet.


Interview with Martha Collins

Please tell Poetry of Recovery blog readers how your new collection came about.

I began the book in 2004, and I wrote daily during a different month each year until I finally finish all twelve months. The first six parts of this project were just published as Day Unto Day by Milkweed Press this past March. I have two more months to go to complete the second half.

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?

As I said in a recent interview, I’ve been reading a lot of African American poetry lately, partly because of the writing I’ve been doing (see below). Beyond older poets like Carl Phillips and Marilyn Nelson, I’m been impressed enough with recent books by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Evie Shockley, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Major Jackson to review them in print.

Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens—and the Bible!—were early influences. Later John Ashbery gave me a kind of stylistic license (though my writing is nothing like his), and poets like Denise Levertov, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Muriel Rukeyser allowed me to pursue the kind of subject matter that is reflected in my recent books.

Martha Collins

What are you working on now?

My book Day Unto Day, just released, followed soon after my collection White Papers, which was a kind of follow-up to my book-length poem Blue Front. Two of my books focus on race: Blue Front on a lynching my father witnessed, White Papers more broadly on issues of race as seen from a critical white perspective. A friend once suggested that I must be writing some kind of trilogy, and I am working on a manuscript that might in some sense follow these two—-not focused so narrowly on race, but perhaps related in some way. Or perhaps not related at all.


Martha Collins is the author of Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012) and the book-length poem Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), which won an Anisfield-Wolf Award. She has also published four earlier collections of poems and three collections of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, most recently Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap (Milkweed, 2013, with the author). Other awards include fellowships from the NEA, Bunting Institute, Witter Bynner Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation, as well as three Pushcart Prizes and a Lannan Foundation residency. Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin until 2007, Collins is currently editor-at-large for FIELD magazine and one of the editors of the Oberlin College Press.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Two Poems By
William Greenway


Pit Pony

There are only a few left, he says,
kept by old Welsh miners, souvenirs,
like gallstones or gold teeth, torn
from this "pit," so cold and wet
my breath comes out a soul up
into my helmet's lantern beam,
anthracite walls running, gleaming,
and the floors iron-rutted with tram tracks,
the almost pure rust that grows and waves
like orange moss in the gutters of water
that used to rise and drown.
He makes us turn all lights off, almost
a mile down. While children scream,
I try to see anything, my hand touching
my nose, my wife beside me—darkness
palpable, like a velvet sack over our heads,
even the glow of watches left behind.
This is where they were born, into
this nothing, felt first with their cold noses
for the shaggy side and warm bag of black milk,
pulled their trams for twenty years
through pitch, past birds that didn't sing,
through doors opened by five-year-olds
who sat in the cheap, complete blackness
listening for steps, a knock.
And they died down here, generation
after generation.
The last one, when it dies in the hills,
not quite blind, the mines closed forever,
will it die strangely? Will it wonder
dimly why it was exiled from the rest
of its race, from the dark flanks of the soft
mother, what these timbers are that hold up
nothing but blue? If this is the beginning
of death, this wind, these stars?

From Selected Poems (Future Cycle Press, 2014). Reprinted by permission of the poet.




Eurydice

When my wife woke from four months
of coma after a “massive” stroke,
with chances of recovery “minimal,”
and we had finally flown home
in a tiny jet around the polar horn
of Swansea, Cardiff, Reykjavik, Goose
Bay, Toronto, Cleveland, Youngstown,
I sat by her wheelchair in a class
like a kindergarten where kids of all ages
cut colored cloth, stacked blocks,
and pieced puzzles like a map
of the world. When they shook their heads
to lament how she couldn’t remember
anything or speak, I wrote
on a big pad in crayon, “Let us go
then you and I.”
After she had read it aloud,
she went on in her whispery voice
to chant, eyes closed, the rest
of the poem from memory while
the rehab staff in their green
and blue scrubs gathered around
and stood open-mouthed as something
odd and unintelligible, yet
somehow strangely familiar,
came to them from a far place,
deep and dark where she had been,
beyond the reach of light and love.

In 2008, Greenway's poem "Eurydice" appeared in the anthology After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, which featured 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations.

Interview with William Greenway

How did you come to write the poem "Eurydice"?

It began after my wife’s stroke and subsequent two-month coma while we were in Wales on sabbatical.

How did writing "Eurydice" affect your recovery?

All through this trauma, I wrote poems as prayer, believing, as I always have, that poetry taps into a power outside of ourselves as well as inside. Both give us strength we don’t know we have or have access to until the trauma comes along.

Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped "Eurydice" come to life?

Because I keep a journal, I’m able to objectify my experiences enough to get past mere self-pity and sentimentality and leave a sort of vacuum of emotion to draw in the reader’s emotions. I try not to hog all the feeling, and let the reader have some.

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?

William Stafford, William Matthews, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Sharon Olds.

What are you working on now?

Whatever comes my way. My life seems to follow paths that eventually become patterns that then become the organization of a book. My latest book is titled Tripwires, about those upheavals—some good, some bad—that we never see coming, but that change our lives, and us, irrevocably.


William Greenway

Greenway's collection Everywhere at Once (2008) won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award, as did his Ascending Order (2003), both from the University of Akron Press. He has published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner. He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. He’s Professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he has been awarded a Distinguished Professorship in Teaching and three in Scholarship.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

William Greenway featured
on Poetry Daily Today

William Greenway's poem "Entrance" is featured at Poetry Daily today. You can find it at Poetry Daily: "Entrance" by William Greenway. The link stays live forever, so if you miss it today, please view it at your leisure.

The poem comes from Greenway's recently released Selected Poems.



"Everything I love about William Greenway's poems is here in spades: the self-effacing wit, the spritely erudition, and the serious charm. Like a wry descendent of Homer who 'woke up human and Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia,' Greenway discerns in the mundane world of barbershops and flu shot lines the guises of the mythic." —Lynn Powell, poet, The Zones of Paradise


William Greenway

Greenway's collection Everywhere at Once (2008) won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award, as did his Ascending Order (2003), both from the University of Akron Press. He has published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner. He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. He’s Professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he has been awarded a Distinguished Professorship in Teaching and three in Scholarship.

In 2008, Greenway's poem "Eurydice" appeared in the anthology After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, which featured 152 poems by 115 poets from 15 nations.

Monday, April 7, 2014

New Collection Bend to it
from Kevin Simmonds


Kevin Simmonds' new collection Bend to it was just released this Spring from Salmon Poetry. Kevin is an award-winning poet and musician who divides his time between San Francisco and Japan, and he's now at work on a theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre in San Francisco. Here's a sample poem from Bend to it.

Tono City, Japan
     December, 2000

Crows against snow

Beauty beaten on these anvils

A sky

Falling apart

Black anchors

Crows hawking

To god

To me

A moment's match

Pushing the light from itself

Pushing the light from its wings

Reprinted by permission of the poet.
From Bend to it (Salmon Poetry, 2014). Buy Bend to it at Salmon Poetry.

Interview with Poet Kevin Simmonds

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?
Lucille Clifton
Richard Ronan

What are you working on now?

My second collection, Bend to it , is out from Salmon Poetry, who also published my debut collection, Mad for Meat.

I'm at work on a new collection, tentatively titled Upright. At the same time, I’m processing Ota Benga, a river, a recent theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre here in San Francisco. I wrote the music and co-wrote the text. It was an eye-opening experience, and I won’t soon forget the challenges of creating a work that draws from Japanese and African-American musical conventions.

Finally, I just wrapped up The Nudists , a short experimental documentary about the nudity ban in San Francisco. I collaborated with designer and artist Nori Hara to create a protest pamphlet about this in 2012, shortly before it became law in February 2013. I’m hoping some film festivals will pick it up.



Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry) and the edited works Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as Emmett Till, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica. He started the first-ever poetry workshop at Singapore’s Changi Prison and founded Tono International Arts Association, an arts presenter in northern Japan. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco.

Visit Kevin Simmonds web site.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

After Shocks Poem Reprinted
in Theologian’s New Book

Noted Theologian Walter Brueggemann has used the poem “After Katrina” in his new book Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks. The poem, by Kevin Simmonds, was first published in the journal Callaloo, and was selected and published in the 2008 anthology After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events .

Dr. Brueggemann’s new book presents parallel theological crises arising from two watershed historic events: the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Both events raise questions about ideologies of “chosen-ness” held by those in power, denial that ideologies have failed, and despair when reality is faced. Dr. Brueggemann conducts a lengthy presentation of those historic ideologies, of grief and denial, and of hope as a counter to despair.

His book is available at Amazon.com Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks

Dr. Brueggemann chose “After Katrina” by Kevin Simmonds for his chapter “Grief Amid Denial” as an example of a lament that is voiced by the powerless in the face of events that they cannot control. He writes (page 84): We may pay attention to the rich legacy of contemporary laments that grieve over the failure of our “system” of well-being. Such laments arise among the excluded, powerless, and vulnerable—not the kind of people who constitute usual church voices. But these voices provide a script that we are able to echo, because such voices match and give freedom to our sadness….consider the following.

After Katrina
By Kevin Simmonds

There’s no Sabbath in this house
Just work

The black of garbage bags
yellow-cinched throats opening
to gloved hands

Black tombs along the road now
proof she knew to cherish
the passing things

even those muted before the water came
before the mold’s grotesquerie
and the wooden house choked on bones

My aunt wades through the wreckage failing
no matter how hard she tries
at letting go

I look on glad at her failing
her slow rites
fingering what she’d once been given to care for

The waistbands of her husband’s briefs
elastic as memory
the blank stare of rotted drawers

their irises of folded linen still
smelling of soap and wood
and clean hands

Daylight through the silent windows
and I’m sure now: Today is Sabbath
the work we do, prayer

I know what she releases into the garbage bags
shiny like wet skins of seals
beached on the shore of this house


Reprinted by permission of the poet.
"After Katrina" appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events.

Walter Brueggemann is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. His many other books include A Social Reading of the Old Testament, The Threat of Life, Theology of the Old Testament, Truth Speaks to Power, and The Prophetic Imagination.


Interview with Poet Kevin Simmonds, who wrote “After Katrina”

How did you come to write “After Katrina”?

I wanted to create a poem about the experience of helping my Aunt Trina as she tried to salvage things from her home after the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Or after the bombing of those levees. Those sloppily designed levees. I knew -- in the moments of wading through the mold and mess with her -- how important that time was. Not too long thereafter she died of cancer.

How did writing “After Katrina” affect your recovery?

The subject of the poem is literally about recovering objects that are imbued with memory. Objects are talismans for memory. Having those objects and the memories surrounding them alongside the poem, something that was created and then recovered in a sense, helps me go on. My mother also lost her home. Everything in it. With this poem, I retain the essence of what was lost in the physical sense.

Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped “After Katrina” come to life?

This poem was different and came easily compared to other poems. I often fail at this but I want each poem to be an experience of discovery. Something without agenda or predetermined direction. This poem came from my love and admiration for my aunt. If there are resonances beyond my personal history, then it's because of love and admiration.

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?
Lucille Clifton
Richard Ronan

What are you working on now?

My second collection, Bend to it , is out from Salmon Poetry, who also published my debut collection, Mad for Meat.

I'm at work on a new collection, tentatively titled Upright. At the same time, I’m processing Ota Benga, a river, a recent theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre here in San Francisco. I wrote the music and co-wrote the text. It was an eye-opening experience and I won’t soon forget the challenges of creating a work that draws from Japanese and African-American musical conventions.

Finally, I just wrapped up The Nudists , a short experimental documentary about the nudity ban in San Francisco. I collaborated with designer and artist Nori Hara to create a protest pamphlet about this in 2012, shortly before it became law in February 2013. I’m hoping some film festivals will pick it up.



Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry) and the edited works Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as Emmett Till, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica. He started the first-ever poetry workshop at Singapore’s Changi Prison and founded Tono International Arts Association, an arts presenter in northern Japan. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco.

Visit Kevin Simmonds web site.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

"After Katrina"
by Kevin Simmonds

There’s no Sabbath in this house
Just work

The black of garbage bags
yellow-cinched throats opening
to gloved hands

Black tombs along the road now
proof she knew to cherish
the passing things

even those muted before the water came
before the mold’s grotesquerie
and the wooden house choked on bones

My aunt wades through the wreckage failing
no matter how hard she tries
at letting go

I look on glad at her failing
her slow rites
fingering what she’d once been given to care for

The waistbands of her husband’s briefs
elastic as memory
the blank stare of rotted drawers

their irises of folded linen still
smelling of soap and wood
and clean hands

Daylight through the silent windows
and I’m sure now: Today is Sabbath
the work we do, prayer

I know what she releases into the garbage bags
shiny like wet skins of seals
beached on the shore of this house


Reprinted by permission of the poet.
"After Katrina" appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events.

Interview with Poet Kevin Simmonds

How did you come to write “After Katrina”?

I wanted to create a poem about the experience of helping my Aunt Trina as she tried to salvage things from her home after the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Or after the bombing of those levees. Those sloppily designed levees. I knew -- in the moments of wading through the mold and mess with her -- how important that time was. Not too long thereafter she died of cancer.

How did writing “After Katrina” affect your recovery?

The subject of the poem is literally about recovering objects that are imbued with memory. Objects are talismans for memory. Having those objects and the memories surrounding them alongside the poem, something that was created and then recovered in a sense, helps me go on. My mother also lost her home. Everything in it. With this poem, I retain the essence of what was lost in the physical sense.

Can you tell us something about your process of writing that helped “After Katrina” come to life?

This poem was different and came easily compared to other poems. I often fail at this but I want each poem to be an experience of discovery. Something without agenda or predetermined direction. This poem came from my love and admiration for my aunt. If there are resonances beyond my personal history, then it's because of love and admiration.

Who are your favorite poets or poets new to you whom you'd recommend to others?
Lucille Clifton
Richard Ronan

What are you working on now?

My second collection, Bend to it , is out from Salmon Poetry, who also published my debut collection, Mad for Meat.

I'm at work on a new collection, tentatively titled Upright. At the same time, I’m processing Ota Benga, a river, a recent theatrical collaboration with Theatre of Yugen, an experimental Japanese Noh theatre here in San Francisco. I wrote the music and co-wrote the text. It was an eye-opening experience and I won’t soon forget the challenges of creating a work that draws from Japanese and African-American musical conventions.

Finally, I just wrapped up The Nudists , a short experimental documentary about the nudity ban in San Francisco. I collaborated with designer and artist Nori Hara to create a protest pamphlet about this in 2012, shortly before it became law in February 2013. I’m hoping some film festivals will pick it up.



Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry) and the edited works Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as Emmett Till, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica. He started the first-ever poetry workshop at Singapore’s Changi Prison and founded Tono International Arts Association, an arts presenter in northern Japan. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco.

Visit Kevin Simmonds web site.