PAWA Arkipelago Series features Bermeo, Armas, Gaerlan and Pelaud

Philippine American Writers and Artists, Arkipelago Books, Filipino American International Book Festival present

PAWA Arkipelago Series

Saturday, February 19, 2011
5:00 PM
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
FREE!

featuring:

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of four poetry chapbooks, most recently To the Break of Dawn. He has been a featured writer at a variety of institutions including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Kearny Street Workshop, Rikers Island Penitentiary, San Quentin Prison, UC Berkeley, UNC-Chapel Hill, NYU and many others. Recent poems appear in CrossBRONX, 580 Split, Milvia Street Journal, and phat’itude Literary Magazine. He has taught creative writing workshops to foster youth in San Jose, bilingual fourth graders in Oakland, and to adults through the Oakland Public Library’s Oakland Word program. Oscar makes his home in Oakland with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes, where they co-edit Doveglion Press. For more information, please visit: www.oscarbermeo.com.

Jennifer Cendaña Armas is a NYC performer/writer/teacher. Her work includes presentations at the Binational Center of Cuzco, Lincoln Center’s La Casita, Culture Project’s Women Center Stage Festival, London’s Ronnie Scott’s Upstairs, and choreographing reg e. gaines’s production of BLAK. She teaches performance and writing workshops stateside and abroad, and is a teaching artist with Brooklyn Academy of Music. her first show, skinimin12 featured at both the Downtown Urban Theater Fest and NYC Hip Hop Theater Festival at the Public Theatre. She is a member of the Blackout Arts Collective family. Her new piece, my mouth may not know all the words but everything else understands, will have an excerpted, work-in-progress presentation at La Peña Cultural Center Feb. 25th and 26th, with a workshop open to the community Feb. 27. www.junipersupadupa.com

Cecilia Gaerlan is a Bay Area playwright based in Berkeley, California. She is the founder of the multicultural theatre arts group Artis Mundi. She received an Honorable Mention in the Stage Play Script Category of the Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in 2005 for The Hand of God and in 2010 for Magnus Laurent (Lorenzo the Magnificent). She is a recipient of a Theatre Bay Area CASH Award in 2002 for her play, Brilliance within the Darkness which is about the blind Spanish composer, Joaquin Rodrigo, the composer of the guitar masterpiece Concierto de Aranjuez. She is the author of several other plays on a wide variety of topics such as the United Nations (commissioned by City College of San Francisco for the U.N.’s 50th anniversary), child prostitution, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, etc. In Her Mother’s Image is her debut novel.

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud is associate professor in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. She is the author of this is all i choose to tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American literature published by Temple University Press. Her academic work can be found in Mixed Race Literature, The New Face of Asian Pacific America, Amerasia Journal and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her creative works have been published in Making More Waves, Tilting the Continent, Vietnam Dialogue Inside/Out and The Perfume River. She is founder of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).

Most Intellectuals Will Only Half Listen


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Originally uploaded by tutam

[In response to Claudia Rankine’s open call to move “toward a discussion about the creative imagination, creative writing and race.”]

First off, I want to applaud Ms Rankine and her thoughtful course of action with dealing with the racism in po-biz. She identified a problem, went to the source, engaged in conversation, wrote a response, and then presented herself in an open public forum. All these actions are well worthy of praise especially when one considers the fact that many authors are more than happy to just rest on their laurels and harp about these kinds of issues behind closed doors or, even worse, their private web feeds.

I’m even more thankful of Ms Rankine’s follow-up by posting her presentation (again, in an open and public forum) and then opening up a new forum for writers to share their own individual thoughts on racism in creative writing circles. Please link over to claudiarankine.com and click on AWP for the presentation or OPEN LETTER for her call to responses.

But, as Nas reminds us, some intellectuals only half listen and would prefer to rehash the territory Ms Rankine already traversed by referring over and over again to one racist poem.

So here is what I don’t understand: Why do poets-of-color insist on reinforcing the Ivory Tower (the literal and figurative one) by constantly paying deference to it? And if they think they aren’t doing that, then I respectfully disagree. To put it plainly and name the harm: I would rather not teach/share/discuss Tony Hoagland’s “The Change” and instead focus on the wide body of work from so many other poets who successfully and respectfully discuss racism in their poetry.

Here are some poems I would rather refer to:
• “Skinhead” by Patricia Smith
• “Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between Races” by Lorna Dee Cervantes
• “Talk” by Terrance Hayes
• “So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans” by Jimmy Santiago Baca
• “Niggerlips/Negro Bembón” by Martín Espada
• “About the White Boys who Drove By a Second Time to Throw a Bucket of Water on Me” by Patrick Rosal
• “won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton
• “The crowd at the ball game” by William Carlos Williams

This is an incredibly incomplete list but a good start for anyone who wants to start talking about how hard and complex issues can be dealt with craft and tact in poetry. I’m open to more suggestions but will shy away from reading any poems that are presented with disclaimers such as “This poem does a lousy job of dealing with racism,” or “Here is an example of a white privileged dude talkin bout his white privilege but trying to dress it up as a poem.”

And why will I shy away from it?

#1) Because if I want to read what Anglo-Centrics thinks about the issue of racism as seen through their personal prism, I can go to the thin Poetry shelves of (insert name of national book selling chain) on my own and pick up that book on my own.

#2) I don’t need to eat a shit sandwich to know it doesn’t taste good. Point, as vulgar as it is, made.

#3) Every time you read your friends/students/colleagues a “change” poem that isn’t really about change, not only does a cat die but, more importantly, a much better poem goes unread. See list above.

Love Poem For My People


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Originally uploaded by Pro-Zak

It’s time to fall back in love with poetry. If you haven’t guessed by my lack of updates, I’m currently in a rocky relationship with my poetry. I keep looking at my work and feeling distant from it wondering what I have to do to get it alive and kicking again. Luckily, I have a couple of live readings coming up and nothing makes me more excited about the wonder of poetry than a live reading. My goal is to have at least one extended piece memorized and then also have a cover poem I can recite from off the dome. The fact that I’ll be reading for PAWA’s Arkipelago Reading Series makes me think about Manong Al Robles and how his poetic storytelling instantly raptured the Bayanihan Center. And thinking of Al always brings me back to Rev Pedro Pietri, how his poems/stories/dialogues/chismes/plays would blend in and out of each other with ease. How the live audience was the sole concern and how far away things like conferences, panels, debates and politics seemed when he got to the nitty-gritty of poetry. I make it sound like I got to hear Pedro read a ton of times and the truth is I only got to hear him once but that’s all it took and now I get to read him a lot and am grateful his work is captured in print. (Some hard to get print, for sure, but it’s out there if ya look.) Which brings up quite the conflict—I have two voices in my head, Rev Pedro and Manong Al, both who lived their poetry and had little concern for publication but the way I know most of their work is from publication. Ain’t dat a bitch? To be caught in the middle of this intersection of orality and print with both traffic lights saying GO at the same time? But that’s what makes it exciting! To run into the middle of that mess and not worry about who is saying to wait and who is saying to keep on, to trust my own instincts and do the thing because I need to do the thing. And do it all with love, for me, for my poetry, and for my people.

Love Poem For My People
by Pedro Pietri

do not let artificial lamps
make strange shadows out of you
do not dream
if you want your dreams
to come true
you knew how to sing
before you was issued a birth certificate

turn off the stereo
this country gave you
it is out of order
your breath is your promised land
if you want to feel very rich
look at your hands
that is where
the definition of magic
is located at

FLORICANTO IN DC: A Multicultural Reading in Response to SB 1070

Join us as over twenty poets lend their energy and language to a group reading in response to Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and in resistance to the atmosphere of national xenophobia under which the bill (and its emerging counterparts) were created.

Confirmed readers include: Francisco X. Alarcon, Tara Betts, Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico, Carmen Calatayud, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Susan Deer Cloud, Martín Espada, Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Aracelis Girmay, Randall Horton, Juan Felipe Herrera, Dorianne Laux, Marilyn Nelson, Mark Nowak, Barbara Jane Reyes, Abel Salas, Sonia Sanchez, Craig Santos Perez, Hedy Trevino, Pam Uschuk, Dan Vera, Rich Villar, and Andre Yang.

Co-sponsored and presented by the Acentos Foundation, Split This Rock, and the Poets Responding to SB 1070 Facebook group.

Hosted by Rich Villar.

TIME: Friday, February 4 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm

PLACE: True Reformer Building, 1200 U Street NW, Washington, DC

EVENT: AWP 2011

RSVP: Facebook Event Page

Acknowledgment (Again): Eleven Eleven Journal

Many thanks to all the folks at Eleven Eleven for nominating one of my poems for a Pushcart Prize. This is some of the best news I’ve heard in a long time since it really came completely unexpected. I’m also in good company. So, yeah, I’m feeling good.

Eleven Eleven Journal 2010 Pushcart Prize Nominees

  • Oscar Bermeo, “The Story of How A Pigeon Came to Live in City.”
  • J Michael Martinez, “The Lady of Guadalupe’s Dream and Jade Ruin.”
  • Aurora Brackett, “Brother Death.”
  • Alissa Nutting, “Ant Colony.”
  • Sean Bernard, “in the days of butchers.”
  • Laura Ulewicz, “Notes toward the River Itself.”