>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. ^M00:00:03 ^M00:00:21 >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Welcome, welcome to the Library of Congress. I'm really very happy to see you all here for what promises to be a very exciting program. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division here at the Library. And I make a little ad for our division. Our division is made up of three sections, the African, the Near Eastern, and the Hebraic Sections. We're responsible for materials from 78 countries in the Near East, Central Asia, the Caucusus as well as from the entire continent of Africa. We also serve these materials to patrons here in our reading room and around the Library. And we organize programs, exhibits, conferences and other activities that highlight these collections. And that inform our patrons about the countries and cultures these publications come from. The African Section has been partnering for the past five years on a special series entitled "Conversations with African Poets and Writers" and has been partnering with the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library and the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa. So we were delighted to meet with Kwame Dawes, founding member of the African Poetry Book Fund and editor of the Prairie Schooner, a couple of months ago over dinner and we began discussing and planning this very special event today on African poetry which fitted right in with what we had been doing for the past five years. So I very much hope that this program is only the first, on the beginning of many programs to come that we will all be doing together. So now, I would like to recognize Professor Kwame Dawes and to thank him for bringing the African Poetry Book Fund to the Library. I would also like to thank all those who have made this and all the other programs in the series possible. Of course, Rob Casper, the dynamo, the head of the Poetry Center and Anya Creightney, the partner in this endeavor who has worked so very hard on the Library side to put the program together. As well as our long-term partners in the Conversations with African Poets and Writers, the President of the Africa Society, Patricia Baine, and the Chairperson of the Africa Society, Ambassador Pamela Bridgewater -- who unfortunately due to trains and, you know how they work, has not been able to -- will not be able to join us. I would also recognize -- I would also like to recognize my own team, Dr. Angel Batiste, Specialist for West Africa, Marieta Harper, Specialist for Francophone Africa, Laverne Page, Specialist for Southern Africa, Eve Ferguson, the Reference Librarian for East Africa, many of whom are here today and took a very active -- were very active in the whole program. And now, let me pass the baton on to Patricia. Patricia Baine, President of the African Society for the National Summit on Africa who is going to make a few remarks as well. Patricia? ^M00:03:46 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:53 ^M00:03:58 >> Patricia Baine: I guess it's good afternoon. Hi, a very warm welcome to all of you and especially to our poets and writers. The Africa Society is a nonprofit organization that works to educate, inform, and advocate on behalf of Africa in order to create understanding and to promote meaningful engagement with Africa that will encourage partnerships on culture and education and technology and commerce. This is why we are very supportive of [inaudible] education. With increasing advancements in technology that continue to bring people closer to us, we appreciative to you, our writers and our poets for your literary contributions that communicates and continue to interpret the world for generations to come. We all know the power of a book and how a good book can transport you to a different world. And while you're there, you will inevitably learn something about the author's world. And to us, that is why African literary work is essential in our efforts to educate about African continents because when I was growing up, all I knew about the west was what I read in a book. And so now, we have the same opportunity as writers and poets to communicate our world to the rest of the world. We will, at some point here today, have some students who are on their way [laughter] and they are extraordinary educator who's part of one of our other flagship programs, Teach Africa. They are from the School Without Walls. They are very excited to be here today so when they are speaking to you, you'll understand why they are very animated. They are all, as I understand it, aspiring writers. So enjoy the program and it's good to meet all of you. Thank you. ^M00:05:43 [ Applause ] ^M00:05:50 >> Rob Casper: Thank you, Patricia and thank you, Mary-Jane. It's been wonderful to work with the Africa Society and the African and Middle Eastern Division to make this program in this year possible. I'm Rob Casper. I'm the head of the Poetry and Literature Center here at the Library of Congress. Just a couple of things, let me just ask you to turn off your cellphones and any other electronic devices that you have that might interfere with this event. Second, please note this program is being recorded for future webcast. You might participate and you give us permission for future use of this recording. So if you look at the program, that should be on your chair, you'll see the list of the great poets who are participating. I'm not going to go in and do much in terms of introduction of the panelists or the readers. What I do want to say is as much as I try to be dynamo in this world, I could never match the wonder of Kwame Dawes. Kwame Dawes, for those of you who've ever had the chance to meet with him, and especially, for those of you who had the chance to talk to him about what he is doing on behalf of the African Poetry Book Fund. Know that the kind of ambition he embodies is the kind of ambition that can change the world and I feel like he should be up here instead of me introducing his family which are the other editorial board members who will be participating as moderators of discussion. We've also asked him to come up after the moderator discussion section to introduce all the poets. All I can say is thank God for Kwame Dawes and please welcome him. ^M00:07:38 [ Applause ] ^M00:07:47 >> Kwame Dawes: Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you Rob. And it's good to be back here. This is -- it's just a fantastic space. It's a fantastic -- first of all, it's just a beautiful room, right? But secondly, you know, I came to the Library of Congress for the first time in 1986. And I think -- I remember writing in my journal there is so much information and knowledge here and I already have quickly discovered that things that I've been looking for in the Jamaican archives that I couldn't find, I was finding here. And I just thought, "With so much information and knowledge here, if we pay attention to it, we really shouldn't mess up too much in the future, right?" And so, for us to be here and for us to be able to celebrate African poetry in this space, I think it's fantastic. And our hope is that it is the beginning of a really continued relationship that they've been -- there's been some great work done before. If you just go online and see some of the writers who have come through here, it's fantastic. But also, it's to create interesting conversations and to piggyback on other conversations with other centers and so on and so forth around the world especially in Africa. So that's the exciting thing. And I'm really, really grateful to all involved, you know, from Rob and Mary-Jane Deeb and, you know, it's been a -- it's been a fantastic thing. So I'm just going to say a few quick words about the panelists who'll be here and really to say that for me, people ask me, Kwame, how are you?" And I say, "Man, I'm good, man." And they'll say, well, why? ^M00:09:36 [ Laughter ] ^M00:09:40 And I say, "I am involved and working with some of the most amazing people that I've ever sort of worked together as a group." And that's the team that is responsible for the African Poetry Book Fund. It's the editorial team and here are the characteristics of that team. They are all brilliant like no joke, like really exceptionally brilliant and bright. ^M00:10:01 They volunteer like their time at time when they shouldn't but they do. They volunteer their time and then they are the most proactive people who are really about community. We don't fight. We don't argue. And if today, I just sent like a text and I said, "Guys, I need this, that and that and that," literally, in a few hours, people in England, people -- they're responding right away. It's -- I'm not kidding you. This is one of the most amazing teams of people. So you're going to meet a few of them but I just want to mention everybody on the editorial team of the African Poetry Book Fund. We've just added two people to our group, one of whom you'll meet. One is Phillippa Yaa de Villiersis who is based in South Africa and she just joined the team this fall. And she's a wonderful poet, really a tremendous poet and a great actress. She's done some tremendous theater in South Africa. So she's there and you know, we do everything by you know, psychic communication [laughter]. The other person who is not here is John Keene. John Keene is an African-American poet and thinker and just brilliant all-around guy and a translator of no joke about that. He's a serious and gifted translator. And one of the most generous people in the world. Bernardine Evaristo is a powerhouse in England. She's literally on her own sort of energy transformed the position of black writers and black writing in Britain at so many levels and so she's on that team as well. And then Gabeba Baderoon who is from South Africa, wonderful poet, just all-around fantastic person and so she's on the team. So the two -- the three people that you'll meet today, first of all, Chris Abani. And typically one need not, you know, introduce Chris Abani. But out of politeness, I will. Chris -- Chris [laughter] -- first of all, Chris has been like, the co-partner in the beginnings of this discussion. And Chris, we tease Chris and say, he's the most generous man in the universe. We're teasing him kind of but he kind of has that -- that gets in him. That's just a part of him. But above all, Chris is a brilliant poet. And he writes novels and people think it's great. But he's really like a [laughter] far better poet than he is [laughter] -- than he is a novelist. And if you haven't read his book, ^IT Sanctificum ^NO, you should because it will transform you and make you think of poetry in different ways. Chris originated from Nigeria and Chris lives and works here in the States. Also coming on stage is Aracelis Girmay. And Aracelis just joined the team recently. I'll give you a simple example. Aracelis has just joined the team and immediately, she's -- she didn't know that the team volunteers to mentor people just automatically after they look at work that is sent to us. She didn't know we do that. And sometimes, the volunteering is not really volunteering like I tell them, you need to go mentor somebody. But typically they just and spontaneously after our first sort of go-around, she writes me and says, look, I really want to work with this person, and I go, "Hallelujah. It was like, this is perfect. And Aracelis is an amazing poet. I don't know if you know her work. But her work is just powerful and moving and full of heart and full of beauty. And she's, you know, just a person -- she's just smart and thoughtful and fantastic. So it's great to have her on the team and she'll be here talking to you. And then finally, Matthew Shenoda, who is essentially our security and bodyguard. ^M00:13:42 [ Laughter ] ^M00:13:48 He doesn't smile a lot, that kind of thing. ^M00:13:50 [ Laughter ] ^M00:13:54 Matthew is somebody I trust implicitly and explicitly. I've known Matthew for many years. Matthew is beautiful poet, great thinker and always thinking ahead for what we can do and so on. The funny thing is Matthew probably looks like a 50-year-old but he's really 26 [laughter] and -- but he has twins so that explains the problem. But these are fantastic people and you'll get to know them and you'll get to see the spirit of what we are doing and the excitement of it. So I welcome them to come on stage and the discussion will take place. All right, so Chris Abani, Matthew Shenoda and Aracelis Girmay. ^M00:14:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:14:38 ^M00:14:49 >> Chris Abani: Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: And then we're all here and we need to put this thing on. ^M00:14:57 ^M00:15:03 Okay. So I was going to say -- my first question was going to say, it was going to be -- why are you involved with the African Poetry Book Fund? But now you know [laughter] after having heard Kwame speak, you know, why they're involved. But I'm still going to ask the question. I want each of you -- I'm going to ask each of you to say something about themselves but also in addition to Kwame Dawes, why did you, why are you part of this project? Why, what you think your role is, should be and, you know, how you feel you're contributing to this project? >> Chris Abani: Okay, hi, you can hear me? All right, I always have to check like a big man with a small voice [laughter]. And so, I think for me, perhaps historically among the group, apart from probably Bernardine, have known Kwame the longest. And it's on to more than 20 years now. >> Kwame Dawes: Yeah. >> Chris Abani: And what people don't know but my first ever poetry workshop was with Kwame Dawes in London and so Kwame started something called the Afro Star School of Poetry and he would come to London, black British poets had no mentors. And he would run this workshop. And we all were kind of very cocky and assumed we knew what we were talking about and then like I think the first hour, Kwame sent everyone into like panic. He's, you know, people were like, yeah, I'm a poet, you know. Like I've been writing for 15 years. And Kwame was, "Oh, that's interesting. What is your typical syllabic count per line?" And they're like what. So Kwame, I sort of have known and sort of -- I have seen Kwame do things that Calabash started as a conversation with Colin Channer in this aisle of a supermarket. We were buying orange juice and we couldn't find the large orange juice in England. And Colin said, I'm so tired of the way the English would put on -- no big orange juice, you know. [Laughter] It's just like them for small, small festival and things. And Kwame said, "Want me to do a big festival, you know." And so I was coming up behind and I said, "Oh, we're going to need a calabash for this." >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Absolutely. >> Chris Abani: And so, what is it is where other people have planning meetings to have planning meetings, an idea occurs and from the moment of the inception of the idea is already the planning and implementation of it. So this idea that Kwame has always had which is to give, that we as a particular generation of writers, did not always benefit from a generation that came before us. And so his commitment from the beginning has always been to provide access and to try to create an institution around access that will sustain itself beyond an individual generosity. And that's why I bought into it. It's very simple. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Wonderful. What about you, Matthew? >> Matthew Shenoda: Hello. Sometimes, I do smile [laughter]. You know, I think quite similarly to Chris. For me, I think it has been -- I've always been someone who's believed very deeply in institution building and in creating something outside of one's self. And I think having met Kwame some years ago and seen what he does when he first approached me with this idea, I knew that this would actually happen, right. So that was the other thing, that the investment of this energy was going to go somewhere. And that we would be able to create something that we hope will live beyond us which I think is something I was always raised with. I was always raised with this idea that you can't just do what you do, right. That that you have to take an active role in building community in some way. And I think for many of us, as writers in this country who come, you know, from various places and lived in this kind of diasporic space, we've not had that. We have not had the space. And so I love the kind of audacity of the idea of making a space where we could fit into a space that would actually hold us, a space that would be a foundation for the future of who we are and what we do. And then of course, just the incredible need. There is, to me, an incredibly like simple practicality to all of this, right, that there is no space that is publishing contemporary African poetry in the English language in any sustainable way. So the idea is just brilliant in its simplicity and I think all of that alone and then working with these folks -- as Kwame said -- I have never -- I've worked in a lot of places. I've never worked with a group of people this easy, this committed and who just don't -- you know, nobody asked questions in the sense of why are we doing this? Everyone is just there and doing the work and laughing through it which I think is important as well. ^M00:20:05 >> Aracelis Girmay: Thank you. Can you hear me? >> Yeah. >> Aracelis Girmay: I -- I mean, as Kwame said, I've just joined the editorial board and was thrilled to have been asked and I've gone to the first cycle. But before I joined the board, I remember getting my first box, the little Chapbook box and just had been so excited and [inaudible] and all that and thinking, which am I going to read first [laughter]? And lamenting but it was a short-lived lament. Lamenting the fact that I hadn't grown with these voices and then realizing as somebody who believes that time is strange and complicated that these were voices -- these are voices that are raised in me. And stretching my vision and my languages and so I just feel immense gratitude to everyone who has anything to do with the poetry book fund and out of love and greed maybe to listen as much as I can and to be a part, you know, no question. That's why. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: That's wonderful. So -- ^M00:21:27 ^M00:21:34 And so I'm going -- I'm going to read out the mission of the African Poetry Book Fund. It has a very broad mission. "It promotes and advances the development and publication of the poetic arts of Africa through its book series, contests, workshops and seminars and through its collaborations with publishers, [inaudible], booking agents, colleges, universities, conferences and all other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa." Being the head of a small division of poetic people, I think that this is an enormous -- an enormous task. So looking at the three of you, I just wanted to ask, do you see yourself as performing a part, a specific part of that overall vision? Does each one of you have a different part or a different role in that mission? Usually when one sits on the board, you know, you say, okay, these are the strengths of the people or this person or that person. They complement each other. And each one, in a way, does something else. I might be -- I might be asking a very non-poetic question, a very -- but I was wonder, as you are leading this organization and this initiative which is it's very, very exciting, very new. Do you see yourselves as performing a specific role? >> Chris Abani: I actually like to -- I don't know how many of you know about Rastafarians but I think in a way -- we have a friend that talks about being a secular Raster and the idea is that Rasters don't -- there's an implicit understanding about a network and about a hierarchy. But it is not a western notion of hierarchy. So like we have to meet or at least, I have been around for a length of time where Kwame has two nicknames. One is Father Dawes because he's the father. And the second is Noah because he knows everything. ^M00:23:54 [ Laughter ] ^M00:24:00 So I think it really works like this. The father puts out a call. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Okay. >> Chris Abani: And the disciples answer. So sometimes, when Kwame -- I don't sleep but Kwame doesn't sleep at all and so I'll wake up at -- I don't know, like 8:00 A.M. and they'll have -- you see the first email from Kwame and it goes out and says, "[Inaudible], we need to do this. Who can help?" He has twins so he's always up next [laughter]. And then you'll see a response where maybe Kwame says, "We need to do something at AWP. I need a proposal written." I wake up and within 10 minutes of that email going out, he has detailed a proposal which then goes to Kwame who then sends it to me and then within two-and-a-half hours, it's already at AWP. So it's the same -- Kwame may say, "We have a Library of Congress event," and so it's sort of like everyone, there are things we are all -- we do better than others but I think it's just -- it's never really thought of in that way. Instead of this is a house we're all building, whenever you wake up, you pick up the shovel and you start doing it. So there's that part of it. But I think that it's really this idea that what we're trying to create is a living archive. We don't think of the archive as something that is just there. It's alive all the time and it kind of goes into what you are talking about this notion of a strange idea of time. You have to imagine the thousands of entries we get and then you get assigned 60 to a hundred and it's like we need a turnaround in a week. It's something that's so -- you start reading it and then you come across voices like these voices sitting here. And you -- something happens -- there's a real humbling that happens to us reading it because you start to -- you know, there are moments when Kwame would just call me and be like, hey, listen to this line. And he would read me a line from Safia. And I said, "Who the hell wrote that?" And he's like, your cousin. ^M00:25:57 [ Laughter ] ^M00:26:02 So I think that what the scope of it, there is a whole and you know like Matthew told [inaudible], the Pan African notion of this because oftentimes you find that literature tends to kind of have been very focalized around West Africa and Southern Africa coming from the continent. But we don't subscribe to that. But I think what sustains in this context of creating this is that we are transformed. It is not -- I don't feel like we are giving things to people. I think that they are giving things to us. They make our works -- >> Mary-Jane Deeb: So it comes both ways. >> Chris Abani: It comes more towards us, I think, than people can often really imagine. It transforms your work. It transforms your notion of self because you're encountering African voices you didn't even know existed that articulates in an experience for you that you know at a DNA level but have never thought to articulate in this way. So all of it is really about -- it's more for me, the gift that it expands us. And that, in turn, expansion I think sustains this idea of the global expansion and so it makes it so easy to pass the mission statement. I think what that says is not even -- it doesn't even come close to the gift it is to people who work within this field. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Okay, lovely. >> Matthew Shenoda: Yeah, I think for me, the thing is that the work always comes first, right. And I mean the work of the poet. That is at the center of this. So in terms of a division of labor, I think we all just do whatever needs to get done. We all have certain skillsets -- or you know, I mean, for me, I also work in higher ed administration so doing certain logistical things in this case is actually enjoyable. And so it's easy to do them quickly. But at the center, I don't think any of us ever lose sight of -- >> Mary-Jane Deeb: The whole. >> Matthew Shenoda: -- of the core, of the work of the community that we're building, of as Chris said, this work that feeds us, right. Because at any moment, even in logistical things that could get tiresome or annoying, we've got a ton of work to look at that inspires us and reminds us of what we're doing and what we're trying to build. So I don't know that -- and the interesting thing is as Chris says, there is no hierarchy. We've never -- I don't think we have ever had an organizational discussion actually. I don't think we've ever said, here are the things. We just kind of worked and we say, Chris is good at this. Aracelis is good at this. This poet is someone that Bernardine would absolutely resonate with so let's assign this person to her. We just kind of moved through it without much conversation actually which, you know, like I -- there's something about the spirit of this that just allows it carry on without us needing to think of an orchard. >> Aracelis Girmay: I don't know that it destroys the [inaudible]. I don't know what, if I have anything different to add but I guess I'll say I just -- something that I said earlier. I just feel like it's my work or job or commitment to try to listen as closely and as deeply as possible and I mean, I'm looking at Tsitsi now. But I'm just thinking of just the -- the idiosyncratic imagination and sound and the worlds and to allow that to be a school and to keep asking, you know, what is it that I'm hearing? What are the projects that I'm seeing? How is this -- you should just go as a listener, I mean, going back to what Chris said about humility. So I don't -- this is not going to answer the question about hierarchy but I feel like that's all I can -- that's what I know or how I know to be here and to contribute is to try to practice that. ^M00:30:01 >> Mary-Jane Deeb: And so all you -- you all feel as if you can communicate. You can go to a university and say, we've got this fantastic project that we'd like you to look at. I mean, any of you would do that. Any of you would call out someone and say, we think we should be working with you on that. I'm looking at it in terms of how that works, in terms of organization really. >> Chris Abani: I think all of us are competent at that. You know, I also occupy a very high position in academia, an institution, fundraising is not a problem. Talking to donors is not a problem. I wear multiple hats. I can speak to anybody. I could be very English when I need to be. I could be very [laughter] -- I could be extremely Nigerian when I need to [laughter]. You know, I can guide people very quickly to their checkbooks when I need them to [laughter]. So and I have no -- this is a thing too that I have. I cannot ask for things for myself but I have no shame asking for things for other people. But I'm not even asking things for other people, I'm asking for the support of an institution, of a thing, of an entity that is almost alive that is beyond individuals. It's really not about individuals at all. I'm not asking for money for Tsitsi's book or Mukoma's book. I'm asking for something that should exist already and that I'm asking for it is already out of sync. So I have no difficulty. There is no hierarchy but we -- this is the thing. We trust Kwame implicitly. And this is why I think also articulate in there. There is no ego involved. It's not like well, you didn't mention that I did all this stuff. You didn't mention [laughter] -- in fact, you know, Kwame is always trying to deflect attention and credit. And we're always trying to like push it in his way. But we entrust -- so even yesterday, we sat down, the three of us -- Matthew, Kwame and I -- we were having a cup of coffee and Kwame said just, "Okay, gentlemen. So what's next?" And I think we talked for like 20 minutes and I was taking -- one of us was taking notes. And then we all kind of know now what's next and it will start evolving. But just so that I know, we try not to -- the fact that there is no hierarchy and no defined plan, it's not -- we're not running it, you know, like a Nigerian storefront, you know. Hey, you [laughter] -- where you're running to five different who will tell you the same five different things all the time. It's very -- it's a choreography, but it's a choreography where we trust implicitly that sort of like sometimes, we'll be talking and Kwame will say to Matthew, why don't you do this? And Matthew will, I think Chris is -- why don't you handle that and I'll handle this? And there's no [inaudible]. It just gets done. So there is definitely, we look to Kwame as the hub. And we trust implicitly. He has an intuitive understanding of the spirit of how things can work. And then he knows how to execute it. So there is definitely that part of it. I hope this answers the question. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Yes. No, no, no -- it does, it does, it does. Okay, so I am going to ask you something else now. Why don't you say something now? Why don't you tell us something about the poets that we're featuring because after all, you have been the people who have selected it and how do you as editors respond to the Chapbook winner's work and what have you done from this? I mean, you're being involved with this for quite a while and you've made a selection and how does that come about? So you see I'm sort of building from organization to -- >> Chris Abani: Yes, to the editorial. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: So you see from the general to the more specific. >> Chris Abani: I should also point out that the Chapbook box sets which are remarkable are only part of what we do. We do first book prizes. We do -- we kind of reintroduce poets that may have been forgotten over time. And we bring into existence people who were not like in Patricia's [inaudible] who have a body of work but who we realize can -- that what we can do is position in a particular way that allows the full range of who they are to come about. So I mean, the very basic thing is we get all these submissions and everyone gets assigned a reading list. And then we narrow down to finals and then we talk about that. And it's always kind of incredible that there's never really a lot of debate. It almost -- it's almost instinctively you find the books that work. And then what Kwame and I would do -- because we primarily focus on the Chapbooks is then to go through books of work almost ready for book but aren't quite ready. And then we begin the conversation with the poet where we say, look, there's this option we can offer you. Are you interested? And what we do is offer -- because we're dealing with not just people on the continent but also continent -- a kind of -- a kind of way in which writers of color are not always offered respectful mentoring which means that we hold you to extremely high standards. But we hold you to those standards with an intuitive understanding that if you do what we're asking you to do, you will become excellent. And this is how we just live anyway. So we do that and we're very strict. When we give people deadlines and there, we have incidents where people don't meet the deadline and then we just roll over to the next poet. And they come back, you know, [inaudible] next try, next year. And so it gets around but you know, you go -- we do a lot of international festivals and you -- I was recently at the Ake Festival in Nigeria. And this young man comes up to me and says, "How much do I owe you?" And I said, "Who are you and what do you mean?" [Laughter] Not because, you know -- because I was thinking well how much can I get from you? No, I was kidding [laughter]. So he was one of the poets. I had never met him that we had mentored in this way. But the idea is that he couldn't understand. He actually thought there was going to be a bill for the amount of work that went into mentoring him and the fact that he's going to get these books and they're published and he gets all these copies. And the notion that he doesn't have to -- that all is required of him is to step into his own power. Sometimes, it's something that is foreign. And so that is part of how -- so the editorial process is not just a -- it is also about the poems but it also becomes ways in which inadvertently you're work shopping people into an acceptance of how powerful they are. And so it becomes easy for us in that way. And then we get together and then Kwame says to me, I need your introduction. And I'm like, when do you need it? Well, yesterday would have been nice. [Laughter] And you know, oftentimes, we work under such high pressure but it's very easy and it's a back and forth. And then we have incidents where we assign particular writers to other -- you know, editors who and we say, work with this person specifically. We have Helen Yitah who's been work to help really bring Amah Ata Aidoo's work back into public. And sometimes, we're asking poets, you know -- we're asking poets who -- you know how hard it is to say to [Inaudible], I read this poem and I think you should change this line. ^M00:37:28 [ Laughter ] ^M00:37:32 So -- well, I'm asking people whom you're kind of holding in a certain kind of reverence at the same time to like -- >> Mary-Jane Deeb: To make the changes. >> Chris Abani: To make these changes. And what becomes really beautiful about it is that they respond to you in this way where they realize they too have been hungry for a certain conversation. And not just, you know, then being -- >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Not just being up there. >> Chris Abani: Yeah, that they -- >> Mary-Jane Deeb: My folks [inaudible]. >> Chris Abani: Yeah, then no one talks to them. They want people who could -- so it works on all kinds of levels in this way and I don't know if you -- >> Matthew Shenoda: I mean, I don't know that I have much to add to that other than the fact that that cultivation is very important for us, I think. And for the young writers especially those on the continent, we know they have limited access both to a certain body of literature as well as to workshops and these kind of things. So we spend a lot of time back and forth with them doing, you know, critiques and line edits and this kind of thing. But even for the writers in diaspora and here in the United States, those of us who have published extensively in this country also know the lack of an editorial criticality that exists in the U.S. publishing as it relates to African writers and writers of color in general. And so I think there -- that has opened up for me some really beautiful conversations. Like you know, Bob Marlowe once said, "If you know who you are then you would know where you're coming from then you wouldn't have to ask me who the hell do I think I am." [Laughter] I think in a way, that's almost a model for the relationship that we have with people because there is -- there is a kind of foundational sense of who we're working with. And who they're working with as editors that we can immediately move the conversation to a new level and actually engage in the work, engage in the aesthetics, engage in the craft and what is happening. We don't have to ask these questions about like what does this word mean -- or what's that or where do you find this country on a map? Or I mean, this is stuff where frankly I'm -- you know, look, I mean when I published my first book which was through a great publisher here in the United States, I remember clearly my, you know, white editor said, "This is really interesting but I don't -- I don't think that I can say anything to you." And I said, "Well, you're an editor. Isn't that your job?" [Laughter] And he said, "Yeah, but, you know, like it makes me nervous." ^M00:40:01 And he was very honest with me. He said, "You know, from critiquing this, I don't know about the cultural this and that." And I just thought, all right, we're not going to have a real conversation here, right? Because I can't -- you know, there's too much behind that that needs to get a word through. And so I think that you know, one of the great things about our team too is that we're an incredibly diverse group of people, right. We represent the diversity of the African continent and its diasporas. We represent it in terms of, you know, gender, ethnicity, language bases, aesthetic practices, all of these things. And so I think that there's always one of us who can connect to a writer in a very meaningful way. ^M00:40:43 ^M00:40:47 >> Aracelis Girmay: I don't have a [inaudible]. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: And those writers, do they -- do they have an input in other writers' works? In other words, let's say you've worked with someone and you've published that person, you go back to that person and say, well, you know, I've read something, you know. I'd like to have your opinion on that. Do you do that sometimes? I mean, is there more than -- >> Matthew Shenoda: Just a group of us. >> Chris Abani: Yeah. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Than the group of you? >> Chris Abani: Well, we're working on a great anthology with Tsitsi here. So we absorb people all the time. But what has been most beautiful to watch is the conversation that happens amongst the poets. We had a reading last year and to see Warsan Shire, Safia and Ladan -- sort of an East African coalition of female poets having a conversation on a street in Chicago is you know, as if it were -- this is -- it's done. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: And how did you come about meeting them on the street in Chicago? >> Chris Abani: Well, because we all organized an event. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Oh, okay. >> Chris Abani: But what I'm saying too is that you find that when you start -- because we've been -- so we have almost 50 Chapbooks in the world now. And Kwame and I would have said that by the time we have a hundred Chapbooks floating around, that we will stop to have -- to be able to sort of think about what are the trends, what are the conversations. But 20 Chapbooks in, you start to -- you're reading a Chapbook and there is a poet in Nigeria referencing Ladan's poem in his poem. And you start to realize that the conversation -- this is what I mean by it's a living archive. And we don't need that part of it too. You don't need to -- you don't need to organize it. It happens naturally. You see conversations happening between Patricia's work and you look at a line and you think, wow, that must have been reading Patricia. Mukoma and so you notice of this is a living tradition in its own way. So and that is what has been most beautiful about it is that the poets are having these conversations directly or indirectly in amongst themselves. And so that each book that comes out essentially changes the pattern of the next book that comes out. And the quality of the books that are coming out make people who haven't had access to being held to a certain accountable level within the aesthetics because these poems is -- they're not just saying, okay, we're going to publish some African poets because they're African. These poets stand. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: They stand out. >> Chris Abani: And I would say that they stand better than American -- I put my money on this, you know. And so, they -- you started -- it sort of is affecting the quality of the entries. The qualities of the entries are getting higher and higher because there is a conversation happening that we're not in control of and we don't want to be in control of in that way. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: And is it, again, I'm off the theme but your conversation is so interesting because I want to continue. Is it something that those poets are bringing in terms of imagery, in terms of language, in terms of looking at a reality which everyone sees but they can express in a different way? What is it that stands out that immediately grabs you and says, okay, that's someone we want to publish? >> Aracelis Girmay: I mean, I'm so -- I'm so new so I hesitate to say it but just to somebody who's been following from outside, I had a bit of anxiety thinking about how to talk today or be a contributor today. And say anything about African writing or poetry because I have trouble saying anything about poetry and I know that that's something that people still -- I've heard Kwame, and Matthew, and Chris talk, you know, about how difficult it can be to find any trends. But I'll say that as a reader, I'm struck by -- it depends on each person's work, right? I'm struck by sound. I'm struck by image. I'm struck -- but one of the things that keeps moving me and surprising me especially with the new three books that came out but it's with all of the books really -- is what happens with place, and with ancestry, and lineage and thinking about -- I'm thinking of Ama Ata Aidoo writing towards Bessie Head. And so hearing this, getting to kind of listen -- put my ear to the door on this communication between poets but also how and I don't think that this is specific to the poets published by APBF but how many places each poem, each person holds? And at once and all the various ways that Ladan is doing it or Safia is doing it or -- and that again, I'm not quite -- it's not particular to this group of people only but I'm struck by the places being held in poems in English because I have it. I had access to that -- or heard those exact places or the kohl under the eyes with that. I hadn't had access to those families outside of my imagination in family and that strikes me especially. >> Chris Abani: Just to add to that. I always think of poems as automaton. I think of a poem as a virus. And the job of a virus is to mutate endlessly and to resist any control of it. And this is what these poets achieve with language. Just with language alone. In both Ladan and Safia's work, there is a simultaneity of language where fracture would normally lead to loss. Fracture here becomes a way of multiple embodiment, right. So that what would normally be [inaudible] -- there is not that there is not a melancholy but this is what I love about melancholy. Melancholy is not lost. Instead of a bittersweet desire, it's sort of you know, it's like -- it's like when you cut yourself and it scabs, I mean, you pick at the scab when you shouldn't and it bleeds but it's such a delicious thing? [Laughter] This is melancholy. And so -- and all of these poems, you know, the way in which Tsitsi's work embodies a thing that you would not think would make sense in poetry. The idea of a zebra clan that exists in western English style poetry, but sustains not only sort of this idea of stripes like the way which a zebra's body is already multiplicities, right. But that these multiplicities aren't in the skin. They're actually on the skin and you know, zebras aren't colored on the hair. It's on the body and can hold that but then use that to talk about simultaneity, about patriarchal reduction but also like a feminist resistance. It's the simultaneity of it all. And it's done linguistically with Arabic, with Shona, with English, with line ends, with blind fractures so that what you end up with are all of these beautiful cartographies that don't amount to loss. They actually amount to a tremendous hope. And that is what we look for and we find it endlessly existing. >> Matthew Shenoda: Yeah. I'm just going to add very briefly to that is this is very exciting to me. I actually -- one of the things that I find most incredible is the way that this newer generation of poets has embodied their complexity as a fundamental part of their humanity and as kind of broken out of certain modernist traditions around the notions of identity and honing these things. And what this has done for me in particular, I think about this as a professor contemporary and [inaudible] poetry. This has fundamentally shifted poetry, period, right? It has changed the way that we relate to language, right. And of course, they're not the only ones who have done this, right. There's many traditions of, you know, Native American poets and other poets who have kind of moved through that. But the way that it is shaping the English language is very exciting to me. So it's almost like a new English. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: And that's the reason -- that's the reason why I had asked because I had read something about French doing -- French has been enriched by African literature. And someone was commenting, the imagery is different. The language is different and it has added to the existing body of the French language and literature with new ways of looking at it. ^M00:50:01 So you actually are answering my question. So I had asked something about how do you feel and this is something that would be in asking all our writers as they come. How do you feel that your mission connects to the American -- to the American literacy? What does it add to the existing American -- and I'm saying in the broader sense, American in all its shapes and forms and ethnicities and [inaudible]? What does your own work, the work of the African Poetry Book Fund, what does it add to the existing trends? What do you feel it adds? >> Chris Abani: Oh, I would just really start by saying that to be American is not to be from the United States. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Yeah, it's from the world. >> Chris Abani: Right and that everything that is American has to do with -- >> Mary-Jane Deeb: The rest of the world. >> Chris Abani: Yes. And in the ways in which a particular kind of ideology may have been exported. But it has been reconstituted and given back to you. And this is what allows America. There's even this boast of freedom, this boast of inclusive -- all of this is not because of a particular sort of way in which America existed. It is because America is continuously being reformed and not reformed here. If you walk through Nepal, there are people listening to Michael Jackson and drinking Coca-Cola. And they have a very clear idea of what America is. And whether we realize it or not, when you -- that is also being absorbed back into Americanness. And so I would say fundamentally then that what these poets are doing is reshaping America. Now there's also and I just want to put this out there. There is no African identity without early Caribbean and African-American movements towards self-articulation. All African independence movements are predicated on the work that was done by Marcus Garvey, that was done by Martin Luther King, Jr. It was done by writers like Ellison. Most of the Nigerian where the First Republic started and how were they started in America. Early West African politicians came home and wrote books about how they would shape the modern African identity. This kind of modernist way of thinking exists so what's fascinating is that even the concept of the modern African has been articulated and begun in absence of the continent. It is started by Africans who lived in America. So most of us are musically -- all of [inaudible] has to do with these musicians -- African-American blues musicians arriving on the docks of Ghana in the 19th century and teaching [inaudible] to kids who then incorporate it. So there's really no way to be a modern African without already being an American. There's more to being American without being an African. So we're not just articulating [inaudible]. We're also articulating a kind of African-Americanness because that conversation has already been started for us. So we're starting to look at the idea of what it means to be a global black person. And to have equal access even to things people say you don't own. And not in sentimental ways but in this case, in fully embodied beautiful ways. So that -- those are just two things I would throw out there. >> Aracelis Girmay: Gosh, I mean, it's so -- I love and returning to what Chris said about fracture and not fractured into loss but to something else. And what I keep hearing and thinking about is the story of -- I keep thinking of the story of ISIS going and looking for the different parts to put [inaudible] together and all I can say -- I just the possibility of returning of ourselves to ourselves, to possibility. What might we do in language? How might we be in language? What is a page? What is a -- I mean, I keep referring back to the three new books that just came out. And I said to Safia, I can't -- I can't -- the genuine [inaudible] is just so stunning to me and also each page. And like I just think, oh, a page might be a sea. A page might be a -- what is a mark on a page? I just feel like the -- the more we have access to each other's imaginations and places, and ways of accessing our imaginative strategies, the more my person, my being on this Earth is stretched open and returned to my imagination is grown. And so I can't help but think even though I tend not to think on a kind of national level. I can't help but think that this place is just continuing. It's going through a trajectory of being enriched by everywhere. But I cannot point and have names. The shape is not [inaudible]. It has never been but now I have some names to [inaudible] to that. Okay. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Thank you. And now, for the last question and then we move to the speakers. So I'm going to ask each of you anyway, what you hope to accomplish in the coming years. You've already all done so much and published and edited and created this fantastic movement, I would say. What -- when you look in the coming years, what you hope to accomplish? ^M00:56:26 ^M00:56:31 >> Matthew Shenoda: It's a big question. To take over the whole contemporary literature [laughter]. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Oh, wow! >> Chris Abani: That's why he works for [Inaudible]. ^M00:56:42 [Laughter] ^M00:56:46 >> Matthew Shenoda: You know, I think that -- I think that we're all committed to a sustainable systemic structure, an institution building that allows for this work to carry on for many generations. And I think that that will include a lot of things. I mean, we've talked quite a bit and, you know, we're all connected to universities as well. So we've talked about the scholarship pieces of this and the importance of creating pathways for certain kinds of scholarship about this work to emerge. We've talked about the intersections especially with much of this contemporary work with film and the ways that we will need to kind of find spaces to embrace, you know, other media as well. And of course, the visual arts -- I think that you know, aspirationally we have very big ideas on what we'd like to see in the coming years. And I don't think that it's -- that's not APBF. I think that that is the dream of this work going out into the world and doing its own thing which we're already beginning to see, right, that the work itself will create new things. So I mean, I think from my standpoint, that's what I hope. I hope that my children, if any of them were to become writers and I hope not because I'll have to read [inaudible]. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: You have this whole -- this whole group out there [laughter]. >> Matthew Shenoda: But I hope that they -- that they will have a structure to plug into like, a community that sustains them and that mentors them at a different level than what we had. And it's not that I lament what we had but I think that, you know -- I hope to see that evolution. And I think, you know, this is very interesting to me. I mean, this is very -- it's scary in a lot of ways. Not necessarily for us but I think for this society in particular, right. I mean what Chris and Aracelis were just talking about is also about the absolute, you know, dissolve of certain borders and canonical structures which is what this work is doing. It's actually erasing things to create brand-new things that people don't yet know how to wrap their minds around. And I think -- you know, I'm excited to see what it does on its own. I think that it's a very organic thing that will grow certainly without any of us. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Thank you. What about you? >> Aracelis Girmay: I mean, I love -- I love what you said and I also -- again, I just -- I feel like I need to do some more listening to what it is already before I say. But I believe in what you said that the momentum -- the momentum of it already and just being excited to see what organically comes of that. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Chris? ^M00:59:43 >> Chris Abani: So when people think about terms -- the terms of humanity that we bring to other people, we -- what we -- and we do this through race, class, and gender, disability, body -- we like to imagine that people have a different inner life than we do, that a person who works at McDonald's does not have as rich or even a richer inner life than we do. And therefore, we think we cannot access them. But the truth about literature -- and this is my hope always -- that I became a writer because of James Baldwin, right, because I read "Another Country" when I was 10 years old. And the fact that there is no way James Baldwin could have imagined my existence, that his book would travel 6000 miles through time into an African country, and that a young boy would read this book, and who -- his entire aesthetic will almost mirror Baldwin's in this way. So what his books are doing is that they are proving that their inner lives, that there is not African, there is no other. There is just human. And so my hope is that five years from now a 12-year-old white boy will wander into a store, and in a discount bin if necessary, find "January's Children" by Safir, and when he is 21, and he's signing a book and someone says, "What book made you want to be a writer?" He will say Safir's inner life made my inner life possible. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Wonderful. Well, thank you. And I think we should all give them a big hand. ^M01:01:31 [ Applause ] ^M01:01:44 And now Kwame Dawes will come and introduce our ten speakers. I'm still very shaken by all I heard, and I hope you have all been a little transformed by our speakers, and you will now with our eight. Eight? Yes, okay -- seven. Okay, seven. ^M01:02:12 ^M01:02:22 >> Kwame Dawes: Okay, so we've got -- I'm counting, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven fantastic poets. Listen, I want us to use the balance of the time to just hear the poets, because the truth is, that's kind of the proof of the pudding, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you've got programs. Everybody's got programs? Yeah, so read their -- read the details about them at your leisure. Yeah, you can do that [applause]. Yeah, and so what I'll do is I'll just name them. I'll give you their names, and that kind of, you know, ladies and gentlemen. And then they'll come one after the other to read in the order they are introduced, then. All right, so Chekwube Danladi, Safia Elhillo, Tsitsi Jaji, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Ladan Osman, Hope Wabuke, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. They're going to all read, all right, one after the other. And you'll be moved, flabbergasted, astonished, and stunned. And I thank these guys for their fantastic conversation and discussion and yes, we are taking over the world. Let's hear it for them. ^M01:03:46 [ Applause ] ^M01:03:57 >> Chekwube O. Danladi: I didn't realize I was first, so we'll see how I do. Yeah, can everyone hear me well? Okay. All right, I'm going to start with a poem called "Salt, Alum." You can touch me. I've been so good. I have been especially still, all this time, each of my palms made a bed for your untucking. Me, the meal made from reused chicken grease, eased and always saying yes. Gender is cunning; the ruination unwitting -- a stolen position. I have been bent over, the beast dug out of me, the jewels. Pleasure light pops the eyes, obsidian sticks in the throat, even this body doesn't register. The knuckles fold toward Lake Michigan, the gut hardens, oxalate builds in the kidneys, the tongue is a grateful peasant. For a beating I can answer to a middle name. ^M01:05:14 ^M01:05:23 This poem is called "At the Lavender Farm." Fingers already spent, but lingering on my hips, a sexual pal obsessed. We travel down past the docks, take rest on a patch of grass. The batik print cloth is laid out beneath us, our beers leaving footprints, rings, sloppy circles of a local Wisconsin brew we are happy to designate home. We enact our slovenly myth-making, the hybrid names we leave our children, something Russian, something Ebo [assumed spelling], the natural meanings queered. Your voice momentarily dulcet, you edge the sentiment and ask me to love you forever. I swallow, my mouth sour, say, "Ask me something difficult." It's here we love pretending to be old, love twisting this coaxial longing into reality. We are trying. No one else we know is this gullible. Around us the lavender stocks run the risk of being too beautiful. At dusk they, too, seem to embody their condition. The smell of purple, another kind of useless joy. Hair nestled on your chest, stroking scars. I understand the risk of excess. I sniff your tufts of armpit hair because I adore your musk. I've left myself, [inaudible] as generously as how much I gift you, perhaps an evidence that I am always this easy. If I am mewing on your behalf, scold me better. The moon meets us, its carmine fate is trite, tomorrow, returning to exile draws new lust and brings us to our feet. We toe the spume of the lake, the water an impossibility. My hand at the back of your neck, I want to remind you for our sake, nothing good is banal. ^M01:07:31 ^M01:07:40 This poem is a little gross, so I hope you guys will bear with me. Not too bad. It's called "Deer Head." Fall has unleashed its yellow, love a solace extenuated from its bearer. On my afternoon walk, alone this season, I come to the elementary school. There in the butterfly garden a deer head rides on its carnal prolixity, flesh skimmed in some places, dark color ablated by November's hard sun, white bone exposed. I'm drawn to its sickness, flies and all, the fetid odor leaning in to speak. My hand finds its muzzle, mandible exposed, the hanging offal where the carcass has been severed. Prone to uttering absolutes, I say nothing is more natural than this, and remain undeterred. Your eyes still intact and expressive, I arrive honest with my desperation, my claim unsophisticated. Buck, I am the son you want, my own eyes thick as amulets, the hard edges of me cloven, all of these tensions bifurcated. With opportunity, I would not have left you in such uneasy rest, dead with the solitude of lesser creatures. As most progeny may attempt eventually, your decomposition is now a lesson for my grief, the distress of my medic souvenir of identification. We two flexing the fiction of temporality, our time that cannot be broken, this image of us. Around your antlers curl newly-bloomed clematis, and I am reminded that this month later it will snow. My head and yours will be blanketed, washed. ^M01:09:38 ^M01:09:47 "I Used To Be Called Olivia." I dug my own unbecoming as much as you. Thirst became ritual, the wallop of water soaking into the earth, myself wafting off as dust, an openness invited inward, blue, and enough. I imagined childhood a swamp. Wet, my small self, nappy hair doubled by cockleburs, easy name [inaudible] spineless and clean, muck-suckling the shame quickly, new abode forming, holding. Thank you. ^M01:10:30 [ Applause ] ^M01:10:40 >> Kwame Dawes: We're going to have a little change of order, and wanted to say something about Patricia, who is amazing powerhouse poet. And she has to leave early, so she's going to read now. It is our honor that we could get to publish Patricia's work, and she has been a great champion -- a fantastic champion. And like, you know, she's the mother like hardcore, like real deal. And I'm sure you're going to enjoy her. Patricia, thank you so much, yeah. ^M01:11:07 [ Applause ] ^M01:11:16 >> Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Yeah, please forgive me, my younger sisters and daughters. I'm becoming the grandmother now. Yeah, and I'm so grateful to this team. When I was coming up for tenure, my university decided to -- the letter they sent me, they decided to quote some lines from the external reviewers -- lines that put the university on, you know, like [inaudible] university for, you know, why were they [inaudible] the treatment I was getting? But one of the things one of the reviewers said is what Kwame is doing right now. He said -- and this is a professor who is a distinguished professor at Tennessee. He said, "Fifty years after Patricia is dead before scholars will know what she is doing to American poetry, that she's bringing [inaudible] Africa in America, in the West and Africa to converse on the same page." And that's what Kwame is doing in multiple books. And that's why I'm proud. This is a newer poem I will start with. It is -- I am going to this order, reading the powerhouse reading of protests in the next hour is starting. This poem is entitled "Too Many Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost." Let us open the doors. Let us lift the shuttles over the threshold of the doors. Let us remove the bars from the doorposts. Too many chickens are coming home to roost. And it is not the storm. It is not the August or September hurricane. It is not the storm that's driving home all the angry of heart, all the hate that like aged-tar or broken pavement has lifted onto the roads. And now too many chickens are coming home to roost. Let us open the doors not to let them in. Let us open the doors to let them out. Do not turn down your lights. Do not go to bed with your eyes closed. Do not let out your young sons. Do not wander into unknown places. Do not listen to the wind. Too many roosters have come home to drive us away from town. We who came running from the fires of our homelands are now being told to flee again. Too many roosters have come home to roost because it is not a thing we can hold in our safety. It is not a thing we can place a finger upon to sooth away hurt. It is as hard as a [inaudible] stone, as hard as pain as an open sore. Now I will read from -- you know, the problem is if you follow a poet, you know, from town to town, you will end up being very bored -- ^M01:14:53 [ Laughter ] ^M01:15:00 -- because when they find out that a particular poem works, they will keep reading it over, and over, and over until you get bored. So keep following us, you will have problem. When I was a -- when I was growing up, I didn't know I was talkative. It was my stepmother who was -- and she was a mean, mean little witch. So everybody knew she was a mean witch, okay. So whenever she said, "Shut up!" My name is -- "Marie, Shut up! Can you just shut up your talking?" And I always said she hates me. And then I grew up and went to high school, and the bullies told me I was talkative. So here's a poem I wrote for my stepmom -- memory of my stepmother, "When I Was a Girl." My stepmother used to say, "Shut up, Marie. Shut up! A woman should be quiet." So I tried shutting up one minute, two minutes, three, but then something inside my belly began to rise up like sourdough, rising, rising slowly, rising. Something tightening up like a big knot, the kind that ties up forest branches as if something needed knotting up for the trees and the branches not to know movement, not to know air, not to know the freedom a bird knows. And my belly will say to me, my little tiny 14-year-old stubbornness, the kind that lets a stepchild know she has power. And before she knew it, sitting there next to my huge stepmother, her heaviness of heart and body led to the heaviness of slapping hands. I had to remember what my pa told me, "A woman shouldn't be shut up, Marie." And then four minutes, I'd begin talking again, talking fast, talking fast, carrying on like the pepper bird in the Liberian dawn, a bird without business. And the knot at my bellybutton would loosen, and before I could speak again, I'd hear her say, "Shut up, Marie! Something will shut you up someday." And I'd look across from her, sitting on a dented stool, somewhere in our old kitchen a huge pot, boiling without worry. And I'd stare into her fine, mean eyes, and I'd say, "All right, Ma, all right." But before she swallowed in satisfaction, I'd begin chattering again, chattering on with friends, chattering about the worries of a 14-year-old stepchild. ^M01:17:54 ^M01:18:03 Okay, where is my poem? Oh, I thought I found my poem, and now, okay. "Send Me Some Black Clothes." Well, one of the cultures that we have in Africa is that when your father dies you mourn for a year. You wear black. You wear black for six months, and then you wear [inaudible] mourning for six months. And when your husband dies, you may mourn for what, two years, you know. And when you take off the black people will want to know why you're taking off the black. So I wrote this poem just before the Liberia Ebola. And I wrote it because I went home, and I had so many people to bury. And then few months after I left, what this poem is saying actually happened, that people were dying by the hundreds and thousands, of Ebola. "Send Me Some Black Clothes." Elegy for my homecoming. Sweet sorrow of family reunions around the dead, so I get dressed for another funeral where I'm almost ashamed to burden my friends with news of another dead relative, as if I were some storehouse of dead people, as if I could earn a living announcing news of my dead or dying brothers and sisters. I returned home walking into a place of dead bodies here. In Monrovia, only corpses, the same manner in which I left decades ago, walking through dead bodies of my people during the war. Someone please send me some black clothes. Liberians are dying like earthworms after a long, rainy night, dying the way centipedes crawl out of a burning shed to die quietly. They say love has many zigzags, many harms. They say if you live long, you will see something. [Inaudible], the woman named after [inaudible] of whom I sing in my poems, of whom I've strung these scribbled words around verses. [Inaudible] namesake has died, so Uncle [inaudible] travels 500 miles of rugged terrain by road and dust because there is no room to make excuses not to bury your sister. So here I am, lost daughter come home for something else, and I find myself standing among caskets. Life has rotted away the remains of lack. When a country decides to rise up not from their uncles, but from their head, as those at the ankles die of lack. As if living in lack where it [inaudible], I say, "Send me some second mourning clothes so to spread along the footpaths so millipedes can crawl. Send me some second mourning clothes, my people, please." Liberia smells again of corpses. The poor are burying their dead, so let the rivers swell in rage. Let drums cry dirges against the wind. Let mutiny break out upon the dawn. There is too much death in town, so I asked for the town crier. He, too, is dead. I asked for the horn blower. He, too, is dead. I asked for the [inaudible]. The [inaudible], too, is dead. I asked for the young virgins and their suitors that used to line the roads. They are all dead. Someone please holler for me. Someone please send me some black [inaudible] to cover the ground in the Harmattan dew. I will read two more, and then I will sit down -- or I will walk out. ^M01:22:12 [ Laughter ] ^M01:22:17 Then I will walk out. "For My Children, Growing Up in America." One of the saddest things about life is that you never know tomorrow. You know, in Africa you say nobody knows tomorrow. Nobody knows tomorrow, Mama, oh, you know. So when I was 30, 31, 32, we built our house, and I planted 20 coconut trees. I planted mango, breadfruit, papaya, everything. And now my son has cut down half of the coconut trees. He says they are -- you know, they're going to fall on the house. But -- and my dream was that my kids would climb these trees. And then we fled a year after we built the house and planted the trees. "For My Children, Growing Up in America." Wishing you more than the sunshine, more than the trees, more than the hills rising, as if hills didn't only grow but also talked, and walked, and had time for climbing hills themselves. Wishing you all more than you could ever wish to hold in your hands. Wishing life were a bed you could unmake and remake, covers to roll under, lift off, or roll all over until sunrise. Wishing you could stand along the old river that still flows back at home, where the Atlantic still carries its patience as a woman carries a newborn on her back, a woman who knows that the navel string is as tender as dewdrops in the Harmattan. Wishing I could still hold you, and keep you, and make you cry until all your eyes were free again, the way you used to be free. Wishing that the sun were not just up above, something we could all keep for ourselves, so when the clouds got all cloudy, we could let out our own little sunshine. Wishing that the trees I planted in my backyard in my early years were here. Trees I dreamed my children would climb and fall from, and then we would rush them to the car to take them to the hospital right up the road. Wishing they would be there for their cousins who outnumber the grains of sand on the beaches along Sinkor's shore. Wishing you, my darlings, had grown up where the trees do not lose their color, where color does not lose its brilliance, where color is not the defining line, where today is before us as if today were tomorrow, a never-ending day of winding roads and deep footpaths, leading us back to Cape Palmas. I'll read the last one, and then I will give you your thing. Okay, I will read -- I will make sure I read a [inaudible] of the poem that, you know, that follows me around. When you get bored, just throw something at me. "I Want to Be the Woman." I don't want to be the other woman. Don't want to stay up nights for the phone call. Take your excuses and pour them down some rusty drain as if from a wine bottle, and kill yourself at dawn. I want to stay the woman who stands there waiting, so her husband's lies rest like dust on the windshield of an old car. I want to carry deep scars of brokenness all my life, like our mothers' mothers' mothers, who did not learn how to kill that old African polygamy, but killed it anyway. I am the woman, the maker of the bed, the unused love keeper, the breeder of fine children, scarred only by broken dreams in the broken places where our foremothers found company with other women, and buried their babies' naval strings with hopes that someday, someday something would happen. No, I am already the woman, Khade Wheh, head wife, the housekeeper, Khade, the owner of the afterbirth and the afterbirth pains, Khade Wheh, the holder of hot pots, the keeper of the homestead, the fireplace holder, the powerless powerful African woman after the old paths of lonely women betrothed too early to unknown ugly men. No, I am not looking for love. This body is too old for lovers to hang out in my dreams or in my daydreaming. Don't lie to me. I am too beautiful for you. Don't fool yourself, I do not need love. I do not think my [inaudible] new love, and I used to hear her say that love could not make a farm. My [inaudible], whose bare feet grew thorns from walking back and forth from farm to farm homestead, from farm to town, from tilling the land like a husbandless wife, [inaudible] who entertained all the small wives of an already blind husband. My [inaudible] who was not too blind to sleep with multiple wives. But [inaudible] had only one husband, despite the crowd of wives populating her marriage. Yes, I want to be the villain only to my husband. I want to ground my last years under a cold blanket to guard my woman parts from your invasion. I want to greet my ancestors, our mothers, with this old piece of my brokenness. Yes, I am Khade Wheh, the mother of mothers. ^M01:28:27 [ Applause ] ^M01:28:42 ^M01:28:50 >> Safia Elhillo: Hi. >> Hi. >> Safia Elhillo: I feel absurdly lucky to have this fairy godfamily who have made all my dreams come true, and also are very nice to me despite the fact that I'm a ridiculous human being. >> Can you tell us your name? >> I'm sorry? >> Your name? >> Safia Elhillo: Oh, my name is Safia Elhillo. "A Brief History of Silence, or the Last time Marvin Gaye Was Heard in the Sudan." True story -- just kidding. At the musician's club in Omdurman a singer is stabbed to death for playing secular music. The month before, a violinist on his way home is beaten by police, his instrument smashed to matchwood. All the bars in Khartoum are closed down, all the alcohol in Khartoum poured into the Nile. A new law forbids women from dancing in the presence of men. Another bans song lyrics that mention women's bodies. And at a party in Omdurman, lights strung among the date palms, my not-yet mother, honey legs in a skirt, opens her mouth, and the night air is the gap in her teeth. She sings in the lilting English to a slow song while bodies around her pair off and press close. Before he is my father, my father smokes a cigarette and shows all his teeth when he laughs, wants to ask the dark-gold girl how her English got so good, what the words mean, and could he sing something sometime into the gap in her teeth. But first, police arrive, rip lanterns from trees, and fire a shot through the final notes of the song. And tonight, my parents do not meet. My mom is a very like polite, cute hijabi Muslim lady, so she's very scandalized by that poem. Sorry, Mom. ^M01:30:48 ^M01:30:54 "Talking to Boys About Abdelhalim Hafez at Parties." Who decides the equator is real? What marks the end of my body? What if I do not want to bear fruit? Where does a father go to abdicate? Where does a folktale go to die? The first time I heard Abdelhalim, I found an affordable glamor. I prefer the mythology. I prefer to perfume my hair, and say no, and mean no. What makes a man a man and not a rumor I haven't yet decided. What if I do not want to go home at all, let alone with you? Let alone, I got a girl from the land of milk and honey. You're so beautiful, may I ask? Okay, but mixed with what? But if you're from Africa, how come -- do you know my country conjoins a split Nile? Do you know how my parents met? I'd tell you, but there are plenty of songs. And I'm sorry, what was your name? I'm a big hit at parties. "Second Date." So I understand why you did not call me back. I peel, and peel, and cannot undress. I wear my grandfather, and my left eye turns to milk. My grandmother and the curl unravels from my hair. I smell a flower, and dill, and acidic perfume. I wear my mother and remember a garden with magnolia flowers. A scarf packs up my heavy hair. I wear my brother, and a bullet is assigned to me at birth. I wear blood in my mouth where a man's name or a language should be. And for my last poem, "Second Quarantine with Abdelhalim Hafez," who's a very hot and very dead Egyptian popstar, for context. "Second Quarantine with Abdelhalim Hafez." ^M01:32:51 [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] ^M01:32:56 [ Laughter ] ^M01:33:06 The lyrics do not translate. Arabic is all verbs for what stays still in other languages. [Speaking in foreign language], to morning, what the translation to awake cannot honor, cannot contain its rhyme with [speaking in foreign language], to swim, to make the night a body of water. I am here now, and I am not buoyant. I'm 26 -- in the book it says 24, but it's an old manuscript -- I'm 26 and always sick, small for my age, and always translating. I cannot sleep through the night. No language has given me the rhyme between ocean and wound that I know to be true. Sometimes when the doctors draw my blood I feel the word at the edge of my tongue. Halim sings [speaking in foreign language], I am drowning, I am drowning. The single word for all the water in his throat does not translate. Halim sings, "Teach me to kill the tear in its duct." Halim sings, "I have no experience in love, nor have I a boat." And I know he cannot rest, cannot swim through the night. I am looking for a voice with a wound in it, a man who could only have died by a form of drowning. Let the song take its time. Let the ocean close back up. Thank you. ^M01:34:30 [ Applause ] ^M01:34:42 >> Tsitsi Jaji: Thank you all for being here. It's so wonderful to be among family. And I just want to say it's especially great to get to read with Mukoma, someone I met at 18 when he told me that he was going to write the next great American novel. And he's written several novels as well as the poetry that just came out. I dedicated this book to my husband, and I want to start with a poem that I wrote on the occasion of our marriage, "Our Embrace, After Brancusi." Our embrace is monumental, a bloc representing the phalanx that is us. Tending toward each, other than the word our communal well utters, we envision silence singly. This one sense is our plenty, a sense of more than common sense. God helped us, one might say, were misprision not, in its own house, taken for language. Our tongue in common remains unknown to the greater world. We bound this region true to our word, braced for the impact of wind, dust, time, force, removal. Schooled hard, we hold fast, and this is the unrushed sense that speeds us into each other, where we intend to rest. It's true, it gives us pause. Metallicized, it present us, Eia!, with all we did not need to make in order to be here all along. Sandstone is not specified. Boulder overstates this plain monument to the two in one, now us. The other poems I'm going to read are from a series in praise of my ancestor VaNyemba, who's one of the founders of the Zebra clan. [Speaking in foreign language], these are Latin vulgate terms. I have no idea exactly what they mean, but I found them online. So anyway. Tete sits me down and tells me the story of our ancestors. She says it with a hard K. I squelch my sass and listen. Our ancestors were hunters of the Zebra Totem. There were two brothers and a very beautiful sister, as sweet as a sugar bean, so they called her VaNyemba. They came all the way from Mozambique to this place, tracking wild game. When the chief saw VaNyemba's beauty, he granted his brothers leave to hunt on his land. They set out to hunt early, leaving VaNyemba to tend the fire. She was very beautiful. The chief surprised her. She screamed, but her brothers were far, far. He was a heavy man, and as he thrust himself inside her, he found her penis. Our VaNyemba hanged her busted, bare body. When the chief saw it, he was afraid. He stripped off his regalia and fled, leaving the land to her brothers. That is the land they buried her in, and that is how we came to live in Chihota, the land of sweet potatoes. I'm sitting next to Tete, wondering if I will ever eat a sweet potato again. [Speaking in foreign language] Ground nuts, field peas, black-eyed peas, split pea, cowpea, chickpea, kidney, pinto, red, red lintel, yellow lintel, nyimo, navy, garbanzo, butter bean, lima bean, green bean, salt, peanut, salt peanuts. Sugar bean, honey. Nyemba, VaNyemba. [Speaking in foreign language], come, let us eat. [Speaking in foreign language], come let us pray. [Speaking in foreign language], our grandmother, VaNyemba, we bless you [speaking in foreign language]. Grandmother, we sing your name in the fields and in the mountains [speaking in foreign language]. You died for your land, but you were victorious. Praises, Grandmother, high praise [speaking in foreign language]. Give us this day plenty of sweet potatoes [speaking in foreign language]. Oh, how we rejoice to eat your sweet potatoes [speaking in foreign language]. Oh, and how we love to eat your sugar beans [speaking in foreign language] VaNyemba. For you are -- we are your great grandchildren, raised at your breast [speaking in foreign language]. Yes, we come from the land of sweet potatoes [speaking in foreign language]. Praise be, sweet sugar bean [speaking in foreign language] VaNyemba. I want to thank my father who helped me correct some pretty terrible Shona. And the last one, [speaking in foreign language], oh, Daddy Rex, you horn-billed bronze, shake that mane, baby. Flash that strobe-colored coat. Dazzle us, old guinea eyes, all black, and white, and red all over. Let me hear you do that njenjenje, you earth rambler, you. Kick up a storm, sweetheart. Kick with your mouth. You, highway-robbed of you, endless gift. Thank you. ^M01:41:31 [ Applause ] ^M01:41:46 >> Mukoma Wa Ngugi: Hello. >> Hello. >> Mukoma Wa Ngugi: Yeah, now I just have this image of me and Tsitsi, we have known each other since, yeah, the early 1990s. I just had this image of us 20 years from now walking with walk-sticks, you know -- you know, walking sticks. And then say, "Yeah, I've known her for 40 years now." And so I'm only going to read two or three poems. But I have another event at 3:00, so please most of you come with me when I'm leaving. All right, okay, I'll stop the jokes. And I do believe all poets at some point wanted to be comedians, but. Yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, nobody has ever asked me how I ended up getting published by the Africa poetry book fund, but what happened, though, is I came across a -- one of the books they had previously published by Clifton Gachagua called "Madman at Kilifi." You know, and I read it, and I was seized by a rage of jealousy, so I compiled my poems and sent them off. No, actually, no I was consumed by a -- by -- you know, because he's much younger than me, so it was more of a -- of feeling a sudden embrace, you know, from the African literary tradition, something along those lines. So you know, of feeling that poetry is safe, so I could send mine out to the world again. And so the first poem I'll read is called "Hunting Words with My Father," which is poem I wrote for him for his 70th birthday instead of buying a present. You know, it's cheaper to write. But anyway, "Hunting Words with My Father." He's also a writer, so you know, I've said this elsewhere, but -- >> Yeah, right. >> Mukoma Wa Ngugi: [Laughter] Yeah, you know. Yeah, he's also -- he's a somewhat-known writer from Kenya. "Hunting Words with My Father." One morning I burst into my father's study and said, "When I grow up, I too want to hunt. I want to hunt words, and giraffes, pictures, buffalos, and books." And he, holding a pen and a cup of tea said, "Little Father, to hunt words can be dangerous. But still, it is best to start early." He waved his blue pen, and his office turned into Nyandarua forest. It was morning, the mist rising from the earth like breath as rays from the sun fell hard on the ground like sharp nails. "Little Father, do you see him?" my father asked "No," I said. "Look again. The mist is a mirror. Do you see him?" And I looked again, and there was a Maasai warrior tall as the trees, spear in hand. "Shadow him, feign him, feign his movements, shadow him until his movements are your movements." Running my feet along the leaves, I walked to where he was, crouched like him so close to the earth, feet sinking deeper into the earth as if in mud, turning and reading the wind, and fading into the mist until I become one with the forest. For half a day we stayed like this, tired and hungry. I was ready for home, but my father said, "I did not say this was easy. You cannot hunt words on a full stomach." And just as soon as he spoke, there was a roar so loud and stomping so harsh that hot underground streams broke open like a dozen or so water pipes, sending hissing, steaming water high into the air. I turned to run, but the warrior stood his ground. As the roar and thunder came closer, his hair, braided and full of red ochre, turned into dreadlocks -- dreadlocks so long that they seemed like roots running from the earth. When the transfiguration was complete, before me stood a Mau Mau fighter, spear in one hand, homemade gun in the other, eyes so red that through the mist they looked like hot molten cinders, the long dreadlocks a thousand thin snakes in the wind, the leaves, and the grass, and thorns rushing past him. "You must help him. Don't just stand there, help him," my father implored. But just as soon as I had closed my little hands into fists, the lion appeared high up in the air, body stretched the whole length as the Mau Mau fighter pulled the spear like it was a long root from the earth. The lion, midair, tried to stop, recoiled its talons to offer peace, but it was too late. And he let out another roar as his chest crushed into the spear, breastplate giving way until the spear had edged its way into the heart. Dying, then dead, it continued its terrible arc, and landed. I waved, and the picture stood still. My father came up to me and asked, "Why have you stopped the hunt?" I said, "But we killed it. I have what we came for." I pointed to where the Mau Mau warrior was pulling his spear from the carcass, but my father shook his head and said, "You have done well, but look closely. How can you carry all that in a word? How can we carry that home? It is too heavy." I laughed and said, "Father, you'll help me." But he pointed to the ground, to a steady flow of a bright, thin, red river furiously winding down the grooves of the spear to the earth. I too pointed, unable to speak, the beauty larger than my imagination. I was confused. I had no words. "Come, let us go home, Little Father. When you are of age you shall find the words," he said. "But always be careful. To hunt a word is to hunt a life." ^M01:46:55 ^M01:47:00 So when I wrote -- most of these poems, when I wrote them I wasn't writing them with a [inaudible] -- they're the poems I think I wrote because I had to, because of things that were happening. For example, my daughter's birth. You know, so in that sense, it's not poems I was writing with the idea of a collection. Though I don't -- I'm not going to lie and say that I was writing for myself, you know. But yeah, so it was for -- I wrote most of these poems for things I couldn't quite grasp. And this is for my daughter, who is here somewhere, whom we named after my late mother, Nyambura. So this is a play around her name, which means bringer of rain. "In Your Name." Bringer of rain, I know someday I will learn to call you by the name your mother and I gave you, but for now the myriad of little names will do, [speaking in foreign language], all names that amuse us now, so often as they will not you. [Speaking in foreign language] Let's face it, even hate me for having them in a poem, but [speaking in foreign language], Little Mother, you'll not abandon. Yes, it will first tie you down, tongue-tie your teachers and friends, but one day your name, Nyambura, will free you, and that which was once like a prison will be a warm embrace, and that past from which you come from will be an anchor and not a chain, each syllable a reminder and an echo. Let me read my last poem, you know, because, you know, even though I wrote the poems before the age of Trump, I just have to say something about Trump, you know, and I have this joke that I was thinking about like if you really want to hide the nuclear codes from trump, you know, put them in a library, or [laughter] so, right. >> Oh! Oh! >> Mukoma Wa Ngugi: But you know, but the poem is really about, you know, for most of us, you know, who have not been in the U.S., we're the first-generation Africans, and we have been here for a long time. You know, around questions of identity that I think, you know, the Trump and his anti-immigration, then you know, brings these questions back to the forefront. "My Two Names." I have tried, but I'm never hungry in Nairobi and full in Boston. No matter my will, the parallels will not collapse. It's a [inaudible] my stomach, this one we share. Sometimes I try for daylight here to surprise nightfall there. By riding the divide of night and day, the sun is large in such a place that I'm always awake here and asleep there. I am without a name, yet I bear two names. I am without a name. I bear four names. I'm nameless. Always outside my window, my shadow restless like a ghost calls me to find its parallel. When I left home, I found it dancing here with a rope and an effigy outlined in chalk, and we took turns being shadow and being. When I close my eyes to this sun or moon burns teal, the world around me keeps changing form, and I make a home. But flight, too, has a shadow, and I fall back into things I cannot name or touch. What I cannot name, I cannot touch. One day I'll have to speak for myself. One day in my bones, marrow-deep, and complete like a grenade, I find remnants of ghosts that have walked and lived hard before me [speaking in foreign language], all born in times when the modern collapse of parallels was a stretcher as is treason. Home is longing not to be in two places at once. This morning, there I woke up to sounds of mourning and tear gas, graves as shallow as my writing paper, deep like diamonds and coal mines. This morning here, I awoke to a cup of tea with fresh ginger and mud, someone's black blood. There this morning 30 years ago, I witnessed Kamadi's [assumed spelling] hanging. This morning here, 30 Puerto Rican Nationalists were hanged. One day I will have to speak to all of ourselves. I thank you. ^M01:50:52 [ Applause ] ^M01:51:04 ^M01:51:09 >> Ladan Osmun: Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. >> Ladan Osmun: It's always an honor to read with the Book Fund. Thank you so much for the work that you do, the editors, writers there, the partnership with Prairie Schooner. So I wanted to chill a little bit, but I could not be so close to the Supreme Court and not read this newer poem which is written for Mohammed el Gharani who was a juvenile Guantanamo detainee from Chad. When asked what it was that he wanted, he said, "An apology." And because there's a sense that he's categorized as a non-person for this form of detainment and torture to work, it doesn't appear that that apology is forthcoming. Okay. And I want to start with an introduction, an excerpt from Laura Marling's "What He Wrote." ^M01:52:11 ^M01:52:16 Forgive me here. I cannot stay. He cut out my tongue. There is nothing to say. Love me? Oh, Lord, he threw me away. He laughed at my sins. In his arms I must stay. He wrote, "I'm broke. Please send for me." But I'm broken, too, and spoken for. Do not tempt me. Her skin is white, and I'm light as the sun. So holy light shines on the things you have done. The title of this poem comes from something a female interrogator said to Mohammed. "Think of Me As Your Mother." It's the Ides of March, and I have too much longing. Lions and gales replace speech. My mind breaks in a stone courtyard. It echoes as if played from turrets. They admit me. They put my clothes in a bin and search my skin for marks, cuts, and bruises, verify my eyes, hair, toes, and knuckles are black. They remove the string from my hoodie so I won't make a noose of it. I'm too tired to laugh about that. They offer me rice. They say, "The rice is good," and watch my face. They think they know Africans. I say nothing. They give me medicine, two kinds. I get free and yell, "I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! I'm black! And I've never been to a wedding." After the medicine, I keep seeing my black and yelling, "What is that? What is that? What is that? What is that?" They don't answer. A woman tells me to move it. She's pretending a toy keyboard is a lie detector. I bumped her hands, and now she has to start all over. After the medicine, I can see my black, and it can't stop talking. It says, "I'm not a demon. I'm a ghost. They're doing the wrong rituals on me." They took inventory of my Keds, my Dickies, but I'm still found without shoes or sheets. My chin stays bruised, and a sore in my mouth makes me remember my wisdom tooth surgery when I was 17, and I had my first Muslim doctor, and he made a mistake and gashed my cheek. And to keep from crying, he bid me to stop crying, even though I wasn't. They'd given me cackling gas. He cooed, "Everything will be okay. Everything will be all right. Everything will be okay. Everything will be all right." I screeched, "I love myself," in my best Kendrick voice, spin like my feet are arabesque. They shoot me. After that medicine, I stop rapping on tabletops and go to my bed. The mattress receives me. I think of dark hair on a soft bely. The blanket hugs me. I think of my baby sister sleeping on my mother's back. I stay in my bed all day and miss all my prayers because the bed says yes and yes. I want it to say no. So it's yes and yes is real. Can you rape a bed sleeping stubborn in it, even if its springs tell you to get out? Tell my mother to bring me some grease and my pick and to hide my hot hair curler in her skirt. I already know my hair better be laid when I lie in this therapist's face and tell her, "I just got confused." They release me with three brown paper bags. All their handles break. They want me to look crazy in these streets, but I just hum Badu in the parking lot, and on the bus break the high note, "Pack light." Every city built by the water is way too turnt [sic], from Chicago to Istanbul, the thin caterwaul of stray felines from mid-morning to dusk, the geese that flew nowhere all winter holler in a knotted field at a devilish hour. Then there are gunshots, police cracking ribs. The volume is up too high, too high in black ears. What do you do when a whole city is dog whistling? A woman curses her young son. His blink is blank. They face each other hard-eyed. They have trouble translating the Quran into English. Hell is the burning fire. Hell is pain of mother losing child. In many places on Earth, both definitions hold at the same time. I took my medicine, both kinds, and don't yell out the window, "Rise like dust in a Maya Angelou poem and the voice of a kid reciting it." Rise like [inaudible] concerts when they were tossed out the compound windows or like [inaudible], or Mandela, or anyone whose knees, or shoulders, or skulls were clubbed in a dank prison. I wish I could take you into my belly. I think it's the only safe space for you. Come into my womb. You might find cinderblocks and mixed metal. You might find teeth, and discrete ejaculations, and rancid tears, and salvaged bits of scripture. Come into my placenta, my electric water via dream submarine. I will throw the key into the ocean. I am infinitely generative. You'll find your grandson guarding you. When you're ready to leave, he'll call to you, "All the best. Good-bye. Good-bye." Thank you. ^M01:58:55 [ Applause ] ^M01:59:09 ^M01:59:17 >> Hope Wabuke: Wow. It's always the worst to have to read after Ladan Osman, because she's amazing. She really, really is. I want to thank you to Kwame, and Chris, and Matthew, and Aracelis, and Patricia, and Mary-Jane, and Rob, and everybody at the African Poetry Book Fund, and the Library of Congress for making this wonderful event happen. Tsitsi said it really is like being around family, and it is, just the work that everybody does. ^M01:59:49 So I wanted to read a few poems from my tract book "Believing," which ABPF published, which is an excerpt from a large poem manuscript in progress, similar [inaudible] called the "The Body Family," which explores my family's escape from Amin's genocide in 1976 in Uganda, where he massacred about 300,000 people and I'm lucky that my parents were able to come to America. So it felt timely with what's happening right now. The first one is called "If Not David." When the British came, they brought their guns and their Jesus. They took our oil and diamonds. They sent our men to fight their wars in Europe, did not send the bodies home. Amin was 18. He learned his lesson well. Kill the other. Take what is his. When Amin and his cronies drove the British out, our country in chaos, those already ignore. At first his killings were called a natural byproduct of events. His buddy Obote, the new president, promoted him. Said, "Kill more." But later, when his killings grew too much and Obote said, "Stop," Amin went after him too, took the throne, and laughed. "No one can run," he said, "faster than a bullet." At times, so many dead bodies were thrown into the Nile River the water stopped flowing. "Hitler," he was fond of saying, "had the right idea." Can you hear me okay? Great. This next poem is called, "Goliath," also about Amin. Names given, His Excellency Idi Amin, the Butcher of Uganda, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa and Uganda in particular, Field Marshal Alhaji, Doctor, Big Daddy, President for Life, Lord of all the beasts of the Earth and fishes of the sea. Weight, 250. Height, 6-4. What his former British commander said, "A splendid type, a good rugby player, and a reliable soldier, cheerful, energetic, and an incredible person who certainly isn't mad." First instance of torture, 1962 Turkana Massacre, burying alive, beating to death, et cetera, overlooked. Promoted to head of armed forces, 1963. Awards, distinguished service order, Victoria's Cross, Military Cross, Doctor of Law. Seizes power backed by Israel and Great Britain, 1971. Number of wives, four. Mistresses, 30. Abused, 34. Number of soldiers employed in special death squads, 18,000. Number of villagers wiped out, unknown. Kill count, 300,000, or 1 in 26 people. Flees to Libya in 1979 after losing war with Tanzanian forces and Ugandan dissidents. Motto, in any country, there must be people who have to die. This one is called "Exodus, Fathers, Americans Superheroes." Because certain death, because genocide, he leads them out. He is Moses and Jeremiah when no one else will try. The faith to move mountains and get to America keep them secret, keep them safe. Raise up his body family. Begin again. This one's called "Mouth." They pack nothing to escape detection. One change of clothes. No books, furniture, or photographs. My father's lab specimens are sewn into his pants. A day trip with our daughter, they will say at the border. We will be right back. This one is "Breath." They never speak of the dead, the massacres, at school. Friends and family disappeared. How they got word they were next. The crossing to Kenya, then America. What happened to those left behind? This poem is called "Numbers." Mother makes the doll after their baby boy who would have been my older brother dies. She sews his bits of curly black hair on top, pricks his finger with her needles, paints his blood on the cotton-stuffed face. Two circles for eyes, two lines for nose and mouth, and she is finished. All the time father is away, she will hold baby boy doll and hum the many melodies she learned to sing when a hospital nurse back home in Amin's war to the skin-thin shivering rib caged infants, tiny orphaned fists flailing to eat their last bit of feces that would not keep them alive another day. The lightness of their bodies in her arms, no heavier than the breath of air that was her song. And that one came from a dream I had when I was pregnant with my own son and I began to have all these memories I couldn't know and that was one of them. And I called my mom and I said, "Did you tell this to me about being a nurse and the babies, orphans, newborns not having enough milk because their parents were dead and them dying of hunger?" And she said, "No. I didn't tell that you." But somehow, that memory came up and that fascinates me, that cultural memory. So this one's called "The Nerve." I've never read this one before aloud, but, again, it seemed timely to be here in this town, in this place, at this time and read this poem. So it's a little long. So bear with me and I'll just read two more after this. "The Nerve." When I was a little girl, you and I were the best of friends, dear father. As I followed you down the long test tube flanked aisles of your laboratory funded by the same people who had enslaved your grandparents and bankrupted your country and would deny them the medicines you were discovering, still following you in stores, still sending cops to watch our house, because those niggers have been up to no good since we moved to our town, I wanted to know why and wrote down everything you said as truth until I began to think for myself and you couldn't have that. So you began to beat at me like a housewife does a stain, as if that would get the education out. The doctors have said you will spend this year dying and I want to tell you so many things. But yesterday, they let free that white man who killed a little brown boy just because he was brown and the day before that, they took away our right to vote and the day before that, they released a study saying the radiation from a nuclear disaster exploded in Japan has already jumped in the water, swum across the ocean, up through our faucets, our hoses, into our earth, plants, and animals, our bodies now dying, infected already. And there is not enough medicine for everyone and you know who there will not be enough for. This morning I had to stop while doing my yoga and curl into a ball, hold myself to keep from shaking. All day long, I felt terrified. Little spasms down my spine and central nervous system. As I remember taking my seven-month-old son for our daily walk because he loves outside, outside, and I love him, walking with him pressed against my body, still feeling my bones realigning, muscles unwinding from giving birth to him, carrying him, and the old white man who lives in the house on the corner yelling he would shoot us like that other white man had the other little brown boy just because we are brown too. And all I could think was breathe. Breathe. There are people's small horrors too. A friend who was trying to get pregnant, another miscarriage, says it feels like meeting a ghost without ever having met the person before. And I just want you, my father, to protect me, teach me how to protect my son, because they have put in a law that says the last man standing can say, "I felt threatened," and shoot to kill and then walk free. And they always say they are threatened by us and they have taken away the other law that says they cannot stop in front of our path -- step in front of our path to the voting house and stop us. And they have never stopped trying to stop us. And I wonder what is to stop them from firing, knowing their whiteness is their ticket to not guilty, to be set free of having to feel their rage of having a man who looks like you in their White House again. ^M02:09:20 ^M02:09:28 This one is called "Refugee Minds." And my son had [inaudible] one of his little friends and we was talking to her mom and she was telling me about the banyan tree that grows in Hawaii and I never heard of it and it's the tree that grows up and then its roots and limbs, instead of going outward, grow back down into the ground and then it grows up again. And that image stuck with me and said exactly what I needed. So I have to thank my son for choosing really wonderful friends who have really wonderful moms who give me poems. ^M02:10:01 So "Refugee Minds." They thought believing would be like the banyan tree rising to spread wide, branches turned down become root again, grow new life. But there is work that must be done to connect deep and strong inside alien ground. You must speak. You must let yourself be known by these new children and all your glorious tangled mess of becoming. Your culture also. Burrow down deep in this. Else for there are always storms coming. Rootless, apart, you break. And my last two poems, very quickly, this one is "Naomi." When grandmother listens, my mouth is alien, foreign waters lapping at a foreign shore. I have only the language of her conquerors within just one small island. Kuhu [assumed spelling], Kuhu, her name repeated become a song. And my last poem I wanted to read for you, "Slow Dance with Bullet." Again, felt like I'm here in this town so I needed to read this poem to you. "Slow Dance with Bullet." This is when you become political. This unarmed black boy shot, this white killer cop not charge, but given three months paid vacation, plus $1 million in thanks for this job well done. This happened yesterday, too, the day before that. They used to say this, "Dance, nigger, dance, and empty their guns laughing." This was their theory. If you can rise fast enough, the bullets would not hit your feet. This, the weight of five centuries that did not break your back. This, you are scared of, then. This, you stiffen silent and bored. This will happen again tomorrow, different city, different dead black boy body, but now, the straw needle. Oh, how your baby boy loves to dance. His legs, though, are little. He could never jump enough. Thank you so much. ^M02:12:24 [ Applause ] ^M02:12:35 >> Let's just hear it for all the poets who read. ^M02:12:37 [ Applause ] ^M02:12:46 I just want to name a few people that -- we do all this work, we publish this work, but, frankly, the funding to make this happen has come through a most generous benefactor, Laura and Robert Silaman [assumed spelling] and they've been incredibly generous and supportive, and that's how we are able to pay for these publications and these books. So it takes money and it takes the support of them. I also must mention Ashley Strosnider. Ashley is the managing editor for this series and, of course, with Prairie Schooner, and Ashley's over there. She runs things. Ashley is fantastic, amazing, and is Paul here? Paul is our Web editor for Prairie Schooner, but also the Web editor for APBF and he's been doing amazing work and so on. I want to say that the University of Nebraska Press, the publishers for many of our books and [inaudible] books. They are publishers for many of our books. We have a partner in Senegal called Amalian [assumed spelling] Books. And then, of course, we've worked with Slapering Hol Press for the first box set. So that's been fantastic. We've had -- all our book covers are by African artists. So we celebrate African art in exciting ways. We're working on other partnerships that I can mention. For instance, we've got support from Ford and, of course, we are getting started to have a conversation with the African Center in New York. So a lot of exciting things going on and we want you to keep supporting us. Right? You know, buy the books and tell people about it and -- for me, it's all about this writing, isn't it? It's beautiful and that's why we are really pleased to do this. So I thank the folks here at the Library of Congress. Hope we didn't cause too much trouble and thank you for having us. Okay. ^M02:14:30 [ Applause ] ^M02:14:42 >> So, again, thank you. Thanks for this fantastic program. When I was on the phone with Quami Warding [assumed spelling], he told me everything would be fine, everything would be wonderful, and he was absolutely right. There was absolutely no reason for me to fret. Now, I would like to first of all thank again the absolutely wonderful, wonderful poets, and thank you Kwame, thank you Chris, thank you Matthew. Thank you, Aracelis. You've been all fantastic. And now, I want to invite you. There is some food here and also the books are for sale in our bookstore. So thank you for being here and please come again. ^M02:15:29 [ Applause ] ^M02:15:34 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E02:15:40