THE JOY OF SPOKEN WORD

“perhaps it is easier for me to think of the violence in this way, not as/ senseless but as a sacrifice to a darker god//one as bronze as we are/ a harkening to a forgotten past/ where we make ritual out of the surest thing. death/ is the sun dance of the ghetto…”

These words are from Steven Antoine Willis’s poem “In Summer We Sacrifice Our Boys to the Sun,” which opens his powerful collection A Peculiar People. I read the collection in preparation for Steven’s coming to Norwalk on July 15 to give a performance, and was struck by the power and musicality of the poems. His purpose, he says, is to “creatively [articulate] African American culture,” a “daunting task.” The voices are many, including this one that I love from “A Scolding for the Brother, Dylann”: “Nice try, Dylann, but we are still/going to church.” The scolder’s voice is so vivid—a tired mother who just isn’t going to take any more. From there the voice moves into an appraisal of the relationship of the black church to the “white man’s religion.” “Despite the threat,” she says, “our eyes are closed/and our heads bowed at benediction.” This is no easy acceptance of Jesus or the role of the church, but instead a place “for revolution,/ an embryo of resistance.”

Another powerful voice appears in “Police as Pantoums #27 (Traffic Stop)” in which the cop speaks: “(Places hand on gun)// …Anything in the car I should know about?/ Any weapons on ya?/ Relax, guy, you are making me nervous,” as if it is the driver’s responsibility to make the police officer comfortable. You can find Steven on YouTube reading some of his poems—his voice is funny, angry, thoughtful, and provocative by turns. Check him out here. He is a graduate of Manhattanville College and the Iowa Writers Workshop, teaches poetry workshops, and was an Individual World Poetry Slam finalist. We are so excited that he’s coming to visit us!

Opening for Steven will be Jerry Johnson, another spoken word poet and author of A Coldness and other works, and Christine Kalafus, National Book Award recipient for What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life. (Whew! What a line up!!) The event will take place at Factory Underground, 16 Isaacs Street, Norwalk, CT on July 15 from 6 – 8 PM. All three authors will have books available to sell, and we encourage you to bring your friends with you. The event is free but there’s a registration link here, so that we have enough food! I hope to see you there.

Thanks for reading.