Keorapetse Kgositsile Poetry Reading

I didn't get to write down all the poems that Mr. Kgositsile read. But here are a few:

These are from If I Could Sing:

1. "Red Song"
2. "Seaparankoe"
3. "Memorial"
4. "Rejoice"

Most or all of these poems are from This Way I Salute You:
5. "Messengers"
6. "Brantome"
7. "Cassandra Wilson Will Sing"
8. "In the Naming"
9. "No Serenity Here" (click on link for poem) - This was my favorite poem!!!
10. "No Boundaries"
11. "Letter from Havana"

I have to say that this poetry reading was one of my favorite experiences. I think it came at just the right time in my life. I needed to hear all that he said. And the way that he read his poems was like he was reaching deep down inside the souls of all living things and striking that special chord that connects us all. It made perfect sense to me. It was good to go to a reading where this was the case. Sometimes I get lost in the words, the phrases, and I am not sure in the way the reading affected me, even though it did. But Kgositsile's reading left me with an overall message and feeling of peace, yet an understanding that it us up to us to make peace, within ourselves and then within this world we live in. He spoke to all our fears and sorrows, but then gave us hope.

A line from "Seaparankoe":

"Not that we are strangers to fear
But we love freedom and peace more
And for this we work and fight."

- Morgen Moxley

You will soon be able to see a video of the entire reading on the MAE Poetry Series website. 

Keorapetse Kgositsile Poetry Links

Kgositsile’s poetry ranges from the unambiguously political and public to the lyric and confessional. A strong feature of his work is the recognition and celebration of his influences, his friendships with other artists, and, in particular, his deep love of blues and jazz. He has written nine collections of poetry including Spirits Unchained (1969), My Name is Afrika (1971), The Bitter End (1995), If I Could Sing (2002) and This Way I Salute You (2004).

 

Longer Biography

Poetry

Mandela's Sermon

Origins

Random Notes to My Son

The Gods Wrote

Morning in Tunis

Spirits Unchained

Video of Poetry Reading by Kgositsile

http://kenyatta.academia.edu/EjakaitpapaEtyang/Papers/1453864/KEORAPETSE

mirror of my pain and purpose
this blood we demand
is the flow of life
we must bleed yes
there is no birth without blood
if they call us insane let them
words will not kill us
if they say we are not poets let them
our poetry will be the simple act
the blood we bleed
moulded by pain and purpose
into a simple
do not fuck with me
your shit is going up in flames
here and now.

Kgositsile has worked in various African National Congress departments and structures both above and underground. This poem is from his collection, If I could Sing. Keorapetse Kgositsile remains one of the most prominent South African poets whose protest poetry has achieved national and international recognition.

Myung Mi Kim Poetry Reading

I loved Myung Mi Kim's introduction to her poetry... to her past and to herself... to language. She told us how she first came to Oklahoma from Korea when she was nine years old. This is where she learned English. Thrust into a new culture, she had no choice but to learn the new language - listening, writing, speaking... understanding. Using all her senses to change the way she had once processed information and communicated to something brand new. She spoke of the terror and the pleasure of that experience. Of how she began to connect and link aspects of the language, but still she could not speak it. I can't imagine, especially at such a young age, how difficult that must have been for her, and how rewarding it must have felt to finally break through the barrier. She remembers very clearly the big dictionary that Ms. Beasley gave her to learn from. And now, her Korean is still at a 3rd grade level, as she never had to speak it again. And the thought of "learning Korean" seems weird and almost like a foreign concept to her because in her mind she already knows it, she is Korean, but she never expanded on her own language. Her perspective on language is different than mine. I have never had to master a new language in such a way. When I think about language, I think about words, meanings, symbols, what I can readily grasp and move forward with. I don't think about culture, where the word comes from... I do not think about social or political contexts, but rather stay inside of what those words mean to me personally. I'm sure if I were to really think on and understand these personal connections, I would start seeing outside of myself and link the words to a grander meaning, which would even still relate to myself.

Myung Mi Kim read poems from most or all of her books to show us the differences in progression, exploration and understanding at those specific times in her life. Her books serve as a collective outlet to allow discoveries and a deeper mastery of her consciousness and of her concept of language to flow through.

I do think poetry should be performed and spoken/read aloud by the poet, but I also think it is so important to see the poems on the page and see the space, the breaks, the text. Her poetry did seem very fragmented, and I suppose this was to mimic language and the processes of comprehending it.

"Myung Mi Kim explores issues of dislocation, colonization, immigration, loss of her first language, and the fallout of history in her work. Eric Weinstein, poetry editor for Prick of the Spindle, commented in a review: 'Penury instantiates exactly that: a poetics of extreme and devastating lack, an inadequacy and insufficiency of language designed to mirror the extraordinary poverty of its subject(s).' " (The Poetry Foundation)

We all enjoyed Myung Mi Kim's reading very much. I think this interview http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kim/generosity.html will really help you understand her foundation and her poetics. Also, buy her books! Also, a video of her reading will soon be posted on the Mark Allen Everett Poetry Series Website.

- Morgen Moxley

Myung Mi Kim Poetry Links

There are many links to Myung Mi Kim's poetry, audio, video, writings and reviews here: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kim/

Poetry

from Dura

Lamenta: 423

[accumulation of land]

[Exordium: 'In what way names']

ruins library

Labors

The Bounty

Joseph Harrington Poetry Reading

history becomes fate when

it's over with

no more disjunct

than this world

A gateway timeout occurred

The server / is unreachable

History abounds 

a keeling curve

this starts to be how it gets

to keening

love filters : red void

Molly's mussels live-o

while she dies-o

that's the point, see?

A space

is a character too

One remembers that, if not what

The space is more historical

than the stars

From Joseph Harrington's book, "Things Come On: (an amneoir)". Harrington read poems mostly from this book, which links the death of his mother, taken by cancer, to the Watergate scandal.

"Things Come On is a broken and sutured hybrid of forms, combining poetry, prose narration, primary documents, dramatic dialogue, and pictures. The narrative is woven around the almost exact concurrence of the Watergate scandal and the dates of the poet’s mother’s illness and death from breast cancer, and weaves together private and public tragedies—showing how the language of illness and of political cover-up powerfully resonate with one another. The resulting “amneoir” (a blend of “memoir” and “amnesia”) explores a time for which the author must rely largely on testimony and documentary evidence—not unlike the Congress and the nation did during the same period. Absences, amnesia, and silences count for at least as much as words. As the double tragedy unfolds, it refuses to become part of an overarching system, metaphor, or metanarrative, but rather raises questions of memory and evidence, gender and genre, personal and political, and expert vs. lay language. This haunting experimental biography challenges our assumptions about the distance between individual experience and history." (Wesleyan University Press)

We all really enjoyed Harrington's reading, his story, his style. He was intertwining these two events that were happening simultaneously in his life as a young boy, gathering what little he actually remembered, memories with his mother, and the later received realization of certain themes that linked these two tragic events, documentation, research, a collage of artifacts, memories and ideas... a story told by Harrington. His reading did seem a little distant. And why wouldn't it? He was only ten years old. The emotion didn't come from his remembrance, but from another place. I think it came from the not-remembering... the distance. It is a part of his history, but yet, a part of our nation's history. I even found myself snickering in moments of tragedy because of the way he read it, and then I realized, this is actually extremely sad. It was an emotional movement through and around the ups and downs of life. It was a mystery, something Harrington was figuring out and discovering, and the emotions reflected just that. You can see a video of his reading at the MAE Poetry Series Website.

Glenn Mott Poetry Reading

Glenn Mott came to the Fred Jones Art Museum to do a site-specific poetry reading and lecture on the Rauschenberg exhibit - "The Lotus Series".This was Rauschenberg's last work, but as Mott told us, its origins go back to the photographs taken in China in the early 80's. Mott told us about the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), "focused primarily on developing countries, in which paintings, sculpture, and videos were created and exhibited from Chile to the Soviet Union, countries in which artists and the public were isolated not only from the American art, but from their own artistic traditions due to the political situation." (Mott)

The ROCI projects became "a social force and conduit for new ideas" and the exhibition had an enormous effect on all Chinese artists of that generation.

Mott said in his lecture: "The thing for me about any work of art is to avoid the cleverness of seeing what is not there, so I can focus on what is. It’s actually very hard to do because we are trained with a critical impulse preventing us from what I will call the long gaze; that is, purposeful looking. We are probably biologically hard wired to fill in the gaps and find stories, and to flatter ourselves with powers of comprehension. The advantage I think we have with Rauschenberg is that it is already hard to read into his work because it’s so: surface. Surface made us modern with the focus on process and materials, resisting absorption in the lyrical and representational, whether in the visual arts, the compositional technology of jazz, or exploding certain hackneyed language structures in poetry. Rauschenberg throws his militant gaze back to us, and seems to see us looking. As John Cage wrote, in his seminal early work titled On Rauschenberg '. . . there is at least the possibility of looking anywhere, not just where someone arranged you should. You are then free to deal with your freedom just as the artist dealt with his, not in the same way but, nevertheless, originally.' "

I think you can look at a picture or a painting and yes, sometimes your first instinct is to see something that is not there, to find hidden meanings. It is important to see the art in its truest, most naked form, to let it speak to you rather than go searching for what it is trying to say. But what Mott is saying about Rauschenberg's work is what you see is what you get. Your gaze... your freedom... your appreciation of what Rauschenberg saw as beautiful, as meaningful. 

"What I find in the literature is that the persistent question about Rauschenberg’s work has historically been one of interpretation; that is, the critical anxiety involved how to ascribe meaning to the surface, and how or why he choose certain images at the exclusion of others," Mott said.

Rauschenberg thought all objects carried beauty, and this is what he used in his art - ordinary, every day items. Because as he said, we are surrounded by these things all day long, and if we saw them as ugly, we would be miserable people.

According to Mott, "The most difficult person to surprise will generally be oneself. Acumen and self-knowledge bind our social lives, preparing us for what is expected. We are, if we have a modicum of sanity, socialized—necessarily so—but we are also profoundly interior. Our rapport with art, as with people, is likely to be a refinement of existing habituations. One thing I find wonderfully ebullient about Rauschenberg is this: where many artists and poets need to invent systematic limitations in order to produce work that will surprise and subvert the habitual act of self-editing, or just to deceive the speakeasy of life’s official emotions, Rauschenberg was for "'Yes.' 'No' excludes. I’m for inclusion"."

Raushcenberg saw the beauty in everything around him and he captured that beauty, framed it, and made the world see it differently. 

You can see the video of his entire lecture and readings on the MAE Poetry Series website.

You can see Mott's Lotus flash poem below, or by clicking on the link... it won't have the exact same effect on you as it did at the reading, but you get the idea!  Lotus Animations Mott

Stanley Lombardo & Judith Roitman Poetry Reading - Recap

11-20-11

What a treat it was, on the cold, quaint night, to hear the lovely poetry and charming voice of Judith Roitman. She read selected poems from her published books, and also read many new, unpublished poems. I remember there was some dark humor woven into her poems, and she told us it was "okay to laugh". She is a very visual person, and it showed while she read her experimental poems. She indicated to us which poems were her favorites, and, as she read, holding the book in one hand and measuring out the words on the page in the air with her other hand, you could feel the passion, memories and vulnerabilities through her words. We didn't want her to stop reading.

You can read and get a feel for her poetry here: http://www.locuspoint.org/lawrence/roitman.htm

Distinct
 

before

        not finding anywhere

                      everything everywhere

              place & time distinct

      unglued

                          associate.

The next reader, Stanley Lombardo (Judith's husband), decided to treat us with a dramatic reading of Homer's Illiad. He beat his drum, adding excitement and intensity to moments and calmness and moderation to others, to his already perfect reading voice. We all listened and watched, holding on to every word as the story of Achilles unfolded. 

You can watch recordings of both of these readings at the MAE Poetry Series website.