Author Bio:
Cave Canem Fellow and Affrilachian Poet, Amanda Johnston has performed across the country for various causes and events. Honors include a 2003 and 2004 Artists Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the 2005 Austin International Poetry Festival's Christina Sergeyevna Award. Currently, Johnston serves on the board of directors for the National Women's Alliance, is an ensemble member of The Austin Project Performance Company (TAPPCo) and is the founding editor of Torch: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women. http://www.torchpoetry.org/
Work Sample:
First Song
for Ahyana
She wailed and my heart stood still
as the doctor dangled her
head down and bloody like a fish
caught between the muck and pull
of my churning water and vine
creeping awkwardly up to this
blurry life of tears and loose soil.
The delivery room held fast
while her silence echoed off
defibrillators, nursing hands
and her father tending my
hollow earthbound body waiting
for his daughter's first solo
in a chorus of furrowed brows.
We wanted to hear her wail
with a quick slap on the ass
desperate breath then sound
at least a whimper of newness
breaching our anticipation
not this eternal pause of her
wide eyes questioning yes or no
to a world of uncertainties.
She wailed and my heart stood still
in that resounding yes, yes she would
stay in this imperfect place
with all of its cobwebs and stars
here, in the shit and pain of birth,
she wailed and her song began.
Monday, June 23, 2008
June 14th, 2008 Salon Sit Down Discussion
Amanda Johnston is a Poet, Mother and Daughter, and when she arrived, she brought both her mother and her daughters with her, embodying the multi-generational nature of her own work within the space of the Salon.
This month, Amanda brought us into her circle by reading her work and having us riff off of it - to enter her work and allow it to give us new words. She said it clearly, "I'm going to read you a poem, and you write a story from something that you hear. And if you want, then you take a line of your story and write a poem, and it can go on." She had first learned of the exercise from her mentor and friend, Patricia Smith.
As we moved from our own writing into a discussion about Amanda's process and writing, we began to engage questions of craft, of vulnerability, and of dialogue. Questions that were asked included:
What is your relationship to form?
What was your first poem?
Amanda answered candidly, speaking of her own sense of intimidation, of her own perception of form as a "white man's imposition". It was at Cave Canem that she truly allowed herself to explore form and what it has to give to her work, regardless of the end result of her exploration.
What was fascinating is that Amanda's first poems were at age 10 and were raps - a form that is defined by music, by life experience, by set rhythms and words. Her early explorations were the foundation to her later work, developed when she first learned about the connection between words and intention as a young poet living in Kentucky.
The artist's fascination with the whole person, and the people behind things led us into a discussion about the architecture of language. One person named Tapies, and his own inquiries into the life of material objects, which then led us to ask Amanda about her own relationship to objects and their stories. What, if anything, do they have to tell us? And Amanda answered very clearly: the ancestry or timeline of a body or thing tells us about who we are today. Who designed this room that we're sitting in? Who made the panels for the walls, and installed them? Who are we today bringing ourselves into this space that was designed with intention?
When asked what form her aesthetic takes, she responded, "It is a wagon wheel, in which the spokes are the different manifestations of the self - and questions about the self." Amanda went on to describe how she reads a book, as a metaphor for how her poetry falls in line with her aesthetic - she reads it in pieces, wherever it may open to when she picks it up. Her aesthetic is closely aligned with her process in which she multi-tasks, writing a poem as she has to, "getting the bones down" and then returning to it to pile on the flesh of it all. She spoke of being obedient to the poem, when they come, she must heed them. And being accountable to her community: making sure she writes them down and develops her work, because after all - she is a poet.
Which led to questions about joy and inspiration. One participant asked, "What is the intersection of fun in your work?" to which Amanda replied: "Fun should always be in my work." She spoke of the need to laugh, especially in tedious or serious moments, quoting Nicky Finney who said, "You are as writerly as the last poem you've written." Amanda insisted that in order to write, we must also enjoy life so that we may nourish the work we create. And of course, this means that for Amanda, inspiration comes from people, from listening to people, from remembering what people have spoken, from the day outside the window. She mentioned the names of poets she goes to when she needs to find her voice, or her own words: poets Sharon Olds, Patricia Smith, Nicky Finney, Afaa M. Weaver... and her community.
In this way, we can understand Amanda as an architect of language: a person who understands language as a landscape from which to design and develop buildings of memories and sound, and meaning. And creating poems that require the reader's active participation, and reflection on their own lived experience. Amanda, who also loves and is inspired by photography and video, aptly describes her own perspective as only one in relationship to others: each person has their own perspective on language, much in the same way the camera has its own perspective with relationship to what's in the frame.
She left us with the questions that form the basis of her inquiry: what angle is this image speaking to? What is it that we're not supposed to see? What is out of context? How can we present multiple perspectives? And how do we make it possible for all of us to have our own experiences with written and visual work?
This month, Amanda brought us into her circle by reading her work and having us riff off of it - to enter her work and allow it to give us new words. She said it clearly, "I'm going to read you a poem, and you write a story from something that you hear. And if you want, then you take a line of your story and write a poem, and it can go on." She had first learned of the exercise from her mentor and friend, Patricia Smith.
As we moved from our own writing into a discussion about Amanda's process and writing, we began to engage questions of craft, of vulnerability, and of dialogue. Questions that were asked included:
What is your relationship to form?
What was your first poem?
Amanda answered candidly, speaking of her own sense of intimidation, of her own perception of form as a "white man's imposition". It was at Cave Canem that she truly allowed herself to explore form and what it has to give to her work, regardless of the end result of her exploration.
What was fascinating is that Amanda's first poems were at age 10 and were raps - a form that is defined by music, by life experience, by set rhythms and words. Her early explorations were the foundation to her later work, developed when she first learned about the connection between words and intention as a young poet living in Kentucky.
The artist's fascination with the whole person, and the people behind things led us into a discussion about the architecture of language. One person named Tapies, and his own inquiries into the life of material objects, which then led us to ask Amanda about her own relationship to objects and their stories. What, if anything, do they have to tell us? And Amanda answered very clearly: the ancestry or timeline of a body or thing tells us about who we are today. Who designed this room that we're sitting in? Who made the panels for the walls, and installed them? Who are we today bringing ourselves into this space that was designed with intention?
When asked what form her aesthetic takes, she responded, "It is a wagon wheel, in which the spokes are the different manifestations of the self - and questions about the self." Amanda went on to describe how she reads a book, as a metaphor for how her poetry falls in line with her aesthetic - she reads it in pieces, wherever it may open to when she picks it up. Her aesthetic is closely aligned with her process in which she multi-tasks, writing a poem as she has to, "getting the bones down" and then returning to it to pile on the flesh of it all. She spoke of being obedient to the poem, when they come, she must heed them. And being accountable to her community: making sure she writes them down and develops her work, because after all - she is a poet.
Which led to questions about joy and inspiration. One participant asked, "What is the intersection of fun in your work?" to which Amanda replied: "Fun should always be in my work." She spoke of the need to laugh, especially in tedious or serious moments, quoting Nicky Finney who said, "You are as writerly as the last poem you've written." Amanda insisted that in order to write, we must also enjoy life so that we may nourish the work we create. And of course, this means that for Amanda, inspiration comes from people, from listening to people, from remembering what people have spoken, from the day outside the window. She mentioned the names of poets she goes to when she needs to find her voice, or her own words: poets Sharon Olds, Patricia Smith, Nicky Finney, Afaa M. Weaver... and her community.
In this way, we can understand Amanda as an architect of language: a person who understands language as a landscape from which to design and develop buildings of memories and sound, and meaning. And creating poems that require the reader's active participation, and reflection on their own lived experience. Amanda, who also loves and is inspired by photography and video, aptly describes her own perspective as only one in relationship to others: each person has their own perspective on language, much in the same way the camera has its own perspective with relationship to what's in the frame.
She left us with the questions that form the basis of her inquiry: what angle is this image speaking to? What is it that we're not supposed to see? What is out of context? How can we present multiple perspectives? And how do we make it possible for all of us to have our own experiences with written and visual work?
Thursday, May 29, 2008
May Featured Artist: Nelly Rosario
Nelly Rosario was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in engineering from MIT and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received numerous awards, including a 1999 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fellowship, The Bronx Writers' Center Van Lier Literary Fellowship for 1999-2000, two National Arts Club Writing Fellowships, the 1997 Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and the 1988 National Teachers in English Writing Award. She was named "Writer on the Verge" by the Village Voice Literary Supplement in 2001. Her debut novel Song of the Water Saints, which traces the lives of three generations of Dominican women, won a PEN Open Book Award in 2002. Currently she teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos.
Work Sample:
Justice sans Blindfold
My name is Najila Sivaka Gesbor, M.D., President and Head Surgeon of Innovative Ophthalmology Clinic.
I have no blood on my hands, so help me Horus.
It is my understanding that arrested persons are to be handcuffed with their hands in front of them—this behind-the-back standard is only for the convicted.
You accuse me of eating human eyes. Cow eyes are not human eyes, however similar. I much prefer the taste and texture of the former than that of the latter, which I imagine are rather saccharine and pliant. In addition to being considerably larger in size, cow eyes are much more bitter and salty in taste, requiring the pleasant task of cutting through fat and extraneous muscle prior to consumption. Ask any of your government officials who frequent steakhouses.
I have also sampled kangaroo and monkey eyes, both equally savory.
May 10, 2008 Salon Sit Down Discussion
This being our first meeting after the winter hiatus, we met at the Carver Museum on the perfect 100 degree day. Next door was the Saturday afternoon drumming classes (the rooms are soundproof), and through the glass panel we saw the generations streaming by on their way into the drumming circle.
Nelly expressed her wish to be in the space as a collaborative artist, and perhaps, to lead a small writing workshop. We settled in and Nelly began by introducing us to her creative process and the theoretical underpinnings to her approach.
She then continued her presentation with a discussion on the importance of artistic discourse and attention to craft as fundamental elements of her practice. She asked us to consider the question of text as object ("Why do we think text cannot move?"). Much like perusing art objects in a gallery or museum space creates an individual experience of time and space, language on the page can also function to mirror this trajectory. She described her work as "holographic" - in which the text is not only a reproduction of itself, but moves and acts as if the characters and their landscapes are present before us - the novel as crystal.
In her debut novel, Song of the Water Saints, Nelly Rosario succeeded in bridging stories between land and sea. In her forthcoming work, of which she read an excerpt previously published in Callaloo under the title "Airman Basic Training", her characters are embodying each other; they are literally exchanging their eyes. When asked to describe the composition of this new work, Nelly delves into her fascination with Gaudi - Barcelona's fanatical architect who is famous for La Sagrada Familia - and his obsession with details, with perfection and with seemingly oppositional elements. Her character, an airman, is compulsively focused on power, but is conflicted by the reality of constantly changing authorities. The author asks her character: At what point does he own himself? She asks us, as readers, to consider questions of value and worth, motivation and multiple perspectives. What would compel someone to trade eyes? How do you determine the value of your eyes in exchange with someone else’s? This is not only a theoretical contemplation, but a negotiation embodied by her characters.
When asked about other influences on her current work, Nelly spoke of “Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K LeGuin, of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino (especially “Invisible Cities”, for its structure), and Toni Morrison (specifically, the language of “Palace of Dreams”). She also spoke of her own philosophical inquiries: “Imagine looking down at the stars.”
“How can my readers exchange eyes with my characters?”
“What occupies the space between our eyes and a camera’s eyes?”
and finally, “How do we exist within infinite processes?”
I might describe Nelly’s aesthetic as the clouds left behind by comets: concurrently gracile with language and dense in conceptual and historical undertones. She herself spoke of the first time she understood beauty: living on the third floor of a building in New York City, staring at the mosaics on the floor. She was fascinated by the way the light passed through the bubble glass and danced across the hexagonal patterns of tile. Similar to what we see against our eyelids when we tightly shut them. Fractals. Things that are simultaneously broken and unified at the same time.
We talked about the concepts that Nelly had presented to us: the concepts of value and planes of sight, of language and perspective. And then, we finished by giving each other creative tasks. I agreed to share these here on the blog page for others who might want to try them.
2) Write a dialogue between your 12 year old self and your 80 year old self – using diaries or other source materials to inform your writing.
3) Draw SWARM theory.
4) Write an application form for a completely free person. What does her day look like? What does she dream? Where does she live? What kinds of questions would she ask of the world?
5) Create collages for a week in place of writing.
Summer Line Up
The Austin Salon was on hiatus for the winter (hibernation), and has resumed with an extraordinary line-up for the summer and early fall:
May 10th, 2-4pm
Carver Museum
Austin, TX
Featured Artist: Nelly Rosario
Nelly Rosario was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in engineering from MIT and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received numerous awards, including a 1999 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fellowship, The Bronx Writers' Center Van Lier Literary Fellowship for 1999-2000, two National Arts Club Writing Fellowships, the 1997 Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and the 1988 National Teachers in English Writing Award. She was named "Writer on the Verge" by the Village Voice Literary Supplement in 2001. Her debut novel Song of the Water Saints, which traces the lives of three generations of Dominican women, won a PEN Open Book Award in 2002. Currently she teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos.
June 14th, 2-4pm
Carver Museum
Austin, TX
Featured Artist: Amanda Johnston
Cave Canem Fellow and Affrilachian Poet, Amanda Johnston has performed across the country for various causes and events. Honors include a 2003 and 2004 Artists Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the 2005 Austin International Poetry Festival's Christina Sergeyevna Award. Currently, Johnston serves on the board of directors for the National Women's Alliance, is an ensemble member of The Austin Project Performance Company (TAPPCo) and is the founding editor of Torch: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women. www.torchpoetry.org
July 5th, 2-4pm
Carver Museum
Austin, TX
Featured Artist: A. Van Jordan
A. Van Jordan is the author of Rise and MACNOLIA. Among other awards, Jordan has received the Whiting Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Jordan teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and serves on the faculty at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Austin, Texas.
August 9th, 2-4pm
Location TBA
Austin, TX
Featured Artist: Samiya Bashir
Samiya Bashir is the author of Where the Apple Falls: poems, editor of Best Black Women's Erotica 2 and co-editor, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana, of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. She has also published two chapbook poetry collections: Wearing Shorts on the First Day of Spring & American Visa. Her poetry, stories, articles, essays and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications including: Callaloo, Essence, Contemporary American Women Poets, among many others. Bashir is a fellow with Cave Canem and a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writer's festival for LGBT writers of African descent. She's currently wrasslin' poetry, paint, stuffed bunnies and sunshine in Austin, Tejas. website: samiyabashir.com
Monday, October 15, 2007
October Featured Artist - Senalka McDonald
Artist's Statement:
Being a young, black, Latina in America, I have always known what it is like to be unlike my American peers. This caused me to question many human actions and analyze them entirely. I feel that human emotions and relationships fuel our past and serve to shape our futures. Having grown up always questioning the dealings of humans, they are what I choose to focus my artwork on. My paintings have been about child molestation, focusing on a specific moment that changes a child's life forever. Because I am currently working though moving on to a new stage of my life, so are the children in my newer pieces. They are beginning their adolescent years; discovering social capacities, burgeoning sexuality and hidden longings. My photos and videos are of a completely different nature. I choose to focus on the grandeur of human memory. My attempt is to create a feeling of importance and beauty using a simple image, causing the viewer to relate what is being seen to his or her own memories. Serigraphy is a new obsession of mine. In this media, I ask the viewer "Who is an American?" I think about who has value within the United States and how much power the racial hierarchy has over the public. I plan this to be an ongoing project, using many different images to create a body of work that causes the viewer to question their notion of who an American truly is.
Currently, I am a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cultural Geography.
Artist's Work:
To learn more about the artist and her work, visit her website: www.senalka.com
October Featured Artist - Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano
Artist's Bio:
Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano is a Queer Xicano poet, dreamer and activist. Born in San José, California, he was raised in Estación Adela, Chihuahua and now lives in Austin, Texas. Lorenzo’s work has been called “uncompromising and hopeful, cínico y cariñoso,” “inspiring… provocative,” and “landing so deep / you bleed without feeling the cut.” He is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-Nominated Santo de la Pata Alzada: Poems from the Queer/Xicano/Positive Pen. He is in the final stages of publishing his second book, Promesas y Amenazas, an all-Spanish collection of poetry inspired by the Bolero aesthetic and is finalizing his third collection, God Don’t Live Here Anymore, scheduled for release in 2008. Lorenzo is the Director of Arts & Community Building for allgo: a Statewide Queer People of Color Organization in Texas; is a founding member and Board member of Unid@s, the National Latina/o Human Rights Organization; served on the Steering Committee of the recently consolidated National Latino Coalition for Justice; and, is the Cisgender Male CoChair of Out Youth, a community based queer youth organization in Austin. For more on Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, including random ramblings and embarrassing moments, visit: www.jotopower.com; godisbrown.blogspot.com; myspace.com/jotopower.
An excerpt of Lorenzo's Work:
Coming Soon!!
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