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CELEBRATING AMERICAN SHE-POETS (17): NIKKI GIOVANNI, Quilting the Black-eyed Pea

Nikki Giovanni (1943), American poet, writer, activist and educator
Nikki Giovanni (1943), American poet, writer, activist and educator

Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are
safe
Art offers Sanctuary to everyone willing
to open their hearts as well as their lives”
excerpt for Art Sanctuary in Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, poems and not quite poems

Nikki Giovanni is lauded as iconic, luminous, adventuresome and courageous.  She is all of these, but I think what I like most about her is that she is straight-forward, practical and compassionate. These characteristics are the underpinning that make her a rather extraordinary poet, a powerful combination of visceral and intellectual.

There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”

Nikki Giovanni first came to note in the late ’60s and early ’70s as part of the Civil Rights, Black Arts and Black Power movements. The strength of her voice punctuated our poetic and political world and she has written, taught and advocated for uncommon good sense ever since. As with all of us, she has many roles in life including daughter, mother, friend and lung cancer survivor. It is clear in her work that she values family and community and supports and encourages these values in others.

Ms. Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. She earned her undergraduate degree in history with honors at Fisk University and did her graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her knowledge of history richly informs her perspectives in poetry, essay and talk. She taught at several universities including Virginia Tech and was at Virginia Tech for the shooting by Seung-Hui Cho in 2007 when he murdered thirty-seven people.  Cho was a student in her poetry class. She sensed something was amiss with him and asked the authorities to remove him from her class.  After the shooting, she spoke at the convocation.

We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS. Neither do the invisible children walking the night awake to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water….We are Virginia Tech….We will prevail.”

This video is the first of two in this post. If you are reading from an email subscription, you will have to link through to the site to view the videos.

Ms Giovanni’s early writing was a response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., John and Robert Kennedy, and Medgar Evans.  Her first book (1968) Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement is considered by some to be the one of the most important books on the black-rights movement.  Younger people reading it will want to research the history of the era to put the book in context.

Ms. Giovanni has written some twenty-one books of poetry as well as autobiography and children’s books. She’s edited anthologies and collaborated on books with James Baldwin and Margaret Walker. She’s won countless awards for both her work and her activism. The following video is a reading of Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars).

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

portrait ~ Brett Weinstein under CC BY-SA 2.0

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, SUPERMAN … and therein lies a writing prompt for you

SupermanRoss“On a purely personal level, it’s very strange, because as a kid, Superman informed my personality. Now I’ve been given the job of forming Superman’s personality and, in some ways, drawing on my own background.”  J. Michael Straczynski author of Superman: Earth One

The first comic about the character (an immigrant, by the way) that was destined to become an American cultural icon came out on this day in 1938.  Superman, the invention of Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” He was ultimately affiliated with the Justice League and the Legion of Super-Heroes. He was the first of the great comic book superheros. He’s come a long way in both print and film media since 1938 and since this 1950s television version:

(I admit I could have used a more contemporary video but this is the version I grew up with and I still love it best.)
Note: If you are reading this post from an email, you will have to link through to the blog to see the video.

Yesterday, I wrote a poem, an homage, to real-life superheroes, the women and men who are dedicated  to fighting injustice and laying the groundwork for understanding and peace: the seeds of awakening. I wrote it because I’ve just finished reading some books by a brave and intelligent activist for common sense and social justice. The poem started out being an homage to her, but I began to think of and tick-off the names in my mind of the people who have invested their lives (and sometimes lost them) in the work of peace and justice and so had to broaden the poem’s reference.  Though the poem is written in the feminine, it is meant to be inclusive of all who fight for justice, female and male.

WRITING PROMPT: Write a poem, story or essay about a real-life superhero you admire. Show why you admire this person and perhaps what you try to emulate. Or, alternately, create your own fictitious superhero. Remember, every superhero has to have a vulnerability. Superman’s was krypton.

Illustration: Superman as depicted in The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes (August 2005). Art by Alex Ross. Used under U.S. fair use doctrine.

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the seeds of awakening, a poem

rebbleoh! simple the beginnings,
the apple of amazement,
the core of an idea, and
out slips the memories,
the injustices on which
the child-mind puzzled,
processing in adolescence,
then big girl, grown woman,
chasten the world, plant
the seeds of awakening

courage in slender frame, high
thoughts in rounded forehead,
the long expressive hands,
the sweeping circumstances,
Africa, Arabia, Europe, U.S.,
first the suffering and tears,
then the work, work, work ~
courage in the face of tyranny,
voices of the voiceless: the Justias!
the Prudentias! of our modern day

© 2016, poem and illustration, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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EXPERIMENTS in iPhoneOgraphy and Video

IMG_8736

Way back when, one of my main motivations for ditching my flip phone and getting a smart phone (best thing I ever did) was the camera. As much as anything, I got my iPhone 5c to take, edit and manipulate photos. I wanted to be able to illustrate poems and other works.

I’ve also had some ideas for videos I’d like to make and the video below is my first experiment. I used Animoto, a cloud-based service founded in 2006 according to Wikipedia. Honestly, it was just the first service that came up when I started my search. No analysis went into the selection. I didn’t comparison shop. Since I’ve never done this before, I can’t tell you how easy or not Animoto is to use relative to other tools.  The video is not exactly what I envisioned, but the problem is mine, not Animoto. After awhile I just got tired of fussing over which photos, what order and what music.

I found Animoto easy – intuitive, as they say – to use and affordable, though that’s a relative thing.  The videos are loaded into a WordPress post the same way you’d load a YouTube video  – by using the URL. Easy.

You can log into Animoto and play around without making any committment to buy, so if it’s something you want to try too – GO FOR IT. The site offers direction, information on copyright, a limited selection of music and even stock photographs if you don’t have your own. Not bad. $8 a month if you pay for an entire year. Otherwise it’s $16 a month.  That’s just the basic package. There are two other options.

If you are viewing this from email, it’s likely you’ll have to link through to watch the video.