Talk on the Wild Side

Think of the word ‘poetry.’

Okay, before you puke, consider this: the best rock ‘n’ roll is the best poetry. From Robert Johnston to Bob Dylan to Shane MacGowan, genuine, passionate, meaningful poetry has lived well this century. Because poetry should have a beat; not be beat into you. We should not allow the word to be appropriated by some middle class dry-mouthed vampire academics, whose only purpose in life seems to be to drain meaning and life out of art. Because — like all great art — great poetry rocks. It moves you, makes you happy, sad, makes you think.

The Nuyorican poets are based in New York. They were originally set up in the early Seventies by two poets/writers, Miguel Pinero and Miguel Algarin, as a forum for Black and Hispanic voices. As one of their new generation poets, Dael Orlandersmith explains, the point Pinero and Algarin were trying to make was that: “You didn’t have to be a two hundred year old poet and a WASP to have a voice.

“What we’re doing,” Orlandersmith says, “is taking poetry and writing about what we know. It’s the best thing to do, to write about what you know. And take the word, as we call it: ‘kick the word’ to the public, to the nation, and make it come alive. You know, the way poetry is taught is the fuck-up. Because you have people who hate poetry. You know, I hated it as a kid, because of the way it was taught to me. I had some asshole teacher stand up and have me read a stanza, and we talk about that stanza. Or, if I was stimulated enough to bring something in; if it wasn’t Shelley, Keats or Byron, it didn’t fit.”

BACK SLAPPING AND ARSE LICKING

The perverts in the universities — and other good literary jobs — don’t want poetry to be popular. Because that would spoil their little club for them; their little circle of arts council grants and back-slapping and arse-licking. They couldn’t actually bear to compose poetry which actually meant anything. Not Orlandersmith. She has the strange fixation of wanting, “people to hear me stuff. I want it to be successful. To be successful and to make money off what I do is not a curse. In fact, it’s something that gives me the time to create. Because the stuff that I write is very, very dark. And I need that time and I need that space to reach inside, wrestle my demons and then assemble my demons.”

Orlandersmith performs her poetry, which considering the fact that poetry was born in the voice — that it is at base a technique of memory — makes total and perfect sense. “I am sick and tired,” she states, “of poets standing up before people and feeling that they don’t have an obligation to make their words come alive. Just because it’s brilliant on a page doesn’t mean you’re interesting to watch or interesting to hear. I have to captivate you. I have to have you listen to me. When I stand before people it’s my damn responsibility to make those words come alive. Words should kick ass sometimes.”

Rap/Hip Hop contains some of the most brilliant poetry made this century. “This particular movement was influenced by Hip Hop,” Orlandersmith states, “there’s no ‘ifs’, ‘ands’ or ‘buts’ about it. But it’s gone off in other directions as well. Hip Hop started it but it became a catalyst for other things. You know, some people say that Kerouac and Ginsberg started this sort of movement. Kerouac and Ginsberg didn’t have jack shit to do with this, and I love Jack Kerouac, I don’t like Ginsberg. But they didn’t have jack shit to do with our wave. Our wave came out of the streets. Our wave came out of hip hop and rap.”

While Orlandersmith pays her respect to rap, she has not time for its ‘bitch this, bitch that, nigger this, nigger that, side. It reflects a way of life in the ghetto — where she grew up — she agrees, but as she puts it: “Not everyone from the ghetto talks bitch this, bitch that.… A lot of the people who are coming out singing that stuff; these are middle class people.” In one way she can understand this, it’s “the flipside of racism,” as she puts it, whereby middle-class Blacks are, “made to feel that in order for them to be Black, they have to be ghettoised.”

THE SLAM

Although Hip Hop is a core influence, Orlandersmith wants to make it clear that the movement to bring spoken poetry back onto the streets and lives of people, has many other sources and influences, and is taking its own unique directions. This idea, of an evening of poetry which makes you laugh and which entertains you, while also cutting you to the core with words of meaning and depth, is becoming ever more popular in cities like Chicago and New York.

Part of the light entertainment of this movement is what’s called The Slam, a mock poetry competition, where the audience gives marks out of ten to the poets onstage. But then things can get serious, like when Orlandersmith steps up. She is a survivor of incest, and like one of her major influences, Lou Reed, she wants to express things “succinctly, compactly and clearly and honestly. “Because he has exposed himself, and he’s letting you know that if you are going through this silently, someone else before you has taken it, channelled it and thrown it back out.”

Which is what Orlandersmith is doing. She’s a survivor, and while many of her poems are maps of hell, they are at least maps. They put the experience down in word and by doing they place it, form it, tell the listener that she was there too and she has survived to tell the stories about little girls like Evangeline, who:

When he forced her legs apart

And when she tried to tell

No one would believe this child so dark

With thick-skinned lips

Who peeked through windows

Who crouched in corners

This sordid collector

Of splattered secrets

All kept in a small, black box.