Guest Poets

Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal / 2005 Arabian Drive / Finksburg, MD 21048— I became aware of Rudy Lewis’ labor of love a few short months ago during a visit to Kalamu ya Salaam’s e-drum listserv. As soon as I saw the title of the journal I knew it was about Black folks, and the power of the written word.  A quick click took me into a journal that’s long on creativity, highlighting well-known, little known, and a little known writers, and commitment to the empowerment of Black folks. I contacted Rudy to ask if he’d consider publishing some of my work. His response was immediate, and a couple of days after I’d forwarded some poems to him—they were part of ChickenBones. What I didn’t know was that this journal has been surviving for the last five years with very little outside financial support. . .  If we want journals like this to “thrive” we need to support them with more than our website hits, praise, and submissions for publication consideration.

—Peace, Mary E. Weems (January 2007)                       

  Kalamu ya Salaam Table

Writing Sonnets

On Writing Haiku

Life on Mars

By Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly noted the collection’s “lyric brilliance” and “political impulses [that] never falter.” A New York Times review stated, “Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we’re alone in the universe; it’s to accept—or at least endure—the universe’s mystery. . . . Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief. Smith’s pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the book’s first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant.” Life on Mars follows Smith’s 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet’s second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African Americans. The Body’s Question (2003) was her first published collection. Smith said Life on Mars, published by small Minnesota press Graywolf, was inspired in part by her father, who was an engineer on the Hubble space telescope and died in 2008.

Nelson) / Carver: A Life in Poems /  Marilyn Nelson Awarded Frost Medal / Murders of Till  / The Shocking Story 

Barack Obama: The corporate masters’ 21st century ‘House Negro’  /  A Day in the Life—Marvin X and Discussion 

A Day in the Life— 2  / A Day in the Life—Marvin X and Discussion 3 / Greetings from Japan‏ (Anastacia Tolbert)

Karma’s Footsteps

By Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie

Somebody has to tell the truth sometime, whatever that truth may be. In this, her début full collection, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie offers up a body of work that bears its scars proudly, firm in the knowledge that each is evidence of a wound survived. These are songs of life in all its violent difficulty and beauty; songs of fury, songs of love. ‘Karma’s Footsteps’ brims with things that must be said and turns the volume up, loud, giving silence its last rites. “Ekere Tallie’s new work ‘Karma’s Footsteps’ is as fierce with fight songs as it is with love songs. Searing with truths from the modern day world she is unafraid of the twelve foot waves that such honesties always manifest. A poet who “refuses to tiptoe” she enters and exits the page sometimes with short concise imagery, sometimes in the arms of delicate memoir. Her words pull the forgotten among us back into the lightning of our eyes.—Nikky Finney /  Ekere Tallie Table

Her Voice   / Mother Nature: Thoughts on Nourishing Your Body, Mind, and Spirit During Pregnancy and Beyond  www.ekeretallie.com  

Carrie Mae Weems—Art: 21  /  Carrie Mae Weems Talks/ Rev Curtis Watson—Come Out of the Wilderness  /  Louis Armstrong—Mack the Knife 1959

Schomburg: Chronicler of the Black Diaspora

a Precursor of Biracial America

By Jonathan Tilove

Buddy Tate – Mack The Knife  /  Ben Webster – Chelsea Bridge (1964)  /  Lester Young 1944—Blue Lester /  The Cry of Jazz (1959) Part 1 of 4

Trouble?

By Craig A. Garner

Other Books Books by Craig A. Garner: A Poetic Purpose to My Life  / ChickenBones Black Arts and Black Power Figures (Compiled by Rudolph Lewis)    

Was the CIA involved in Libya’s revolution?  / Noam Chomsky—USA has extreme contempt for democracy  / Tuareg minority flees Libya /  Wayfarer 4th Quarter 1967—Black Baltimore magazine

Pelican Heart—An Anthology of Poems by Lasana M. Sekou

Edited by Emio Jorge Rodriguez

Passion for the Nation is what comes out of Sekou’s poems at a first glance and at a deeper reading. The book is a selection gathered from eleven of Sekou’s poetry collections between 1978 and 2010. Rodríguez is an independent Cuban academic, writer, and essayist. He has been a researcher at Casa de las Américas’s Literary Research Center and founded the literary journal Anales del Caribe (1981-2000). María Teresa Ortega translated the poems from the original English to Spanish. A critical introduction, detailed footnotes, and a useful glossary by Rodríguez are also found in the book of 428 pages. The collection has been launched at conferences in Barbados, Cuba, and Mexico.

Rodriguez’s introduction to Pelican Heart refers to Dr. Howard Fergus’s Love Labor Liberation in Lasana Sekou, which is the critical commentary to Sekou’s work that identifies three cardinal points in his poetics. I would add as cardinal points: Belief or Driving Force of people in political processes, like his political commitment to make St. Martin independent, as the southern part of the Caribbean island is a territory of the Netherlands, while the northern part is a French Collectivité d’outre-mer.—Sara Florian  / Lasana Sekou

Romare Bearden’s Southern Sensibility / The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child. (Kahlil Gibran)

Devil in a Blue Dress and Cinnamon Kiss  (Mimi Ferebee)  / We Can’t Afford To Not Fix Justice System  (Benjamin Todd Jealous)

There’s no big accomplishment in acting white (after being subjected to some third stream muzak) / I Choose Us: The African  Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

After Katrina . . . 

By Latorial Faison

When We Were Poor Revelations  Sounds of Blackness       Chaos 

Ekere Tallie —Forced Entry   A Poem for A Man WhoKnows  Elemental Sounds  Permanent Rain  Reunion  Jazz Musicians  Suddenly I Need One Thing Constant

 Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks: Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7 /  Part 2 of 7  /  Part 3 of 7  / Part 4 of 7  / Part 5 of 7 / Part 6 of 7  /  Part 7 of 7

Africa My Motherland (Not)

By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Tell Me How Long

Has the Essence Train Been Gone?

By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Lucille Clifton Still Missed and Always Loved

The African Medicine Women of New Jersey  /  Try Jah Love (Third World 1982)  /Chinua Achebe, Pt 3/3 / Champagne & Reefer (Muddy Waters)

Beverly Jenai: Do Cowboys Dance?   / That Which Binds   / The Painting  My Friend Yictove /   Bevjenai Obama Order Page / The Crossings

Kalamu ya Salaam: in the hot house of black poetry another furious flowering —  Part I / Part II  /  Part III  /  Part IV  / What Is Black Poetry

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Response to Criticism of Fellow Ministers

By Martin Luther King

Emmett Till Case   /  Confessions of the Killers  / Racism Republican Style   It Ain’t About Race  Sitting ducks at the superdome

The Black Arts Movement Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s  By James Edward Smethurst / ChickenBones Black Arts and Black Power Figures

  37 Poems by Lasana Sekou taught at US university   Salt Reaper  – Poems from the Flats    Tortured Fragments   Haiti 200   Lasana Sekou in Oxford Poetry Book    Skin Poems The Salt Reaper       Visit & Fellowship II  Sekou Knighted  Sekou Writes with “Erotic Power”

Books By Puerto Rican Poet/Writer, Alberto O. Cappas

  Doña Julia and Other Selected Poems  / Never Too Late to Make a U-Turn   Lessons for Myself

Kwame Ture defines Pan-Africanism (1 of 2)  / Kwame Ture defines Pan-Africanism (2 of 2)  /  Debate James Baldwin and Malcolm X / African Hair and Its Significance

Beverly Jenai: Do Cowboys Dance?   That Which Binds   The Painting  My Friend Yictove / Jean-Michel Basquiat : The Radiant Child

How the U.S. Impoverished Haiti (Jean Damu) / Also Poems on Haiti by Marvin X, Ayodele Nzinga, and  Dr. Rose Ure Mezu

Jean Saint-Vil of Canada Haiti Action is interviewed by Pat Van Horne / New Orlean’s Heart is in Haiti

No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain! (John Maxwell)   / The hate and the quake (Sir Hilary Beckles)

Climbing Malcolm’s Ladder /The Black Religious Crisis  / A Theology of Obligation & Liberation  /

 How the Riots Might Have Turned Out 

Autumn Leaves

Short Story by Sam Greenlee

Be-Bop Man/Be-Bop Woman  /  When Desoree Danced   / Ammunition: Poetry and Other Raps / Snake in the Garden of Eden 

Fanon: A Novel by John Edgar Wideman / The Wretched of the Earth /  We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For  / Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher

 The Omni-Americans  / An Unmistakable Shade of Red & The Obama Chronicles  / Our Women Keep Our Skies From Falling  / Black Fire: An Anthology

The Intersection of Beauty and Crime

Poems by Jawanza Phoenix

Macy Gray—I Try  / Macy Gray—She Ain’t Right For You  /  Macy Gray—When I See You  /  Macy Gray—Sweet Baby 

  Rudy’s Place : Sussex County: A Tale of Three Centuries  Public Education in Sussex County in Black and White   History of Jerusalem Baptist Church

The Big Boys  /  Industrial Me / Steadman Graham’s Steps to Success

New Work by Imamu Amiri Baraka (Black World, May 1973))

Mary E. Weems Table /  4 Closure Poems / Mary Weems on YouTube  / Nomination  / Marvin X, Essays on Education (e-Book)

Poetic Sermons for Sundays

I Want Things, Remember Me, The art of seeing the blessings

By Ayodele Nzinga

Ayodele Nzinga Directs Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson

Privatizing Education: The Neoliberal Project  / Timbuktu Educational Foundation  /  Timbuktu: Recapturing the Wisdom and History of a Region

Dancing in a Book’s Arms

A. Rita Gaines Reviews Kamau Daáood’s

Tracy Chapman: Baby Can I Hold You Tonight  /  Talkin bout a revolution  / Give me one reason  / Crossroad / New Beginning

Dr. King Said It: I’m Black and I’m Proud!  /Reparations, Queen Mother Moore /  Stokely Carmichael—We Ain’t Goin’

Turf Dancing in the Rain / WordSlanger@Black World Theater /  Staceyann Chin—My First Period  /  Nigerian Yoruba Movie by Funke Akindele

A Tribute to Lucille Clifton (1936 – 2010)

Poet Lucille Clifton was a mentor, friend, and teacher to scores of writers in Maryland and around the country. Clifton served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland and was Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She received the National Book Award for her poetry collection, Blessing the Boats (2000). Clifton wrote more than 16 books for children. She served as trustee of the Enoch Pratt Free Library from 1975 to 1984.Join us for this celebration of the life of Lucille Clifton. Poets from Baltimore and around the state will raise their voices to honor the memory of Clifton’s life and works. We invite you to bring your favorite Lucille Clifton poem to share. Schedule: (click on the location to see map) Central Library   Thursday, Jun 24, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)  PrattLibrary

 Kam Hei Tsuei:   Hurricane Katrina: Did the Chinese Help /  Chinatown Blues  / Minna Tsuei Poems

Fela Kuti—Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense  /  Fela Kuti—U Be Thief / Fela Kuti in Concert  / Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 Zombie  / Fela Kuti—Shakara

Books by Al Young

Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs  /  Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Still and Frames

ChickenBones Black Arts and Black Power Figures (Compiled by Rudolph Lewis)

 (compulsion strikes the witness)

jorge’s journey

  Notes for (jorge’s journey)

Kelley, Everett, Dove, Madhubuti Win Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards—By Calvin Reid—Nov 16, 2010—The nonfiction award was presented to Robin D.G. Kelley for Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press) and the fiction prize was presented to Percival Everett for his novel I am Not Sidney Poitier (Graywolf Press). For the first time in the history of the awards, there were two winners for poetry: Haki Madhubuti for Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems 1966—2009 (Third World Press) and Rita Dove for Sonata Mulattica (W.W. Norton).

Winners receive a statue and a cash prize. This year’s event also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, founded in 1990 by novelist Marita Golden and bibliophile Clyde McElvene as a resource center for writers, readers and supporters of African American literature.—PublishersWeekly

Miles Davis: Miles Ahead / Milestones / Kind of Blue /  Freddie Freeloader  /  All Blues  /  Walkin’  /  Miles Davis et John Coltrane – So what

The Passing of Poet

Carolyn Marie Rodgers 

(December 14, 1940—April 2, 2010)

Fela Kuti—Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense  /  Fela Kuti—U Be Thief / Fela Kuti in Concert  / Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 Zombie  / Fela Kuti—Shakara

Tracy Chapman: Baby Can I Hold You Tonight  /  Talkin bout a revolution  / Give me one reason  / Crossroad / New Beginning

Creative Writing at Dillard  / Dillard Faculty Focus  / English Faculty Focus Dillard / Dillard Writing Successes / Poems: Red Beans and Ricely Yours

An Unmistakable Shade of Red & The Obama Chronicles (Mary E. Weems) /   4 Closure Poems Mary Weems on YouTube  / Nomination /

Class

 For Katie Latimore  November 7, 1900 to February 2, 2010

Poem by Glenis Redmond

Mutabaruka: Live 1984  /  I Am The Man   / Johnny Drughead 198X /  Butta Pan Kulcha / Whey Mi Belang  /

Mutabaruka: Reggae Sunsplash-1982 / it no good(to stay in a white man country too long /dispel the lie / Spirituality / Blacks In Amerika

The Flowering Rock, Poems by Eric Merton Roach

Kam Williams Interviews Colin Roach

We keep coming back and coming back & Other Poems by Kahlil Koromantee  / Poetry Foundation

Opened Letters

The N Word, Go Tell Michele, and other Books

By Rudolph Lewis

Black Boys and Burning Midnight Oil  /  Dust Bowls and Wading Pools

A Season’s Griot Poems

By Beverly Fields Burnette

A Look inside Baraka’s Toilet

By Marvin X

Marvin X and Fresno State University

 Love One Another / The Ancestors Are Not Really Dead  /  Into His Arms  / On Learning of Walter Rodney’s Death & Other Poems 

  Ralph Nader on Israel-Palestine, Barack Obama, John McCain

Poor poetry, rich deceit

The Phrasing Of ISP Letters 

ISP Deceives 

Baroness Lynda Chalker

 Why South Sudan Wants Obama to Lose White House Bid (Mulumba)  / Obama and the Israeli Lobby   (Uri Avnery)

Obama Victory Creates African Excitement  / Obama Declares Victory  / An Obama Love Story / Meditation for Obama /   Obama 2008 Table

whose really blues (Q. R. Hand Jr.)

Interview with Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd Author of  Loving Black Women     

 Remembering Chinwe  History to Destiny Through Afrocentric Poetry  Waiting for You    My Beautiful Wife    Journey to the Motherland

Who Fears Death  

By Nnedi Okorafor

Well-known for young adult novels (The Shadow Speaks; Zahrah the Windseeker), Okorafor sets this emotionally fraught tale in post apocalyptic Saharan Africa. The young sorceress Onyesonwu—whose name means “Who fears death?”—was born Ewu, bearing a mixture of her mother’s features and those of the man who raped her mother and left her for dead in the desert. As Onyesonwu grows into her powers, it becomes clear that her fate is mingled with the fate of her people, the oppressed Okeke, and that to achieve her destiny, she must die. Okorafor examines a host of evils in her chillingly realistic tale—gender and racial inequality share top billing, along with female genital mutilation and complacency in the face of destructive tradition—and winds these disparate concepts together into a fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling

Vocal Landscape Poems by Paul Tyler  Drawings by Patricia Brown

We Are A Dancing People  Leslie Garland Bolling   Wendy Stand Up with Your Proud Hair!  Coming of Age in 1960s Newark

Beltway Poetry Quarterly  inaugurates National Poetry Month with a new issue devoted to authors who have recently published their first, full-length, single-author books.  Five authors are featured, all with notable books, including A.B. Spellman, author of Things I Must Have Known 162 pp. Coffee House Press 2008. Spellman is a founding member of the Black Arts Movement and one of the fathers of modern jazz criticism.  A.B. Spellman Interview

Dungeons

A Poem by Ayodele Nginga

1994 Furious Flower Conference  /  Etana—Roots  /  Etana—Wrong Address  /  Etana—The Strong One /  Etana—August Town /  Etana—Dont Forget

Psychedelic Literature is pleased to announce that the Summer 2010 issue of Black Magnolias Literary Journal is now available.  This issue features essays by Dr. Agnieszka Lobodziec (University of Zielona/Poland), Carl Schinasi (Miles College), and Shelia Bonner (Belhaven University), poetry by Rudolph Lewis (Editor of ChickenBones:  A Journal) and Nathan Harper aka Urban Raw (Jackson State/Mississippi State) and fiction by Tony Robles (author of two children’s book and editor of POOR Magazine) and Katrina Byrd (Playwright in Residence for The Center Players).  To purchase a copy or view the complete table of contents and cover art, go to Psychedelic Literature.com/Black Magnolias

Black Magnolias Literary Journal is a quarterly that uses poetry, fiction, and prose to examine and celebrate the social, political, and aesthetic accomplishments of African Americans with an emphasis on Afro-Mississippians and Afro-Southerners. We welcome pieces on a variety of African American and Afro-Southern culture, including history, politics, education, incidents/events, social life, and literature. All submissions are to be made by e-mail as a Word attachment to psychedeliclit@bellsouth.net . Each issue costs $12.00, and a year’s subscription is $40.00.

Richard Wright Print Resources  /  China II Report  (June 4-19, 2010)  / Open Note to President Barack Obama //  Searching for the Half Sign (O. R. Dathorne)

      Claire Carew files:  The Artist as Social Activist   From Birmingham Alabama to Qana Lebanon   It Ain’t About Race   Healing Wisdom of Mexico 

Sitting ducks at the superdome Claire Carew: Giving Voice Through Art   

Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy . . .

is about devastation and mourning, about the failure of humanity to act humanely, about the politics of poverty and race, but it is also about hope and healing. The poets give voice to the rainbow that comes after the storm and the revival of spirit that comes out of the depths of tested faith.  All of them share a willingness to see beyond their sorrow to reinvent the spirit of “Laissez les bon temps rouler!”  Though human suffering shaped the beginning of this project, the result of it is a morning of hope and inspiration

ChickenBones: A Journal has invaded my Sunday School class.  

Last week, I took a copy of the essay, “The Black Church Is Dead,” from ChickenBones, to class at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, NJ. Brother Warren read it out loud, and we all discussed it. We are members of a progressive black church, but we weren’t always. We have had other experiences, and some not always so positive/ pleasant/nurturing. Cornel West—my Cousin West—calls the author of “The Black Church Is Dead” one of the finest new public intellectuals on the horizon, and he most certainly is, Eddie Glaude, I hope I have the spelling of his name. I just wanted you to know that ChickenBones continues to provide sustenance for constituents far and wide. Its impact upon the black community is most definite.—Sandra L. West

Ron Artest Ain’t the Problem!  People Did Not Have to Die  Another Stolen Election?   The Watts Rebellion   Protest to Stop Police Brutality

Both Water & Bridges

 (for Staceyann in the space/time continuum)

By Kalamu ya Salaam

Creative Writing at Dillard  / Dillard Faculty Focus  / English Faculty Focus Dillard / Dillard Writing Successes / Poems: Red Beans and Ricely Yours

How US Energy Policy Got Militarized—The association between “energy security” (as it’s now termed) and “national security” was established long ago. President Franklin D. Roosevelt first forged this association way back in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged American access to Saudi oil. The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter told Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was a “vital interest” of the United States, and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered “by any means necessary, including military force.” To implement this “doctrine,” Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organization, the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. Every president since Reagan has added to CENTCOM’s responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons, and other assets. As the country has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa, U.S. military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well. Alternet

Communism as Russian Imperialism  (Nicholas Berdyaev)    / Aboard the African Star  / Dublin Quarterly

Niyi Juliad: Osundare’s Universe of Burdens  The Poet’s Pen & Other Poems 

Artichoke Pickle Passion: A Sonnet

By Beverly Fields Burnette

Search for Black Men: Vietnam Post-Mortem  Searching for my Great Grandmother at Stonewall  Voices of the Culture

Saloy Files: Red Beans and Ricely Yours (2005)

WE: A Poem  For Frank Fitch  For Daddy V  Mother with Me on Canal Street  A Life Won with Blood & Tears

Mona Lisa Saloy Winner of the PEN Oakland National Literary Award   Trouble in Paradise (Mona Lisa Saloy) /   Red Beans and Ricely Yours — Reviews

Mona Lisa Saloy   /  Mona Lisa, Lakeside and the N-Word   / Red Beans and Ricely Yours — Reviews

 Asili Ya Nadhiri  and how do you warm     / Duh Measur’n Rod    / Mama   /    Corners

Attending The Ninth National Black Writers Conference 

A Report by Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd

Report on Third Annual African-American Spoken Word Festival  /  Larry Uklai Johnson Redd Table

After the Hurricanes

The Art of Tom Dent: Early Evidence  (essay)

 for nia long   /  Instructions for Your New Osiris  /  The Cruelty of Age  in Lorenzo Thomas’ “Tirade”  

 Askia on Pan Africanism   /   Dawnsong!  /   Osirian Rhapsody: A Myth 

     Rudy Interviews Askia Touré Part 1   Part 2  

Three for “O” in Light and Shadow

 Askia M. Touré    Askia on Pan Africanism  /  Black Arts and Black Power Figures  /  Askia Toure’ Talks To Konch  / Black Arts Movement  /

Black Arts and Cultural Revolution (Askia M. Touré) / Dingane Joe Goncalves  / Journal of Black Poetry Festival   

9/11 (Are We Flying the Same Flag Now?)

By James Goodwyn

Fourth World Poems: For Stan Tookie Williams   Postcard from Hell  Ode to Bowling Balls   When They Flooded New Orleans   The street I live on is dying  

Will the people ever wake up?   I Choose Us: The African  Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd—— Listen to Conversations of Africa  by following this link: http://www.conversationsofafrica.asmnetwork.net/ You are invited to listen to this and join in the conversation and make it a discussion by calling in and participating at 347-215-7831! Remember this segment will begin at 8 PM Pacific Standard Time!  Conversations of Africa  / Attending The Ninth National Black Writers Conference   / Larry Uklai Johnson Redd Table

Send  a Gift to ChickenBones: A Journal  — Perform a Selfless & Commited Act Give a New Gift Book — Support Writers & Poets     

Only one copy of each title now available (except where indicated):  — Donations at all levels welcomed

Sisters Who Hate Fast Food  

By Anastacia (Stacey) Tolbert

 Baring My Soul  /  Kool Aid  / Elvis at the dinner party  /   Breaking Down  / Anatacia’s Lament   / Baring My Soul   /  Fantasy Island   / Sonia’s Song  / What’s Goin On 

Grace Boggs: The Worst and Best of Times  Crime Among Our People   The Dropout Challenge  Give Detroit Schools a Fresh Start   Food Future Past                                    Going Beyond Black and White     A Thoughtful Conversation about Religion

Files for Yictove On the Passing of Malvina Turk  American Money  Blue Print  (Poems) Jammin  Mr Politician  My Life Story  Tropical Love   

African Slave Castle (video)

Poetic Mission

A Forum on the Role of the Poet and Poetry

The First Time I Heard Billie

Poem by Amin Sharif

On Cultural Work

The Free Southern Theatre Institute

a Venue for Truth-Telling

By Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

Cornel West Moves to Princeton  West Cites Reason For Quitting  Cornel West: An Editorial  Pass the Mic  Kam Williams Interviews Cornel West

Beverly Jenai: Do Cowboys Dance?   That Which Binds   The Painting  My Friend Yictove / Jean-Michel Basquiat : The Radiant Child

Did you know  . . .

April is National Poetry Month

We highlight Dudley Randall and Audre Lorde

360° A Revolution of Black Poets Edited by Kalamu ya Salaam with Kwame Alexander

 Reginald Lockett in Memory and Tribute

to Oakland’s Poet and Professor

Some Gangster Pain By Gillian Conoley

Some Gangster Pain  Slave Quarter  Suddenly the Graves  Goat Without Horns  / Global News:Politics—Literature & the Arts

Poems for Peace in Kenya

By Maurine Otor

Poems of Love and Pain  (Maurine Otor)  /  Human Rights and Women’s Rights

Love Poems by Amendrius Elizabeth McRae

Queen Africa: A Poem in Two Parts

By  Betty Wamalwa Muragori

Alberto O. Cappas, Poet/Writer   Never Too Late to Make a U-Turn An Educational Pledge and 15 Questions to Self-Development

Poems: Doña Julia Review   Cappas Bio  Nubian Voices   Doña Julia    Her Borinquen   Haiti in Puerto Rico My Home

Interview with Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd Author of  Loving Black Women     

 Remembering Chinwe  History to Destiny Through Afrocentric Poetry  Waiting for You    My Beautiful Wife    Journey to the Motherland

Whatbody Is Killing

   (a concave allusion to Amiri Baraka’s “Somebody Blew Up America”)

By Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

Blue Voices for the Fourth of July  /  Somebody Blew Up America   Making Peace with the Loss of Things

Slo Dance Reviews   Celebrating the Release  Acknowledgements  Slo Dance Table   Slo Dance Introduction  A Real Long Look   The Protector  Mobutu and Zaire

Tom Dent Speaks Tom Dent Bio  My Father Is Dead  Jessie Covington Dent  When I Do That Thing  

When I was a girl

By Mary Weems

On Almost Meeting Alice Walker  Five Poems   News at Noon   Argo Starch   Mary E. Weems Table

Man of Fire—Man of Passion  by C.P. Gause, PhD / Poems  by Andrea Barnwell To Myself: Lists    The Sudan     January Again     Rain Poem

A Poetic Purpose to My Life

By Craig A. Garner

Poems, Interviews, & a Story by Jane Musoke-Nteyafas: Meet Jay Lou Ava   Where Is the Love of All Things African? WE BE BLACK PEOPLE 

REMEMBER: CHEIKH ANTA DIOP   AFRO-DISIAC   FORBIDDEN FRUIT  Enough with the Poisonous Lyrics   Interview with Rudolph Lewis  

The Wondrous Wanda Coleman Poems  & Stories She Writes

  Yictove Obituary & Poems

Written by daughter, Chie Lunn

Before Becoming Historical  / Yictove (Eugene Turk) made his transition suddenly Saturday evening,  July 28th 2007

Sundiata Memorials—A special Memorial for Sekou Sundiata takes place on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 (his birth date), at Tishman Auditorium, New School University, 66 West 12th Street, exactly from 6pm to 8pm, with poets, musicians, family and friends. . . . African Voices africanvoices@aol.com is looking for poems and short comments from friends and fellow artists who were influenced and inspired by Sekou Sundiata. Publisher Carolyn Butts and Editor Layding Kaliba are looking to publish as many dedications to him as possible; therefore, no submission should be longer than 500 words. African Voices also wants to include photographs to accompany the dedications All submissions should be sent to africanvoices@aol.com no later than midnight, August 20, 2007, in order to include materials gathered in the very next issue. Interested parties may submit materials via email and/or call African Voices at 212.865.2982.

Gifted Poet Sekou Sundiata (August 22, 1948 — July 18, 2007) Obituary by Louis Reyes Rivera

Loneliness   40 Acres in a prison    Stand By Me

Poems/Lyrics by  Crystal Cartier

Check out Crystal’s rousing Stand by Me video and her delightful Hello World video

The Afro-Blues Tradition: Glorious Child of The Africans  By Kwame A F Copeland

Emerge & See

By Tony Medina

I and I Bob Marley  / Love to Langston  / Christmas Makes Me Think  /  DeShawn Days  / Committed to Breathing

The Different Flavors of Words  By Claudia Saul

Ashé, a Poem of Homage & Love

for Iya Barbara Ann Teer‏ (1937-2008)

By Olabisi Askia Toure

Tavis Smiley Questions Minister Louis Farrakhan on President Barack Obama:  Part 1 /  Part 2 / Part 3 / “The Black Agenda is the American Agenda.”

African Burial Ground

By Linda Mayfield-Hayes

Po-It Brotha Soul Untitled  Himacy  Lickwid  Langwij (A Musical CD)

We Are A Dancing People  /  Leslie Garland Bolling   / Wendy Stand Up with Your Proud Hair!  / Badge of Honor: Coming of Age

Maya Angelou at Million Man March   /   1 in 2 Million  / Cries of a Ghetto Child  / The Chosen One 

My Grandma Rocks the Cradle and Rules the World

& Other Poems by Ellen Dunbar

Writings by Ng’ethe Githinji I  Am Not Superman #1       Twenty Short Stories of Love

Poems by Cheryl W. Robinson

Global News:Politics—Literature & the Arts

37 Poems by Lasana Sekou taught at US university

Poet, Activist, Sonia Sanchez Reading Toni Cade Bambara / Kalamu ya Salaam Tribute to Toni Cade Bambara

“I like your Christ but I don’t like your Christians, your Christians are so unlike your Christ”—Gandhi

The Autobiography of Medgar Evers A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches 2006

By Myrlie Evers-Williams and Manning Marable  / Bob Dylan—Only a pawn in their game (video) /The Ballad of Medgar Evers —SNCC Freedom Singers

Second2Last Table —   a generation    Scene/Seen  Money  The 10 Step Program  Truth B   Conversation With Myself     Crown   Legion    Change

How can we trust them?

 By Akoli Penoukou

Laura Ivers —What’s For Supper   The Proliferation of a Lie  NEGLECT  The Price of Ignorance  Textbook Victimization  A Letter To Langston Hughes

  ]]>

Searching for my Great Grandmother at Stonewall

(For my great grandmother Mary Lewis Farrar)

By Beverly Fields Burnette

Voices of the Culture   Search for Black Men: Vietnam Post-Mortem

 Paula M. Patton-Ross — Miss La Reba Potato’s Salad   Tell Me Where  AfterGlow

Flowering Sky

By Arif Ay

 Poems Translated by Mevlut Ceylan

Carnations Guerrilla  Here   Looking at Istanbul  Ostlers & Doomsday   Parting  Poems of Destruction  RAMP  REQUIEM  

Say it Loud: Poems about James Brown. Edited by: Mary E. Weems, and Thomas Sayers Ellis. We grew up on James Brown’s hit me! When he danced every young Black man wanted to move, groove and look like him. Mr. Brown wasn’t called the hardest workingman in show business because he wasn’t. Experiencing a James Brown show was like getting your favorite soul food twice, plus desert. His songs, like black power fists you could be proud of and move to at the same time.  When Mr. Brown sang make it funky we sweated even in the wintertime.  Losing him was like losing somebody in our family. This is a shout out for poems about the impact James Brown had on our lives.  Poems that will help people remember, honor, and celebrate his legacy. Don’t be left in a cold sweat, send us your old and new James Brown poems today.Submission Guidelines:  3-5 Unpublished and/or published poems with acknowledgement included. No longer than 73 lines  Deadline: December 31, 2007 (Receipt not postmark) Send hard copies along with a Word Document and short bio on a CD to: Dr. Mary E. Weems / English Department /  John Carroll University / 20700 North Park Blvd. / University Hts., Ohio 44118 / Send via e-mail attachment (Word Documents Only) to: mweems45@sbcglobal.net,  and tse@case.edu