Speak! CD

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:*
*March 7, 2009*
*SPEAK! WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA COLLECTIVE** RELEASING SELF-TITLED DEBUT CD*
*UNITED STATES *

SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective, a netroots coalition of women of color bloggers and media-makers, is debuting March 7, 2009 with a performance art CD, accompanied by a collaborative zine and classroom curriculum for educators.

Compiled and arranged by Liquid Words Productions, the spoken word CD weaves together the stories, poetry, music, and writings of women of color
from across the United States. The 20 tracks, ranging from the explosive
“Why Do You Speak?” to the reverent “For Those of Us,” grant a unique
perspective into the minds of single mothers, arrested queer and trans activists, excited children, borderland dwellers, and exploring dreamers, among
many others.

“We want other women of color to know they are not alone in their
experiences,” said writer and educator Alexis Pauline Gumbs, one of
the contributors to the CD. “We want them to know that this CD will
give sound, voice and space to the often silenced struggles and dreams of
womenof color.”

The Speak! collective received grant assistance from the Allied Media
Conference coordinators to release a zine complementing the works featured
on the CD, as well as a teaching curriculum for educators to incorporate its
tracks into the classroom environment.

“*Speak!* is a testament of struggle, hope, and love,” said blogger
Lisa Factora-Borchers of A Woman’s Ecdysis. “Many of the contributors are
in the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names… I
can guarantee you will have the same reaction as to when I heard them
speak, I was mesmerized.”

To promote the initiative, the Speak! collective is coordinating
listening parties in communities across America, creating short YouTube
promotions illustrating the CD creation process, and collaborating with organizers and activists online and offline.

The CD is available for online ordering at the SPEAK! Media Collective site on a sliding scale, beginning at $12.

All inquiries for review copies should be directed to us at speakcd@gmail.com. Proceeds of this album will go toward funding for mothers
and/or financially restricted activists attending the 11th Annual
*Allied Media Conference* in Detroit, MI from July 16-19.

[Tip o' the Fedora: Elle]

The First Jazz-Poet President?

Could Obama be the President that gets people interested in poetry again? Ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but it turns out that he dabbled a little in verse back in his undergrad years, even publishing a few poems in the undergrad literary journal. Heh, even Harold Bloom “was not unimpressed” with his work, which is really saying a lot coming from Bloom.

This is really cool, though (h/t Baratunde).

President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that he wants to “open up” the White House to local children and artists and that he also envisions a science lecture series to inspire youth.

Mr. Obama, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” outlined for the first time a way to showcase the “tapestry that is America.”

“We want to invite kids from local schools into the White House,” he said.

Mr. Obama said he wants the White House to be a forum for “elevating science once again and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about.”

He said he would like to invite jazz and classical musicians and have poetry readings in the White House.

Wait? What’s this? Intellectualism and creativity in the White House? Say it ain’t so! Poetry readings and Jazz in the White House? I too get all blubby about hearing that Obama plans on, gee imagine, investing in the U.S. infrastructure and creating jobs, but stuff like this just sends me into a complete tizzy of happiness.

Art, science, learning, and all a part of the new administration. Wow. Just wow! You’ll forgive me for being a tad overwhelmed over the thought of it. I’ve suffered from an 8-year nightmare that would send The Sandman into hiding.

What I Am Thankful For…

Language…

Your Revolution

I was reminded of this song on this thread over at Jack and Jill Politics. So good. It’s a remix, as it were, of Gill Scot-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and takes on misogynistic lyrics in Hip Hop. I’m kinda pissed now, though. I just spent half an hour digging through my records looking for this 12-inch and I can’t find it. There’s some really frigging good mixes of this song with DJ Vadim that I wanted to listen too. I can’t imagine for the life of me that I would sell this 12-inch, so were’d it go? Regardless, I had to share. Enjoy.

[Warning: NSFW for sexually explicit language]

“Your Revolution”

Poet Mahmoud Darwish Has Died

Ugh. I just learned from Theriomorph in comments that Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has also passed on. Theriomorph is right. This has been a bad weekend for art.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry encapsulated the Palestinian cause, will get the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank on Tuesday — an honor only previously accorded to PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

Tributes for Darwish poured in on Sunday, a day after the 67-year-old writer died from complications following heart surgery in a U.S. hospital in Houston, Texas.

A poem, “I Belong There”, from the Academy of American Poets. Translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash.

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.

I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell

with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.

I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,

a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.

I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.

I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to

her mother.

And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.

To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.

I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a

single word: Home.

May you rest in peace, Mr. Darwish.

Happy Bloomsday!

Grab yourself a bottle of Powers and celebrate the best novel of the 20th century that no one but a handful of English majors and Joyce scholars have ever read.

Sunday Poetry Review

Because sharing poetry is sharing love and peace and all that is good with the world.

“All the World Moved” by June Jordan¹

All the world moved next to me strange
I grew on my knees
in hats and taffeta trusting
the holy water to run
like grief from a brownstone
cradling.

Blessing a fear of the anywhere
face too pale to be family
my eyes wore ribbons
for Christ on the subway
as weekly as holiness
in Harlem.

God knew no East no West no South
no Skin nothing I learned like
traditions of sin but later
life began and strangely
I survived His innocence
without my own.

[Cross posted from The Unapolgetic Mexican]

1. June Jordan. Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans, ed. Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey, 136 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006). [↩]