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Kwansabas for Jayne Cortez
Writers
Club Resumes 19th Season--September 5, 2005
August 2005
To: All Media, Poets,
Writers, Cultural Centers, Libraries, Schools, English
Departments
From: Eugene B.
Redmond Writers Club/SIUE English Department/Drumvoices Revue
Contact: 618 650-3991; eredmon@siue.edu;
Fax: 618 650-3509
WRITERS CLUB RESUMES 19th SEASON OF MEETINGS SEPTEMBER 5:
Issues “Call” for “Kwansabas for Jayne Cortez”—Poet,
Activist & “Firespitter”
East Saint Louis, Illinois—Amidst
celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement,
the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club resumes its 19th year of
twice-monthly meetings on Tuesday, Sept. 6, at 6:00 p.m. in Room
005, Library/Building B, of the East St. Louis Higher Education
Center, 601 J. R. Thompson Drive. All writers, from beginners to
professionals, are welcome. Meetings are held on the first and
third Tuesday, September through May.
As co-publisher of Drumvoices Revue, the Club
is also issuing a “call” for “Kwansabas for Jayne
Cortez,” a pioneering poet, social-cultural activist,
publisher, and co-founder (with Ama Ata Aidoo) of the
Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA).
Last year, OWWA produced “Yari Yari Pamberi:
Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization” at New York
University. Cortez will perform with “Firespitters,” her
world-renowned band, at an October (24-28) Black Arts Movement
Symposium on the campus of Southern Illinois University,
Edwardsville.
Kwansaba submissions should arrive by
Nov. 1 at Drumvoices Revue, English Department Box 1431, SIUE,
Edwardsville, IL 62026-1431. Submissions should be in hard
copies as well as on MicroSoft Word disk. A 2 or 3
sentence bio should also accompany the submissions. Accepted
kwansabas will be published in the Spring 2006 issue of
Drumvoices Revue (“a Confluence of Literary, Cultural &
Vision Arts”)
The kwansaba, a 49-word poetic form
invented during the 1995 EBR Writers Club workshop season (in East St. Louis), consists
of seven lines of seven words each; each word must contain no
more than seven letters. Exceptions to the seven-letter rule are
proper nouns. Previous issues of Drumvoices have featured
“Kwansabas for Katherine Dunham” (2004) and “Kwansabas for
Amiri Baraka” (2005).
Following is an example of a Baraka kwansaba from Drumvoices
#13 (2005):
| His-Story
By Diondra
Humphries
What would history be
without your words?
His story can’t be told
unless chanted
in our blues as yours.
Only you
can tell how it swells
falls swells.
The truth sits on your
tongue, ready
to be spat out into the
world
to change it for all its worth. |
Founded in 1986 and named after East St.
Louis Poet Laureate Eugene B. Redmond, the Writers Club’s
trustees include Baraka, Maya Angelou, Walter Mosley,
Barbara Ann Teer, Quincy Troupe, Dr. Lena Weathers, and Avery
Brooks. Some of the trustees—including Baraka, Mosley, Troupe,
and Angelou—also serve on the editorial board of Drumvoices
Revue.
For more information, call 618 650-3991,
email eredmon@siue.edu,
fax 618 650-3509, or write EBRWC @ P.O. Box 6165, East St.
Louis, IL 62202.
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|
Taking the Blues Back Home
By Jayne Cortez
The blues that came to me
from the slave dungeons
the blues that came to me
from the death trails
the blues that came to me
from my ancestors
the blues that came to me
in a spell that tells me
through birth that I'm the owner
of the blues
from a long time ago |
Jayne
Cortez (1936 - ) is the author of eleven books of
poetry and performer of her poems with music on nine
recordings. Her voice is celebrated for its political,
surrealistic, dynamic innovations in lyricism, and visceral
sound. Cortez has presented her work and ideas at
universities, museums, and festivals around the world. Her
poems have been translated into many languages and widely
published in anthologies, journals, and magazines. She is a
recipient of several awards including: Arts International,
the National Endowment for the Arts, the International
African Festival Award. The Langston Hughes Medal, The
American Book Award, and the Thelma McAndless Distinguished
Professorship Award. Her most recent books are
THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK (Bola Press) and
JAZZ FAN LOOKS BACK (Hanging Loose Press). Her latest
CDs with the Firespitter Band are
FIND YOUR OWN VOICE,
BORDERS OF DISORDERLY TIME (Bola Press),
TAKING THE BLUES BACK HOME, produced by Harmolodic and
by Verve Records. Cortez is organizer of the international
symposium "Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition & Creative
Progress" (NYU) and director of the film Yari Yari Pamberi:
Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization. She is
co-founder and president of the Organization of Women
Writers of Africa, Inc., and can be seen on screen in the
films Women In Jazz and Poetry In Motion.
"Cortez has been and
continues to be an explorer, probing the valleys and chasms
of human existence. No ravine is too perilous, no abyss too
threatening for Jayne Cortez."—Maya
Angelou
"If you haven't read
Jayne Cortez, you're missing some of the best that life has
to offer. A compellingly original voice of fire and
freedom."—Franklyn Rosemont
"Jayne Cortez's poems are filled with images that most of us
are afraid to see."—Walter
Mosley
|
Poetry
In fact
poetry
will not
strike
lightning
through
any
convoy of chickens
Today poems are like flags
flying on liquor store roof
poems are like baboons
waiting to be fed by tourists
& does it matter
how many metaphors
reach out to you
when the sun
goes down like
a stuffed bird in
tropical forest
of your solitude
In fact
poetry
will not
sing jazz
through
constricted mouth
of an anteater
no matter how many
symbols survive
to see the moon
dying in saw dust
of your toenail |
posted 21 August 2005
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updated 13 April 2009 |
