Poetry Month has got me by the inspiration. Last week I wrote about Poetry Everywhere, and this week I want to profile a book that excites, that teaches, that challenges - Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint.
Revolutionary. It's not a word you hear much in conjunction with writing, but I still believe words have the power to change hearts and minds, to change history. Whitman, Sandburg, Frost, Neruda, Rich, Piercy, Giovanni and Jordan herself have all lived it, breathed it, put the word to paper, and the word became wildfire. We have only to look at recent history to know the White House would rather not have poetry in it. That kind of incendiary truth is more than an inconvenient one.
But beyond the title, why is this book revolutionary? It came out of a series of workshops for artistic and political empowerment aimed at students and Oakland area residents, led by June Jordan, under the auspices of the University of California at Berkeley. One need only to read her preface to the syllabus to see that there is a fundamental difference in this work than what is commonly offered in mainstream education. An excerpt here provides a perfect illustration.
- • We reach toward the development of literacy in today's world literature of poetry.
• We divide the course of study evenly, between the scrutiny of published poems and the development of new American poetry to be written by the students themselves.
• We present this new American poetry in public readings open to the entire San Francisco Bay Area. These readings are invariable factors of our coursework.
• We publish student poetry in suitably splendid form, and distribute these anthologies at the student readings and through the kind offices of Berkeley bookstores, such as Black Oak Books and Cody's. This is an integral part of our coursework.
• In conjunction with our course work, we invite one or more visiting poets to present their work ... Obviously, our guiding criteria, in addition to the excellence of poetry, is the relentless pursuit of ethnic, racial, gender, and linguistic diversity. (Such poets included: Jimmy Santiago Baca, Marilyn Chin, Thulani Davis, Cornelius Eady, Joy Harjo, Li-Young Li, Donna Masini, Adrienne Rich, Nzotake Shange, among others.)
• All students, regardless of academic status (Freshmen to Graduate), are eligible for enrollment.
On a more basic, and even more fundamentally profound basis, is the title of the workshop, Poetry for the People, and Jordan's definition of who is included in the constituency:
- • "The People" shall not be defined as a group excluding or derogating anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, sexual preference, class or age.
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