Last month, James Madison University’s Furious Flower Poetry Center (the nation’s first academic center dedicated to the study and celebration of Black poetry) held their decennial Furious Flower Conference. The conference’s theme was “Furious Flower IV: Worlds of Black Poetry”, emphasizing the importance of a global Black poetic community. As a student of literature dedicated to engaging with and uplifting marginalized voices, I attended many of the conference events and readings. I walked away with countless new poets to keep up with, but five in particular stood out!
- Glenis Redmond
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The first poet laureate of Greenville, South Carolina, Glenis Redmond commanded the stage with four gorgeous poems: “Kissed by a Crow”, “I Wish You Black Sons”, “A Song of Everything”, and “In Spades.” A sort of response to the inimitable Lucille Clifton’s “Wishes for Sons”, “I Wish You Black Sons” imagines that those who claim not to believe in “#BlackLivesMatter” are burdened for one moment by the worry and fear Black mothers live their entire lives entrenched in:
“I wish you not one flower his funeral
just quotes about black-on-black crime
I wish you a world that never talks
about white-on-white crime
I wish you a stone for a pillow
I wish you awake all night alive in this place where we have always lived:
1600s 1700s 1800s 1900s 2015
I wish you America
and your black sons are named:
Trayvon, Michael, Oscar, Walter and Freddie…”Â
– “I Wish You Black Sons”, Glenis Redmond
- A.B. Spellman
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A.B. Spellman put a spell on me from the moment he walked onstage. His attention to his poems’ sonic qualities, to their incomparable rhythm, cannot be overstated. Spellman, who oozes authenticity, read “Groovin’ Low”, “The Women I Have Not Slept With”, and “After Vallejo.” With humor and cultural allusion as his primary poetic tools, Spellman was able to inspire the full range of emotions in each soul occupying the auditorium during his reading.
“i will die in havana in rhythm. tumbao
montuno, guaguanco, dense strata
of rhythm pulsing me away
                                          & the mother of waters
will say to the saint of crossroads
well, damn. he danced his way out after all”
-“After Vallejo”, A.B. Spellman
- Tony Medina
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Tony Medina sustained Spellman’s humor and cultural markers with his reading in the JMU Festival Lower Drum. Medina’s poems were some of the most overtly political I encountered during the conference, which I found extremely refreshing. He read several poems, including, “How It Will Finally Come to An End”, “In Venice Dolphins Swim the Canals”, “At Khan Yunis”, and “From The Crushed Voice Box of Freddie Gray.” With themes ranging from police brutality to COVID-19 response efforts, Medina’s poetry had tremendous contemporary resonance.
“In Venice dolphins swim the canals free
Of debris while here black joggers are hunted by
Fathers and sons in a rite of passage
Jim Crow outdoor trailer trash parlor game
As Amy or Karen or Becky with the bad brains
Scream hysterically into cellphones at 911 operators
In their worst Stanislavsky Method Acting
Like the black birder is a mockingbird
While an essential worker EMT cannot get
Any PPE instead she got 8 bullets into
Her bone-tired sleeping body in a 21-gun
Salute to T.S. Elliot with a side of side-eye
Because May is the cruelest month especially
During a lockdown where racism and hate Â
Are never quarantined yet a black man
Remains a stepping stool for a white man’s
Knee who drummed out Colin Kaepernick
As if a flag takes precedence over a black life”Â
-“In Venice Dolphins Swim the Canals”, Tony Medina
- Harryette Mullen
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Harryette Mullen’s poetry combines considerations of race with considerations of gender, pointing to how the two identity markers are irreversibly intertwined. Mullen also read quite a few poems: “Black History Minute”, “Iconoclast”, “Weathering Hate”, “Colorless Green Ideas”, and more. “Weathering Hate” stood out for me, as it reimagines the trauma systematic racism inflicts on Black bodies through metaphors of weather and the natural world:
“A boulder, even a mountain, will wear down. So will bodies, bent and
broken under toilsome burdens, caving beneath unbearable weight, in
adverse climate, exposed to harsh elements, caustic rains.”
-“Weathering Hate”, Harryette Mullen
- Evie Shockley
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One of the conference’s final performing poets, Evie Shockley shook me to my core. Everything from her incredible diction to her radiant grin embodied the spirit of Furious Flower. Shockley read “How Long Has This Jayne Been Gone?”, “Perched”, “Time: The Nick”, “You Must Walk This Lonesome”, and “les milles.” “les milles” in particular was one of the most powerful poems I’ve ever encountered, and I encourage everyone outraged by global systems of violence to read it. You will feel seen and understood in a way you perhaps never have before:
“auschwitz? if i say settlements,
have i now forgotten camps? if
i don’t say palestine, have i
forgotten elmina, selma, cape town,Â
haiti? must every place-name on earth
be a shorthand for violence
on a map of grief?”
-“les milles”, Evie Shockley