The Split This Rock Interview with Sherwin Bitsui

By Susan K. Scheid

This conversation is one in a series of interviews with poets to be featured at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, 2018.

The festival is three days at the intersection of the imagination and social change: readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, activism, a book fair, and a party. Celebrating Split This Rock’s 10th anniversary! The poets to be featured are among the most significant and artistically vibrant writing and performing today:  Elizabeth Acevedo, Kazim Ali, Ellen Bass, Sherwin Bitsui, Kwame Dawes, Camille T. Dungy, Ilya Kaminsky, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, Solmaz Sharif, Terisa Siagatonu, Paul Tran, Javier Zamora.

On-site registration is available every day during the festival at the festival hub: National Housing Center, 1201 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005. A sliding scale of fees is available for full registration, beginning at $200. Student registration (with ID) is $75. One day passes are $85. Two-day passes are $170.

Full festival schedule available on the website. The Festival Mobile App is Live! Download the free app  for iOS and Android today for easy access to the schedule, session descriptions, presenter bios, and more! Just search your app store for Split This Rock.

Events Open to the Public

• Nightly Free Poetry Readings: National Housing Center Auditorium
• Social Change Bookfair, Saturday, April 21, 10 am-3:30 pm, National Housing Center (Free)
• Poetry Public Action, Friday, April 20, 8:30-10 am, Location TBA (Free)
• Open Mics, Thursday, April 19 & Friday, April 20, 10 pm-12 am, Busboys and Poets, 5th & K, Cullen Room, 1025 5th St NW, Washington, DC 20001 ($5 on www.busboysandpoets.com)
• Closing Party, Saturday, April 21, 10 pm-1 am, National Housing Center Auditorium ($10, tickets available soon at Split This Rock's website)

Open mics and the closing party are free to festival registrants.

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Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) is the author of Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press) and Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press). He is of the Bįį’bítóó’nii’ Tódi’chii’nii clan and is born for the Tlizilłani’ clan. He is from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. Bitsui holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and a BA from University of Arizona in Tucson. He teaches for the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An ecopoet, he has poems published in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere. Steeped in Native American culture, mythology, and history, Bitsui’s poems – imagistic, surreal, and rich with details of the landscape of the Southwest – reveal the tensions at the intersection of Native American and contemporary urban culture. Bitsui's honors include the 2011 Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Fellowship for Literature, a PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Writers Award.

* * *

Susan K. Scheid (SKS): Your book, Flood Song, is full of beautiful and dream-like imagery. I wanted to savor it like rich food eaten in small bites. Some of the images that stay with me were: “I pinch your silences into soft whispers, / pile them on your still chest” and “The luminous wander the cornfields without husbands; / their wooden faces splinter the owl’s nest;” and the references to the “cornfield inside you.” I wonder if you are willing to share with us a little of your writing process? Can you describe what takes you to this place where you can write such surreal and powerful poems?

Sherwin Bitsui (SB): I like to think the poems reveal themselves to me on their own, they meet me halfway and it’s my job to give them shape and form. Sometimes I follow them for months and years until I’m able to see their edges sharpen and clarify. My process unfolds — there are many detours along the way. I am lucky to find at the end, a line or two, that speaks to thought in a new and interesting way. Lately, I feel that the poem is already here in our time, a poet just reveals it to the reader or listener—that moment of recognition is what makes poetry most powerful for me. Time and distance fold away, something deep in us is revealed and we are renewed again, briefly, by its beauty.

SKS: In one interview you stated that the Navajo language is “thought in motion”. How does that inform your poetics?  And since you are also a visual artist, does that influence your writing?  How do your poetry and visual art interact with one another? 

SB: I’m always in some state of translation — a poem is also a kind of translation. I don’t know how deeply Dinébizaad affects my writing in English — it’s difficult to see myself and my work as some kind of ethnographic subject. I sense my ability to encounter both worldviews simultaneously gives me the perspective and distance needed to create my work. Language then takes on another quality besides meaning-making — there is weight, movement, tension, texture and tone that also inform the emotional quality of the experience I’m trying to create for the reader and listener.

SKS: In Flood Song, I was struck by the imagery of the land, the water, and the invasion of technology. These poems express the centuries of indigenous people’s struggle, the removal from their lands, the loss of traditional ways, and the encroachment of technology. They speak to me as well as someone who grew up surrounded by corn fields, who now sees so many drastic changes to our planet. Do you think of yourself as an environmental/eco-justice poet? If so, what does that mean to you?

SB: I don’t particularly see myself as an environmental/eco-justice poet. The poems may reveal some aspect of my thoughts on the subject of ecology and our collective response (or lack of?) to shifts in our relationship with the land and environment—but they do so because I only write what is essentially present in my world at the time. It is a difficult time to write poems — there is much to look away from and ignore, poetry doesn’t have that option — it must see and respond even when we choose not to.

SKS: Flood Song has poems with the repetitive drip of rain and the rhythmic lapping on the shores of a lake, or an ocean. This rhythm and many of the images and themes in your book remind me of Walt Whitman. How would you describe the way your poetic voice has developed?  Who are some of the poets that have influenced you?  Is there anyone else (non-poet) that has influenced your work or your poetic voice?

SB: I hope my work continues to evolve with each book — each work teaches me something about myself and the world around me. I always want to feel like I’ve been called to write a poem. Sounds strange, but I know my poems feel forced if I try to write when I’m not necessarily in the right space or time. This may explain why it takes me several years to complete a body of work. Flood Song and Dissolve are both book-length poems. Flood Song is a lapping, horizontal work that moves and takes on the dimensions of a kind of flood.

Dissolve feels like a much different work. It is restrained or tethered to something deep inside; perhaps it’s a floating work, one suspended above the ground but unable to fully free itself from the gravity of the shifting world beneath it. The breath of the poem feels like it’s moving inward as opposed to moving outward. There is also a lot of mirroring in the new work. One stanza or line may contain a gesture that is replicated in another line or stanza. Lately I’ve read pieces from Flood Song before moving into Dissolve, I notice very quickly how my voice has to shift in order to locate the frequency of the newer lines.

SKS: What role do you think poets can play to bring hope to the world?  Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow poets?

SB: Poets renew language and bring worlds together. I’m always hopeful that poetry can change lives. Poets should continue to be uncompromising in their creative vision. It’s also important we support each other and appreciate the very fact that we are here making language do things it is probably not supposed to do.

* * *

Additional Links

Bitsui’s poems in the April 2018 issue of Poetry Magazine, with poems by all the poets featuring at the festival.

Three Poems by Sherwin Bitsui (The Quarry)

I Don’t Stand Alone: Poets Orlando White and Sherwin Bitsui on the Importance of Mentors, by Jennifer De Leon (Ploughshares)

The Motion of Poetic Landscape: An Interview with Sherwin Bitsui, by Bianca Viñas (Hunger Mountain)

Sherwin Bitsui: Sounds Like Water, by Thomas Hachard (Guernica)

Three Native American Poets: a conversation between Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Linda Hogan, and Sherwin Bitsui with Poetry Lectures from The Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute hosts (audio file, The Poetry Foundation)

* * *

Susan K. Scheid is the author of After Enchantment (2012). Her poetry has appeared in Truth to Power, Beltway Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, The Sligo Journal, Silver Birch Press, Tidal Basin Review, and other journals. Her work is also included in the chapbook anthology, Poetic Art. She has taught workshops as an Artist-in-Residence at the Noyes School of Rhythm. She lives in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC. She is Co-Chair of the Split This Rock Board of Directors.

Poems that Resist Police Brutality & Demand Racial Justice - Post #10

We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest -  Poems that Resist Police Brutality & Demand Racial Justice

Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son -- we who believe in freedom cannot rest.
                    - Ella Baker

Even as our hearts break in rage and anguish over the murder of Black and brown people throughout the land by police who are not held accountable, here at Split This Rock we are heartened by the powerful actions in the streets and the visionary leadership of mostly young people of color in this growing movement for justice.

We are also moved by the poets, who continue to speak out, and especially by BlackPoetsSpeakOut.

In solidarity, Split This Rock offers our blog as a Virtual Open Mic, open to all who respond to our call for Poems that Resist Police Brutality and Demand Racial Justice. The poems below were submitted in response to that call.

Please note poems with complex formatting have been posted as jpegs, as this blog has a limited capacity for properly displaying these poems. We apologize if these poems are not accessible to you.

For more information or questions, feel free to email us at info@splitthisrock.org.

If you are moved by any of the poems below, please contact the Department of Justice and your local representatives to demand for police accountability. Visit Ferguson Action Demands for more information.

****

I Am a Man

by DuEwa Frazier

I am America

I bleed the red, white and blue

I built this country

Yet you made me strange fruit

I am a man

Yet this system 

Just won't see

Why am I so feared when I should be free?

I taught you justice

I impact every aspect of culture, history and society

Still you ignore my claims and cries

I am Thurgood Marshall's gavel

I Toussaint L'Ouverture's sword

I am Frederick Douglass' en

I am W.E.B. Dubois' intellect

I am James Henrik Clarke honoring history

I am Paul Robeson, renaissance, man, hear me speak

I am Malcolm X

I am Medgar Evers

I am Martin Luther King

I am Nat Turner

I am Langston Hughes - I, Too Sing America

I am James Baldwin - Native son

I am Amiri Baraka - My people created blues music, blues poetry

I am H. Rap Brown

I am the Last Poets - I am not scared of Revolution

I am Huey Newton

I am Eldridge Cleaver

I am the Scottsboro Boys

I am Jena 6

I am Trayvon, Tasmir and Kajieme, hold me, don't let me go

Never forget me

I am Michael Brown, don't shoot

I am Eric Garner, I cannot breathe

I told you cannot breathe

Judge me not for my ants when they sag

Or my bandana 

My tattoos

My rims

Or my grillz

Look into my heart

See me carrying 400+ years of oppression

On my back

Because my DNA has a memory and yours does too

I am a man, I am no different from you

I have grown from innocent boy to a man who has

Seen it all

I redefine the meaning of THUG as - Transform Hope Unity and Growth

I am marching to take a stand

New York City, DC, Atlanta, St. Louis, Philly

Detroit and Oakland

And in the time of the new civil rights era

This revolution will most certainly be televised, photographed and videotaped

I galvanize and organize

See me, hear me

I will not retreat

You may lie on me

Punch me

Shoot me and strike me down

You may burn my house, spread your hate on my street

You may try to kill me and say I wanted it, asked for it, deserved it

You may call me every n-word, spook, porch monkey, and jigaboo in the book

Still, I will not retreat

I will protect my family

I will raise my children

I will secure the future of the next generation

I will teach

I will pray for my people and this nation, under God

I will create a new world

One that makes you see me, hear me, respect me, honor me

I will fight for justice

I will fight to be seen as a man, in all of my power

In all of my glory

I will fight to be viewed as a human of value

On the shoulders of my ancestors

Do I stand

As I proclaim 

I AM A MAN!

****

Ferguson poem

by Chandramohan S

The anger of the pronoun

sandwiched 

smothered

between

"Acting white"

and 

the blackness of the round silver bullets.

****

If Riot Means Destruction

by Wesley Rothman

Without the moon we find       our lightness        whiteness

washed out brightness      coming down on us       a baton of

unconsciousness      unconscienceness         the breakage we

didn't know we could bring        riot is not reaction        it is

burning down from within           how we burn an other's body

down quietly          over time           keep the ember humming

blowing          blowing          blow        until the tongue flares

sizzled and singeing                            riot is the whiteness 

looting stores propped in the chest             robbing water and

bread to break down         the head and will of an other    the

riot begins with silence        with an attack        a drone strike

a sniper some mile off      every voice in the street    fist     cry

every face in the eye               of a camera is not            a riot

not a threat     a force to stop traffic        bring on the red lights

shut down the headlights         eager to blind         bring down

the sky         the moon          bring down               bring down

****

(no title)

by Kristen McCallum

Stop the apologies for non apologies because our expressions should feel free

I don't believe in holding tongues when my people cannot breathe

Feeling sick from being tired of removing erasers from our heels

Don't you dare look in our faces and dictate how much we can feel

The innocent lives lost at the cost of independent madness

But you're placing blame on grieving hearts that too have felt this sadness

Now all lives matter when the perp isn't gifted...with a pension package, a                                                                        badge and pardons unlimited 

But black lives shouldn't matter, our priority should be shifted?

Our protests should halt and our cries should be muffled?

You think these mothers only mourn so you feathers will get ruffled?

There's no timeline for our justice because we deserve it now.

Condolences for the losses that we've spent decades crying about

You say in due time but our time has been due, you really still think we are                                                                                            waiting on you?

We are tired of burying the dreams of our youth, the mothers of our children                                                                         and the fathers of them too

This work is not an option. We aren't asking for the room.

So do not ask us for a silence you aren't entitled to.

****

For Eric Garner

by Donna Katzin

It was not the cigarettes

they said you sold on the street,

short stubby cancer sticks, 

that took your life.

It was not potato chips and Coca-Cola,

calories or cholesterol 

that blubbered your belly,

slowed your step.

It was no weak heart --

yours filled with mother, wife, son,

and hope to make ends meet for them

one sidewalk cigarette at a time

It was the color of your skin

that made white officers in State Island

wrestle you to the ground,

knee on your face,

choke you from behind,

that deafened them

eleven times, when you gasped

I can't breathe.

It was your blackness that blinded

the Grand Jury to your humanity,

made them decide your death

wasn't even a crime.

Perhaps it was the memory in a shallow grave

of green plantations, brown mud,

where black men walked in chains,

hung from trees for lesser crimes,

the terror in white hearts

that the cold avalanche

of hatred they began

would bury them.

****

Redeem the Dream

by Ty Gray-EL

Now this poetic statement

may seem to some extreme

Yet a people climb no higher

than the summit of their dreams

So we must plan this hour

an elaborate spiritual scheme

For the sake of all humanity

we must Redeem the Dream

Cause if the Reverend Doctor

were standing here today

I'm not sure that he'd be pleased

not certain what he'd say

I's been more than 50 years

since that faith-filled day

Still the circumstances

have not gone away

Because police brutality

cast a shadow on our dreams

A blue haze prevents the raising

of our people's self esteem

America must realize

Its folk are under attack

The victims being assaulted

are those driving while black

Cause some men in blue we've chose

to protect and serve

seize every opportunity

to kick us to the curb

Of the almost 3 millions Americans

locked up in our jails

7 out of 10 are black or brown

How did Justice tip the scales

I thought Justice was blindfolded

She must be reading braille

Obviously she's not colorblind

she obviously favors pale

This poem is a plea for justice

to right this grievous wrong

It's time the burden was lifted

we carried the load too long

From all the melanised people

oppressed by men in blue

this poem is a prayerful out-cry

that we are human too

In the name of God, we ask

Call of your cruel regime

In the name of god, we pray

Dear Lord, redeem the dream

of Dr. Martin Luther King

****

One River, One Boat

by Marjory Wentworth

"I know there's something better down the road."

- Elizabeth Alexander

Because our history is a knot

we try to unravel, while others

try to tighten it, we tire easily

and fray the cords that bind us

The cord is a slow moving river,

spiraling across the land

in a succession of S's,

splintering near the sea.

Picture us all, crowded onto a boat

at the last bend in the river:

watch children stepping off the school bus,

parents late for work, grandparents

fishing for favorite memories,

teachers tapping their desks

with red pens, firemen suiting u

to save us, nurses making rounds,

baristas grinding coffee beans,

dockworkers unloading apartment size

containers of computers and toys

from factories across the sea.

Every morning a different veteran

stands at the base of the bridge

holding a cardboard sign

with misspelled words and an empty cup.

In fields at daybreak, rows of migrant

farm workers standing on ladders, break open

iced peach blossoms; their breath rising

and resting above the frozen fields like clouds.

A jonboat drifts down the river.

Inside, a small boy lies on his back;

hand laced behind his head, he watches

stars fade from the sky and dreams.

Consider the prophet John, calling us

from the edge of the wilderness to name

the harm that has been done, to make it

plain, and enter the river and rise.

It is not about asking for forgiveness.

It is not about bowing our heads in shame;

because it all begins and ends here:

while workers unearth trenches

at Gadsden's Wharf, where 100,000

Africans were imprisoned within brick walls

awaiting auction, death, or worse.

Where the dead were thrown into the water,

and the river clogged with corpses 

has kept centuries of silence.

It is time to gather at the water's edge,

and toss wreaths into this watery grave.

And it is time to praise the judge

who cleared George Stinney's name,

seventy years after the fact,

we honor him: we pray.

Here, where the Confederate flag still flies

beside the Statehouse, haunted by our past, 

conflicted about the future; at the heart

of it, we are at war with ourselves

huddled together on this boat

handed down to us - stuck

at the last bend of a wide river

splintering near the sea.

****

Ghazal for Our Sons

by JP Howard

No one knew seventeen would be his last candle.

There’s always a flicker of hope, even after that last flame.

History repeats itself in the worse ways.  If you say their names out loud:

Emmett, Trayvon, Sean, Amadou you will burst into flames.

How much repetition can we take before we grow tired of these stanzas?

My teenage son looks more man than child; I wonder what storm will he ignite?

This poem has no date, no place to rest its final line,

as long as justice flickers in the distance.

What is it about a brown boys face

that makes the world around him explode?

A  mother sees the sparkle in her son’s eyes,

but a stranger’s fingers extinguish his flame.

Juliet, how many mamas have to hold a candlelight vigil

to get this spark started?

*Ghazal for Our Sons was originally published in Stand Our Ground Anthology: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, edited by Ewuare X. Osayande, FreedomSeed Press, 2013. Link to website: http://standourgroundbook.com

****

My Otherwise

(after Jane Kenyon)

by Susan Scheid

I awoke today

with two strong boys.

It might have been

otherwise.  I kissed

their cheeks, pale

young, innocent

male.  It might

have been otherwise.

They walked through the park

and home again safely.

All day long I lived without

fear for the ones I love.

For lunch we made grilled

cheese sandwiches. It might

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

at a table with paper

napkins.  It might

have been otherwise.

The boys slept in beds

in a room with painted walls

and planned other days

just like this day.

And I prayed in the dark

because I know,

there are other mothers

with boys for whom

every day is otherwise.