#rustbelt poetry slam

[buttonpoetry]

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of the poets competing at the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival.

Dave Harris is a playwright and poet from West Philly. He believes no poet's work will ever surpass "I'm hot cuz I'm fly/you ain't cuz you not."

Come check out Dave Harris perform at this year’s festival in Minneapolis, MN, June 2-3.

[evesviolets]

"Maybe I cant see you now without also seeing you dead."

Sam Sax - Essay on Crying in Public

[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Recipe for the Poet by Deonte Osayande

TO ORDER ONLINE GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/recipe-for-the-poet-by-deonte-osayande/

RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

Deonte Osayande is a writer from Detroit, Mi. His nonfiction and poetry have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize, and a Digital Book Award. He has represented Detroit at 4 National Poetry Slam competitions. He’s a professor of English at Wayne County Community College. His books include Class (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2017), Circus (Brick Mantle Books, 2018) and Civilian (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019). He also managed the Rustbelt Midwest Regional Poetry Slam for 2014 and 2018.

#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry

[wallaceenglishproject-blog]

“Don’t you show me what I got to live for, don’t make me want this again, please don’t make me fight. I’m tired, and no, I don’t want it to be better! Better is only a father’s presence. Don’t wash off the scabs, don’t fix the brokenness that is all that I know. “

[meret118]

i fed your body to the fish traded it at lunch for milk

i know where they buried you cause it’s my mouth

they tell me bootstraps & i spit up a little leather

they tell me Christ but you don’t have black friends

during the anthem i hum Niggas in Paris

i cha cha slide over the flag C-walk on occasion

i put a spell on you it called for 3/5s of my blood

apple pie, red bones & a full moon

but instead i did it in the daylight, wanting you

to see me ending you stupid stupid me

i know better than to fuck with a recipe

i don’t make chicken when I don’t have eggs

look at what i did: on the TV the man from TV

is gonna be president he has no words

& hair beyond simile you’re dead, America

& where you died grew something worse –

crop white as the smile of a man with his country on his side

a gun on his other side

//

tomorrow, i’ll have hope.

tomorrow i can shift the wreckage

& find a seed.

i don’t know what will grow

i’ve lost my faith in this garden

the bees are dying

the water poisons whole cities

but my honeyed kin

those brown folks who make

up the nation of my heart

only allegiance i stand for

realer than any god

for them i bury whatever

this country thought it was.

[heartmagician]

Also y’all I have such exciting things planned for summer 2018!! If all goes well I’ll be competing in the Rustbelt Poetry Slam in Detroit as part of a team with three other lovely poet friends, and after that I’ll hopefully be touring through the Northeastern US!!! Nothing is set in stone yet, but the cities that look likely are NYC, Boston, Northampton, and Easthampton MA (I’m hoping I can also swing through Manchester NH!!!). Cross yr fingers this can happen!! And if I have any followers in these areas, I’ll keep you posted if/when more details become concrete as to where my shows will be :) 

[ashymcgee]

Snitching. The flaming topic on the internet, and urban youth's lips, for the last two weeks. . The memes. The laughter. As much as I would love to reveal in the comedy, I can't. It isn't funny. . What's being absorbed is the glorification of cowardice. The opera of a bonafide 'Snitch'. . Despite my youthful appearance, I'm old enough to remember the 80s quite well. I'm glad the old heads shuffled to their porches and preached about loyalty, 'taking licks' and snitching. Today's young people have forgotten these lessons. Shame. . Ghetto culture... Hood Culture is glorified for a reason. The 'High Rollers', the King Pins, the ones that ran block did not destroy it at first. They were Ebony Robinhoods. The Police and CIA? The Sheriff of Nottingham. . This was a time when black men, or what was left of them after Vietnam, The Korean War, segregation and the Heroine epidemic, couldn't get factory jobs or menial labor. Schools were laughable. What good was an education if you couldn't get a job? . So the High Rollers fixed that problem. They employed those men that had no options; those men began to rebuild the hood one corner at a time. People could eat food that wasn't government cheese and powdered milk. They had a shot to procure the elusive luxuries they saw on TV. . Mama got that mink. Grandad got that Caddy he saved so long for and could never afford. Houses were built. Little black boys and girls got a chance to wear an expensive uniform and go to private school. Nobody talked. Nobody saw anything except prosperity. . And what killed it all? . Jealousy and Snitchin'. . I'm not saying dealing was/is right. Not by a long shot, but America was never built blood free hands and clean dollar bills. Every penthouse is built on a pyre of forgotten bodies. This is the true price of 'democracy'. . I wonder what the South Side of Chicago, or the Wards in the South or the Projects in NYC would've been if snitchin' didn't happen? . Check out Siaara Freeman's poem: 'The Drug Dealer's Daughter'. She was a finalist in Button Poetry's 2014 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam. . It's raw. You've been warned. (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2578umJRZ9/?igshid=7cjwuy3i68e8

[dollarcompliments]

This compliment is dedicated to my friends who helped me survive the Utah Arts Festival. The organizers of the festival really had it out for me for several reasons. I was banned from the indie slam and other events because I "said too many swear words" last year even though I asked and they said it was OK. But they committed a lot of injustice to the poets who were booked. They intentionally misgendered a few and edited pronouns in poets bio. They paid black poets less than white poets. They did nothing when a racist heckler was saying racial slurs during a black poet's set and then sent security after ME when I told the lady to shut the fuck up. The festival organizers also booked featured slots for themselves in prime time slots and then paid themselves for their own features an unknown and undisclosed amount. One organizer even took money that was supposed to go to a high school team last year. Also last year they ran the festival budget into the negative and then did it again this year. It was a lot. It was so much. But the poets themselves were the pinnacle of grace. Coming together to redistribute the money to close the racial pay gap and also working with eachother to ensure this doesn't happen again. And so, this compliment is for my friends. For my rustbelt slam team, the Social Justice Mages, and for all the poets who helped me cope at the festival. #dollarcompliments #poetry #writing #compliments #typewriter #poetsofinstagram #wordgasm #poetryhive #poemsofinstagram #poems #poetrycommunity #poemsporn #igpoet #igpoetry #igpoems #poetsofig #instapoem #wordporn #spilledink #writersofinstagram #writersofig #prose #validation #utahartsfestival #uaf #artliveshere (at Midvale Mining Cafe)

[are-scared-of-revolution]

One Poem by Danez Smith Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Danez Smith for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.

Wendy Xu | December 28, 2016

Glenn Ligon, “Prisoner of Love #1 (Second Version)” (1992) (detail), oil and gesso on linen, 80.25 x 30.13 x 1.38 inches, Collection: Carnegie Museum of Art; Founders Patrons Day Acquisition Fund (© Glenn Ligon; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London) (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino for Hyperallergic)

my nig

this one isn’t about language but who the language holds

those niggas who say my name like it’s good news

those who let me know my blood is speckled sapphire. i’m in love

with purple gums, the yellow stain of front teeth, the bit of plaque

unbrushed & revealed when my niggas laugh. o loves

i know god is for i have seen you throw your cackle in the air

& watched the clouds turn heavy bronze, i have seen tears well

in the corners of your eyes when you are overcome with joy

& that little wet is all the sea i need to live.

we are alive & amen. someone of us are dead

but they are alive in us amen. heaven be your blunted breath

your chapped lips & sharp shade your ashy elbows & lotion prayers.

i need no church but my niggas’ arms. i need no savior but their love.

oh sweet god if you be my nigga don’t never take my niggas from me

less i be a black & yolkless shell less i be tabernacle at the bottom

of the sea, less i be whittled down to not a nigga but a n-word

one letter to say a thing about shame keep me free from that kind of hell.

let me live forever on the tongues on my people & when they gone

from this world then i have use for me, let me end when they end

let my breath jump off the cliff with them all, they me be a follower

into that greater world, where streets are paved with our enemies’ teeth

& the angels sing of Shine where the rivers flow milk & honey

& Hennessey & kool-aid & none of that, just give me

the heaven of now, give me days near water with my niggas

leave me be in the sun surrounded by my friends’ good

black as we all get blacker we caramelized children

of a darker god, we summer kin, august colored, my brick

colored friends, the safety that is they being, the peace

i feel when near their hands. hosanna the bridge over crossfire

they be when they press green in paper & seal with their lips, this

piff kiss, hosanna the rope that a text message be

for who knows how many times i was saved by the ding

of hey, how you? or what you on, hoe? bless the grace

of being bored with fam the heaven of my niggas

in a silent room, the holy of all that quiet which saves

me in my darkest hours. the only thing that kept the blade

from my wrist, closed the medicine cabinet was

the thought of my friends in a room dressed in a black

that is not their skin. how could i do that to them?

how could i deny us the grace of accidents

& old age, the laws of disease & holy sick?

there is already so much trying to end us so let

it not include our hands today, let us no be dead

& red handed for it not today, not never

not yet

*   *   *

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer, and performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017). Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books) and black movie (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Danez’s work has been featured widely, including on Buzzfeed, Blavity, PBS NewsHour, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They are a 2-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, 3-time Rustbelt Poetry Slam Champion, and a founding member of the Dark Noise Collective.

[sayitaintcapitalism]

“What My White Mother Meant To Say...” Dylan Garcia at Rustbelt 2015

[buttonpoetry]

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of the poets competing at the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival.

Malachi, Detroit is my Gotham, I am my Art, Described as "a female biggie smalls who does poems”.

Come check out Malachi perform at this year’s festival in Minneapolis, MN, June 2-3.

[decisivesoul]

Just love this. So raw, broken, and passionate. From the 2013 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam.

[buttonpoetry]

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of the poets competing at the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival.

Mollie Lacy is a soft butch lesbian, who likes macabre poems and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Come check out Mollie perform at this year’s festival in Minneapolis, MN, June 2-3.

[buttonpoetry]

Over the last few weeks, we've been highlighting some of the poets competing at the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival.

Ry Irene (ze/zir) is a writer, drag king, & guinea pig parent transplant from SLC. Ry enjoys bath bombs, power lifting, & dismantling gender

Come check out Ry perform at this year’s festival in Minneapolis, MN, June 2-3.

[buttonpoetry]

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of the poets competing at the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival.  

E.J. Schoenborn (they/them) is a nonbinary and queer slam poet and recent graduate from Macalester College who loves otters and glitter.

Come check out Deonte perform at this year’s festival in Minneapolis, MN, June 2-3.

[buttonpoetry]

Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of the poets competing at the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival.

Victoria C Prescott is wholeheartedly from San Antonio, an art/justice educator, & grateful for community, friends, performance,& loves the punk music.

Come check out Victoria perform at this year’s festival in Minneapolis, MN, June 2-3.