Art
More young people reading, buying poetry
FLORIDA COURIER — People are clicking on poetry on Twitter.
By Jenna Ross
ST. PAUL, Minn. – People are clicking on poetry on Twitter. They’re listening to poems on podcasts. They’re buying poetry collections on Amazon.
But on a recent Monday night in St. Paul, they were hearing poetry in person. A diverse, mostly 20-something crowd snapped and purred as friends and strangers read their verses from Park Square Theatre’s lower stage during Button Poetry’s monthly slam poetry competition.
Many were drawn by YouTube. (Button’s YouTube channel boasts more than a million followers.) By Instagram. By the changing world of poetry.
“We’re seeing astronomical growth,” said Sam Van Cook, who founded Button, a Minneapolis-based company that straddles poetry’s in-person and online worlds. “Friends who work in book sales … we joke that for the first time in any of our lives, poetry is a growth industry.”
National bump
More people — especially young people — are reading and buying poetry. About 12 percent of adults read poetry in the past year, a bump of 5 percentage points over 2012 and a 15-year high, according to a new survey by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sales of poetry books have swelled over that time, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks book sales in the U.S., “making it one of the fastest growing categories in publishing.”
Social media are driving the trend. Among the top 20 bestselling poetry authors in 2017 were a dozen so-called “Instapoets,” who attract readers by sharing short, photogenic verse on Instagram and Twitter.
Their queen is Rupi Kaur, an Indian-born Canadian poet who boasts 3.4 million Instagram followers, sells out theaters and claps back at her detractors.
New, ‘b-side poems’
But poets published by traditional presses and praised by critics use those platforms too, sharing one another’s work and changing the notion of a poet as an old White dude.
Minnesotans Danez Smith and Hieu Minh Nguyen are among those sharing new and “b-side” poems on Twitter, letting their thousands of followers in on whom they’re crushing on, poetry-wise and otherwise.
“There’s a myth around who a poet can be — or who can be a poet,” Nguyen said by phone. “People are seeing that those archetypes, those barriers, aren’t true.”
More diverse
As the slate of bards becomes more diverse, so do their audiences. Some of the biggest gains in that NEA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, released last year, came from people of color. About 15 percent of African-Americans reported reading poetry, up from 7 percent in 2012.
Some 13 percent of AsianAmericans had read poetry in the past year, compared with 5 percent in 2012.
Minnesota-based Vietnamese-American poet Bao Phi compared it to the shift in Hollywood, where “we’ve seen that representation can actually pay out huge dividends.”
Spoken word success
For decades, many marginalized people have hustled to diversify the slate of poets performing and publishing, especially by connecting with students and young people, said Phi, who crafted his reputation as a spoken word artist in the 1990s.
Performance-based poetry finally shed some of the scene’s chauvinism. Spoken word artists broke through the glass ceiling of publishing. (Phi didn’t publish his first poetry collection, “Sông I Sing,” until 2011.)
“This didn’t happen overnight,” Phi said. “All that work adds up to what we’re seeing now.”
‘Political poetry’ hot
Erika Stevens, poetry editor at large for the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Coffee House Press, pointed to “Indecency,” by Justin Phillip Reed, which tackles White supremacy with intimate, sometimes confrontational poems.
Last year, that collection, published by Coffee House, won the National Book Award in poetry, showing “how far the institutions have come in terms of what they recognize as innovative and groundbreaking and worthy of award attention,” Stevens said.
U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith recently wrote in the New York Times about why “political poetry is hot again,” arguing that poetry “has become a means of owning up to the complexity of our problems.”
Reaching women
Poets and readers have debated the success of Kaur, who turned a viral Instagram post into bestselling books, a tour and, now, printed canvases.
A recent poem, paired with a pen drawing, nabbed more than 200,000 likes: “i am water/ soft enough/to offer life/tough enough/ to drown it away.”
Whether Kaur’s hugely popular poetry is “for me or not is not the question,” said Van Cook, of Button Poetry. “But I can tell you, if I talk to people about poetry at a wedding or a coffee shop, people — especially young women, women of color — she’s one of the first names on their lips.”
Those young women recognize themselves in her work and find solace in her books, he said.
‘Little less magnificent’
Van Cook founded Button because he believes poetry is “most vibrant read aloud, and read by someone who loves it.” Its YouTube videos of readings by well- and lesser known poets often amass tens of thousands of views.
Composers talk about how film took classical music, which was being relegated to the sidelines, and gave it a new, more prominent home, he said. “People are going to look back and talk about social media that way for poetry,” Van Cook predicted. “What poetry needed was to be a little less magnificent.”
At “Button Poetry Live” on Monday night, a few newbies and some spoken word veterans took the stage, reading from iPhones and journals and memory. Many of their poems grappled with tough topics: micro-aggressions, breakups, coming out. Then, the special guest took the stage: poet, performer and podcast host Franny Choi.
For one poem, titled @fannychoir for her Twitter handle, she took racist, misogynistic tweets and Google-translated them into other languages and then back again, to English.
In short, she garbled their words and made them hers.
“Mrs. Great Anime Pornography, the fruit of the field,” she began with a smirk.
Making them think
Outside the theater, three friends in their 20s perused Choi’s chapbooks, selling for $12 and $15. They started attending Button’s live events after hearing about them from a friend, finding them to be an inexpensive, fulfilling way to spend a night together.
“It’s thought-provoking,” said Katie Snell, 26, of Minneapolis. “I cried.” Snell owns “Milk and Honey,” a book of Kaur’s poetry, she said. But that wasn’t her introduction to the form.
Years back, she said, she came across a book of sonnets at a used-book store and brought it home.
This article originally appeared in the Florida Courier.
Art
At Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening, Music Director Kedrick Armstrong Will Make History
Music Director Kedrick Armstrong will make history with his debut performance at the Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening Concert on Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. Armstrong, who is from Georgetown, South Carolina, is the ninth music director in the organization’s almost 100-year-history. His appointment follows in the footsteps of the late Oakland Symphony Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan.
By Oakland Post Staff
Music Director Kedrick Armstrong will make history with his debut performance at the Oakland Symphony’s 2024-25 Season Opening Concert on Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.
Armstrong, who is from Georgetown, South Carolina, is the ninth music director in the organization’s almost 100-year-history. His appointment follows in the footsteps of the late Oakland Symphony Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan.
Armstrong, 30, is not a new face to Oakland as he has been an active partner with the Oakland Symphony over the last few years both on and off-the-stage.
From 2022-24, Armstrong led three Oakland Symphony programs and guest-conducted the orchestra, showcasing his broad knowledge of the classical repertoire and enthusiasm for spotlighting diverse voices.
On his Oakland Symphony subscription debut on Feb. 16, Kedrick led the World Premiere of “Here I Stand: Paul Robeson,” an oratorio by Carlos Simon on a libretto by Dan Harder, commissioned by the Oakland Symphony.
On April 16, 2023, Armstrong conducted the Oakland Symphony’s Family Hype concert, presented in partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Bay Area. Armstrong first led the orchestra for a free “Summerstage at City Hall” concert at Oakland City Hall on Aug. 4, 2022.
The music program “Kedrick Armstrong Inaugural Inextinguishable Oakland!” will include commissioned works from master drummer Allison Miller and Bay Area artists – Ethiopian artist Meklit and Latin percussionist John Santos – in celebration of Living Jazz’s 40th anniversary.
Oct. 18 musical program:
Julia Perry: A Short Piece for Orchestra
Celebrate the 40-Year Anniversary of Living Jazz with three jazz-rooted compositions.
“Valley of the Giants” (for Eddie Marshall); Allison Miller, composer; arranged and orchestrated by Todd Sickafoose. Featured artist: Allison Miller, Drum Set; guest artist: Dayna Stephens, Saxophone.
Medley: “Ethio Blue, My Gold, Stars in a Wide Field”
Songs and Lyrics by Meklit; arrangement and orchestration by Sam Bevan. Featured artist: Meklit, Vocals; guest artists: Sam Bevan, Bass, Colin Douglas, Drumkit, Marco Peris Coppola, Tupan/Percussion.
“Un Levantamiento (An Uprising)”
Composer, percussion: John Santos; arrangers: Saul Sierra and John Santos. Featured artist: John Santos, güícharo, bongo; guest artists: Pedro Pastrana, Puerto Rican cuatro; Maria Cora, spoken word.
Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable”
Pre-concert talk by John Kendall Bailey begins at 7:05pm.
For tickets, go to: https://oaklandsymphony.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0SUu0000001rYXMAY
Art
Augusta Savage: A Sculptor, Activist and Renaissance Woman
Augusta Savage was a prominent sculptor and activist of the Harlem Renaissance, known for her artistic talent and dedication to encouraging and supporting African American artists.
By Tamara Shiloh
Augusta Savage was a prominent sculptor and activist of the Harlem Renaissance, known for her artistic talent and dedication to encouraging and supporting African American artists.
Augusta Christine Fells was born on Feb. 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Fla. She later took the name of her second husband as her
Savage began sculpting as a child using natural clay found near her home. Her father, a Methodist minister, didn’t approve of her sculpting and did whatever he could to stop her. She once said that her father “almost whipped all the art out of me.” Despite her father’s objections, she continued to make sculptures.
When the family moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1915, she encountered a new challenge: a lack of clay. She eventually got some materials from a local potter and created a group of figures that she entered in a local county fair. Her work was well received, winning a prize and along the way the support of the fair’s superintendent, George Graham Currie. He encouraged her to study art despite the racism she encountered.
In the 1920s, Savage moved to New York City, where she attended Cooper Union, a prestigious art school that provided free tuition. She excelled there, completing her studies ahead of time and receiving scholarships for living expenses. Despite being rejected for a summer program in France because of her race, she persevered, using the incident to highlight discrimination. She gained recognition during the Harlem Renaissance, creating sculptures of prominent African Americans, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey.
In 1929, Savage received a Julius Rosenwald fellowship, which enabled her to study in Paris, where she exhibited her work at the Grand Palais, a famous exhibition hall and museum in the French capital.
When she returned to the U.S. during the Great Depression, Savage turned to teaching and founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, mentoring young artists like Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis. She played an active role in the Harlem Artists’ Guild and worked with the Works Projects Administration (WPA) to support struggling artists.
One of Savage’s most celebrated works was The Harp, created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the monumental sculpture depicted twelve African American youth as the strings of a harp. Although it was highly acclaimed, The Harp was destroyed after the fair ended.
In her later years, Savage retreated to a quieter life in Saugerties, New York, teaching children and creating art as a hobby. She was married three times and had one child, Irene.
Savage passed away on March 26, 1962, in New York City after battling cancer. Although she was nearly forgotten at the time of her death, today Savage is recognized as a pioneering artist, educator, and advocate for African American art and artists.
Art
Phenomenal Woman’ Maya Angelou Monument Unveiled at San Francisco Main Library
In a joyful community celebration attended by over 200 people, including Mayor London Breed, the highly anticipated ‘Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman’ monument to Dr. Maya Angelou was unveiled at the San Francisco Main Library on Sept. 19. Oakland-based artist Lava Thomas created the 9-foot bronze and stone monument in the form of a book featuring a portrait and quotes from the celebrated author, poet, civil rights activist and former San Francisco resident.
By Linda Parker Pennington
In a joyful community celebration attended by over 200 people, including Mayor London Breed, the highly anticipated ‘Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman’ monument to Dr. Maya Angelou was unveiled at the San Francisco Main Library on Sept. 19.
Oakland-based artist Lava Thomas created the 9-foot bronze and stone monument in the form of a book featuring a portrait and quotes from the celebrated author, poet, civil rights activist and former San Francisco resident.
The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission in response to legislation passed in 2018 by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, requiring at least 30% female representation in the public realm.
Attending the unveiling were Angelou’s grandson, Elliott Jones, social advocate, philanthropist, and board member of the Dr. Maya Angelou Foundation; and Rosa Johnson, Angelou’s niece and family archivist, who spoke about the historic unveiling of this first public monument portraying a Black woman in San Francisco’s history.
-
Activism4 weeks ago
Oakland Post: Week of September 25 – October 1, 2024
-
Activism3 weeks ago
‘Respect Our Vote’ Mass Meeting Rejects Oakland, Alameda County Recalls
-
Bay Area3 weeks ago
Mayor Sheng Thao Issues Executive Order to Shut Down Homeless Encampments
-
California Black Media3 weeks ago
Study: UC 4-Year Grad Rate Doubles That of CSU
-
Bay Area3 weeks ago
Former Mayor Willie L. Brown Endorses Dana Lang for BART Board District 7
-
Bay Area3 weeks ago
State of Black California: Oakland Tour Stop Rescheduled
-
Alameda County3 weeks ago
Alameda County Democratic Party Opposes the Recall of Mayor Sheng Thao
-
Business3 weeks ago
Google’s New Deal with California Lawmakers and Publishers Will Fund Newsrooms, Explore AI
Pingback: “Black Americans still find inequality in homeownership” and other tweeted links… – the rasx() context