interview questions

from the local newspaper in Imola, Italy, where I'll perform on Thursday. Pina, my wonderful fairy-goddess-translator-organizer-mountain-mover in Italy, got them to send the questions early, so I could send her my answers in English to translate into Italian for publication before the performance.

Question: Your poems denounce the tragedies originated by war, discrimination, migrations. Is your choice of using the "spoken word" form dictated by a desire to communicate the issues you explore more forcefully and more directly with the audience?

Answer:

"Spoken Word" is a new term for an ancient form - the oral tradition of poetry. Live performance has the power to move people in a way that many other genres cannot. In our world today, we mostly experience culture as "consumers". Books, film, music, are "products", channeled through filters of technology and marketing. When I perform live in front of an audience, there are no filters. Nothing I do is edited, engineered, or altered. So the audience become participants, co-creators, in an experience, instead of passive consumers of a product. That is the power of live oral poetry.

Question: What is the power of "social" poetry at a time of war?
(Note: "Social" poetry in Italy means political poetry, poetry that engages with current events. As opposed to 'real' i.e. 'literary' poetry :-))

Answer:

To quote the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, during the time of Stalin: "Poetry is a law unto itself: It is impossible to bury it alive and even a powerful propaganda machinery such as ours cannot prevent it from living on."

"Social" or "political" poetry is no different from any other poetry in a time of war - it requires us to look deeply and unflinchingly at the reality around us. To experience fully what it is to be human in our time, and to respond to what our times require of us as full human beings. It wakes us up to feeling, and to channeling feeling into action for peace and justice.

Question: Did your last work, "Migritude"seek to re-write the history of migrations, giving a voice to those who were forced to experience them?

Answer:

Migritude unfolds the hidden stories of migrant colonial subjects. It reclaims the dignity of outsider status. I use my trousseau of saris to give voice to women living in the bootprint of Empire, women whose faces are not seen or known in the global North. Just as the 6 yards of a sari both reveal and conceal female form, Migritude reveals what is concealed behind "official history".