festival flirtation

This week, I got an email from someone at 00TAL, the hip culture magazine behind the Stockholm International Poetry Festival. The theme of this year's festival is

An Evening In Three Love Acts

We, the featured poets, have been asked to:

read something you have written about love; a big word that you are free to interpret as you wish.

The email asked me to answer, as briefly as possible, five questions, for the little booklet they'll create and distribute about the poets. It felt like a flirtation and a haiku challenge, rolled into one.

Here are the questions, and my answers.

If love were a city, which city would it be?

The three-way union of Stockholm on Midsummer's Eve, New Orleans before the levees broke, and the 13th-century city-state of Lamu.

Have you ever gotten a love poem from someone?

Yes. The loveliest one was nine pages long.

Have you ever written a love poem to someone?

My aspiration as a poet is to write political essays which work as love poems.

Who in the world needs poetry the most?

Those who have disconnected their guts from their hearts, and their hearts from their brains.

What would you like to communicate to the audience?

My job as a poet is to wake the audience up. To move them beyond numbness, bring them fully alive, to both heartbreak and wonder.

portraits

Taken by Cato Lein at WALTIC in Stockholm last year.

Back by popular demand. A couple of readers asked me to put these portraits at the top of this page, rather than letting them slide into the archives. Although for those of you with time to spare, a ramble through the archives throws up all sorts of poetic gems and thoughtful morsels. Not to mention sashimi satire.

A new exhibition of Cato's portraits of writers will run from June 17th to July 31st at Hedengrens, Stockholm's largest and best-known bookshop. It will include the photos above, and others of Dennis Lehane, Zadie Smith, Le Clézio, Alaa al-Aswany, and more.

Gina Hotta

died suddenly last night, of a heart attack.

She was executive producer and host of the weekly APEX Express show on KPFA radio. The show was the voice of Asian America, getting APIA voices and issues out on the airwaves, week after week.

Each time I was a guest on APEX Express, I was impressed by Gina's razor intelligence, huge heart, and willingness to make space for issues that most people don't consider "Asian" - in my case, Kenyan and African politics. Here's my last interview with her, broadcast at the start of this year, where I discussed what Obama's election meant for Kenyans.

After the shows, I'd always suggest we head to my favourite Berkeley dosa house, Udupi Palace, just around the corner from KPFA. We'd talk politics, culture, media, for hours, over channa batura and idli sambar.

Gina was also a pioneering civil rights activist and passionate musical archivist. Adriel Luis captures her perfectly and poignantly: analog girl in a digital world.

And Claire Light over on Hyphen reminds us:

The Movement leaders are passing, Asian America. Let's remember to honor our elders before they leave us.

I wish I'd thought to tell Gina how much I respected and valued her decades of work to carve out media space for minorities. Her technical skill and journalistic excellence. Her unwavering commitment to community-building.

It's another wake-up call to me. Never bypass an opportunity to tell those whose shoulders I stand on what their work has meant for me. So they hear it while they're alive.

Go in joy and music, Gina. Your work will carry us all, and we will try to be worthy of the space you opened for us.

Bantu Mwaura Children Fund

Five months ago, I mourned the tragic death of Bantu Mwaura, friend, brother, and truth-teller.

He left a wife, Susan, and two daughters, Makeba, aged seven, and five-year-old MeKatilili. The first time I met Bantu, he whipped out his cellphone to show me their photos. When he told me their names, I teased him:

No pressure there, huh? No burdens of history on two gorgeous children?

Bantu's family and friends have now set up an education fund for his daughters. Bantu was passionate about learning, as a scholar and teacher. This fund is a way to support his children on their educational journey, and honor the memory and legacy of our friend.

This account will be drawn only thrice a year, exclusively to pay for the children’s school fees. Please circulate this information to others who knew and valued Bantu.

Checks, transfers or deposits should be directed to:

Account Name: THE BANTU MWAURA C. E. FUND
Account number: 0151306093400
Bank: Standard Chartered Bank, Moi Avenue, Nairobi, Kenya

For quick assistance at the bank ask for:

Mr. Kinyanjui Kombani (The Business Financial Consultant- Standard Chartered Bank)
Email: Joseph.Kombani@standardchartered.com

Contributions can also be sent via Western Union, PostaPay or Mpesa to:

Mrs. Susan K. Bantu
Cell: + 254 720 318 984
Collection point: Nairobi-Kenya

Any questions can be send to:

bantumwauraeducationfund@yahoo.com

or

Mrs. Susan K. Bantu
Cell: +254 720 318 984)
Email: wanbantu@gmail.com

Northward bound

At the end of October, I'll be heading North again - to the Stockholm International Poetry Festival.

I've only ever been in Sweden in late spring and summer. Time to test my mettle against the cold :-). But now that I know what a magically beautiful city Stockholm is, I'm actually looking forward to seeing it as winter fairytale-land.

the magical hands

of my favourite massage therapist on the planet, Leland Thunes, are now also blogging in-between clients and music-making. Leland created the soundtrack for Migrant Song and Shilling Love in Migritude I.

You can feel The Hands in action at San Francisco Chiropractic, downtown SF.

Warning:
Hanging out with Leland may induce inferiority complexes. But may also lead to spontaneous eruptions of poetry.

Body of the Goddess

An expanded version of this posting, with full text of both poems quoted, is now up on The Women's International Perspective, and on Tikkun Daily Blog, the multimedia blog site of the progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine, Tikkun. I've already received a range of responses - both delighting and dissenting - so I look forward to a lively debate. Feel free to post your comments either here or the sites.

Today is Vijaya Dashami, the Day of Victory that completes the nine-day Hindu Navaratri celebration of the Goddess in all her aspects and manifestations. In mythology, Vijaya Dashami marks the final triumph of the Goddess, after nine days of battle, over the demon Mahishasur. It also marks the start of the harvest season, and invokes the Divine Mother as all the powers of fertility and the life-giving gifts of the earth.

I stand firmly, fiercely, and unequivocally against the global rise of Hindu fundamentalism. In 2002, in the wake of the Gujurat massacres, I wrote Today I Dismantled My Gods (which appears in Shilling Love) and performed it across the US to raise awareness and funds for the survivors.

Since then, conversations with progressive desi friends have convinced me to reclaim my Hindu spiritual and cultural heritage as a feminist scholar, radical activist, and artist. Navaratri has been a potent and transforming festival for me since childhood. It's a time when I reconnect with my own Goddess-hood, and celebrate all the manifestations of the Goddess in my life.

Last night, I attended a beautiful Saraswati puja at Berkeley's Yoga Mandala. It nourished all my senses, left me filled with light. It reminded me of my poem, Ode To Durga, from Dreaming In Gujurati.

I’m glad I can worship with all my senses,
with petals and flame, bells and incense smoke,
succulent offerings of halwa and khir,
glad this ritual rides a spectrum,
austere silence to ecstatic noise.


More than ever, all of us on the planet need to reconnect to the Sacred Feminine. To move in the world with the radiant consciousness born of that connection; as a collective, unstoppable momentum for reparation, restoration, justice, and equality.

I’m glad I can touch my gods
with intimate reverent fingers,
tangible forms to absorb my fears,
demons, longings,
to draw from me
what’s brave and joyous,
in showers of rice and water,
libations of milk and ghee.

Whenever I doubt my own abilities or capacities, I turn to all the amazing women I know. Writers, scholars, warriors, leaders, builders, activists, healers, dancers, teachers, dreamers, changemakers. I draw on their potency and courage to recharge my own.

Goddess present in all beings
who sang me into the light of dawn,
you who are a million faces,
which one shall I be today?
You whisper in my ear like a lover:
Do the thing you dread the most.


May we all continue to honor this fragile, luminous, wounded world as the Body of the Goddess.

I say: I’m scared.
You say: I know.
I say: This hurts!
You say: So what?
Would you rather stay asleep?
I say: What if…..
You say: Jump.