Love Letters from Oklahoma Black History
One week till Jasmine Elizabeth Smith reads at Green College!
Dear Friends,
We look forward to gathering in one week to listen to Jasmine Elizabeth Smith read South Flight.
April 10, 2024
5 - 6:30 pm with Reception to Follow
Coach House, Green College, University of British Columbia
If you live far away, or you can’t make it to the cozy coach house of Green College that evening, you’re welcome to follow along from home via Livestream.
If you show up in person, you may well leave with your own copy of South Flight, as we’ve used our series budget to purchase copies for folks to follow along during the reading and take home. Please plan to stick around for fruit, bountiful cheese and coffee/tea if you can.
A Poem Preview
After the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Jim Waters leaves Okahoma for Chicago. His lover Beatrice is left alone to send letters from Boley to Chicago, which Jim sometimes answers. These letters take shape in conversation with Blues musicians, archival newspapers, and bible verses, and in deft formal homage to writers like Toni Morrison, Phyllis Wheatley, Richard Wright, and Gwendolyn Brooks. South Flight goes deep on both research and sound. The result is pretty astonishing.
Love Letter on the Eve of Revolution
I am all wanting. only blues seems to make sense these days— to touch you like parted vowels from harp teeth. I can't breathe; therefore, I am greedy for passage of air: clarinets cleared of cold coughs & low-down tonk house songs slapped out my anger. how can a strangled chord progression picked in love sound like something other than violence? how might I chorus hornets into sonnet when my mouth feels a containment? my tongue stiff, an unsoaked reed, I keep tryin to play every undigested place of our existence but my tongue so dogged out, even my notes flatten cruel. will I draw or blow lovestruck, the fermata between your eyes & parting braids— head northbound without turning back? b. I beget you what little I still have: my body throaty, a staged pathos, at 2 am, the trombones' bent melodies & riot of beaten drunskins. of honest folks, this world makes sinners' ramblin. I know this blues sounds mean, but how can I love on bended knees?
This poem first appeared in a slightly different form in Frontier Poetry on August 19th, 2020.
This is work that clamors to be voiced and embodied. We can’t wait to listen with you next week.
A Recording from Our First Whole Cloth Event with Ali Blythe
It’s a pleasure to share this recording of Ali Blythe’s reading of Steadfast from November, now available on YouTube.
All the best from your hosts,
Bronwen and Elee