Resource Roundup #8
For the week of June 4th.
Hi all,
Apologies for being late on this. Yesterday was my last official day teaching for the year, and as such, certain other things fell to the wayside. But we are back! And there is lots of good stuff, below…
Thinking today about the way Alexis Pauline Gumbs wrote about Audre Lorde as a teacher in her essay, “Two Rivers”:
“The students wondered something about the poet-in-residence Audre Lorde. “Miss Lorde,” they asked on the first night, “would you call yourself a nature poet?” Because they felt the convergence of rivers and oceans. Because the sound of her voice was reshaping stone. Because they, children of the Delta, could smell the air before the flood. And the flood happened. Audre Lorde let herself love those poetry students so much that she revealed her secrets to them, who she was and who she loved, which is what she taught them to do with their poetry. Be who you are and act on your love. “
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
Also from Southern Cultures, this profile on the Earthseed Land Collective, forty-eight acres in Durham, NC, owned and operated by a group of Black and Latinx people.
So often are artists often the true revolutionaries, especially in the ways they imagine new lives for objects of difficulty. Check out this piece on artists turning plywood from last year’s protests into art.
I’ve been loving the Daily Yonder’s newsletter. They had a great interview recently with Azuré Kauikeolani Iversen-Keahi of Soul Fire Farm on food sovereignty and rural farming in Hawaii. It’s important to remember that rural isn’t just southern or midwestern, and they do some killer coverage on news, arts, and culture in rural communties.
MASSIVE congratulations to my friend Marcus Amaker, Poet Laureate of Charleston, who was just announced as one of the 2021 Academy of American Poets Poets Laureate Fellows. Marcus is an incredible human and writer, and the kind of person who exudes love and ease into any room he is in. I hope one day to be the kind of poet and teacher he is, and I cannot wait to see all the amazing things he continues to do.
Been digging this week through The Creative Independent’s Sober 21 zine, a resource guide from musicians who have gotten sober. There’s reflections on the journey, the why, the difficulty of doing so in the music business, and why it’s important to push back on the myths that creative production hinges on substance. There’s some legendary musicians in here, and I’ve been thinking a lot as I read about how the public perception of artistry is slowly starting to shift towards a focus on community, health, and peace. I definitely recommend this zine, free to download here.