So I wanted to first of all, thank you all,
and thank the Poetry Center there
at the University of Arizona.
And then it turns out that these are all my friends here,
and I really appreciate that.
Each one of you mean a lot to me.
And people will say, like with Luivette and Michael,
and Peter, that I publish my friends.
Well, here's the truth.
I don't.
Most of Tia Chucha Press publish people I don't know.
But it just so happens that I have great poet friends,
and Diana, you're one too, you're a good friend.
I remember the walks we did and talked
we did in San Antonio, when we were in Macondo.
And you're amazing poet.
So it just so happens that I happen
to have friends who are great poets.
Just to be clear I've had a lot of friends
send me manuscripts who I don't publish.
Because they're just, for me, not where they should be.
That's just the way it goes.
But I do feel like the friends who
are great poets include Luivette,
and Michael, and Peter, who are amazing poets.
Their poetry just-- all of them different, powerful, moving,
deep, and encompassing.
So I just wanted to mention that to everybody in case
people have any other ideas about the stuff.
I wanted to share though two new poems.
Well, at least, one new poem, because I don't think I
want to share the other one.
But one new poem is--
one of the things that I missed because of the pandemic
I've been teaching poetry in prisons, and juvenile halls,
and jails for 40 years in one form or the other.
Usually I do one time poetry readings, or talks, or healing
circles, but I've also been doing these several weeks,
several months, and even years of creative writing classes.
And since 2007, I have been teaching at Lancaster State
Prison in California, which is a high level prison,
high security level prison.
And because of the pandemic, we don't get a chance to go back.
They don't allow any more instructors,
and they don't really allow us to get in touch with anybody.
And so I'm hearing from people that people are getting sick,
the COVID has killed close to 60 people,
and in the state of California, and hundreds and hundreds
have been sick and a lot of families that we know
don't know what's going on.
They don't communicate.
There's a lot of problems going on here.
And so I really miss these guys, and women,
because I also went to the women's prison as well.
So I wrote a poem for them as well.
And just so you know, just so people understand,
I also published a new book.
I don't mind sharing it.
You can get this at my bookstore,
TiaChucha.org/bookstore along with all my books and other Tia
Chucha Press books, all the books from these poets are
there.
But Make a Poem Cry just came out,
and it's in creative writing from California's Lancaster
Prison.
These are guys in my classes that we published.
We wanted to honor their voices and came out
during the pandemic.
And it's edited by myself and Kenneth E.
Hartman who did 38 years in the California prison system.
So I'm going to read the poem that I wrote based
on this title, and it's called Make A Poem Cry,
and it starts with a excerpt of a poem
by one of the poets, Jimmy McMillan, who
is still incarcerated in the prison system in California.
And it starts with this one line--
"I can't see him coming from my eye.
So I had to make this poem cry.
You can chain the body, the face, the eyes, the way hands
move coarsely over cement or deftly
on tattooed skin with needle.
You can cage the withered membrane,
the withered dreams, the way razor wire shouts,
yells, and batons can wither spirit.
But how can you imprison a poem?
How can a melody be locked up, locked down?
Yes, even caged birds sing.
Even grass sprouts through asphalt.
Even a flower blooms in a desert.
And the gardens of trauma we call the incarcerated,
can also spring with the vitality of a deep thought,
and emotion buried beneath the facades
deep as rage, deep as grief, the grief beneath all rages.
The blood of such poems, songs, emotions, thoughts,
dances are what flow in all art, stages, films, books.
The keys to liberation are in the heart and the mind,
behind the cranial sky.
The imagination is boundless.
The inexhaustible in any imprisoned system.
And remember, we are all in some kind of prison.
If only the contrived freedom society professes
can flow from such water."