WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.428 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:02.428 --> 00:00:03.880 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.880 --> 00:00:07.400 align:middle line:90% Good evening. 00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:11.400 align:middle line:84% January Gill O'Neil's poems have been included in multiple 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:15.200 align:middle line:84% anthologies, such as "This is the Honey: 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:18.720 align:middle line:84% an Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets," 00:00:18.720 --> 00:00:22.720 align:middle line:84% "The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood," 00:00:22.720 --> 00:00:29.080 align:middle line:84% and even "Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs 00:00:29.080 --> 00:00:30.500 align:middle line:90% of Taylor Swift." 00:00:30.500 --> 00:00:32.800 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:32.800 --> 00:00:36.520 align:middle line:84% The organizing principles of these anthologies 00:00:36.520 --> 00:00:40.920 align:middle line:84% give us immediate insight into some of O'Neil's enduring poetic 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:42.600 align:middle line:90% concerns-- 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:47.440 align:middle line:84% motherhood, womanhood, particularly her experience 00:00:47.440 --> 00:00:53.560 align:middle line:84% of Black womanhood in the US, community, and love. 00:00:53.560 --> 00:00:58.600 align:middle line:84% O'Neil's poems sweep us up into intimate moments and memories. 00:00:58.600 --> 00:01:02.250 align:middle line:84% As part of this intimacy, the reader also enters 00:01:02.250 --> 00:01:06.130 align:middle line:84% the speaker's "Underlife," the title of O'Neil's debut 00:01:06.130 --> 00:01:10.650 align:middle line:84% collection, which is that gnawing wilderness of thought 00:01:10.650 --> 00:01:15.850 align:middle line:84% and emotion hidden away from the external world. 00:01:15.850 --> 00:01:20.850 align:middle line:84% In other words, these poems burn from deep within. 00:01:20.850 --> 00:01:22.850 align:middle line:84% Whether it is weeping in Home Depot 00:01:22.850 --> 00:01:26.170 align:middle line:84% after the rupture of a relationship, 00:01:26.170 --> 00:01:29.890 align:middle line:84% fears for her biracial children in a violent and overpoliced 00:01:29.890 --> 00:01:34.490 align:middle line:84% America, or anger at the wage gap exacerbating 00:01:34.490 --> 00:01:38.730 align:middle line:84% the economic insecurity of Black women essential workers, 00:01:38.730 --> 00:01:42.370 align:middle line:84% O'Neil's poems are spoken by a prophetic voice 00:01:42.370 --> 00:01:47.010 align:middle line:84% of untamable emotion and rigor of thought. 00:01:47.010 --> 00:01:50.010 align:middle line:84% Many poems use images of things trapped 00:01:50.010 --> 00:01:54.370 align:middle line:84% and things freed, like lightning bugs in a jar on a summer 00:01:54.370 --> 00:01:57.970 align:middle line:84% night, a wasp trapped in a window, 00:01:57.970 --> 00:02:04.090 align:middle line:84% or golfers hitting golf balls out and away into oblivion. 00:02:04.090 --> 00:02:06.770 align:middle line:84% Certainly, in so doing, O'Neil speaks 00:02:06.770 --> 00:02:10.889 align:middle line:84% to the ever present history of chattel slavery and its echoes 00:02:10.889 --> 00:02:13.810 align:middle line:90% that reverberate today. 00:02:13.810 --> 00:02:16.350 align:middle line:84% In her most recent book, Glitter Road, 00:02:16.350 --> 00:02:19.650 align:middle line:84% she travels from the Northeast to the Deep South 00:02:19.650 --> 00:02:24.770 align:middle line:84% and holds the trauma of Southern cotton in her hands. 00:02:24.770 --> 00:02:28.090 align:middle line:84% Freedom comes in many forms, as she reminds us. 00:02:28.090 --> 00:02:31.610 align:middle line:84% The freedom to create, freedom in one's 00:02:31.610 --> 00:02:36.690 align:middle line:84% sense of self, in who we love, in how we make our living. 00:02:36.690 --> 00:02:39.770 align:middle line:84% As she tells her son, your place in this world 00:02:39.770 --> 00:02:43.050 align:middle line:90% is the one you claim. 00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:46.090 align:middle line:84% The powerful last lines of many of O'Neil's poems 00:02:46.090 --> 00:02:50.550 align:middle line:84% enact this yearning for freedom by leaping imaginatively, 00:02:50.550 --> 00:02:53.810 align:middle line:84% unexpectedly, away from the immediate setting 00:02:53.810 --> 00:02:56.490 align:middle line:90% or syntax of the poem. 00:02:56.490 --> 00:02:59.530 align:middle line:84% They pull us elsewhere, inviting connections 00:02:59.530 --> 00:03:02.610 align:middle line:90% that deepen the poem's effect. 00:03:02.610 --> 00:03:06.020 align:middle line:84% In one poem about making love with her husband with the hope 00:03:06.020 --> 00:03:08.600 align:middle line:84% of getting pregnant, in the last lines, 00:03:08.600 --> 00:03:11.180 align:middle line:84% the speaker's mind casts out of the bedroom 00:03:11.180 --> 00:03:15.040 align:middle line:84% and toward the ripe tomatoes in the yard. 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:18.260 align:middle line:84% In another about memories of a past relationship, 00:03:18.260 --> 00:03:22.300 align:middle line:84% the final line leads to the fact that the starlight we see 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:24.360 align:middle line:90% is many light years old. 00:03:24.360 --> 00:03:27.260 align:middle line:90% 00:03:27.260 --> 00:03:30.380 align:middle line:84% O'Neil's poems also speak to the writer's calling 00:03:30.380 --> 00:03:34.700 align:middle line:84% in a divided world, asking, can art effect 00:03:34.700 --> 00:03:41.140 align:middle line:84% change when every bullet blooms the color of elegy? 00:03:41.140 --> 00:03:44.140 align:middle line:84% Even as her as her work evolves and deepens 00:03:44.140 --> 00:03:47.260 align:middle line:84% across her four collections, she reminds us 00:03:47.260 --> 00:03:51.740 align:middle line:84% that writing poems is true and hard work. 00:03:51.740 --> 00:03:55.780 align:middle line:84% In the poem "Cartwheel," she says with her characteristic 00:03:55.780 --> 00:03:59.580 align:middle line:84% energy and humor, "All this time, 00:03:59.580 --> 00:04:04.580 align:middle line:84% I have been able to balance my little life in my hands. 00:04:04.580 --> 00:04:09.420 align:middle line:84% That I go through the turn and keep landing on my feet is 00:04:09.420 --> 00:04:10.880 align:middle line:90% a goddamn miracle." 00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:13.820 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:18.019 align:middle line:84% O'Neil works tirelessly on behalf of other writers, 00:04:18.019 --> 00:04:20.980 align:middle line:84% helping them find their voice through her teaching at Salem 00:04:20.980 --> 00:04:24.500 align:middle line:84% State University and Bread Loaf, giving them 00:04:24.500 --> 00:04:27.180 align:middle line:84% a place to share their work at the Massachusetts Poetry 00:04:27.180 --> 00:04:29.660 align:middle line:84% Festival, and providing community 00:04:29.660 --> 00:04:32.060 align:middle line:84% and professional development through the Association 00:04:32.060 --> 00:04:34.740 align:middle line:84% of Writers and Writing Programs, where 00:04:34.740 --> 00:04:37.140 align:middle line:84% she is a former chair of the board of directors 00:04:37.140 --> 00:04:41.380 align:middle line:84% and its longest serving current board member. 00:04:41.380 --> 00:04:44.580 align:middle line:84% O'Neil has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural 00:04:44.580 --> 00:04:49.420 align:middle line:84% Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, 00:04:49.420 --> 00:04:53.680 align:middle line:84% and was the 2019 to 2020 John and Renee Grisham 00:04:53.680 --> 00:04:55.500 align:middle line:84% Writer in Residence at the University 00:04:55.500 --> 00:04:58.260 align:middle line:90% of Mississippi, Oxford. 00:04:58.260 --> 00:05:01.900 align:middle line:84% Please help me give a warm welcome to January Gill O'Neil. 00:05:01.900 --> 00:05:04.950 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:05:04.950 --> 00:05:07.000 align:middle line:90%