Acentos Writers Workshop Fall 2010 Session 2 Tara Betts

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Acentos 

Fall 2010

Session 2

Sept. 26.

Tara Betts

Last Sunday morning upon arriving at Acentos we had the pleasure of seeing one of the founders of the Acentos Foundation, Fish Vargas, who we haven't seen for months as he is a new West Coast transplant. He brought with him the logical proposal of a sister group to ours based out of Oakland, California. As passionate as he is about Acentos it was logical and presented us a wonderful opportunity for growth on a national level. It's Manifest Destiny!

After a group hug and farewell we got down to the nitty gritty. And it WAS gritty!

During our second week back at Acentos we had the pleasure of partaking in poetic repartee with the wonderful author, lecturer and Cave Canem Fellow, Tara Betts. Her easy going relationship with the group and dynamic thinking were guaranteed to shake something loose in us. 

It turned out that it would be both exciting and nerve wracking as we all stepped outside the box to try something new. We began with a writing exercise called the "Ten Minute Spill". 

Cliff 

Needle

Voice

Whir

Blackberry

Cloud

Mother 

Lick

Here is my own:

Our relationship was ginger foot tracing along cliff

The tear soaked needle that sewed our mother-daughter quilt rusted blunt 

Her voice sent my mind reeling into tailspin confusion

The comforting whir of the fan blowing on my face soothed the small hairs on my nape 

Small women living in a cloud of confusion and despair

She tore open my wounds and licked them with lemon tongue

“He left us, you look like him, that bastard desgraciao”

I hate you, wish you’d never been born

My right thigh red, her left hand with swollen blackberry fingertips

If even she couldn’t take the force of her rage what hope had I?

We read our poems to one another and found ourselves laughing, enjoying each other's different plays on the words, discussing the particular usages. Some used the word "blackberry" literally and mention the fruit, my own symbolized a bruised welt or as the cell phone which when the exercise created didn't even exist.

 

Using words we’re forced to use can make us break out of common modes or we can find a way to incorporate them into our favorite themes. The word "mother" prompted most of the poets to go directly into poems about our mothers which more often than is bound to dredge up some tears, because we get open like that that's what went down. Fearless poetry here, people!

The second segment of the workshop had us all breathing funny or altogether holding our breath. Tara shared that she is often inspired by music and we logged onto YouTube to check out Broken Language by Smooth the Hustler. Good times! In it he describes himself in a creative, forceful bulleted barrage of straightforward and flip-descriptive lyrics. Our job was to crank out an identity poem with Tara telling us she wanted to see the women get open and bring it because as women we're taught to downplay our badassness and this kind of work taps into the uncomfortable regions of braggadocio. 

As we listened I tried to jot down as many as I could. He tells us he's a:

Head spinner 

Body polluter 

Gat shooter

Brain smasher

Breath taker

Shot popper

Cock blocker

Lady shitter

Human drug generator

(google the lyrics later)

Heather Headly 

Kiss craver 

Baby conceiver

Now it was our turn and hopefully the poets identity wouldn't be straight misogynistic like the 90s lyricist. Our results hit points in a range from fun and light to deeply traumatic and raw. One poet inpsired tears with a wonderfully written but graphic poem describing a woman severely abused and raped. Several of us had tears in our eyes as she read and then we thanked her for doing the work and inviting us into her pain, allowing us the look into her truth. One of the hugely positive points of poetry is that it benefits both reader and writer by uncovering our common ground and exposing our common threads. Healing moments, growth come from the ability to turn pain into art and communication. 

There were many different approaches, some were shy about sharing, some thought maybe they did it wrong but one who impressed was Roberto Plena Irizarry, whom had just gotten off of a plane from Chicago and took a cab from LaGuardia straight to Acentos. 

Beatles loving

Hip hop head boppin

Salsa feet tapping

Merengue hip swinging

Coffee drinking

No beef or pork eating

Fast food hating

Rose scent sniffing

Bomba kissing

Neck biting

Bruised thigh giving

I want things my way arguing

Don't fuck with me warning

iPhone texting

Laptop facebooking

Comfy day sneaker rockin'

9 to 5 dress shoe wearing

Fortune 500 company innovation creating

Live concert organizing

Nuyorican poetry reciting

Mother loving

Father rejecting

Union squaring

Kingsbridging

Pollen sneezing

Migraine suffering

Temper carrying

Silence appreciating

Public argument loathing

Chocolate ice cream cone buying

Arnold palming

Non costco membership having

Out of control money spending

God fearing

God challenging

God praying

God believing

Occasional Sin indulging

Sunday morning acentos cab flagging

Puerto rico tomb purchasing

Bury my ashes in ponce requesting

Use some of it for pen ink wishing

Santa claus dismissing

The Cuco is real believing

Poetry in the park attending

My girls pocket holding

Beard grabbing

One hitter toking

Don't tweet too much but I be's on tumblr posting

Albizu campos writings searching

Signed copy of arc n hue having

Boricua flagging

Young Lord admiring

Amiri baraking

Ying yanging

Bronx stomping

Manhattan train riding

Roberto Irizarry birth certificate filing

December birthday partying

Chips Ahoy cookie eating me

And there you have it. Week number 2! Done and dope! 

Next week we have  E.J. Antonio a 2009 fellow in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a recipient of fellowships from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Cave Canem

Poem by E.J. 

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You can find out more about our Tara Betts  

Tara Betts is the author of the book Arc and Hue, her debut collection on Aquarius Press/Willow Books. Tara is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. She is also a Cave Canem fellow.Tara's poetry and prose has appeared in various journals and anthologies. She has also been a freelance writer for publications such as XXL, The Source, BIBR, Mosaic Magazine and Black Radio Exclusive.

Tara Betts encourages literacy and works with arts programs. In Chicago, she was an influential educator. Tara co-founded GirlSpeak, a weekly writing/leadership workshop for young women. She has also conducted short-term workshops in schools, community centers, Ms. Foundation, City Girls (a substance abuse rehabilitation center for teen girls), Cook County Jail and Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, Louder Arts Project, Cooper Union, Dodge Foundation's Poets-In-The-Schools program and London's Roundhouse.Tara Betts appeared on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam" She also appeared in the Black Family Channel series "SPOKEN" with Jessica Care Moore. She has also been one of the writers/performers in girlstory-an intergenerational, multicultural women's performance collective. Tara has also performed in plays, including two SouthWest V-Day productions of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" at Chicago's DuSable Museum. After winning Guild Complex's Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award, she represented Chicago twice at the National Poetry Slam.

She has performed her work in Cuba, London, New York, the West Coast and throughout the Midwest at venues such as Arie Crown Theater, The New School, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Studio Museum of Harlem, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Bar 13, The Metro, Cornelia Street Café, Bowery Poetry Club, Yerba Buena Cultural Center, the Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, poetry slams, conferences, several colleges, universities and numerous public, private and alternative schools.

Tara is making appearances at festivals throughout the country as well. Some of her past appearances include the Mixed Roots Literary & Film Festival, The Hip Hop Theater Festival,
Ladyfest Midwest, AWP, Split This Rock Festival, the National Black Writers Conference,
the Austin International Poetry Festival, and the Baltimore Book Festival.She has shared the stage with Patricia Smith, Rosellen Brown, Afaa Michael Weaver, Martín Espada, David Mura, Kwame Dawes, Luis Rodriguez, MC Lyte and Grammy-winner Jill Scott and others. She coached and mentored countless young writers and performers that have participated in the Brave New Voices and Louder Than a Bomb teen poetry slams and still teaches writing workshops with teens at Urban Word NYC.

Comments

[Tara Betts]

I'm surprised you didn't share the link to Heather Headley's video or explain why she's in the notes. Thanks for sharing, Jani Bomba!

Heather Headley's "He Is..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3H5zMeD2Rs

[Glendaliz Camacho]

Wow, those writing exercises are tight. I love what you've been able to do with them. You're continually blooming, Rose. ;)