art book project

Project: Create books which include poems, drawings and personal stories of the group members (maybe 4 pages each). Take pictures of each participant and place it above 2 line biographies about the authors. Bind the books with book covers made out of cardboard boxes. Have the participants paint their own book covers.

Objective: to encourage personal and creative expression of aging people. To create a series documenting their voices. To promote environmental and mental/emotional health.

Benefits: The people in the group receive an opportunity to tell their personal histories to people who are interested. They can create artwork. The people who do not read or write can give dictation or draw. The participants can see themselves as published authors which will inspire confidence which is integral to emotional health. The project encourages environmental health by utilizing recycled materials.

Who: the members of the Namaskar groups in Restinga and Belém Novo
What: art books about life, health and aging and happiness
Where: Restinga and Belém Novo
When: 3/11, 13/11; 18/11, 20/11; 24/11, 26/11

Methodology:

This is a three part project.

(Week 1)

1st step: We can provide the participants with templates for an "I Am" poem, a "Letter to my Body" text, and a "Why My Life Matters" prompt and a 2 sentence biography.

(Week 2)

2nd step: We can take pictures of each participant individually, and have them paint the cardboard for their book covers with original designs.

3rd step: I will type all of the text and print it at UFRGS. I can staple all of the books together.

(Week 3)

4th Step: The participants can glue their fotos to the book covers above their biographies. Prof. Dra. Jacqueline has asked to speak with the women about their project when they're finished. Then they can take their books home, and UFRGS can publish an anthology of their work. I can write a preface.

litany

So in the spirit or refusing to consent through silence, I'll mimick a black queer woman I know (only through her work) and trust. thank you Audre Lorde. So I wrote this poem which is not as good as Litany for Survival, but I wrote this one, and I'm glad.

I've also read this in front of big 'ol groups of people. One group liked it, the other not so much. Audience is important. Bombing is also important.

litany: 1. a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by the leader with alternate responses by the congregation. 2. a resonant or repetitive chant. b. a usually lengthy recitation or enumeration. c a sizable series or set.

supplicate: 1. ask humbly and earnestly of. 2. to ask for earnestly and humbly.

Litany for the Wordless

"Dear god almighty," has become a curse in my mouth.
A lashing
reaching from fissured enamel
and tongue tip
to say:

I want meat and gnashing teeth--
Meaning to supplement the open mouths.

I give words from sounds.
"Say: Ni. Th. Cu. Cat.
Say: A. a. ah. aa. I i am.

Then I hand her the pen to scribe the words
"He hurts me. When my baby cries
My breasts leak. He bites, and it feels like rape."

dear, christ almighty, save me from the futility of prayer.

Oh, method and practice,
grant me the aptitude to
teach a woman with worn hands,
wooly mammoth hair--
to give her the words to protect
the gash between her thighs--
to save her sons from the wrath of misunderstanding--
to prevent the unraveling of another generation of
passing, of yes sirs, vapid noddings, poverty,
endless migration.

This is for the wordless and the undersexed--
The wordless who mimic for want of identity.
The undersexed who
sleep and
eat and
work alone
for want of mixing love with status.
For the undersexed who's names are
Older than the histories they're allowed to remember.

For the XY's coupling with the XX's I say
We want proud rounded curved bodies to
touch other hard/soft bodies
kindly, gently and with deference.

In acts of work
and
love and
education
I want phonemes and in strokes
to collide
roughly with passion
like an ax to bark or
gracefully like whittling.

Dear god, let them read to know the words
to write to say, "I am, too."

minority voices

2/22/09

o que o voce fazendo?

This is what I'm doing.

I went to the AWP Conference last week, so I've been reading these journals. I went to the biggest book fair I've ever seen. 800 tables. 1 table was manned by black people. 1. And 6 or 7 times while I was browsing--I walked by every single table--a nice white lady or two would say--Do you write, and I'd say yes and she would say, "we're looking for marginalized voices," we want to give voice to the women of color (like you), the apostrophized parenthetical. I don't know if you know this about me, ya'll, but I'm black and my snatch is black too. Mostly. Except for the pink park--she's red when she's bleeding.

So I'm reading thee journals, and all of the poems by black women are about erasure and rubbing out the blackness, combating the Bulest Eye Syndrome--violently fighting back. We're ( we meaning the African American women of color) are forced to fight the actions of oppressors 'cause silence still equals consent. I'm so sick of the top tier.

Readings and Music and Books, Oh, My!

I spent the last few days at the AWP conference, and I'm still a little overwhelmed. I walked away with my weight in pieces of paper with stories and poems, non-fiction and memoirs. I shook hands, collected buttons, listened to some of the best contemporary writers in the world. Titillated. Curious. Driven. I felt these things and a lack of focus, like I still haven't found a niche. Still, I have deadlines. I have a deadline in 4 hours. In 6 hours I will be on a stage reading a thing called a poem about a moment or moments or people or a person, and I want to make sure I say something right.
I spent the weekend with a good friend and friends. I drank beer and ate food and lusted after pretty bicycles. I studied portuguese and learned how to say, "Eu sou uma mulher," and I'm beginning to belive it because I am no longer "uma crianca," and I don't want to go back to that. Now I have to look up at "uma ceu azul" and dream grown up dreams, then make them come true. So I'm going to quit procrastinating now. I'll read a poem and then write a poem. Then I'll submit a story. bye bye.

Brazil or Bust/ 25th Birthday Party

Event Info

Host:	Maya Marshall
Type:	Birthday Party/Benefit

Time and Place

Start Time:	Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 7:00pm
End Time:	Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 3:00am
Location:	Poitin Stil
Street:	1502 W Jarvis
City/Town:	Chicago, IL

Here's the skinny: DJ PERV spins from 7-10 & intermittently raffles off prizes; Bachelor Auction from 10-10:30; Karaoke from 11-2am; Pool Tournament begins at 7; Dart Tournament begins at 8; Euchre Tournament begins at 9. Buy into it! Come on out.

The Cause: Send Maya to Brazil for 6 months to teach English and serve the Elderly.

I'm preparing for my mid-twenties identity crisis, and I'd like for you to come dance with me. Play pool with me. Be my Euchre partner. Beat me in Darts. Sing Karaoke, win a basket with wine and cheese in it or an hour long massage. Win lunch or a free cut and color by a lovely licensed cosmotologist. Win one of several other prizes. Come have a beer and talk to some folks you haven't seen in a while.

Green Mill

So I'm getting over my fear of reading on stage. As part of this initiative I went to the Green Mill and read a poem I wrote. It received a good response. Here's the poem I read:

She and I are the daughters of top tier abstractions.
I swallow haloed theories of difference. She plucks
strums, fingers nerves like cello strings vying decency
to escape all things traditional. We're glorified young
women free to drink and tromp along glistening Chicago concrete,
gnash teeth at lascivious old men, use our bodies to free our minds.

With a smoke full mouth this semi-Sappho speaks her mind
into sound symbols--syllables meant to concretize abstractions.
She holds my elbow, sure that this way only her feet will hit the concrete.
"I had a baby once, well twice," she admits. She had them plucked
in time to stop their first breathes. She claimed she'd saved her young
fellow the trouble of trying to care. "It's not about decency,

just time and space." I listen: sirens, jingling spokes, "decency."
On the corner a wrinkled woman squats to piss. I wonder what mind
could think this? The young
in the wilderness are in the wilderness everywhere. Flesh is not abstract,
morals aside. Listen. See Sappho push flesh from flesh, too concrete
a liminal breakage. In the alley by my back gate, a little boy is plucking

the face of an action figure. Index nail to plastic. thump. pluck,
pluck. thump. The sound is eighth notes. "Decency"
is not his concept. His is a night of simple destruction: crush plastic into concrete
walk, resume--thump,pluck,pluck. There is no one around to mind.
This little one is alone in an alley at 1 or 2 or 3 am. Abstractly,
I begin to flick the gate--pling, pling, pling--my focus entirely on the young

boy just steps ahead of me. Sappho speaks, "Aren't you too young
to be out here alone?' No response, just--thump. pluck, pluck.
"Are you lost?" His eyes are grey, milky, He looks up abstractly.
"Doesn't your mom want you in bed at a decent
hour?" He turned to leave calling out, "she ain't here, so she don't mind."
She turns her smile on me, laughs, shrugs. I pull the gate, iron scrapes concrete.

He could be my nightmares made concrete,
The epitome of all things frightening about the young.
Too much to hold on to. Too much to keep in mind.
Sappho says, "grab me another drink. Let me finger then pluck
som music out of you." She's on my nerves, but I concede. Decency
degenerates into ambiguity. Whiskey and want cause abstracton.

Tonight I'll make a mistake characteristic of the young.
It would be indecent to deny an artist the chance to pluck
song into creation, to concretize the lush lust, eliminate the abstraction.