Poets Crack Open Writer's Series

If you're looking for a way to soak in words in the warmth of yellow lamps, sink into a soft easy chair at 802 Monroe, Monday nights at 8:30 pm. This humble building two doors down from Dominick's hosts a writer's series over 25 years young - the oldest such weekly literary event in Ann Arbor. With a loose tradition of requesting donations instead of charging cover, an unintentional emphasis on the academic poetry of professors and students, Monday evenings have drawn a crowd of a certain flavor. But this year's Guild House Campus Ministry Writers' Series promises to shake up attendees with performers such as Matt Smith, Wolf Knight, Detroit poetry gems like Glen Armstrong, Lolita Hernandez, Ron Allen, M.L Liebler and even local high school students learning the magic of sculpting words.

Don't be surprised if the little house emanates purple vibes on September 9, as voodoo teacher/poet Nisi Shawl and painter/actor/environmentalist/poet Natasha Raymond crack open the series.

Shawl casts a spell on those near her, animating imaginations with her vivid dream world through short, meaning-charged poems like "I Saw Her":

I saw her

Burning flowers

as if, death were

a gift,

a benison.

She has nothing to make anything out of,

but she creates,

anyway,

a certain

destruction.

"Poetry should be an incantation," says Shawl. "It should lift people out of one world and place them in another." You've probably caught glimpses of her at the Mother's Day Peace Rally, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the defunct Blossom Cafe, the Poetry Slam, or with The Common Ground Theatre. "Dreams are a big influence," says Shawl, "Sometimes I just wake up from dreaming a poem and I write it down."

These incarnations of the muse come either through writing or through a voice speaking to her directly, says Shawl. As her writing has developed, she has expanded her poetic probes, exploring different levels in subject matter. Over the years, Shawl focused on the physical world, then meshed her language with emotions, and now works with more spiritual concerns in her poetry. She emphasizes that while she travels through all three of these planes, she never abandons them, but integrates each kind of knowledge into the whole. She punctuates her work with increased emphasis on rhythm and internal rhyme in her ever-sensual world of concrete images.

Shawl's influences do not come consistently and solely from the work of other poets. Instead, her mind feeds on various kinds of writing including that of Jack Kerouac and science fiction writer Cord Wainer Smith. Although Shawl's philosophy rings of the otherworldly, her poetry is not strangled by obscurity, but intensified by the clarity acquired through experiencing the fantastic. She pierces the barriers between literature and life by performing at significant events and celebrating significant people, like Woman of the Year, Elise Bryant. Raymond collaborated with Shawl on a poem they performed together, exalting the magic of Bryant, at the National Organization for Women Awards Banquet last April.

The listener's conscious mind follows the narrative strains of Natasha Raymond, who claims that her practice of "making a statement by telling a story" reveals her roots in Asian oral tradition. Raymond brings her message home through reinventing her own subjective experiences in affirmative language with a refreshing sense of humor. Raymond keeps you straddling the knife edge of irony, making you think hard. Her simple phrasing and driving images reverberate in your memory with the power of implication.

Raymond's uncanny way of evoking semi-universal memories in listeners is exemplified in "When Mama Teaches." Here Raymond tells how her mother told her that if she tried to pump gas, the pump would cut her hand off. Raymond fleshes out this modern day drama featuring fuel injection engineers as highly talented and superheroic figures who martyr themselves at minimum wages at gas station Olympic games.

Two women tied to a car. It was

freedom to one

it was a jail sentence to another.

I don't like driving

but I love rides.

Mama taught me many things.

She had her Reasons.

You need to hear the rhythm and intonation of Raymond's voice to fully appreciate how these lines resonate with meaning, how Raymond revolutionizes the concept and practice of "confessional poetry" by playing the courageous, optimistic jester. She says that rather than observing the past as set in stone, she chooses to confront it. "A lot of people these days internalize things and walk away angry because they have stripped themselves of dignity and respect," says Raymond. "They have allowed a negative interpretation to control their lives - they've taken away their choice."

She acknowledges harsh realities, yet empowers her listeners by re-creating history, helping them to comprehend the stories that make people what they are. Her poem, "When Mama Teaches" concludes with herself at age 24 triumphantly pumping her own gas. "Instead of focusing on the negative, I've turned a sexist concept around by using that silver lining," says Raymond, who concludes the poem with an ironic yet contented. "I'm a Knight, I've joined the Ranks of the Brave."

Raymond is deliberate and consciously political in her poetry. "I do think about what subjects need to be written about," says Raymond. "I don't see how someone can exist in a vacuum - unaware of social consequences." Her actions reflect her words. She has organized Woman of Color poetry readings at the Michigan Union, read at Performance Network, written and worked with The Common Ground Theatre and has created paintings which correlate to her poetry.

"Most of my paintings are poems," says Raymond, who will bring a few pieces of her work to her Guild House reading with Shawl. "I'm not interested in technical perfection, I want the painting to be a symbol for a statement," she says.

Raymond can give us the courage to feel events in our lives and transform them while Shawl can take us to worlds we've only dreamed of. Both of these poets are going to shake the foundations of Ann Arbor starting with the Guild House September 9, when Shawl and Raymond unite to explore the hemispheres of human experience.

The Guild House is at 802 Monroe St. The Writers' Series readings are every Monday at 8:30pm. Donations requested. See the CALENDAR for details.