Good Hair Gone Forever: Poems by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Happy Halloween!  What is scarier than the freedom of black hair growing out of bright black brains? Muwhahaha. My Halloween gift to all of you is the kindle/tablet/online version of my chapbook GOOD HAIR GONE FOREVER.

View this document on Scribd

My shero namesake Alexis De Veaux took time out to write these words about the collection:

“The poems of GOOD HAIR GONE FOREVER wreak with the sensate badass-ness of a sure nuff trouble maker, a twenty-first century afroheaded trickster black woman who spits nappyness and breathes mirrors. Read the signs: this is a dangerous free. No hemming and hawing allowed.”  –Alexis De Veaux, Author of Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde and An Enchanted Hair Tale

Download it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/180497577/Good-Hair-Gone-Forever-by-Alexis-Pauline-Gumbs-pdf

You can see a video the poem BEWARE here:

https://vimeo.com/14258784

101 Things that Are NOT True About the Most Famous Black Women Alive

What does a black feminist who spends her time lifting up the legacies of obscure black feminist geniuses do about her complicated feelings about hypervisible famous black women like Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey?

These poems.

“Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s book of list poems, One Hundred and One Things That Are Not True About The Most Famous Black Women Alive, then, is an intervention into black women’s relationships with the list form, with truth-telling, with public personages, and with each other.”  Sarah Mantilla Griffin  (See full review here)

View this document on Scribd

[vimeo 54338029]

“The theme of flight is an important one for Gumbs and places her work in conversation with writers, including Toni Morrison, who have explored the trope of the flying African.  As they provide spaces for flights of the mind, for escape, for rising above, or simply for elevating and expanding our perceptions of whom these women could be, the poems enliven what were essentially static public figures.”  Sarah Mantilla Griffin  (See full review here)

Here is a conversation about the meditation of LOVE that is this book with Crunk Feminist Collectives R. Boylorn.

crunkfeministcollective.com/2013/01/28/101-things-that-are-not-true-about-the-most-famous-black-women-alive-alexis-pauline-gumbs-on-black-women-black-feminism-and-the-capacity-to-love/

And here is a fun video I made with excerpts of the poems this morning.

[vimeo 77035006]

Emergency Broadcast: A Youth Activism Workbook

Hey y’all! In honor of the way I met my sister comrade Maia Williams (it’s her birthday!!!!) and the transformative discussion at last month’s Emergency Theologies Parable Potluck

I am REPUBLISHING a digital version of a 47 page youth activism workbook zine that I published when I had one day of liberated access to a copy machine in my early 20s.

Enjoy! All proceeds go towards curriculum building for Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind programming in Durham!

View this document on Scribd

http://www.scribd.com/doc/176274672/Emergency-Broadcast-A-Youth-Activism-Workbook

Lucille Clifton and the Poems of Our Past Lives: October Finding Poems Retreat

 Saturday October 19th 10am-4pm

Durham, NC  (registered participants will get the location info!)

Many people do not know that the great poet Lucille Clifton was also in communication with other worlds.  In her archived papers there are several proposed manuscripts of books that talk about her communication with the dead. Based on Lucille Clifton’s dream poems and past life poems this retreat is about looking for the poems in our own dreams, memories and inklings and maybe even our conversations with folks who are no longer on this plane.

Sign up here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DXh-xfhHc9rs5yE5wTZUKeQSSposJHwxAL-v3cL0cls/viewform

Offer your retreat fee here at a rate you can afford.  (Keep in mind comparable one day retreats cost about $155.00)

 

Glad to be in community with you in this lifetime!

Love,
Lex

Durham Poems from the Finding Poems Participants

On September 28th an eclectic group of poets gathered for session 4 of the Finding Poems Series.  We were inspired by June Jordan’s architectextual poems and by the powerful video conferenced-in sharing of environmental justice scholar Cheryl J. Fish to engage the spatial realities and legacies of Durham in a poetic way.  We wrote many poems that day but here is our group poem/group of poems for Durham.

And you can listen to it here:

Durham Poem #34

Durham, don’t dig down deep

Beg barter and plea, Baby

For transformation you are not willing to have as your birthday wish, Honey

Durham Poem #9

whirlwind my heart you dirty city

you tobacco dust you slave lust trust

you breathing devil     land

Durham Poem #23

Durham, Durham

The beats of the hearts the angers the terrors the smiles

Dance Durham

Durham Poem #24

the pompeii

in durham, traffic slower

than my blood flow

during morning prayer, a man

ask me for food, or change

in front of mcdonalds,

i extend a banana,

he refuses, i continue

singing.  i belong here.

Durham Poem #25 (26, 27, 28…)

the first year i shivered.  who knew there could be snow down here

making broken oak litter

the two next i plumped + grew + crossed under electrical wires to a turtle river.

and coming for fourth year, three thunderstorms have

drenched me here: the drops are so much bigger than

at home

new home, you got warm tapioca pearls,  got aloe blood, got muscadine guts coming from the sky.

Durham Poem #31

Home

Not West Virginia

Now

Durham Poem #4

There is a man waving a gun next to the Bull

We’re to hide inside, as they kill him; watch him die till morning

As a city with its history tattooed on your sidewalks, I wonder how you might caption your present.

Durham Poem #202

This elastic place-when I breath it

I’m learning new shades; if I remember to keep my lungs open

Here-I am becoming more comfortable with complex color patterns and asking for hugs when I need one.