Poets Reach Across Cultural Divides

A poem can seat you at a table with Irene Suico Soriano and a gathering of old men, Filipino American World War II veterans left out of a book about the battles they helped win:

All of them huddled in formica chairs

with 49 cent muffins

and 39 cent coffees

on top of formica tables,

he railed about how

the battles in Corregidor were also

fought

by the men sitting with him.

He made an oath to write a book of his

own.

A poem can take you to East Los Angeles College with Felicia Montes, where a young girl on campus is growing into womanhood.

I was born of the corn in the barrio

Borderlands of Aztlan

became a resister

& learned to take a stand

I am the Little Brown writing hood,

who did all that I could.

A poem can put you in the mind of a black man, Michael Datcher, as he flies toward a city where yet another black man, unarmed, is dead from a police officer’s bullet:

white squares

and lakes

and trees

it is december

and the plane is making

the final approach

into new york

whose pineless pine trees

slowly

loom large

and grow strong enough

to hang a man

Once you are there--on the plane, at the table, on the campus--your heart opens, your mind hears and your eyes see new things in the world beyond the poem.

“People began to change, not because of theory, not because of statistics, but because you can access their hearts and minds,” said Datcher, a poet and literary program director at the World Stage in Leimert Park. “That’s the beauty of poetry.”

So for five days, beginning today, the World Beyond Poetry Festival will offer a space for poets in the city to speak with each other and with anyone else. The free event will include performances by nearly 100 poets, including invited legends such as Amiri Baraka. The lineup ranges from local emerging writers to established voices such as Wanda Coleman, Ruben Martinez, Eileen Myles, Kamau Daaood and Russell Leong. The poets will read in neighborhoods that are not their own, with poets of different ethnicities. In the pages of their notebooks are the tools to build a better city, they say.

“It’s a small start, but the poets are the best place to begin,” said Fred Dewey, executive/artistic director of the Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, a festival sponsor. “Their role is to turn the experience of their community into meaningful, lasting language. People are not coming together first around their identities, but their common need for meaning. That’s a great builder.”

The festival is also an invitation to explore the city’s poetic terrain. Readings begin tonight at the World Stage and continue at Beyond Baroque in Venice; the Lucy Florence Cafe in Leimert Park; Self-Help Graphics in Boyle Heights; the Union Center Cafe in Little Tokyo; the SIPA Center in the Silver Lake area; and the new amphitheater in Elysian Park.

These are the spots where the city’s poets hone their craft, where they witness poetry’s potential, where they discover universal themes in personal experiences.

The festival aims to extend this common ground. Poetry, Dewey said, “allows people to communicate their experiences rather than rest on their [ethnic] identity.”

“People are more willing to talk . . . when they’re sharing something deeply meaningful with each other,” he said. “That’s why poetry becomes the foundation of a new kind of dialogue.”

The festival is a long-held dream of Dewey’s. For two years, Beyond Baroque laid the groundwork for the event through monthly readings with the World Stage. It became a poetic exchange program between Venice and Leimert Park.

“We went through the process of getting to know each other and trust each other,” Dewey said. “That takes time; it’s like building a friendship.”

Last year, community arts organization Self-Help Graphics and its Latino writers joined the poetry exchange. The festival now seeks to build a relationship with Asian American poets.

In Los Angeles--with its racial divisions--building bridges, even among poets, takes a sensitive hand, Dewey said. Outside their communities, however, poets find the unexpected.

Montes was a student at UC Berkeley when she heard a poem about mini trucks, low-riders and a club in El Monte--familiar images but not her idea of poetry.

“I was sitting in the chair, not so much in shock, but in awe,” she said. “Here she was in a room in the English department . . . talking about this, and it was poetry and others were listening. It blew me away.”

It taught her the value of her own experiences growing up on the Eastside--and their worthiness to be shared. She is now a poet and poetry coordinator at Self-Help Graphics.

Datcher performed his poem “flying into new york” at a recent poetry exchange. Its searing lines, questioning the silence surrounding the death of a black man, left the audience in tears. The problem is not only with police, he said, but also with society at large.

“If their interaction with black people or other people of color is lacking, they fall back on an understanding that comes from TV, from movies,” he said, adding that those images justify treatment that would not be tolerated for others.

After his reading, two white women approached him. “They said, ‘I didn’t know it was that way for you,’ ” Datcher said. If there is deeper thinking and more dialogue, poetry can lead to change, he said.

The festival, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and city Cultural Affairs Department, is co-sponsored by the World Stage; AISAREMA, a nonprofit organization that promotes Asian Pacific American literature; and Self-Help Graphics.

Soriano, a Filipina immigrant and student filmmaker, picked emerging Asian American writers to read at the festival.

“It runs the gamut--Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai,” she said. “Although we share the Asian American umbrella, we have our stories within our communities,” she said. “What’s interesting is . . . all of them helped to create L.A. history.”

Alison M. De La Cruz, for example, “talks about being a woman, being Filipina, being queer and being multiracial--she’s white and Filipina American,” Soriano said.

The city’s young poets also will be heard. Their experience differs from those of older poets.

“When I was in high school, people thought I was weird because I wrote,” said Jeffrey McDaniel, who teaches a poetry workshop for youth and is coordinating the youth poets for the festival. “Now, I think it’s a little more acceptable.”

Poet Dee Black asks the youths in his workshop to be honest--the same requirement he faces during workshops at the World Stage.

He tells them, “You can’t cheat the paper, because that tree died for you. Put the truth on it, whether it hurts or not.”

A recorded schedule of festival events is available at (310) 822-3006.