State of the Arts: Poetry
by Marianne Combs
Minnesota Public Radio
September 27, 2002

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Monday at the Artists' Quarter in St. Paul is "open mike" night. Each week first time performers and poetry veterans show up to applaud and support each other's work. Sometimes the poetry is more traditional, but more often than not young poets are using performance poetry - or spoken word - to express themselves. Bao Phi is one of the most prominent local spoken word artists. He tours regularly. Phi remembers when he first got his start as a poet 12 years ago as a teen in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.

"Back then it was kind of lonely," says Phi, "you know I mean there were people doing it but it wasn't nearly as visible. Back then people thought I was a rapper who couldn't rap, because they didn't know what this art form was - the closest thing they could think of was hip hop music - well this kid sounds like he's doing hip hop but he's not really rhyming - maybe he's just a rapper who can't rap."

How does he feel now?

"I think it's blown up - there are so many more people doing it, which is great. So it's changing a lot, it's bigger - a lot bigger - it doesn't feel as lonely as it used to!"

University of Minnesota Creative Writing Professor Ray Gonzalez says what Bao Phi is experiencing as an individual poet is reflected across the country:

"Poetry is going through a stage where it's been fortunate to find activist poets like Robert Pinsky and good corporate backing where all of a sudden the poetry community throughout the country has quite a lot of PR."

Gonzalez says a lot of things have come together to create a particularly prosperous time for local poets. There's a strong academic community, the surge of interest in the spoken word scene, generous funding from foundations, and local organizations which support the local poetry scene. There are numerous venues hosting poetry readings and open mike nights, as well as publications like Borealis and Speakeasy printing the work of local poets.

"It's like all these different forces have come together to show people that you just don't sit down and write your poem in solitude - that's only half the story," Gonzalez says. "It shows people that you're also out there in the community performing and sharing your poetry, and the effect is a larger audience. And I think the Twin Cities is an ideal example of all those different factors coming together."

Gonzalez says many Minnesotans still have a fear of poetry. He blames an education system that made poetry appear stuffy and inaccessible. Gonzalez is happy to see such programs as Art in Motion in the Twin Cities. It's putting poetry on brightly colored posters on public buses. But he says it's also important to get the organizations and poets that participate in those programs to build the public's attention. He says the next challenge is to get the public to come to poetry readings and buying poetry.

Fiona McCrae is chief editor at Grey Wolf Press. It started out as a poetry publisher. Even now about half of its publications are by or about poets.

"We've actually found that poetry is one of the most profitable areas because there has been a genuine interest in poetry and some poetry books. So we've had some successes with books like Jane Kenyon. When we came out with her New and Selected in 1996, it that went on to sell 40,000 copies in hardcover and paperback combined."

40,000 copies is a big number for a small press. McCrae says she's seen poetry books become more popular over time. She attributes that popularity partly to the advent of National Poetry Month each April. She also credits a fast paced society driven by technology.

"I don't know if it's true but there's a theory that the Internet helps poetry," says McCrae. "For example organizations like Poetry Daily feature a poet and a poem every day. So in an economy and a culture that is fast moving you can get a poem across quite quickly."

There are many new avenues for poets to distribute their poetry. Bao Phi has produced a CD and a chapbook of his work and now often receives e-mails from strangers wanting to talk about their own struggles growing up as Vietnamese immigrants in America.

"For me poetry is also about communicating and building community, especially among Asian-American people, by giving voice to concerns and issues and thoughts that have not traditionally been voiced coming from my community," says Phi. "And so that's a very large ongoing process - that's never really ever going to be done."

Phi says he's particularly impressed with the community that's been created by local poets of various ethnic backgrounds supporting each other's work. Phi is respectful of the long line of poets that came before him; not just national figures like Langston Hughes and Gil Scott Heron, but also local figures like Louis Alemayehu. Louis Alemayehu was part of the Black Arts Movement in the 70's. He says poetry is a path to healing. He says you won't see much of his poetry in print. A great deal of what he writes is specifically for funerals, weddings, and naming ceremonies.

"I guess it sort of confirms something to me that being a writer does not remove you from the world into an ivory tower but instead throws you out into the world in ways you maybe never imagined when you first sat down to write something," says Alemayehu.

Alemayehu says poets are accountable to their communities. Their work should reflect the struggles and transformations they see around them. He says if you look at local poetry, you'll see a microcosm for the world.

"It seems to me in a lot of ways what we reflect is how fragmented we are and disconnected we are from one another," says Alemayehu. "I could get really excited about the writers trying to figure out ways to listen to one another more, collaborate more, find the various ways that we are connected and maybe create some new things together."

Alemayehu says he'd also like to see better instruction of writing and art in the schools to nourish the future generation of artists.

Poet Paul Dickenson runs a bookstore on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul called Speed Boat. Dickinson says times have changed for poets.

"There are kids in high school today that say 'When I grow up I'm going to be a performance poet.' Well when I was in high school saying you liked poetry was a good way to get pounded after school! It's come a long way in the consciousness of people."

Dickenson says while poetry has become a much more visible art with more readings and spoken word slam contests, he doesn't want poets to forget the heart of what they're doing.

"Maybe people should spend more time at their desk - chained to their desk just working on language," says Dickenson. "With spoken word, half of it's delivery and half of it's language - but some people are all delivery and all show and they didn't spend enough time just really falling in love with the language and getting back to that old-fashioned work with the words."

Dickenson says foundation grants are wonderful, but he thinks grants should make demands of poets and challenge them to produce more, better work.

University of Minnesota Professor Michael Dennis Brown says it's important to remember Minnesota is more than the Twin Cities.

"Sometimes there's a feeling that we feel we are at the center of the regional poetic universe," says Brown. "Bemidji, Winona, and Duluth are very active places too. I think we need better circulation among us somehow. I don't know how that would be affected but if we could get a more extended sense of literary community beyond the Twin Cities - a more genuine Minnesota outreach community of writers. Because I have friends who are writers in all those places and they're splendid but they're a little bit far away."

Brown says the Minnesota poetry scene is also disconnected from what's happening on the east and west coasts - and that may be a good thing. He says as a poet he's never felt any pressure to conform to any reigning fashion. He believes poetry in America is about to be much more important.

"I think in these times people want to hear the spoken word," says Brown. "We are in challenging times politically nationally - and traditionally in places where that's the case there's something to be derived from the rhythmical energy of poetry that only poetry can deliver."

Mark Nowak teaches at the College of St. Catherine and publishes "XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics." Nowak believes grass roots organizations are the lifeblood of poetry. He sees recent success as a cause for concern.

"I'm a little bit worried about the situation surrounding what I see to be kind of corporate merger politics coming into the literary community," says Nowak. "And so when you have organizations pooling together, putting themselves under one roof. I think that can potentially be problematic. It creates one or a few organizations getting more of the grants, getting more of the power, having more of the say of what literature in Minnesota needs to be about."

Nowak would like to see local grant money spread more evenly amongst organizations, large and small, to inspire a greater diversity of ideas. Nowak says there aren't enough opportunities for mid-career poets to publish their work in Minnesota, and as a result he's seen many of his friends leave to find opportunities elsewhere. He credits small organizations for bringing high-profile poets to Minnesota and hosting local poetry readings. But he worries the poetry scene may eventually stagnate.

"I think the readings are good spaces to give people a venue to get that new work out there," he says. "But they can become stale if it's the same group of people coming out to the readings. The same groups listening to each other all the time and there's not an infusion of new words, new perspectives, new energy, new spaces, new individual writers."

Bao Phi agrees. He says there's a downside to the recent explosion of Minnesota poetry.

"We've grown," says Phi. There are a lot of us, but then the drawback to that is it's hard to excite audiences to really support spoken word events now. It can be difficult. What goes through people's heads is 'oh another spoken word event - I'm not going to go' - you know what I mean? And that's all right; I would rather have that problem of people being aware of what spoken word is and having to get them to come to it than no one having any idea what your doing."

In the spirit of keeping the energy for poetry high, the University of Minnesota is hosting a poetry festival in October that will feature several high profile national poets, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The U of M plans to organize another festival, geared at presenting the work of local poets, in April.