My father was seventeen and ready to leave home. A friend was urging him to run away from parents who were loving but stern. They believed in severe corporal punishment as well as the recitation of long passages of the bible for any misdoings. It was a hot summer weekend […]
How do you feel your poetry has evolved from your first book until now? The shift from my first book, Winter Place, to my latest, Paper Gods and Rebels, lies, I believe, in the expansion of my thematic perspective and life experience in general. After 9-11 happened, I published […]
My father, Reginald W. Major, died just over three years ago. While his passing has left me, his baby girl, with a tremendous void, l recently discovered a collection of audio tapes that we recorded over period of years. This summer I have found myself able to listen to […]
I know you as a composer, poet, film maker, performance artist, multi-genre theater producer, singer and more, but focusing on those how does each art feed the other? Is there one art which takes primacy over the other? While I’d love to say that I have these inspired, long-term ambitions, […]
Writing is by its nature a solitary pursuit. One sits with one’s thoughts, possibly hammering away at a piece of stone, maybe pushing grains of sand together on a low tide shore until something begins to take form. Then comes the edit, the trim, the shape and reshape, and the […]
Opal Palmer Adisa is an incredibly talented and committed multi-genre writer. She generously gave some times to share some of her insights on writing and her own process with me. What is your biggest challenge as a writer? I have given this question a lot of thought, and apart from […]
A nation calls the world of poetry to the microphone. A nation empowers poets across four generations calling us forth from five continents and twenty-six countries with the poets hailing from Venezuela, Argentina, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Germany, Chile, China, Colombia, South Korea, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, the United States, […]
Last year close to today I was preparing to go to Venezuela to be a part of the 10mo Festival Mundial de Poesia: canto comÚn (10th Annual World Festival of Poetry). Hugo Chavez had died that year and much of the nation was still in mourning at his passing […]
Struggling to write one day last week my mind found myself thinking of a Jayne Cortez poem, “You Know:” “You know I sure would like to write a blues you know a nice long blues you know a […]
Writing for the web, particularly writing blogs, has always frustrated me. The writing needs to be fast, glib, entertaining; an easy read and, if possible, say something of value. As writers go, I am a relatively fast wordsmith. That is to say I can get a gush of words on […]
