The Ancestors be recognized & praised for bearing me up with strength & clarity to do this work. Begun in late 2024 as a freejazz improvisation that family & friends supported & collectively helped to shape, the 2025 leg of the tour is proving revelatory with each presentation. From the 4-to-13-year-olds at two community-based programs, to the once-a-month senior breakfast that opened the engagement here in Ithaca last week, the work at each venue has been tailored specifically & structured as a freejjazz improvisation. The common elements to all have been flute, singing bowl, & the pouring of libation. Those elements set the tone & clear space by calling on the Ancestors to hold us to account, & communicate with us across the divide.
Last nite’s opportunity to meet, listen, hear, respond & engage at the Alliance for Families for Justice Men’s Group of formerly incarcerated men & family members of men now doing time, I read only 1 poem. The remainder of the time I poeted in response to the living conversation. Here, I was challenged by one of the men’s group founders. His response to the checkin question about stating his parent’s names was an encounter straight out of the joint. A Dozens moment that I deeply appreciated for its honesty & communion of spirits. In dialogue came a second challenge from the Sister Woman who worked as a coordinator for the Alliance, & additionally served as a city councilwoman. My perspective on what I innerstand as the controled-box nature of race politics drew a measured but hot moment’s response that was heightened by my reference to politicians having no viable solutions to the issues facing commonfolk. Both exchanges were honest & probing. All perspectives were heard & the conversation’s collective drive moved forward with heightened engagement.
Sunday, at Cornell’s Durland Alternative Library, I held forth with two other excellent Poetz, Michael Rhynes & Wren Tuatha, thru three rounds that merged in a Poetz Q&A with community members. Michael had served 39 years for a wrongful conviction & has been exonerated. He’s only been out a year & is on the move creatively. Wren was burned out in the 2018 California Paradise fire that killed 85 people. We Poetz came from places of deep vulnerability, trauma, & fierce perspectives. The people present were touched & moved to consider the power of poetry as action not dead letters on a page.
I’ve one more presentation at the Tompkins County Public Library on Saturday, the 29th. No other Poet is scheduled to appear but I’ll open the forum for any that are there & want to present.
Next stops are at Community Church of Boston on April 4th, with all the history that date portends, & Sunday, April 6th, at the Open Spirit Center, in Framingham, Massachusetts. In Boston, I’ll read with Mark Burrows, a Vermont poet & Rilke scholar of international reputation. Sunday, I’ll share the music stand with Reason Being, a Framingham SpokenWord artist & lyricist. The tone & organization of those engagements will be known when I walk into the venues & face those assembled. Then, with the accompanying Poetz, in the minutes we have, together we’ll work out the order of things. Both Massachusetts stops will be backed by the Tinnitus Brothers, Willie Sordillo, & Doug Rich who played at Fort Wayne’s A Big Apple Jazz Club in 2019.
There’ve been dramatic highlights at each venue & assembly. Each has been a learning session for me & the assembled. This tour comes off of last April’s run in Massachusetts. Then, I was reminded that I’d come full circle. I was released from prison in 1971 in Massachusetts, & the following year joined a crew of itinerant Poetz organized by a multiracial Bronx husband & wife team. From the spring of 1972 thru the summer of 1974, the crew toured universities & colleges, community centers, houses of worship, & classrooms providing audiences with a perspective from inside the walls. One of the first gigs we did was here in Ithaca at Cornell.
So much has changed in those 52 years, both in my life, in Ithaca, & in the world. But so very much more remains the same. I’m deeply grateful that the Ancestors have given me these years to learn, grow, & see what I could not see then. With the mentioned locations, five more thru July will take me to multiple communities within each location. I’ll work & commune with Poetz & the people toward forming lasting mutually beneficial relationships with them & their communities.
Your financial & material support make this OGT25 tour possible. Thank you! Please continue following, sharing, & encouraging others to support. The Poetz are here to lead their communities into cross-fertilized conversation & relationships. What Sweet Honey in the Rock say:
WE ARE THE ONES WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!
Peace, Respect, Gratitude!
Kétu
27/03/25
