Category: Poetry

Come Study With Me

1/7/2019

The following is a partial list of classes that I will offer in 2019.

Voice

Singing is breath with sound. In this way, everyone can sing. In this ongoing workshop, participants remember how to breathe with sound, turn those sounds into moving natural running up and down scales, pay attention to the needs of the voice box and diaphragm, fine tune listening skills, hear and locate the true top of the note (as opposed to the middle or bottom) and like we were taught when I was a girl at church, to “sing out.” We didn’t need microphones back then. We sang to the people sitting in the last rows of the sanctuary.

Voice

Back To Thread Basics

We are needle, thread, and cloth. Sewing is in our blood. Back To Thread Basics honors hand sewing, those simple running stitches and the more elaborate hand embroidery stitches that our ancestors perfected and handed down to us. In this workshop, we re-introduce ourselves to the history of hand sewing and embroidery. We will practice, practice, practice sewing and embroidering using the Running, Double Running, Fern, Palestrina and French Knots, Stem, and my favorite, Chain. Our final project can be a Fancy Pillow or Wall Hanging, all hand sewn. We intend to care for our inner muses, unleash our ancestors, the ones we knew, proficient in this ancient art form, and the ones we did not know. Hand sewing is relaxing and fun. The rhythmic in and out of stitching gives us lots of time to think and listen as those ancient voices speak to us. We’ll have fun, enjoy good snacks, beverages and camaraderie.

Back To Thread Basics

Look Touch Feel Write

Visual art, sound and nature can inspire succinct personal evaluation and points of view. Look Touch Feel Write will draw upon some of these natural occurrences to motivate us to write our way into imagining and re-imagining ourselves and our environment. In this workshop, we intend to care for our inner muses, unleash our writer within, have lots of fun, and enjoy good snacks, beverages and camaraderie.

Look Touch Feel Write

This year I'm offering two Fellowships

Click on the links above under "classes" for more information

I look forward to hearing from you!

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Daughter

11/2/2017

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Here’s me entering an MFA program in 2008 because I thought I wanted to write fiction. Here’s me emerging in 2010 fully committed to poetry. We don’t always know who we are; the trick to finding out is to put one foot in front of the other, to travel along the road to discovery.

Here’s a photo of my mother as a young woman enjoying a night out with girlfriends, cocktails and dinner, at a place called the Loendi Club in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District.

Christine Shefton Richardson (1912-1994)

Harlem Renaissance poet, Claude McKay, dubbed The Hill, “Crossroads to the World,” because it was home to Billy Eckstein, Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Art Blakey and Joe Harris, to name a few greats and including entrepreneur, Gus Greenlee, owner of the Old Negro Baseball League Team, The Pittsburgh Crawfords.

The Pittsburgh Crawfords including Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell and Sam Bankhead.

Here’s me submitting a manuscript titled Good Dirty Down to The National Poetry Series 2017 Competition. On Wednesday, September 13, 2017, I received an email announcing winners and informing me that from 1,500 manuscripts, my collection Good Dirty Down was chosen as a finalist. The email concludes, “Many congratulations again on an extraordinary manuscript.”

So I’m thinking, what made me a finalist and not a winner. These thoughts prompted me to rethink, revise and refashion the collection. During the extensive reconstruction, I realized that, among other things, the title was wrong. It did not capture the essence of what I wanted the poems to reveal.

My mother began speaking. She was aggressive and gentle; she pushed and soothed until finally the magic clicked. I thought about that haunting photo of her, my Christian, upstanding community member mother (the mother I knew) sitting in an after hours club with friends, relaxed and enjoying food and cocktails. I think by studying the photo, my mother gave me permission to dig deeper, to dismiss the obvious, to linger long (a phrase my friends and I used to say during heated Bid Whist parties at my house back in the day) on the blurred and uncertain in order to make sense of the seemingly senseless, thereby discovering or rediscovering the valuable.

Here’s me realizing that the poem I’d written about my mother needed to take a front row seat, if not in placement, then certainly as the needle and thread that would anchor the collection. After reworking and improving her poem, everything else fell into place.

I wrote an earlier post about a collection I’m writing called The Book of Spells. In my mind, The Book of Spells was supposed to be my next published book. But, we don’t always know what we are doing; the trick to finding out is to put one foot in front of the other, to trust the process, to travel along the road to discovery.

Daughter Mouth Blues (formerly Good Dirty Down) will be published by Blacksmith & Bones Press, sometime before the end of 2017 or early 2018.

I think Daughter Mouth Blues articulates signs and symbols of our time, including magic; the differences between prophecy and divination; the change from ancestral analysis to sculpted concealment; and the ramifications of profit or passage.

Daughter Mouth Blues reveals necessary work at the crossroads, the “sudden transformation, sudden certainty, sudden articulation, long legged talking finally foaming from [our] daughter mouth blues.”

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Spells

8/30/2017

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The idea of “still life,” (the representation of inanimate objects, such as fruit, in paintings or photography) intrigues me. One day, I set out arranging and rearranging items in pleasing manners to take photographs. Maybe for quilt ideas, or if the images came out real good, to frame and hang on my walls. The image I liked best is this one: my shoes, hat, guitars, quilt, water, glass, magic leaves.

Still Life

If you are a fledging musician, like me, and your timing is cockeyed, and you can't get your fingers to move fluently over the guitar strings, from one chord to the next, my advice is to study Tupac (Gangsta Party and California Love; both music and video) and Muddy Waters (Champagne and Reefer, and Too Young To Know. Search youtube for old footage of Muddy.)

Both of these artists radiate music through voice, timing, and percussion. In Gangsta Party, there is no slide in, no pause: "Picture perfect," before we realize the verse has even begun. In Too Young to Know, Muddy sings/narrates, but the conversation is between young girls and the more mature women who knows very well. Both are lightening and thunder. Spontaneity, exaggeration and craft. I honor them. They are more than inspiration, they motivate me to add my voice to the conversation.

So, the mind as mixture, seemingly askew, but not, simply bubbling excitement, and these artists, with our shared origins, led me to go back further, to research other artists and was there such a thing as homemade stringed instruments. This is a sampling of what I found.

Stunning beauty and creativity all around the African continent and the Diaspora. The second photo is not of a homemade instrument; just wanted to show her excitement. The images are excitement and contagious. The artists have the nerve to create, are in possession of the artists' way. Create, no matter what. So I thought, what if? The following is Blue Belle, my homemade cigar box guitar.

I’m writing a book on my experiences using Tarot, and want to dispel the notion of negativity as relates to magic, spellwork, and divination. What is the etymology of the word “spell,” what does the word really mean and what are its origins. From the American Heritage College Dictionary:
spell

1a.: a word or formula believed to have magic powers;
1b.: a bewitched state; a trance;
2. : a compelling attraction; charm or fascination.
[From Middle and Old English meaning discourse (a conversation)]

A conversation. Yes. This is magic, spellwork and especially divination. Further, every experience has the potential to be magical, especially, as the definition states—words, and of course, music. Think about your favorite songs, how the hearing of them gives you goose bumps, how sitting in a favorite chair wearing ear plugs and listening to that favorite voice, and or instrumentation puts you in a sort of trance. You are relaxed. You are smiling. You are content.

My next burgeoning project began as songs, just me playing around with lyrics and guitar chords. One of the songs that emerged, White Night Falling, seemed a strong contender for the main voice of something. I just didn’t know what.

Artists, you know that in these times of seemingly jumbled information, the thing to do is wait, listen to day and night dreams, believe and ask the question, what if?

So I thought--

What if the project was poems and music?
I’m writing, I’m writing.
What if the project expanded to include other written forms?
I’m writing, I’m writing.
What if the title and book cover had to do with trance states, magic words, the awesome-ness of still lives, those inanimate objects that portray the power of seemingly motionless form?
I’m writing, I’m writing.
What of heterodoxy, the challenge of taking the least walked or new path?
I’m writing, I’m writing.
What if you include a cd of musical forms and selected poems?
I’m writing, I’m writing.

The project birthed itself as The Book of Spells, became a bubbling cauldron, a mixture of picture perfect swerving heterodoxy, something like Tupac and Muddy Waters making low down music on angel harps. Make. Do. Become. “Lick candle wicks. Wish. Work spells. Pounce.”

Coming soon, maybe by autumn or winter.
CD coming later, later.

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Berthenia

7/8/2017

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Berthenia Belle is now available on amazon.

Berthenia spoke to me in my dreams last night. So the next step is to create an artist made book. You can see examples of artist made books here.

Berthenia's book will document the process/journey of her life in print.

That's the thing about creativity. It's never over. One step will lead to another.

The following image, The Cabin, is my original watercolor/charcoal rendering for the book cover. When you read Berthenia Belle, you will understand the importance of the cabin.

"The Cabin," copyright cathleen margaret, June 2017

Thank you for supporting and appreciating my work!
Berthenia says, "Good luck to you. Create! This is how we make things happen."

the image that inspired Berthenia Belle

Read more about the inspiration for Berthenia Belle here

#poetry #survival #magic #leaving

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Diddley - How the Ancestors Give

6/19/2017

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Steps one through five on one version of creativity:

The ancestors give an initial inspiration
We feebly attempt to create based on the initial inspiration
The ancestors give the actual inspiration
We listen with developed spiritual hearing, we hear with our spiritual listening ears
We free-flow create: write, sing, draw, sew, etc.

The following shows how Steps 1 -5 can be translate into actual production:

1. Initial inspiration.
One day I searched goodreads.com for something to read and found a book titled All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, The Feminist Press, 1982.

2. My feeble attempt to create something.
The title, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, inspired me to write a poem about how I think black women are, and are not, seen in the media, particularly television and movies. It was an OK poem.

3. The actual inspiration.
One day, as I was looking for an image online, instead of the image I was searching for, the ancestors gave me the following image:

The image shows a little girl. She is no older than 10. She and the other children are slaves. While the mothers of the babies are working the field, the older child watches the children. She is the babysitter.

4. Listening ears
A tiny, soft voice began talking to me. She spoke in a tiny, soft voice, but as a rebel, with clear, concise, emotionless directions. She woke me up. I reached for my notebook just in time to catch her initial thoughts: "Of all the dandelions, it’s me, I am the most beautiful.”

5. Free-flow writing
I said, “Yes Berthenia. You are the most beautiful. I sat at the computer. She continued to speak and I transcribed her words. She even sent me back to retrieve the initial OK poem I had written inspired by the book title, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.

It was an easy fix. Berthenia showed me my mistakes, and how to re-imagine the poem so that it could take its rightful place in her story.

The name, Berthenia Belle, entered the session in the midst of Berthenia's narration.

Berthenia is an artist: songwriter, musician, craftswoman. She gave me the lyrics to one of her songs, and she created her own Diddley Bow.

Back in 2016, I was beginning to teach myself how to play guitar because some of my poems wanted to be songs. In researching early musicians, especially Blues musicians, I wondered what they played before the guitar, as we know the guitar today. One of the instruments they played was the Diddley Bow.

The following pictures show my Diddley Bow. It is nailed to a door frame in my kitchen. The door frame surrounds my Ilé `Ọrun (my family ancestor shrine or altar).

As was the custom, Berthenia's Diddley Bow is nailed to the front porch post of the cabin where she lived with the babies.

Berthenia Belle, the most beautiful flower. Thank you for your life, your power, your struggle, your creativity.

I thank God for Berthenia Belle, this brave child, this wondrous woman baby girl.

Some of the ancestors are children.

Berthenia Belle spoke her story to me as one long, book length poem.

Look for Berthenia Belle, a poem, on amazon and on this website on or before July 1.

Follow the progress of Berthenia Belle, a poem, here.

This is how we listen. This is how we create.

Resources:
Read more about the Diddley Bow
Hear Mr. One String Sam, below singing My Baby Don't

Mr. Moses Williams playing Diddley Bow, 1984

Photo Credit: Graham, Andrea, Collector. Moses Williams playing the diddley bow - Orlando, Florida. 1984. Color slide. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. Accessed 28 Jun. 2017.<https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/121981>.

Children Creating Music on Didley Bow
Image link

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Come Study With Me

Daughter

Spells

Berthenia

Diddley - How the Ancestors Give

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