Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?
The New Orleans Poetry Festival (2), joy, and Indran
The New Orleans Poetry Festival has just come to an end as I write this late Sunday night. At least my part. I imagine there are lots of folks still at the final event, at Rodrigo’s house, swimming in the pool and talking more poetry, talking more joyful trash as well. Just as I left, I looked down at my phone to see the news that Mario Vargas Llosa had died. I returned to the house to say something to someone. The marvelous Lisa Pasold and I had a brief, intense conversation about that great, flawed writer that moved me greatly.
The festival was so much fun. Talking with Bill Lavender, whose poetry from his astonishing manuscript city of god I featured in my last post, and who is one of the founders of the festival, he said he thought it was the best ever. The most attendees, the most poet participants. This was the 10th year of the festival and it has become a real fixture on the NOLA cultural scene. One thing Bill and I talked about? Hold on to your hats, mis paisanos mexicanos. At the fest two years from now? Bill and I discussed having a real delegation from southern Mexico, feature our poets who write in Spanish and in Mixtec, Zapotec, Chinanteca, etc. Muy padre. And while he has to run it by the NOPF board, you can say you read it here first. ¡Órale!
Some of the books I picked up, exchanging with other poets, publishers. ¡Que placer!
A few things for me to highlight that were my highlights:
—the French poets who read Friday night; a pleasure to hear them read, in French, with their translators. A special shout out to Fréderic Forte —a fine poet and, because a member of Oulipo, a friend of our friend, the marvelous poet and fiction writer, Harry Mathews. What a pleasure to talk with him about Harry, memories of that great spirit, a marvelous presence in the world of literature.
The “Bringing It All Back Home” reading: poets coming home to NOLA: here Bernardo Wade, Laura Mullen, and Michael Tod Edgerton.
—the astonishing reading by New Orleans poets who have left New Orleans but returned to read, Bringing It All Back Home.
—the Saturday night featured reading, Ariana Reines and Tongo Eisen-Martin: a note on Tongo? His performance at first seems the idle observations heard in a conversation in a bar and then it deepens and deepens and deepens into astonishing political and spiritual spaces. Hs final poem closed with an image of a kind of release, an unclenching fist. I couldn’t help it. When I went to say hello, just as we shook hands, I turned mine to a fist. I put my fist in his palm then opened it. He smiled. Then he hugged me. He knew what I’d heard.
—the Resistance Dreams collaborative reading: thanks to my friend Jennifer Karmin of the Red Rover Series for always making sure I always know where and when these participatory readings will be; this year, the topic was resistance dreams, a focus on the current world situation; folks move in and out of the space as they please, sometimes we read with each other, sometimes over each other, sometimes it’s all silence—for 50 minutes, the American hour, we fill the space with the languages of justice and change.
Jennifer Karmin, Sarah A. Rae, and Sarah Stickney as part of the resistance.
—my panel on Kenneth Koch, celebrating his 100 years: three of the four panelists—Katherine, Tonya Foster and Michael Anania were ill and couldn’t attend. So what happens? Instead of canceling the panel, Bill Lavender strongly advises me to go ahead with it. I prepared a small reader of poems that I thought said something about Kenneth and used that as a guide. We had a marvelous time—the absence of my fellow panelists actually turned into an advantage—the attendees became participants, it went from presentation to conversation and was lovely.
—the Lavender Ink/diálogos reading: of course. I got a chance to give my first real reading from Volverse/Volver and to read with some really wonderful poets and translators: Courtney Bush, Carrie Chappell, Amanda Murphy, and Indran Amirthanayagam.
Yes, it’s me. First official reading from Volverse/Volver. A special shirt for the occasion…
Which leads me into today’s featured National Poetry Month poet: Indran Amirthanayagam.
Indran and I read together at the Lavender/diálogos reading, he read from his striking new translation collection, Animal for the Eyes, poetry by the Mexican poet Kenia Cano. I have had the joy of knowing Indran for a very long time. He taught at Lang College at the New School (where I taught for 31 years) from 1991 until 1993. As I remarked to Katherine, a time in my life of wonder—Jesse was born in 1993. Indran published his first book of poems in 1993, with Hanging Loose. Since then, an astonishing literary career: some 30 books of poetry and translation. Indran writes in multiple languages, translates from them to others. He is a tireless voice for social justice and an even more tireless voice for poetry.
Here are 5 poems from his recent book, The Runner’s Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024):
Indran Amirthanayagam reading at the Lavender Ink/diálogos reading at the NOPF 2025.
Five Poems by Indran Amirthanayagam
GOD AND HIS CHILDREN You did not break my heart, God played his part so I might learn that my heart is like life on earth, a turtle born on the beach who enters the sea for the first time. Will he survive? He enjoys all your gifts, Lord, strong organs, lungs, a shell. But I ask every father and mother if they would let their children go to school alone on the first day, the school of life where the heart may break but will find the force even so, divine wings, to return to the beach and celebrate life lived, the blessing of living still. SEEKING LIGHT I am sleeping with dreams and nightmares. They visit from the day-to-day, from decades ago, the first time I walked in a graveyard and defied death by making love. My friend has disappeared from daily prayers but remains a spirit roaming at night, unbuttoning desire. I invoke her now to say that no one will be forgotten in my daily walk in the nearby cemetery. I will name everyone who has held my hands, embraced me, said go ahead, you are on the right path. I will pray for you now as I pray for clarity in the haze, a light which I can walk, clapping my hands. TYING THE STRANDS Love is not practical. It surges from unexpected, buried depths of experience. It tempts with the forbidden, stepping over unmarked yet firm lines. Do I, you, we, dare? Throw convention out. Build a life together for a good twenty five years before I must leave the stage according to statistics, but perhaps by then we would have raised a child with great love, who would become a brother or sister to the children I have already, and a grandchild to your parents and my mother, and beyond to our relatives in the ancestral land. And we would dance a fiery jig in Western dress at the prenuptial party, and then on the day, march in a grand procession, shift our eyes and hands in bharatanatyam, praise and thank God in veshti, turban and gossamer saree. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR God gave you a son and daughter, father and mother, brothers, a sister. Your parents brought you up. Now it is your turn to care for mother in her old age. And so it shall be when you too will need your son and daughter to come and do the needful, to care for you when ill and feeble. You are lucky to have children. What about those whose kids have been taken away, shot in the street, in a foreign land fighting for some vague motive in the head of a headless government? What about those who have nobody, who must depend on the village, on a friend? Let us remember the neighbor. Let us take care of each other. THE STRIDER TESTIFIES I used to write from the bottomless hole, abject sorrow, black on black. Not any more. I have found peace on the riverbank, in the living room, walking in the neighborhood forest. I don't cry. I smile, laugh, dance with the male bird chasing the female through the thicket. I sit on the bench and smile at joggers in their tracksuits swirling past my spectacles, the spectacle of hair swaying and pert form staying pert, and I don't mind recognizing that I am stirred with the stirring, life racing past everywhere I go and me observing, walking, sitting. But who is looking at me? Who notices that I no longer brush my hair, that I stride careless, carefree?
Good Links: Indran, Arlo, Animals, Satchmo, and Lady Day, okay?
A Few Places to Read More Indran, and a Video!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/indran-amirthanayagam
https://groundviews.org/author/indran-amirthanayagam/
http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/indranam
Arlo Guthrie, City of New Orleans:
It is not a NOLA cliche to love this song. House of the Rising Sun maybe. But this is not. Steve Goodman wrote a most beautiful song. And Arlo is Arlo. Sale?
The Animals, House of the Rising Sun
Except maybe what the Animals did? I remember this as the first time I ever heard the song. Eric Burdon. And it’s on The Ed Sullivan Show! I watched this with my grandma!
Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, New Orleans
Not sure how many folks know this clip—but being here? I forgot how much I have missed this place. Call it whatever—NOLA, Crescent City, Big Easy—I’m so glad it has my heart—Satchmo and Lady Day. Oh my. I do know what it means…
Thanks for Indran. Love the music clips as well as the words.
love being brought back there! and here i am, a subscriber! heart—