Oakland Poet: Meg Day

Oscar Bermeo Thu, 3 Jun at 12:53am
Meg Day

Meg Day is a nationally awarded spoken word artist, published poet and badass arts educator who hails from San Diego but is currently writing and performing throughout Oakland, and teaching young poets to hold their own at the mic with Youth Speaks in San Francisco. She currently runs weekly poetry and performance workshops at ARISE High School in the Fruitvale and teaches 10th grade language arts in East Oakland on the weekends and during the summer through Upward Bound.

Day is a 2006 graduate of UC San Diego's Lit/Writing Program and recently completed her MFA in Poetry at Mills College in Oakland. She's an alumnus of both Naropa University's Summer Writing Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and one of Poetry Slam Inc's first Poetry Cross Training Conferences at SUNY Oneonta.

In 2006 she became San Diego's first queer Spoken Word Grand Champion, a title she held for three years running, and was named by OUT-ART Magazine as one of the nation's "Top 30 Under 30" up-and-coming artists in 2009.

She has taught courses and facilitated workshops throughout the country, but has found working with the young folks of Oakland to be the most rewarding job yet. "I've never lived in a city that pays attention like Oakland does, that speaks up like Oakland does," says Day. "So much of that momentum is coming from the young folks, the students, the artists. Voice means something here and being a part of that, through teaching and performing and real-live activism, has really changed the way I think about my own work. It doesn't stop at the page -- it can't."

megday2

After an autumn chock-full of readings at LitQuake, BangOut SF and Cherry Bleeds, Day spent this last winter on a Pacific Northwest tour with her pack, The Poetic Liberation Collective, whose other members include Oakland's own brilliant queer artist-activists Na'amen, Jezebel Delilah X & Annah Anti-Palindrome.

In February, Day received a San Francisco Creating Queer Community Grant for a project that will showcase hearing and deaf queer performers at the National Queer Arts Festival in 2011. Most recently, she was nominated as one of the Best New Poets of 2010.

Day has been featured at the March on Washington in DC, The San Diego Hip Hop Festival, Fists Up: International Deaf Day Celebration, Life is Living Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, The San Francisco and San Diego AIDS Walks, KPFA Radio with Beyond the Odds, and a variety of venues along both coasts. As an advocate for equality with a fresh take on language (and a love of the underdog) her work often shifts from the page to the stage and back again, having found a readership most recently in The Greenbelt Review, Outspoken: An Anthology, Flaneur Foundry, Zyzzyva and The Walrus.

 

POEMS BY MEG DAY

Welcome to America, Son

  after Tyehimba Jess

 

This is America, son

place where you have never been heard –

only seen & seen & seen & seen &

shuffled quietly, built steadily, into the sidelines.

You have power that means little on this planet;

you tilt heads, pout lips, cause paralysis when ordering coffee.

You are at the other end of the hook

in rubber-neckers’ eyes

and this, son, this is your country.

 

This is America

& last night I had a dream

where children’s skulls were hammered open –

by doctors listening to Beethoven –

their cochleas wired & lit

like trashy fiber optic Christmas trees

in hopes that being able to hear the garbage truck in the morning,

but not knowing what the sound means,

might make them fully human.

 

This is America, son

& I am not dreaming.

 

This is where violence is casual & medical & necessary

when in the name of sameness.

Where disability has been attached

to everyone who is not Uncle Sam.

Be thankful for the things you cannot hear

& do not listen to their pity.

You are not Pinocchio.

You need nothing but your integrity

to be a real boy.

 

This is the place waiting

to grow up so you can grow up.

You are a small prisoner in my arms

a dubbed body, looped and breaking

I keep close under wing, grasped

in anticipation

of how the world might stifle you,

placate with placards that

excuse & encourage the absence of your voice.

 

This is me, son. The country called Mother.

Waiting for the time to be right enough,

knowing there will never be enough right time,

preparing a place where borders always intersect.

 

This is me, son.

Wondering if I’ll ever be strong enough

to let go of your hand

so you can speak for yourself.

 

check check

 

they call it trance, the break, play, third eye,

out of body, blurring lines, other worldly,

adrenaline, endorphins, spellcasting, buck-

bodied & brewed. they call it dreamdaze,

ecstasy, muse-stupor, rapture, reverie,

transfiction, ponderplace & parked. they call

it blackout. they call it somnolence. they call

it reflective consciousness, deja voodoo,

nadaville, stupevacation & guazeface. they

call it swoon.     they call it the torpedo

zone.

 

coastlines

 

when my great grandmother

came around the horn, she

couldn't have known

 

her daughter, lanikai

would bear six more

all lei'd out

along the island shores

kaohao and still haole

 

she couldn't have known

one grandchild

among twenty

 

would have their way

with both worlds

words & waves,

 

the longboard a thick

tipped pen

with which to

carve out the grains

of sand

 

from all

history's grains

of salt

For more information on Meg and her upcoming events, you can check out her Facebook page.

 

About Oscar Bermeo
Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest and Heaven Below. He makes his home in Oakland with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Rikers Island Penitentiary, UNC-Chapel Hill, Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center, the Bronx Academy of Letters, Teatro LATEA, Dias y Flores Community Garden, and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, among others, and led poetry discussions and seminars in schools throughout New York City and Oakland. Oscar has been a featured writer at a variety of venues and institutions including the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Bowery Poetry Club, St. Mark’s Church, WBAI radio, WGLT Poetry Radio, Kearny Street Workshop, Intersection for the Arts, La Peña Cultural Center, The Loft Literary Center, Sacramento Poetry Center, National Hispanic Cultural Center, Studio Museum of Harlem, Litquake, San Quentin Prison, Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, Columbia University, New College of California, California College of the Arts, Illinois State University (Normal), Amherst College, William Paterson University, Syracuse University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, San Francisco State University, University of California at Berkeley, New York University, and many others.