
MOCA Cleveland photo by Deidre McPherson
BOA poet Sean Thomas Dougherty recently participated in a group performance, titled
Rhythm and Resistance, in celebration of the power of the written and spoken word at the prestigious MOCA Cleveland (Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland). The reading was presented as part of the
Mimeo Revolution: Artist Book + Zine Fair in connection with the summer exhibition
How to Remain Human (on view through September 5). This 3-day event was inspired by poet and publisher
d.a. levy and renowned comix creator and graphic novelist
Derf Backderf, key figures in the exhibition. The spirit of levy's work (rebellious, ardent, and resolutely DIY), lives on in self-published artist books, zines, spoken word poets, and underground comix artists. As such, the
Artist Book + Zine Fair featured independent bookstores, small presses, zine-makers, and pop-up exhibitions with 20+ artists from across the Midwest.
Rhythm and Resistance, the capstone event, was a spoken word concert curated and inspired by the energy and DIY ethos of d.a. levy, the prolific poet and publisher of Cleveland's underground literary community during the 1960s. The event was a collaboration between Deidre McPherson, MOCA Curator of Public Programming, and Ra Washington, Cleveland’s activist poet. Readers included Veronica Hopkins, sound poet Julie Ezelle Patton, Cleveland’s young wordsmiths Zena Smith and DL Woure,
RA Washington, and BOA’s Sean Thomas Dougherty.
According to Ra Washington, “The writers and poets we chose for
Rhythm and Resistance reflect d.a. levy’s commitment to experimentation, being a voice for marginalized communities and speaking truth to power. We wanted to not only extend the traditions of DIY poetics, but to also question and push the historic misrepresentation of the time Levy was working. You see, there were dozens of women writers during the beat movement, and at the same time as the Beat Generation was rising there was also a strong African avante tradition of writers, working both in dialogue with the 'name' folks of the Beat Generation, but also in opposition to the prevailing white maleness of those writing communities. I think we have curated poets who can speaking to all of these divergent histories.”
The Fair was co-curated by artist and zine enthusiast TR Ericsson, and comix artist John Greiner (co-creator of Genghis Con, Cleveland’s underground comic convention).
Dougherty, a self proclaimed “Underground Sound” himself, says, “d.a. levy is not so well known outside of the Rust Coast, but he was a phenomenal poet who influenced everyone in the region. His work crossed borders of textuality, of spoken and written word. He was one of the first poets to truly utilize technology to get poems to the people, and he challenged ideas of censorship. He knew the antidote to the police state was the ability of the people to get information into the hands of regular folks. In many ways, he was a walking, speaking corporeal internet, a mimeo hackivist, a revolutionary poet, decades ahead of his time. To have such a prestigious institution as MOCA Cleveland honor him shows how far we have come in many ways, when the poets of the mimeographed pamphlet who wrote far from the academy do not disappear into the winds of history, but are held up as our real antecedents, as the necessary voices to guide us are speaking and marching into the future.”
One of the poems Dougherty performed, “My Father’s Fro in the Mode of Romare Bearden,” is a poem he says was 'written' much as the old mimeograph magazines were constructed. Dougherty made the poem by cutting and “collage-ing” numerous phrases he wrote, with found text. The result brings us this poem , which deals with the (de)construction of racial signifiers, mixes personal and cultural referents, and challenges the current police violence through a lens of family and history. The poem appears in his book
Broken Hallelujahs, and in his selected poems,
All You Ask for is Longing: Poems 1994-2014, both from BOA.
My Father’s Fro In the Mode of Romare Bearden
Our shoulders touch to build a real peace within a heaven one
city of my great-grandmother’s sweet potato pie magnolias
blossom emerging an embryo the moon’s shimmering
collective eye tongues shudder theory okra a bed of witnesses
laid so many Marvins sigh
Mercy Mercy Me
conch shells a sequence South Sides whenever we
sleep a sinuous cricket shines my father’s fro a pregnancy
against draft cards everything plain spoken to awake a new
alphabet Georgia under lynchless skies Legba a cosmos of
delicate gourds Bootsy Collin’s bassline Sly playing in the
background of some backyard bash everyone shaking
something
for dinner the noose a bullet
They laughed as they hung Him
from the trunk of the old sycamore Halos windless comes
Orishas weeping in white robes my eyes turn in the arms
of his hair the silver grass strung with stars sea shells
Ellison invisible Dejembe no “warring” I shall go
wearing
Kente Kent State Ku Klux sheets re-stitched into Egyptian
sails Walt Frazier’s sideburns Monk choreographing the sound
that smoke shapes A jukebox that plays nothing but versions of
Strange Fruit Amadou Diallo’s passport photo at night how it
weeps Molotov cocktails of monarch butterflies