Poetry Planetariat IssueIssue 5, 2, Summer Fall 2019 2020 IstanbulIstanbul / / Medellin Medellin D. Payne PoetsPoets of ofthe the World World UniteUnite Against Against Injustice Injustice Copyright 2020 World Poetry Movement Publisher: World Poetry Movement www.wpm2011.org [email protected] Editor: Ataol Behramoğlu [email protected]/[email protected] Associate Editor: Pelin Batu [email protected] Editorial Board: Mohammed Al-Nabhan (Kuwait), Ayo Ayoola-Amalae (Nigeria), Francis Combes (France), Jack Hirschman (USA), Jidi Majia (China), Fernando Rendón (Colombia), Rati Saxena (India), Keshab Sigdel (Nepal) Paintings by Emmanuel Adekeye/Dorothy Payne Layout by Gülizar Ç. Çetinkaya [email protected] Adress: Tekin Publishing House Ankara Cad.Konak Han, No:15 Cağaloğlu-İstanbul/Turkey Tel:+(0212)527 69 69 Faks:+(0212)511 11 12 www.tekinyayinevi.com e-mail:[email protected] ISSN XXXXX Poetry Planetariat is published four times a year in Istanbul by the World Poetry Movement in cooperation with Ataol Behramoğlu-Pelin Batu and Tekin Publishing House CONTENTS WE NEED TO BREATHE/ATAOL BEHRAMOĞLU A LETTER TO MAYOR LONDON BREED AND SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF SUPERVISORS(SARAH MENEFEE/ JACK HIRSCHMAN/ MARIA CRISTINA GUTIERREZ/ JESSICA G. AGUALLO-HURTADO) AN INTRODUCTION TO THE POETRY OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN POETS/JACK HIRSCHMAN I CAN’T BREATHE- MAKING HUMANITYDOOMED/ AYO AYOOLA-AMALE POETRY OPAL PALMER-ADISA/SAMAR ALİ/AYO AYOOLA-AMALE/ CHARLES BLACKWELL/ JAME CAG- NEY/ MAKETA SMITH –GROVES/ VİNCENT KOBELT/ DEVORAH MAJOR/ TONGO EISEN-MARTIN/ NGWATILO MAWIYOO/ ZOLANİ MKİVA/ NANCY MOREJON/ CHRİSTOPHER OKEMWA/ ODOH DİEGO OKONYONDO/GREG POND/ WOLE SOYİNKA/AXARO W THANİSEB/ MİCHAEL WARR/ ASHRAF ABAOUL YAZİD IN MEMORIAM LANGSTON HUGHES LEOPOLD SENGHOR JAMES BALDWIN MAYA ANGELOU AMIRI BARAKA WE NEED TO BREATHE/ATAOL BEHRAMOĞLU Choking is stay oxygen-free. But being deprived of freedom is also drowning. Those three words that were spilled on the lips of American Citizen George Floyd in May of this year are the expression of not only being oxygen-free but also deprived of liberty. This is why these three words suddenly turned into a scream of liberty and rebellion against injustice, inequality, racial discrimination, oppression, persecution, in a word, slavery, first in America, and then all over the world. Poetry Planetariat adds the voice of poetry to this scream with this issue that it allocates to the world Black verse. Our planet and humanity have a need to breathe. Thus, our initial motto is to repeat from mouth to mouth even higher : “All the poets of the world unite against injustice!” 4 POETRY PLANETARIAT | ISSUE 5, SUMMER 2020, ISTANBUL / MEDELLIN POETS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST WAR To Mayor London Breed and San Francisco Board of Supervisors The police as an institution has proven time and time again that they are guided by fascist ideology, racism and white supremacy. That they were created to, and continue to, serve and protect only the rich and powerful. This came out so clearly during the stay-in-place quarantine, when the police once again targeted homeless and Black and Brown communities to ‘enforce’ the rules of the quarantine, persecuting Black and Brown people if they weren’t wearing a mask or social distancing. Meanwhile in Dolores Park and Precita Park we witness how the police allow mostly white middle class individuals to do whatever they want: no social distancing, no masks, no nothing. The police do not bother doing anything. White privilege? What is more horrifying is that during these protests against murders of Black and Brown by the police, dramatized by the execution ‘by hanging’ of the cop’s knee on the neck of George Floyd, the police continue to persecute and murder Black and Brown young men and women. They continue to use against our people the same tactics used against the Palestinians by the Zionist police, who are brought here to train the police in these brutal torture tactics. The police are increasingly militarized and act as occupying forces in our streets. So it is clear to us that these police departments, as well as the Police Officers Association, cannot be fixed or reformed. Therefore, we demand that the police department be immediately abolished as an institution. We also demand the shutdown of the Police Officers Association (POA) and that we begin to build an alternative, unarmed institution controlled by the communities they serve and protect. We do not believe that any of the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor or any poverty pimps of nonprofits has the moral authority to decide what our demands should be. We know what we want and need. The politicians and the nonprofit organizations see the movement growing, and now they want to climb on the platform and speak, while in the past they have refused to address this issue honestly. We denounce the dishonest strategies they use to get votes and followers. The people have spoken! Abolish the police! Shut down the Police Officers Association! Sarah Menefee, Chair of the San Francisco Area of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America Jack Hirschman, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus Maria Cristina Gutierrez, Mothers on the March Jessica G. Aguallo-Hurt POETRY PLANETARIAT | ISSUE 5, SUMMER 2020, ISTANBUL / MEDELLIN 5 POETS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST WAR E. Adekeye 6 POETRY PLANETARIAT | ISSUE 5, SUMMER 2020, ISTANBUL / MEDELLIN POETS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST WAR An introduction to the poetry of the African-American Poets/Jack Hirschman The African-American poets in this issue of World Poetry Movement’s Poetry Planetariat are for the most part from the West Coast of the USA. All are poets of the written word, as contrasted with Spoken Word poets, who emerged in1977 in The Bronx, NY, with the birth of the Hip-Hop or Rap movement that has migrated allover the world just as Jazz had in previous generations. Indeed, the Spoken Word poets belong to the realm of Music in the sense that, before, for example, I had read (or seen read, as I had the honor to) Langston Hughes, I had the strong sense that Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker were actually writing poems with musical sounds. It’s my belief that Spoken Word poets were born from such music. The poets in this issue of Black Americans have certainly also been deeply influenced by the “Poetry” of Jazz, but their involvement with the written word is fundamentally based upon the need to express contents that speak to the free- dom from slavery and the continued attacks owhite supremacists upon the African- Americapopulation. These poets are the moral spine of the literature not only of the African-American cultural world but of the white, Native and Asian-American worlds as well. They represent some of the most precious poets in the United States today. Two of them— Amiri Baraka, who died in 2014, and the woman Maketa Smith-Groves, who passed away in March of this year—were poets whose work was known internationally. And as virtually all of them are poets in the San Francisco area, you can imagine how widespread African-American poetry is, with poets of the other cities and even small towns in this vast country, united with African poets in the many other nations of the world. POETRY PLANETARIAT | ISSUE 5, SUMMER 2020, ISTANBUL / MEDELLIN 7 POETS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST WAR D. Payne 8 POETRY PLANETARIAT | ISSUE 5, SUMMER 2020, ISTANBUL / MEDELLIN POETS OF THE WORLD UNITE AGAINST WAR I Can’t Breathe- Making HumanityDoome/Ayo Ayoola-Amale It is pleasing that this issue of World Poetry Movement’s Poetry Planetariat is featuring Blacks from Africa and African Americans in a series of live poetry readings and anthology on the theme “ I can’t breathe” the last words of Eric Garner and George Floyd. Poetry shows that racism is ridiculous, and unjustified by reminding us of a truth often forgotten that we are one human race, we possess equal moral worth, and we arebuilt the same in a mosaic of beautiful colours withfeatures that distinguish us but are so superficial from our real human souls.The fight against racism requires great courage, honesty, deep and genuine sense of justice, empathy, mutual concern and humanity. These qualities are best expressed, promoted and make popular through poetry. Obviously the fight against racism, discrimination,and bigotry needs poets and poetry.Structural Racism in the United States is a system of hierarchy, chronic disparity and inequity, which comprises the entire system of white supremacy, the standardization and legitimization of a range of dynamicsdiffusedand infused in all facets of the American society – historical, economic, cultural, institutional, interpersonal and the entire social fabric.These great evil and atrocities is a system that dehumanize both the oppressor and oppressed and consistently gives unmerited privilege and advantage to whites while increasingenduringoppression, destruction, and povertyfor blacks. Structural racism is the most universal and profound form of racial discrimination which other forms of racism emerge from, for instance institutional, interpersonal, internalized, etc. It is largely characterized by the preferential treatment, privilege and power for white people at theexpense of racially oppressed blacks, red Indians (native American),Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Arab etc. Human being’s worthis classified using skin colour as the model of humanity for the purpose of creating and sustaining privilege and power in a structure that has the darkest skin colour at the bottom breathless. In furtherance of a system