02/29/04

NYC: Poet Suheir Hammad interviewed by reg e. gaines
Inside the Culture of Resistance conversation

Suheir Hammad & reg e. gaines

The Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! presents
Inside the Culture of Resistance / conversations with artists

reg e gaines interviews poet SUHEIR HAMMAD
Monday MARCH 22, 2004 7pm
Tishman Auditorium, The New School,
66 W.12th St. NYC tickets $8,
info: 212-229-5353 or www.artistsnetwork.org

The evening will open with a performance by Suheir.

This conversation is part of a series of videotaped public interviews that explore questions confronting artists who have pioneered in reaching a broad audience with art that challenges the world as we know it and celebrates the spirit and resistance of the people.

SUHEIR HAMMAD is a daughter of Palestinian refugees, born in Amman, Jordan, and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Suheir is a poet and author of "Born Palestinian, Born Black" and "Drops of This Story". She is an original writer and cast member of the TONY Award winning Russell Simmons Presents DEF POETRY JAM ON BROADWAY. Suheir's produced plays are BLOOD TRINITY and REORIENTALISM. Poems by Suheir, see below

REG E. GAINES is a poet and playwright. He is director and co-founder, along with Jam Master Jay and Rob Principe, of Scratch DJ Academy. He is artistic director of Scratch Theatrical and the 2004 Downtown Urban Theater Festival. reg is currently directing Marcella Goheen's BLAK, OTHER ASPECTS (which he also wrote), and Regie Cabico's STRAIGHT OUT. He is in rehearsals for his play TIERS. reg wrote the book for Broadway's BRING IN DA NOISE, BRING IN DA FUNK. For more on reg, go here

This conversation is produced by the Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! in cooperation with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

POEMS BY SUHEIR HAMMAD

What I Will

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat
it is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
and hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin break for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own
drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This
heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain't
louder than this breath.

(dedicated humbly to June Jordan)

September 4, 2002

P.
leave fear behind
like smoke like all
that inhibits us all that limits
us what hates us what
makes us hate one another not
see each other in us

I will not watch the repeated images of steel and glass crashing
into concrete. This slow motion still halts
my heart. I will not attend the memorials
promising to end in war cries, nor the vigils held
in the long hope for peace. I will stay at home in
my kitchen of herb green, my bedroom
of coral. I will listen to music that brings me closer
to my own breath. I will breathe shallow
and thankful. I will try to write a poem, and if I fail
to do so, I will write letters. Mostly apologies.

I will stay in my sunshine living room and
even my tangerine hall. I will stay inside of my
self and see what I find there.

E.
The media is looking for America, what America
thinks and wants. Tell the media to look in detention
centers.

Where will you be 365 days to the one New
York City broke down like a woman running? Tell the media
America is in the faces of the people she hates. The people
whose lives do not count as prime time or same time any
time. The people I come from.

A.
I can see where those buildings once stood from where I am
writing. The night is clear and no one is here to see me staring
at the awesome absence. A ladybug has adopted me and is in my
kitchen now, red and black and alive. I welcome her, but tell her we
are in a time where living things have to be careful. She is busy
being fly. I am busy breaking down.

C.
It is more truthful to do the math
around September 11, 2001 than it is to utilize the English
language in an attempt to translate life into prose. Math
does not change from nation to nation. Its self
is not threatened with visa status nor border crossing. One
life always equals one life, though one never brings back
another. No matter the men in power - the math stands. I will not
count the dead here. I will let those who care, ask. And then the
math will write a memorial poem in English, Farsi, in Urdu, Arabic,
in
Spanish, in Yoruba, Hebrew, in Korean, in the tongue of angels, in
the whisper of wind, in the call to prayer, in the walls, in the
wails, in the absence of cameras, in the long hope for peace.

E.
Tonight America is looking for an idol. Tell her not
to look in the White House. Direct her to the poems of JUne
Jordan, the diaries of Malcolm X, the survival of native
nations. Tell her idols are born, not produced. Remind America
of the idols she has murdered, exiled, silenced. Maybe those idols,
human and complicated, have some answers for us.

September 11, 2002

The wind outside is so strong; it has blown branches off of trees and
dust into eyes. I want to believe this wind is composed of the
spirits of the people lost in downtown Manhattan one year ago today.
That this wind is a caress from them to their families. That this
wind is traveling from heaven, and from the other side of the earth.
That it is a healing wind. A cleansing wind. A wind that has picked
up other spirits, other innocents, and is caressing us all.

Today is not a still day. The sky is clear, but none of the
brilliance of that Tuesday. It was such a pretty sky. Not today.
Today the blue is heavy with memory and threatning of war. Today the
blue is in uniforms, in sadness, in the bottom of glasses.

There really isn't anything new to write. I have fewer answers that
I did one year ago. But I am still alive. Sometimes that is the
only answer necessary.

first writing since...
by Suheir Hammad
(September 2001)

1. there have been no words.
i have not written one word.
no poetry in the ashes south of canal street.
no prose in the refrigerated trucks driving debris and dna.
not one word.

today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, science.
evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality.
sky where once was steel.
smoke where once was flesh.

fire in the city air and i feared for my sister's life in a way
never
before. and then, and now, i fear for the rest of us.

first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilotās heart failed,
the
plane's engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, donāt let it be anyone
who looks like my brothers.

i do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill.
i have never been so hungry that i willed hunger
i have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a palestinian, as a broken human being.
never this broken.

more than ever, i believe there is no difference.
the most privileged nation, most americans do not know the
difference
between indians, afghanis, syrians, muslims, sikhs, hindus.
more than ever, there is no difference.

2. thank you korea for kimchi and bibim bob, and corn tea and the
genteel smiles of the wait staff at wonjo *Esmiles never revealing
the heat of the food or how tired they must be working long midtown
shifts. thank you korea, for the belly craving that brought me
into
the city late the night before and diverted my daily train ride
into
the world trade center.

there are plenty of thank yous in ny right now. thank you for my
lazy procrastinating late ass. thank you to the germs that had me
call in sick. thank you, my attitude, you had me fired the week
before. thank you for the train that never came, the rude nyer who
stole my cab going downtown. thank you for the sense my mama gave
me
to run. thank you for my legs, my eyes, my life.

3. the dead are called lost and their families hold up shaky
printouts in front of us through screens smoked up.

we are looking for iris, mother of three. please call with any
information. we are searching for priti, last seen on the 103rd
floor. she was talking to her husband on the phone and the line
went. please help us find george, also known as adel. his family
is
waiting for him with his favorite meal. i am looking for my son,
who
was delivering coffee. i am looking for my sister girl, she
started
her job on monday.

i am looking for peace. i am looking for mercy. i am looking for
evidence of compassion. any evidence of life. i am looking for
life.

4. ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as yuca, "i will
feel so much better when the first bombs drop over there. and my
friends feel the same way."
on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and stranded in
hurt.
i offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see before she
said,
"we're gonna burn them so bad, i swear, so bad." my hand went to
my
head and my head went to the numbers within it of the dead iraqi
children, the dead in nicaragua. the dead in rwanda who had to vie
with fake sport wrestling for america's attention.

yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to happen, lets
not forget u.s. transgressions, for half a second i felt resentful.
hold up with that, cause i live here, these are my friends and fam,
and it could have been me in those buildings, and we're not bad
people, do not support america's bullying. can i just have a half
second to feel bad?

if i can find through this exhaust people who were left behind to
mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.

thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and blinking
back
tears. she opened her arms before she asked "do you want a hug?"
a
big white woman, and her embrace was the kind only people with the
warmth of flesh can offer. i wasn't about to say no to any
comfort.
"my brother's in the navy,"i said. "and we're arabs" "wow, you
got double trouble." word.

5. one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers.
one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in.
one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed.
one more person assume they know me, or that i represent a people.
or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a
flag and words on a page.

we did not vilify all white men when mcveigh bombed oklahoma.
america did not give out his family's addresses or where he went to
church. or blame the bible or pat robertson.

and when the networks air footage of palestinians dancing in the
street, there is no apology that hungry children are bribed with
sweets that turn their teeth
brown. that correspondents edit images. that archives are there
to
facilitate lazy and inaccurate journalism.

and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and death, why do
we
never mention the kkk?

if there are any people on earth who understand how new york is
feeling right now, they are in the west bank and the gaza strip.

6. today it is ten days. last night bush waged war on a man once
openly funded by the
cia. i do not know who is responsible. read too many books, know
too many people to believe what i am told. i don't give a fuck
about
bin laden. his vision of the world does not include me or those i
love. and petittions have been going around for years trying to
get
the u.s. sponsored taliban out of power. shit is complicated, and
i don't know what to think.

but i know for sure who will pay.

in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women
will
have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.
"either you are with us, or with the terrorists" - meaning keep your
people
under control and your resistance censored. meaning we got the
loot
and the nukes.

in america, it will be those amongst us who refuse blanket attacks on
the shivering. those of us who work toward social justice, in
support of civil liberties, in opposition to hateful foreign
policies.

i have never felt less american and more new yorker - particularly
brooklyn, than these past days. the stars and stripes on all these
cars and apartment windows represent the dead as citizens first - not
family members, not lovers.

i feel like my skin is real thin, and that my eyes are only going to
get darker. the future holds little light.

my baby brother is a man now, and on alert, and praying five times a
day that the orders he will take in a few days time are righteous and
will not weigh his soul down from the afterlife he deserves.

both my brothers - my heart stops when i try to pray - not a beat to
disturb my fear. one a rock god, the other a sergeant, and both
palestinian, practicing muslim, gentle men. both born in brooklyn
and their faces are of the archetypal arab man, all eyelashes and
nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair.

what will their lives be like now?

over there is over here.

7. all day, across the river, the smell of burning rubber and limbs
floats through. the sirens have stopped now. the advertisers are
back on the air. the rescue workers are traumatized. the skyline is
brought back to human size. no longer taunting the gods with its
height.

i have not cried at all while writing this. i cried when i saw those
buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart. i have never
owned pain that needs to spread like that. and i cry daily that my
brothers return to our mother safe and whole.

there is no poetry in this. there are causes and effects. there are
symbols and ideologies. mad conspiracy here, and information we will
never know. there is death here, and there are promises of more.

there is life here. anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting,
but breathing for sure. and if there is any light to come, it will
shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the
rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen.

affirm life.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.

suheir hammad

Read 'On the Brink' by Suheir Hammad

INSIDE THE CULTURE OF RESISTANCE: Earlier interviews in this Artists Network series have been done with actor Danny Hoch, poet/playwright reg e. gaines, theater groups Culture Clash and Universes, R&B singer/composer Oscar Brown Jr., filmmaker David Riker, poet Willie Perdomo, and painters Arnold Mesches and Brett Cook-Dizney. Tapes of these interviews are being edited for broadcast and distribution. For more on the ICOR conversations, go here

THE ARTISTS NETWORK OF REFUSE & RESIST! is a group of artists and arts presenters working in NYC and LA, dedicated to creating and promoting art that contributes to a culture of resistance in these mean-spirited political times. We help develop new works and new collaborations, host salons and discussions among artists, and produce events. Check out our website: www.artistsnetwork.org