Some people, when I ask them to sing along to my poem, don’t want to utter the dreaded words: “Little YELLOW Slut.” Good people don’t want to repeat derogatory phrases. But it’s OK. This is a Poem: saying it will make discrimination, racists and sexists, all evil thoughts go away _ like “oharai” by the shaman.
2011 Barbary Coast Award literary event in San Francisco
(photos by Annette Dorfman)
I was in San Francisco Oct. 12, 2011 for the 2011 Barbary Coast Award given to my mentor and publisher and great poet, novelist and teacher Ishmael Reed. Reed is the author of at least 27 books, including Mumbo Jumbo, The Last Days of Louisiana Red and Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down. He is also a publisher (as I well know), television producer, songwriter, pianist and radio and television commentator. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for 30 years.
I just finished his latest novel “Juice!” which highlights his talent as a visual artist/cartoonist as well. The book is not only a deliciously hilarious read, offering insightful satire on U.S. race relations and celebrity scandals, it is also a profound testament, even tribute, to what could now be a passing glory era of the mainstream media _ in all its grandeur, ludicrousness, power and human potential.
More from the ceremony below: Photos and video clips of performances, including my reading with music.
Congratulations to Ishmael Reed
(video by Evan Karp)
Ishmael Reed, who published my latest book “The New and Selected Yuri: Writing From Peeling Till Now,” received the Barbary Coast Award WED Oct. 12, 2011, at a gala ceremony at Z Space in San Francisco, a program packed with poets, musicians and performers, includng even me, who read “Litte YELLOW Slut” with the Broun Fellinis _ from left to right Kirk Peterson (bass), Kevin Carnas (drums), David Boyce (saxophone) _ Makoto Horiuchi (guitar), Ashwut Rodriguez (guitar) and the great Ishmael Reed (piano).
MUSICAL POETS: Al Young sings, presents award to Ishmael Reed
David Boyce of the Broun Fellinis, poet Tennessee Reed and Carla Blank, choreographer, performance artist and my editor at The Barbary Coast Award ceremony for poet, novelist and professor Ishmael Reed Oct. 12, 2011, in San Francisco.
Photos by Annette Dorfman.
Stun-gun poetics: A review of my new book
“Kageyama’s images, scoured, purged of ornamentation, can have the effect of a stun gun …. The focus in Kageyama’s work is less on beauty, which can be delusional, than on truth. Serious literature, we realize, does not exist to comfort and mollify us, but to unnerve and agitate.”
Stephen Mansfield in a review of “The New and Selected Yuri _ Writing From Peeling Till Now” in The Japan Times, Aug. 14, 2011.
A mention in the Cornell Alumni Magazine
My book “The New and Selected Yuri _ Writing From Peeling Till Now” in the Cornell Alumni Magazine:
“In her collection of new and selected poems, Kageyama debunks cultural stereotypes and explores how racism and sexism scar people.”
Reading at a San Francisco book store
Reading at a San Francisco book store TUE Aug. 16, 2011 with (from left to right) Yoshiaki Tago (filmmaker), Hiroyuki Shido (bass), Eric Kamau Gravatt (drums), Makoto Horiuchi (guitar), Yuri Kageyama (poet) and Isaku Kageyama (percussion, taiko).
Photos by Annette Dorfman.
The best thing about the reading was that Milton Murayama, author of “All I Asking For Is My Body,” whom I had not seen in years, came with his wife Dawn because he saw it in The San Francisco Chronicle.
He told me the day he would stop writing is the day he dies.
So much like Milton _ still the same after all these years.
He had that same twinkle in his eye when he said those words like a promise.
Death can’t be all bad if we can keep writing till the day we die.
A Letter to Isaku in Konch magazine
My piece on Japan’s nuclear disaster, “A Letter to Isaku,” and all our children, is published in the new issue of Konch Magazine from Ishmael Reed Publishing Co.