Women in strange trousers

Poem.Author biography: Josh McDonald is a writer, musician, and storyteller. He is currently writing his third novel. [2008]This episode of our podcast features three runners-up in the Voice-only poetry category of our 2007 Audio Competition. In 'The Golden lesson,' second runner-up Susan Somers-Willet gives an engaging performance of a poem rich in painterly image and metaphor, a poem both complex in its ideas, and visceral in its textures. The third runner-up of the Voice-only poetry category is Eric Torgersen with 'Taking tickets.' The poem defies easy classification--but we're sure you'll find this voice-driven poem, with its quirky character, entertaining. And we conclude with the fourth runner-up, Josh McDonald's 'Women in strange trousers,' a prose poem about females attired in an assortment of odd apparel--Publisher's Web siteAuthor biography: Susan B.A. Somers-Willett is the author of two books of poetry, Quiver and Roam, and a book of criticism, The Cultural politics of slam poetry : race, identity, and the performance of popular verse in America. Her honors include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award. Raised in New Orleans, she teaches English and Creative Writing at Montclair State University in New Jersey. [2010]Author biography: Eric Torgersen, Professor of English, Central Michigan University, has published two chapbooks and three full-length books of poetry, one book of fiction (a novella), and the biographical/critical study Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Northwestern UP. [2008]The golden lesson / Susan Somers-Willet -- Taking tickets / Eric Torgersen -- Women in strange trousers / Josh McDonald

Authenticating voices: performance, black identity, and slam poetry

textMarrying theories about the “authentic” from performance studies and critical race studies, Somers-Willett discusses how poetry slams are representational practices which help generate and authenticate marginal identities, and how the systems of reward established by slams embody complex systems of desire between authors and audiences. Focusing on the relationship between African American poets and white middle-class audiences, she weighs the politics involved in awarding authenticity, ultimately looking to poetry slams as sites of social practice from which racial identity is performatively cited, negotiated, and occasionally questioned. Chapter One, “Poetry and the People,” is a literary-cultural analysis of the narratives of blackness and nation employed by slam’s literary and performative precursors. Somers-Willett investigates “renegade” American performance-poetry movements—including blackface minstrel performances dating back to the Antebellum period, the tours of poet Vachel Lindsay, poetry readings of the Beat era, and performances by Black Arts poets—which make an overt appeal to popular American audiences. Chapter Two, “Authenticating Voices,” considers the association of blackness with authenticity in slam poetry. If it is true, as is often claimed, that audiences feel slam poets articulate a more “authentic” verse, then we must be compelled to ask not only how but also why African American performers have so often won the badge of authenticity through national slam titles. SomersWillett’s response is an exploration of a predominantly white audience’s ambivalent celebration and objectification of black voices embodied in fetishism. The commercialization of slam and the fraught issues of representation this entails is the focus of the last chapter, “‘Representing’ Slam Poetry.” In it, Somers-Willett considers the film Slam (d. Mark Levin, 1998), the HBO television series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and the Broadway performance of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam as examples of the mass media’s commodification of urban blackness at poetry slams. In these cases, citations of gender and class function to create a sense of racial authenticity based on the marketability of the black urban male to white bourgeois audiences, a phenomenon which resonates with other current research about image-making in black popular music and culture, particularly that of hip-hop.Englis

TMR Podcast: Audio Winner Series: Second Place: "Women of Troy"

PodcastAuthor biography: Susan B.A. Somers-Willett is the author of two books of poetry, Quiver and Roam, and a book of criticism, The cultural politics of slam poetry : race, identity, and the performance of popular verse in America. Her honors include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award. Raised in New Orleans, she teaches English and creative writing at Montclair State University in New Jersey. [2010]In this episode of our podcast, we present our second place winner for 2009, "Women of Troy," a work which was produced as part of the "In verse" recording project, created by Ted Genoways and Lu Olkowski. In its full, multimedia incarnation, "Women of Troy" features poet Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally, and producer Lu Olkowski as they document the lives of working mothers in Troy, New York. This version consists of two poems that Somers-Willett wrote for the project, paired with field recordings and audio from recorded interviews