Speak, Poet!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 12:14PM 
One week from today I leave here to go north and I have a HUGE amount of work to do between now and then and so, when I finally settled back into my office late Monday after driving Margie to the airport, taking a bike ride, etc., I had determined that I was going to keep other distractions to a minimum.
Even this blog. It is my real work, yet it can be a distraction. I planned to keep this blog extremely simple for the remainder of that time - perhaps one, no more than three, photos a day with simple, brief, narrative - perhaps nonsensical, so that I would not have to spend time thinking at all. I would not go off and do anything new. If anybody contacted me with a request that I do this or that, which they surely would and already have, I would just have to say "no, not now... too busy!"
Maybe I would skip two or three days blogging altogether. I just was not going to let myself be distracted from this work I must do.
So I came home from my bike ride and immediately opened up Facebook and the first thing that I saw was a picture posted by Allison Akootchook Warden, Iñupiaq poet, playwright and actress. Five poets were pictured, included her and Leah Frankson, another Iñupiaq poet who is also a hair stylist and who now cuts my hair - which these days is beyond styling.
The caption read simply:
Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...
This gathering was going on at that moment.
As it happened, Allison plays a part in the project on which I have a huge amount of work to do, so I thought, "I will go see what this epic gathering of poets is all about and maybe I can work something of Allison there into my huge, huge, impossible, project."
So, not knowing what it was about, I rushed to Palmer, expecting to find maybe a couple of dozen of Alaska's most venerated and accomplished poets walking around, speaking in verse, uttering wise and clever utterances.
What I found was in some ways even better than that. It was an epic gathering of high school student poets from Palmer and Wasilla, gathered together to participate in a Brave New Voices, a poetry slam. Allison, Leah and the other noted adult poets that had been in the posted picture had spent the day in the schools of Palmer and Wasilla working with the young poets, preparing them for the slam.
Unfortunately for me, all the students participating in the slam had recited their poems - except for one, Collette Bailey, pictured right here, who was just stepping onto the stage.
She raised her hand into the air.
"Speak, poet!" the crowd shouted.
And so Collette Bailey, Poet, began to speak. To be quite honest, I knew I would have very little time to try to figure out a picture and so I did not catch the full meaning of her words. I did catch the cadence and atmosphere, though, and it felt surprisingly deep to me - as if the words that had been written and were now being spoken had come from the mind of someone who had lived long, had experienced much, had felt deep pain and had wandered long through both the darkness and light of life.
So that is all that I can tell you about the poem written and recited by Collette Bailey and hers was the only poem of the slam competition that I heard at all.
The judges, who paid strict attention to every word that she spoke and who, of course, are all brilliant people who understand all the nuance of poetry and who have read and wept over all the master works ever written since God struck verse onto stone tablets and even before that when God chastised Cain for spilling the bloods of his innocent brother Able to vanish into the dirt, never to spawn future generations, were mighty impressed.
When I saw these numbers, I thought perhaps the last would be first.
We wouldn't know for awhile. Even though they had cast their numbers, the judges had some things to figure out before the winners could be announced.
So, for a spell, poets milled about and posed for pictures.
Then there was a short period of open mic, where poets could recite for pleasure and not competition. One of those who did was Kat Chudnofsky. For some reason, when she took the stage and gestured with her hands, my mind went back to India, to Soundarya's wedding.
Kat took her bows.
Allison, Leah and Leah's daughter Kavi Pearl listen to the open mic recitations.
The judges still needed a little more time. So the crowd began to sing, "There's lots to do at the Y-M-C-A..."
And then the winners were called onto the stage. Kat had taken first, Allie Harrington, left, second and Collette third.
The winning students poets then posed with the adult accomplished poets who had worked with them, they include, from left to right: Trey Josey, Leah, Allison, Kima Hamilton, B. Hutton and the current Alaska State Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker.
A post such as this should just be dripping with verse, but I figured that if I could get a small sample from each of the three winners, that would have to do it. So I tried to pull them together, but Collette had disappeared immediately after adjournment. Allie took down my email address which she was then to share with Kat and hopefully they might get it to Bailey as well, so that all three could send me a sample of verse.
As it worked out, I heard back only from Allie, who sent me three lines from her poem, Feeling Unreal.
Three lines, from all that verse. Yet, somehow, as a dreamer, these three lines strike me as just perfect, the very lines to close with:
"I want you to feel unreal.
I want you to be excited to wake because
dreaming is beginning to seem boring."
