Looking at the world from variety of angles. Speaking to the conscious and subconscious of people. My World is a honest message, a simple message and a powerful message, to educate uplift and inspire.

Poet Nadine Williams

the thoughts hovering over a man’s head

aren’t all about how to get a’head

and frankly it’s a bit of a headache

trying to wrap women’s head around that fact

I mean it’s tough enough trying to get ahead

of the headgames that presents itself as the third party in most relationships

leaving us thinking sometimes who really needs a three-some when we’ve got headgames

it’s at these times that we sometimes tune out as though we were wearing headphones

and tune in to the temptation that lurks around each corner creeping into our headsets, most times starting after the sun sets and continuing till it rises

Heaven knows a brother really doesn’t need the heady heights and the depressing lows to keep us on our toes

And falling headfirst isn’t the norm for all men, for most the heart does have a thing or two to do with it too

especially when a woman can enthrall us from head to toe sometimes with just a whiff of her intoxicating vera wang original perfume

but most times it is the heady sauce that she dishes out in conversations when you try to get saucy with her

sometimes it’s hotter than the fevered fore-head of the baby fathered on the ‘outside

hotter still than the raging pain of that sauce pan meeting the head of that insane dude that messed with Madea’s niece

or better yet hotter than ten scotch bonnet peppers busted in your goat head soup

Yes I’m talking about a man’s head

a space where hours of planning goes down to ensure that the door stays ajar long enough to make a headway in life

I mean it is recommended and down right expected that a man must have his head in the game at all times to win

The team depends on him as the head linesman

And though some may vehemently oppose, my head certainly knows

that although women have headlined many a newspaper with just how far they’ve come at leveling the playing field

there is just no denying that the strength of a man can sometimes take us out of a headlock real quick

and I’m sure that by now you’ve realized that I did say sometimes right

because at other times we all know that once a woman puts her head to it, her strength is equivalent to the insane sport of running with the bulls in spain

her head holds the power to make us weak at the knees

and though we may gird ourselves from our heads down to our very toes, still there’s really no immunity from it

just ask former President Bill about the bill that loomed over his head when he tried it

or better yet ask the Terminator about the termination of life as he knows it with his big reveal

Now although there are several other examples floating around my head space

I’ll quit while I’m ahead

and just hope that by now my words have permeated your head

and you’re now a firm believer that the thoughts hovering over a man’s head

aren’t all about how to get a’head

instead it’s about how to get a headway in life!

NAW (c) June. 2011

Nadine Williams is both poet and self-published author of three books: The Culmination of Marriage Between Me & My Pen, With This Pen I Do Tell and Love Rocks (a children’s book).

Poet David McLennon

By David McLennon

my vote counts, your vote counts
it’s a right, a privilege, a responsibility
as contributing members of society
selecting a government that will push initiatives,
put in place changes and visions
of a better country that we envision
the party you choose, it’s your decision
my vote counts, your vote counts
we need to cherish our right and civic duty
it’s not “eeny meeny miny moe”
or pick your favourite colour
read up on the parties, analyze their agendas
listen to debates before you make that x
and place the ballot in the box
my vote counts, your vote counts
why would you waste the thing that
so many cried for, so many fought for, so many died for
if you notice
so many are still crying, still fighting, still dying for
embrace your right, privilege, responsibility
let your voice be heard
go out and vote

Poet Motion

By Adebe DeRango-Adem

Motion was born Wendy Braithwaite in Toronto to Antiguan and Barbadian parents. She adopted the name “Motion” because it depicted the rate at which she began showing her talent. Heavily influenced by the reggae, calypso and soul music of her childhood, Motion’s creativity extends beyond writing spoken word and hip hop. Her career accolades include a MuchMusic nomination for Best Rap Video Award and the UMAC Award for Best Hip Hop Radio Show.

Sway caught up with Motion to discuss her biggest influences and to find out what really makes her move.

When did you first discover the power of words? Did you write as a child?

Probably before I could actually write. I was always singing, talking, always had songs in my head, taped them on a recorder. We had a lot of records, and mashed up between all the music – reggae, calypso, dub, soul, funk, sound/tracks from Louise Bennett, Richard Pryor, Linton Kwesi and Malcolm X. Isaac Hayes used to start his songs with these long soliloquies. My uncle was a poet. This is what I was hearing while I was growing. I started writing when I was probably around seven. I had a book to write about what I did each day, stuff like that. But then it started growing into writing songs, lyrics, rhymes and then poetry.

At what moment did you realize that you wanted/needed to be a writer/poet/spoken-word artist?  Was there a moment, or was it more of an unfolding series of experiences?

Each phase is inspired by different things… discovering b-sides, meeting power, building with Althea Prince, driving into drama. Each of these and more each time put me on the next trajectory, but I think everything’s been there from the beginning.

What initially prompted you to write your most recent poetry collection, 40 Dayz?

The seed for 40 dayz was planted when I was taking a poetry workshop with Dionne Brand. My challenge was to stretch my style, try new forms and write a body of work on a central theme. I wanted to write a collection where each piece connected, a journey. 40 dayz represents elements of that journey – artistically, personally, spiritually, historically, the mountains and floods, rituals and rebirths.

You have opened for/shared stages with such renowned artists as Mos Def, Wyclef Jean, Talib Kweli, and Jill Scott.  How have these experiences inspired your work?

It’s inspiring to share the stage with respected artists, to witness other artists at work, and be a part of creating that energy. It’s confirmation to keep pushing to the next level, and affirming how much the North brings to the table. Music has always surrounded and run through me, it’s a passion. Poetry to me is one of the foundation elements. It’s that space where word and music merge. It’s visual and oral, read, heard. It’s rhythm, beat, pitch, volumes, silence. And at the same time, it’s literature, lyrical, comical, dramatic, epic. It’s emceeing, storytelling, spoken word. It’s loud and quiet. Music and poetry, word/sound, share an intertwined evolution.

You provide powerful spoken word workshops for youth.  What goes into the process of organizing these workshops?  What is a strong workshop session composed of?

I love working with new talent. Community and arts organizations in the city are promoting workshops incorporating spoken word, poetry, hip hop: ArtStarts, Blockheadz, Urban Arts, A.M.Y. Project, Lost Lyrics, bcurrent, Women With Wordz and Literature for Life. It’s a way to engage youth, introduce them to the art form, empower voices, tell stories, deal with what’s going on personally and communally. In schools, the poetry unit has been one of the hardest to teach, so some teachers are opening up to spoken word and lyricism to engage students and show the poetic word is relevant, accessible and real. It’s a valuable space for developing emerging writers and artists, and building a new generation of writers. The main thing about workshops is providing a space to develop new talent, to find the connection, and jump off from there, explore the poetry in everyday spaces, real life situations. It’s also creating a safe space to share, experiment and risk. After the brainstorms, free-writes, finding memory, exploring the senses and s/language, painting pictures with words, exploring styles, flow and stories, the goal is to inspire new insights, new voices and the next level of creation.

Who are your favourite writers?

If I had to start a list, it would begin with the writers that made me fall in love with reading in the first place: Maya Angelou, Rosa Guy, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes. My mom intro’d me to the classics – Things Fall Apart, Miguel Street, If Beale Street Could Talk. I discovered Sonia Sanchez, Edwidge Dandicat, The Bridge of Beyond. And among that foundation, there are emcees, songwriters, playwrights, and numerous Northside poets and novelists like Althea Prince, d’bi.young, George Elliot and JWyze.

How do you see the role of spoken word/oral traditions within the larger project of recognizing, preserving and promoting the contributions of Black peoples and their collective histories?

In many ways, our oral/aural culture has been a mode of survival for us. When original texts were lost, kidnapped, destroyed, when our languages became contraband, when the audacity to read or write could be punishable by death, our voices, chants, songs, proverbs, stories, jokes, codes, remained a crucial communication. It still is.

The movement is documenting oral culture – rap anthologies, spoken word collections, scholars writing on toasts and dub. There is digital dissemination, global collaboration, audio/visual poetry, the perpetual recording of everything. And that raw mouth to ear experience continues – performance spaces where we share philosophies, ciphers where skills are challenged, open mics to try new work and discover the next new voices; slams where the poet and audience become a intertwined entity. The poetic innovation will continue to build upon that foundation.

Do you have any advice for young or emerging writers trying to get their work heard?

Write, perform as much as possible, discover what makes your voice, story, style unique. Experiment: try new things. Study the art, go to open mics, watch poetry online, listen, read poetry, old and new. Also, be independent; show your hustle, blog your work, record your pieces, make film shorts, promote a poetry jam or underground show in the spaces within your own community and beyond. Join a theatre workshop, poetry program, youth media collective, urban arts organization; this opens up opportunities to work with professional artists and mentors to develop your work. Build your network. Do whatever you can to be heard, read, seen and felt, and more opportunities will come. And read, read, read. Know we are all blessed with a gift/s; take the time to know yours.

What author in history would you have loved to have a coffee (or tea) and chat with, and why?

John Coltrane. He composed, he spoke with music. The vibes he put out inspired a lot of things, scripts, poetry. But I’d wanna be in the rehearsal studio with him, instead of coffee. And Zora Neale Hurston… jus because.

Are you currently at work on any new projects?  Where can we go to hear or find your work?

I’m writing a new book. I’m developing dramatic/poetic work for theatre. My play Aneemah’s Spot will be published by Playwright’s Canada Press this spring in the Obsidian Collection. And I’m building my new show and mixing my live album. It’s been a time of creation. Soon come – dissemination. Log on to motionlive.com  

Click or more information Motion’s new work, click 40 dayz

The Visitor

Secluded hot springs, beaches of oil black sand, unexplored limbs of the Amazon

touch the hands of the visitor that travels the land.

At the top of Kilimanjaro, standing motionless surveying ice glaciers of the Arctic, at the foot of the Grand Canyon

hear the stories of the visitor that nature continuously seduces.

Strung out on the Sahara, high on the Rockies, twisted vines secure remote jungles.

Glimpse the visitor who is always on the go.

Feel Me

Look into my eyes you will see the darkest light

Touch my hands there the softest sandpaper

Listen to my voice you will hear the loudest whisper

Inhale my scent it’s the sweetest stench

Now taste me

By Adebe DeRango-Adem

Dane Swan is a poet and spoken-word performer living in Toronto. He has been featured in more than a dozen North American cities and competed in numerous poetry slams, including the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (placing 2^nd with Team Toronto) and the Rust Belt Regional Slam (placing 3^rd with Team Toronto). His poetry can be found in the pages of Rampike, Misunderstandings and Vallum magazines, as well as in anthologies and on various CD projects.

When did you first discover the power of words? Did you write as a child?

Ever since I can remember words have always had an immense power. I wrote a lot of stories and poems as a kid. In all honesty, high school turned me off of traditional creative writing. I ended up keeping my writing skills sharp writing raps and dancehall lyrics as a teenager.

What initially prompted you to write your poetry chapbook, Narcotics//Flora?

I’m proudly a member of Canada’s spoken-word poetry community. Unfortunately, some members of the literary community have created fictional stereotypes of the poetry that spoken-word poets, particularly slam poets, are capable of writing. At the time I wrote Narcotics // Flora, the anti spoken-word rhetoric was at its loudest. I wanted to quietly make a point—that a slam poet could write eloquent, tight and structured poetry while keeping on message.

Your book is described as a collection based on transit and the aesthetics of the city; it features poetry that is literally in motion.  What is it about the transience of urban space that attracts you as a writer? I think moving and motion is life. Breathing is movement. We are never still. That goes for immigrants as well; they are constantly moving, searching for a place to call home. Cities can be described as living organisms.

You are known predominately in Toronto as a spoken-word artist, though your style lends itself to a variety of traditions.  How do you see the role of spoken word/oral traditions writing within the larger project of recognizing, preserving and promoting the contributions of Black peoples and their collective histories?

The word is everything. Poetry and all storytelling traditions were born of oral tradition. The printing press is merely an extension of these traditions, not a replacement. That’s why books are printed in English, French, etc. If books were the domain of the elite they would only be written in Latin. As for Black History, it’s not enough for us to mimic the traditions of our forefathers. As a community we have to carry oral traditions and the history behind them. Gospel music, spoken-word, storytelling, and even rap are linked together in many ways. It is part of our larger project to understand how and why.

You were born in Bermuda.  How has the experience of moving from Bermuda to Canada factored into your work?

I was born and raised in Bermuda but my mother is Jamaican. Until my grandpa died when I was 10, we spent our summers, Christmases and some Easters in the small village of Yallas. We also spent time in Lands End and Kingston. Bermuda and Jamaica are similar in a number of ways: friendly populations, black majorities, island culture. The biggest difference was the economic situation. Spending time between those two islands was really humbling. When I first moved to Canada, I was excited that my mother’s culture was so pronounced, but I was also upset at how much Jamaican culture was commodified. I remember going into Jamaican restaurants and asking for things every Jamaican should know and getting blank stares. They didn’t know what sorrel was. I could take the cold but a disregard of my mother’s culture was most difficult. It did show me that there is a truth and then an image held up as the truth. My goal as a writer has always been to show an honest, unbiased reality. I guess seeing discrepancies in how my mother’s culture was portrayed here influenced that in my writing.

Do you see Black Canadian writers who identify with a Diaspora as more apt to use their craft to cross multiple barriers aesthetically or culturally?

It’s tough to say whether being identified with a particular Diaspora (Bermudian) allows me to cross barriers that other Black Canadian writers cannot. I assume so. I have a pretty varied life experience, but the truth is we don’t know what the young Black Canadian writer’s voice is. There have been Black people in Canada since before it was called Canada, but Black children are often informed otherwise. There is at least a generation of Black Canadians who don’t know what they are, or are uncomfortable in their skin because they are trying to fit into a mould that doesn’t exist. Hopefully one day those voices will rise.

You and fellow Toronto poet Dan D’Onorio (aka Soulfistikato) founded Soul Jah Ras Productions to promote spoken word and slam poetry in Toronto over the last several years, and have been the tireless hosts of the Toronto $100 Slam, now nearing the end of its series.  How has the experience of hosting the slam inspired the course of your writing career?

Hosting anything will challenge you. We started $100 Slam because we didn’t think there were enough stages in Toronto for spoken word. We also felt that spoken-word artists could learn something from their literary brethren. Now there are tons of stages. A number of literary poets interact with spoken word artists and vice versa. We like to think we helped forge some of those changes in the local community.

How would you describe your working style, or optimal environment for writing?

I can write anywhere. Sometimes I write notes on my cell phone in nightclubs. I would never let something like comfort get in the way of a good poem. The optimum environment is wherever I’m inspired and can write without getting wet or run over.

What are you reading right now? I just finished Austin Clarke’s In This City.  Right now I’m struggling with a translation of The Egyptian Book of The Dead. After that I have The Frog Lake Reader, Things Fall Apart… as you know, if you decide to be a writer, reading becomes part of the job.

What author in history would you have loved to have a coffee (or tea) and chat with, and why?

Langston Hughes. He is one of the few Black American writers who comfortably talks about the struggles of race yet never makes guilt part of the price to read his work. Genius is an understatement.

Finally, are you currently at work with any new projects?  Where can we go to hear or find your work?

My first full-length book, Bending the Continuum, is slated for a May launch with Guernica Editions. Also, Dan and I have a blog: www.souljahras.wordpress.com.  I try to post all events either one of us are involved with there.

Poet Nathalie Taghaboni

Moral Miranda

By Nathalie Taghaboni (copyright NKT Commess University)

You have the right to hate me but not to hurt me

You have the right to ignore me, but never EVER to stop me

From attaining the fullest of my measure

You have the right to keep your culture and language

You do NOT have the right to subsume mine

You have the right to record your history

You do not have the right erase or rewrite mine

You have the right to travel the world but not to destroy or rename mine

You have the right to your religions, God and gods but not to denigrate mine

My Loa are of the air, of the water, of the sky and earth and of my ancestors

They sustain me as yours sustains you

I no longer care about the whys of what was done in the past

I care for my future and wish to shape it myself

You do not know me do not try to invent my image

Poet Nadine Williams

By Nadine Williams

black bwoi mi tyad fi weep fi yuh

Poet Adebe DeRango Adem

By Adebe DeRango-Adem

I come from the land of
Where You From?
My people dispossessed of their stories
and who have died again and again
in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,
the dead who walk, waiting and
furrowed, like ivy crawling up

All those museums and mausoleums,
lifting languages from rivers.
But I cannot leave them
for the rugged North
nor the hot-blooded South south of us,
nor the untamed rivers or deltas
that plaster us to our jackets

My road is neither smooth nor gravel,
my destination neither cathedral nor whole.
I am learning
all about ex-colonial States and states,
the oblivion of my fate
and the legacy of the Veil
from sea to shining sea, drowning
in the calm of our Great Lakes

And the orphan angels
who crowd our classrooms:
I see them, heartless & disrespected
each page burning as it gets read,
and their othered faces burning to tell the others
this ain’t nobody’s Atlantic!
we don’t have to keep on dyin’ in books!

Adebe D.A. is a SWAY writer and former student of poet Amiri Baraka, whom she studied under at Naropa University in 2008.  She has since published ex nihilo (Frontenac House, 2010), a poetry collection that considers the relationship between art and racial identification,  and helped edit an anthology of interracial women’s writings, Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out (Inanna Publications, 2010).

Purge

Purge my mind so I can attain knowledge that has not been unearthed. The knowledge that continues to evade me because of ignorance. Purge my body allowing my physical structure to defend against the pestilence. Immune I shall stay from the ills of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Purge my soul, which enables me spiritually to be free from the confines of man. Mind, body, soul purge but I live in a rubbish heap.