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A poet with history
by Jim Powell Apr 26, 2006
Spoken Word Jim Powell Poet Allison Joseph stays in close touch with her personal history and the history all around her. Rather than eschew the reality of circumstance and the influence of close culture for some more ethereal world, Joseph says she seeks “to be a representative of my age, my race, and my gender … engaged in an ongoing, sometimes battle, sometimes dance, with history.” Born in England to parents of Caribbean heritage, she grew up in the Bronx and often writes about that childhood and adolescence. In “Incommunicado,” Joseph describes her estranged father cooking: “ … maybe he’ll think quietly // of me, daughter who turned her back, / left him behind for places on the map / no one else bothers with. // Maybe he’ll think of forgiveness, / how it starts small — with one meal, / one bowl, one satiating, salty mouthful.” Joseph’s first book, What Keeps Us Here, won the Ampersand Press Women Poets Prize and received the Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares magazine in 1992. Since then, she has authored Soul Train, In Every Seam, Imitation of Life and, most recently, Worldly Pleasures. She studied writing at Indiana University and now teaches at Southern Illinois University, where she also directs the Young Writers Workshop and serves as poetry editor for Crab Orchard Review. Allison Joseph will share her — and our — history in three events as part of the 15th Annual Etheridge Knight Festival of the Arts. On April 28, she will read at the Outward Bound Bookstore, 623 N. East St., at 7:30 p.m. On April 29 at 9 a.m., she will discuss poetry with youth (under 18) at Starbucks Coffee, 2901 N. College, and she will perform with local poets between 4-7 p.m. at the Glendale Branch of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, 6101 N. Keystone. Call 317-524-6951 for information about these and other forthcoming festival events.
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