Annotations for Speaker: Niyi Osundare

Um, thank you all.

Thank you, Lauren.

Thank you Joanne.

Um, poetry lovers.

Let's do this thing.

Um, I, I have a few things I wanna do.

I wanna, um, I was inspired by some of the readings over the course of these three days to, um, to share an elegy that I

wrote because I love the way that people's names are being brought into the room.

Uh, so that's where I'm gonna start.

How long has this Jayne been gone?

Not long.

Not long.

Thank you very, very much.

Um,

about six o'clock this morning,

I was woken up by a call from Nigeria.

On the other side was my old teacher, 96 years young.

Taught me 1967, 68 when I was in high school.

Niyi how are you?

I haven't seen you for a long time.

I understand you are at so, so, so place and that so, so, so place is this.

With him was my younger brother, a professor.

Uh, and there were other people all around.

Um, the point I'm trying to make is,

this has been magical.

Simply magical.

My poetry has taken me to virtually all the continents in the world.

shadow is menace to my side.

Please send a cop send a cop.

Please send a cop.

My life is at risk.

Choke-hold.

Choke-hold, stranglehold and dash and dangle.

400 years of knee-on-neck.

Well, our police know their oath: to serve and to protect.

Black Lives Matter.

Black Life Martyrs.

Asked Louis Armstrong, the smiling trumpetman: what did I do to be so black and

blue?

Memory is not just a trope, uh, in my work, it's something that persists me everywhere.

Uh, I go produce this because it's of memory.

Memory and the faculty of remembrance.

It's, it's one thing to have, memory it's very important, but memory is residual.

What calls it into active, uh, uh, active operation is remembrance.

Well, alumnis alumni of the same University, York University in Toronto.

I'm happy to, uh, introduce Ms. Lubrin.

My thanks.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dante.

Uh, but it was a, it was the scene with Medusa and I grew up really, uh, watching a, uh, reading a lot of mythology.

And I said, oh, wait a minute, what made Medusa Medusa?

And then I looked it up and I realized that like a lot of us, she messed up by making love to the wrong man.

And,

and she made love to Poseidon in Athena's temple.

And Athena was like, oh, no, you didn't.

Um, so, uh, Athena, you know, Athena said, I'm going to, uh, every time you look at a man you're gonna turn to, to, uh, they're gonna turn to stone and your head.

Um, so this is a, a poem in, uh, Medusa's voice as her body is going through these changes.

Poseidon was easier than most.

He calls himself a god, but he fell beneath my fingers, with more shaking than any mortal.

He wept when my robe fell from my shoulders.

I made him bend his back for me, listened to his screams

break like waves.

We defiled that temple the way it should be defiled, squirming and bucking our way from corner to corner.

Thank you very much.

Uh, also.

One of the other things that came up in workshop, uh, I did say that there wasn't a poem that I wouldn't at least attempt to write now.

And, um, shame is powerful.

Uh, you've all been in those conversations where people are talking about not only what they're doing, but what their families are doing.

Thank you very much.

Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you very much.

Thank

you.

Bless you all.

And love

you all.

Thank you Lauren.

And I appreciate especially the note you sent me, asking me to limit my comments to,

to, um,

to an hour.