New Orleans author, essayist, poet and activist Kalamu ya Salaam will be a recipient of PEN Oakland‘s Josephine Miles Awards on December 7 of this year. PEN, which should really be referred to as the less catchy PPEENJH, is an international organization that helps support poets, playwrights, editors, essayists, novelists, journalists and historians. PEN International has been fighting for freedom of expression since 1921 and supporting artists since 1963.
Salaam’s new book, Be About Beauty, for which he is being honored, was published in 2018 through UNO Press. It contains poems, essays and speeches on the topic of “essential human beauty and goodness.”
Raised in the 9th Ward, Salaam has spent his life as a teacher, activist, author, poet, filmmaker, editor and social critic, earning this honor. Visceral and brave, his words are evocative and inspiring.
As Brandan “Bmike” Odums said in OffBeat‘s November 2019 cover story, “I remember hearing Kalamu [ya Salaam] speak once, and someone in the audience asked him about how to make a living as an artist, and his response was so harsh but so real, and so outside the way I thought about before. He said the premise of that question is that you deserve to make a living as an artist, that just because you’re able to experience life in a way that you feel is a quality above others, then you think you deserve to be compensated for that. What are you contributing to society, what are you building, what are you teaching?”
The following is an excerpt from Salaam’s my father is dead. Again. (for my father-friend tom dent):
“english words were never meant
to adequately articulate
the anguish in our mouths, our hearts
when we lose the stretching part
of our selves – the stairs we climb
to see further, to descend deeper
as we look out and over
past the limits of horizon line
our vision is improved when we stand
on the shoulders of elders
whose height hoists us higher
than we could ever grow
if we remained flat-footed
married to the ground”
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