An announcement from writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
Some of you know that I'd planned to go to Haiti in January 2010 to begin research for my next book. Slow-to-arrive funds delayed the trip, then the earthquake happened.
In the immediate aftermath, horrified at the disaster, the idea of writing a book seemed besides the point, to put it mildly. The old question put forth by Hölderlin summarized the feeling: "And what are poets for in a desolate time?"
Here is one attempt at an answer. Along with a small army of folks in two cities, I'm coordinating fundraisers to benefit two grassroots organizations that have been doing important work in Haiti since long before the earthquake and with whom I'd hoped to work during my research.
SOIL Haiti focuses on ecological sanitation, working alongside communities to create composting toilets that remove dangerous pathogens from the water supply and provide
nutrient rich compost to farmers. Since the earthquake, SOIL Haiti has been working in Port-au-Prince along with OXFAM and the Haitian government to implement environmentally sound sanitation strategies urgently needed to serve the 1 million+ people living in tent cities since the disaster.
Seeds for Haiti works in concert with
Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Peasant Movement of Papay), to support farmers in Haiti's Central Plateau in achieving social justice and asserting food sovereignty. With the reverse migration from the city back to the countryside since the earthquake, their work is even more urgent. Recently farmers of MPP made headlines when they promised to burn any seeds donated by Monsanto, a gift-horse of seeds that will not
reproduce and are laced with pesticides, thus subjecting farmers already facing a state of emergency to the vicious cycle of industrial agriculture.
This July in New Orleans (where I'm living at the moment instead of traveling in Haiti) and in Harlem, we'll raise voices, funds and spirits with a marathon bilingual reading of "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" ("Notebook of a Return to My Native Land") the epic work by Martinican poet and statesman Aimé Césaire. Césaire was one who had an answer for Hölderlin. Some of you were there in 2008 for the inaugural public reading of this poem, co-produced with Brent Edwards, as an anti-colonial Bastille Day celebration to honor the recent passing of Césaire. If you were there, you remember the magic raised
up by 11 men and women reading in French and English, a literary
reading-as-ritual that we did not dream of or even know was possible.
If you live in New Orleans (or have people in New Orleans) the date to save is Saturday, July 10. We'll gather at GRIS GRIS LAB, a wonderful art/healing/ community center.
If you live in New York City (or have people in NYC), the date to save is Thursday, July 15. The fantastic Harlem Afrobeat bar THE SHRINE has agreed to open their wonderful space to us for a second round.
Many people have already joined in to make these benefit readings a reality. I hope you'll come gather round the fire of Césaire's poetry in the name of rebuilding Haiti.
Please spread the word. Full details to come. Stay tuned for updates on Facebook at:
with lots of good wishes,
Sharifa
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