INTRODUCTION
Home Is Where
By Kwame DawesDespite the great changes that have taken place in the Southover the years, this fundamental truth has not changed: race is adefining force that can both galvanize and divide the region. Given thelargely negative recent history of race in the South, we are still findingways to affirm those whose race was the target of the greatestdamage. So we have not yet arrived at the place where we can dismissthe need to affirm the positive contribution of African Americans to thelife and culture of the South.It is this that allows us to embark on an anthology of poetry thatis distinguished by being African American. The obvious question thatcould be asked is how the world would respond if some publisherdecided to publish a collection of white Carolina poets. It is not enoughto say that until fairly recently, if a Carolinas anthology were puttogether, it would, in fact, be just that. It is better to admit that in thematter of culture and race in the South and in the United States, thereis still the reality of majority and minority cultures. These are shapedboth by the sheer weight of numbers as well as by the matter of status(economic, educational, political, etc.). In the quest to create the kindof cultural balance that allows for a genuine union, it is sometimesnecessary to assert the cultural fact of a rich, complex tradition of artamong a certain group.For the past ten years, I have been running a poetry organizationin South Carolina called the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. TheInitiative began as an attempt to create a sense of community amongpoets in the state through workshops, contests, summits, readings,and much else. The hope was to bring poets together and toencourage a sense of region among the poets from South Carolina. Theresponse was strong, but the response was also troubling. For years wewere unable to interest African American poets from the state in anyreasonable numbers. We did everything we thought we could do tochange that. We brought in amazing African American poets to runworkshops and do readings, we contacted various poetry and artsgroups that exist in the community to encourage them to participate,and we made contact with the individual poets we knew. It becameclear that many of these poets felt that they did not quite belong tothis organization because, for some reason, it was seen as a largelywhite organization—this despite the fact that it was being led by ablack man. Rather than give up, we decided to persist by employingapproaches more akin to the focused and targeted efforts of affirmative action.Most recently we started a workshop for black poets inconjunction with the organization Cave Canem. In doing this, we were
acknowledging that there is still, for African Americans, a great dealthat works against their being able to enter the mainstream poetryworld and for them to feel as if they somehow have a legitimate placein that environment. Cave Canem has effectively demonstrated that byfocusing on creating an environment that is welcoming to AfricanAmerican poets, and by consolidating the strengths of the black poetsaround the country, a remarkable explosion of writing, publishing, andaward winning can take place among African American poets. CaveCanem has empowered black poets around the country and has giventhem the tools and the network of support to effectively change theface of poetry in the United States today. This is indisputable. Poetry ingeneral, has benefited.It is telling, then, that this anthology seeks to draw our attentionto the strength that exists in African American poets in the Carolinasregion. The quest is not to create a separate nation, but to drawattention to the quality and range of work that is being produced byAfrican American poets from our region. Many of them are scattered allaround the country, and these poets show themselves to have a greatdeal in common by being poets who have roots in this region. At thesame time, many of the poets have adopted the Carolinas as home, asplaces of cultural and imaginative definition. These poets have all saidwillingly that the Carolinas have played a major role in defining themand in shaping their imaginations. These poets have written as peopletrying to make sense of their identity and sense of place on thisenvironment. The result is a gathering of poets that is both excitingand informative. I have not sought to select poems that are “about”the South or about the Carolinas, especially. Instead, I called for poemsand then selected the poems that I believed were the strongest, mostevocative and consistent with the rhythm of the anthology. I have beenas interested in showing range as I have in simply choosing poems Ilike. The latter criteria is decidedly biased, but I do not apologize forthis as I believe that my tastes are not as limiting to make thecollection monochromatic, plain, or predictable, and are not as eclecticas to deprive the work of a unity of artistic taste that I believe isnecessary in any good book, in any solid anthology.Instead, what I believe we have collected here is, first andforemost, a wonderful collection of poems by poets who range from thefully accomplished to those who are making their first outing. Thepoets, of course, hail from different parts of our two states, and manynow live outside the region. This, then, is a proud collection―acollectionthat the region should be proud of. I know, for certain, thatpeople will be surprised to see some names in this anthology, poetsthey might have known of, but poets they had no idea were from eitherof our states. I won’t pretend that this is a comprehensive list of African American poets from our states. To arrive at the list of poets toinvite, I polled as many poets as I knew who might have been able to
help me find other poets. But I also know that I missed some peopleand that some people simply chose not to send me work. This is fine. Iam more keen on exploring the voices that are actually here thanthose that may not be here. My hope is that those poets from here whohave left will be reminded of their place in the community of poetsfrom the region, and the idea would be to create occasions when thesepoets can be together to read and to affirm the presence of great blackpoetry in our region. My hope, also, is that poets from across the stateline will find opportunity in this anthology to discover each other and toremind us of the artificiality of such borders in the face of the geniusart of empathy that marks what we do as poets.It is necessary to make a few comments about the idea of theCarolinas as a singular space. The truth is that only those who do notcome from this region routinely mistake the two states. In myexperience, the tendency for people outside of the region is to defaultby lumping both states into North Carolina. While North Carolina hasno city with more name recognition and legendary status thanCharleston, it is not unusual for me to hear people assuming thatCharleston is in North Carolina. Indeed, people don’t associateCharleston with any particular state (a situation that I am sureCharlestonians will say is understandable)—it is a place in its own right.But North Carolina is, for some reason, the better-known state. It hassize and a cluster of nationally recognized cities to make that the case.I won’t attempt to offer the various things that distinguish the twostates, from football to barbecue styles, but I will say that pulling themtogether as a unit for an anthology is not always as natural a thing todo as one might imagine.Nonetheless, the things that unify are obvious: the shared name,the long history of slavery, the tradition of resistance to slavery andthe attendant years of Jim Crow, the strong sense of place andcommitment to the land, the burden of stigma associated with beingfrom the “Deep South” or the “Bible Belt,” the extended history of faithfounded heavily in Christian traditions, and a long list of names of people who left, became great, and constantly surprised the world withthe discovery that they were born and raised in one of these states. Allof these factors somehow find their way into the poetry that we seecollected here. The hope is not to create a unified sense of place, butto acknowledge the lines that connect the people from this region andthe art that has grown out of these shared experiences andbackgrounds.Anthologies allow us to manage a large and eclectic nation. AnAmerican anthology even if it is defined by race, or theme, will alwaysbe forced to omit some strong and impressive writers simply becausethere are too many good writers working today, and because no singleeditor is going to be able to know everything that is being writtenacross this wide and varied nation. Regional anthologies allow us to
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Home is Where - Introduction and Excerpt
In Home is Where, Kwame Dawes compiles the work of more than two dozen African American poets form the Carolinas, showcasing a vast array of original voices writing on subjects ranging from Jim Crow to jazz,…
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