Parable Of The Poet

The concept of time has had its way with all of us in the past two years, leading many to redefine its more linear aspects and reimagine a new framework. On Saturday night five poets made their way through Artspace New Haven to pose and present their own interpretations of time, influenced and inspired by the ​“Dyschronics” exhibit currently displayed there, as well as Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. The event was part of One City, One Read, an ongoing International Festival of Arts and Ideas program series that continues now through June throughout New Haven, focusing on Butler’s all-too-prescient novel.

On Saturday, the five poets — Anne:Gogh, Sun Queen, Aaron Jafferis, AnUrbanNerd, and Ivy Poiison — each presented their pieces in a different area of the gallery, as attendees followed them around. Some interacted with the art displayed, some with the audience members surrounding them. Ultimately, the words became a part of the exhibition, even if only temporarily, challenging yet again the boundaries of space and time. 

The show began in Gallery 4, where the work of artist Carolina Caycedo was displayed. Anne:Gogh began her first piece by humming a tune as she paced in front of the projection on the wall of Caycedo’s video To Stop Being a Threat and To Become a Promise.

“We sway from side to side,” she said as she moved both literally and figuratively through her words — ​“from the limbs of ambiguity and deceit,” yet also ​“like beautiful bright bulbs blooming under the sun.” She captured multiple levels of movement as she ended where she began, humming and at one with her words. Through four more pieces Anne:Gogh swayed at her own pace, including works titled ​“Time Transitioning into Movement and Expansion, Parts One and Two.” 

“Natural time is infinite, not linear, overlaps closing and creating gaps,” she noted; ​“there is quicksand in your hourglass,” she sang. She continued to sing various pieces throughout the poems, such as ​“I just wanna fly … I just wanna try … I just wanna dream.” Her transitions from spoken word to song felt organic in this space, where Caycedo used various forms of media to convey and transform her own narrative.

Sun Queen initiated her performance in Gallery 1A in front of the projections of Tsedaye Makonnnen chanting ​“tick tock, tick tock,” eventually moving to the space between Makonnen’s Astral Sea I and III. 

“With time comes regret, or maybe not,” she continued. ​“With time come pressure, trauma, blessings, power, and so much more. With time comes time.” Moving across the hall into Gallery 2 for the rest of her pieces, Sun Queen implored the audience to follow her there and to acknowledge the art of Baseera Khan in that room, including the prayer blankets on the walls that read ​“I Am A Body” and ​“I Am As Good As You Are.” 

Sun Queen’s pieces were rooted in prayer, including reciting ​“ten reasons why you should pray until you bloom,” ending each with an ​“ashé” that audience members repeated back to her. She also had them repeating ​“pray for a Black woman” back to her — imploring them to ​“say it like y’all mean it” — before beginning that piece, recognizing multiple reasons why we must do so including ​“because she is the blueprint for everything, she deserves to be celebrated.” She then asked the audience to turn to the prayer blanket and repeat ​“I am as good as you are,” then in succession asked them to repeat the phrases ​“I am love. I am courageous. I am beautiful. I am everything. I am art. I am strong. I am safe. I am. I am, me.” She ended with ​“Where’s Home,” describing the type of place she longed for, including ​“a place where I can lay down my crown.” The crowd offered snaps, cheers, and ashés to their Queen, and she received them with a smile. 

Aaron Jafferis made his way almost immediately to take Sun Queen’s place, offering meditations on not just time but family, past and present. The first piece volleyed between his father and his young child, who at one point wandered over to him and rested in his arms while he recited his words.

“Moving things move them,” he noted, and soon the child was aptly down and on their way away from there, proving Jafferis’s point. He also presented two pieces about his mother, one that described him wearing his mother’s shawl that ​“becomes his skin.” The other was written in the voice of his mother speaking to him about their family, the book her father wrote about their Scottish clan and their land, and the ties between people and what they claim as their own. ​“Settle is a soft word for a hard thing,” he noted.

The program moved back over into Gallery 4 for AnUrbanNerd’s set, beginning with a short piece where he repeated ​“I accept that life is difficult, but I found my happiness” multiple times, ending with ​“I think I finally found my happiness.” 

Proceeding into a piece describing a dream in which he visited his uncle who had recently passed, he relayed a visually and viscerally sumptuous piece, in which he meets other relatives/beings on the way to a most transformative experience. Other pieces included one that described scenes as if in a movie, the camera zooming in on two fireflies: ​“the shape appears as yin and yang, pushing and pulling, spinning in tranquility,” and leads to ​“eternal entities” and ​“atmospheres nuzzling cheek to cheek, sounds so sweet.” Another began with ​“they say we live several lifetimes,” whereupon he played with the idea of different versions of himself and different perspectives of himself in different times. 

“They say life tests us by having everything happen at once, or nothing at all,” he noted, wishing he could sometimes switch to the 20-year-old version of himself, which he noted, ​“to be frank, was an asshole” — an observation that made many in the audience nod and laugh — ​“but had confidence spewing out of his ears.” 

His final piece was in direct reference to Parable of the Sower. ​“Earthseed: the books of the living, the only way to prove that we have power is to use it,” he said, offering prayer and observations such as ​“if we are of God, then would we not be God like?” once again connecting that novel’s themes to the pressures of the present day.

The individual performances concluded back in Gallery 1A with Ivy Poiison and her passionate spin on the national anthem, called ​“Star Spangled.” She then moved into Gallery 2 to ruminate on the nature of time. ​“T, I, M, E to me are moments spent thinking about what we could have done differently in life,” she noted. Another piece about how she overcame her struggles with mental health saw Poiison with her eyes closed, mesmerizing the audience with her rapid-fire delivery of her struggles and growth. She had everyone repeat ​“I am human” before her piece ​“Last Heartbreak,” and ​“I am love” before her final piece ​“What If,” which asked a multitude of questions like ​“what If I gave you the world to represent exactly what you mean to me?” playing with the possibilities of possibility.

Poiison was joined in Gallery 1A by the other four poets to end the program with a recitation of what time was to them, beginning with Sun Queen’s ​“time is my movement” and repeating through each poet numerous times, ending with Anne:Gogh’s ​“time is feeling.” Each one then repeated the word ​“time” to complete the circle, and although we had all experienced a wealth of ruminations on this word, it still felt as if we had only just begun.