Thanks everyone for making BAY09 an incredible APIA Spoken Word & Poetry Summit!  We’re continuing the discussion at our new blog network, APIAWORD.com.  Come through!

(obligatory first post, serious, black and white photo) (see: http://ill-literacy.com/bay09/?p=39)

So, the APIA summit is over, and I am still suffering withdrawals. The intensity of community is difficult to describe, almost one of those things you just have to feel. It was an experience that completely shifted the way I view my art and my role as an API activist/organizer. I think the one thing I took away from this weekend was that sometimes “artistic merit” is not just mastery of language (ie metaphor, rhythm, word choice), but it can also be the moments of connection. The spaces where everything else stops and we are just human together in all our differences and similarities. At the open mics, we didn’t always write pretty, but we said things that fucking moved people.

I was talking to a few other attendees about how it felt to not have to explain yourself on the microphone, but to just be accepted. When I perform for other audiences I always feel the pressure to really elucidate on a feeling (whether that is rage or rejection or loss or whatever). But at the summit, if I said through my poetry that I felt a certain way, it was not only accepted by the audience, but understood without question. We became a collective consciousness.

While I was watching the documentary on Chris Iijima I, as well as the other workshop attendees, broke down in tears. For me it wasn’t just the movie, it was everything surrounding that space (from the fellow attendees tears, to the poetry the night before, the summit family, the oppression I faced yesterday and will face tomorrow, the entire history of people who look like me in this world) feeding into that single moment. Time seemed to no longer exist linearly as everything past and present seemed connected to that one moment of extreme emotional rawness. I have known for some time that as a model minority, we are told that we are excellent at plugging in numbers, or stitching clothing designed by others, or building railroads that we did not conceive. But in that moment I realized the magnitude of the devastation that that oppression creates: that we are told from day one that we do not and cannot create. I think it is the ugliness and enormity of this dehumanization combined with the hope of seeing and living a thriving APIA arts community that epitomizes this “beautiful struggle” for me.

But now, two days later I sit in West Palm Beach, Florida (for the national poetry slam) suffering from summit withdrawals. At the same time I am also suffering from the muggy and hot Florida weather (50 degree SF summers never sounded better). As I stepped off the plane it was like walking into a big hairy armpit. I was again slapped by reality as our cab was pulled over by a cop for failing to properly yield. As I sat in the back of a sweltering cab listening to the cop humiliate and intimidate the driver I knew that this is why the summit needs to be over. The summit was beautiful, but as beautiful as it was, the world is just as fucking repulsive. We need to be in the world spreading the love and humanity we created and experienced at the summit. It is where we exist and what brought us (or pushed us) to the summit in the first place.

As I thought, there are not too many APIA poets here (just a handful). But as hippy-bullshit as it sounds, I still can feel you all with me. I know that I am supported and part of something larger even if I cannot physically see it. I cannot wait to get back to the Bay and continue building, our work is just starting.

(via the fly homies @ disgrasian)

The Summit was aaaabbbbssssooooolllllluuuutttteeeelllllyyyyy spectacular!!!  If you could not tell by the fact that the blog recaps stopped after exactly the first day, the Summit was so jumping that, amidst the amazing showcases, open mics, workshops, b-boy circles, and massive games of duck duck goose, we didn’t have much time to keep ze ol’ website updated.  BUT WORRY NOT!

Now that the Summit is over and the next one isn’t for another two years, this website will be transforming into a blog network, with contributions from Summit participants.  The hope is to create a one-stop hub for everything having to do with APIA Spoken Word & Poetry culture, or what I like to call the science of being a golden earthling.  Sha-winggg!

In the meantime, if you were a part of this past week’s amazing experience, gather up your photos, videos, recordings, poems, and thoughts.  Usernames and passwords in your inbox soon. We need you to keep this website alive.  You’re the one.

Oh, and btw.

TWIN CITIES 2011!!!!!!!!

typing this at 3:30am.  i get me a good 4 hours of sleep tonight, SON!!!! the family showcase was amazing.  thank you to all the fantastic talented great individuals who spit last night, you were all amazing!!!!  we meet at 10am tomorrow @ the MCC.  immaculate wrkshops, and then volume control 3.  i won’t even say anything.  just bask in the flyer’s badasss.

Need to find out where we’re at?  Follow our Twitter!  @apiasummit, or check out the shiny new widget on the sidebar!