41 min listen
Strange Fruit #120: Portland Poetry Series to Feature LGBTQ Poets in June
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
May 22, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
The Portland Poetry Series will focus on LGBTQ poets at their June event, in honor of Pride Month. Co-producer Eli Keel joins us this week, along with poet and writer Adriena Dame, who will read at the event. The series happens in the Tim Faulkner Gallery, once a month, and has been going strong since last December. While there's always a strong LGBTQ presence at the event, Keel says that this time, it will be more intentional than incidental. "We decided for Pride Month we wanted to really focus in on that, and not have it just be a thing that happened as we reached out to the poets that we know and love." We asked Adriena Dame whether her intersecting identities influence her work. She said that coming out changed her writing in ways she didn't expect. "I thought, ok well that just means that people will know that I'm queer," she remembers. But suddenly her poems and stories were populated with lesbians, bisexual, and transgender characters. "They became all of those other dynamics of an entire population that I sort of neglected in my writing, prior to coming out." Keel says the series wants to shake up old ideas of how poetry readings are structured, and even who poets are. ("They're not just old white guys," he says). This installment of the Portland Poetry Series is on June 8th at 7:30, and will have three or four open mic slots in addition to the featured readers - so get there when the doors open at 7 if you want to put your name in the hat! The event is free. In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we talk about the biker gang shootout in Waco, Texas, and try to imagine how the media coverage would have been different had black urban gangs opened fire on each other in a public place. The bikers involved were largely white and middle aged, with the oldest being in his mid-60s. "Where are the headlines for that?" Jai wonders. "Where are the people asking what's wrong with middle aged and elderly white America, that y'all need to ride around on motorcycles and shoot each other with AK-47s?" We also talk about what Emmett Till (and his mother Mamie) meant to America and the Civil Rights movement. Till's murder will be the subject of a movie that's currently in development. Chaz Ebert will produce the film, which is based on the book "Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America." And R.I.P. "dancery." This week, Mary J. Blige revealed that the lyrics to her beloved dance floor masterpiece "Family Affair" might not be what we thought!
Released:
May 22, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #44: Some of My Best Friends...: Interracial Friendship in America: How multi-racial is your circle of friends? Are any of your close friends of a different race than yours? Not the lady who works down the hall from your office or the dad you chat with while waiting for your kid to get out of school. Someone who's been to your house or invited you over for dinner. A [recent poll by Reuters](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-usa-poll-race-idUSBRE97704320130808) found that the many white people - 40% - have no friends outside their race. We on Strange Fruit figure this is probably no surprise to black folks. Among people of color, 25% of respondents said they didn't have friends outside their race. We wanted to talk more about the reasons why this might be the case, and what historical and demographic factors created the situation. So we spoke to Tanner Colby, author of [Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America](http://www.ta by Strange Fruit