Want a refresh? Catch up on part 1 of this blog.

The following is a transcript of a conversation that has been edited for readability.

Z: There was something I wanted to ask you. How has writing helped you as an individual? I understand how, you know, you’re performing, sharing your work with others, but how has it been a device for you?

A: Well, for me, it’s been like having a conversation with myself and God. It’s what I feel in my heart and my soul. Me trying to explain this living that I’m doing, you know. My writing is therapeutic and at the same time, because the people have given me an avenue or a voice to speak to them I want to say something that will help heal them and help them understand. 

You see, the poet’s job is never to tell you something new necessarily. I’m not going to show you another world. I want you to recognize the good that you got in this world, that you just don’t recognize.

I want you to be able to see and understand yourself. I’m not going to talk about a new self that you got to become. I want you to recognize the self that you are and deal with the parts that need to be fixed and work with those parts that are good. I believe the poet’s job is to make you see life from a different vantage point where you can have more control and a better handle on how you living. 

We’re not here to give you a new life. The poets don’t do that. We expose life for what it is and let you make that choice – it’s always going to rest in your hands.

L What support do we need to enable artists to flourish at all stages of their career? 

A: Well, you know, if you’re a good artist, art has a way of making a life for itself. It’s about the commitment of the person, how committed are you to your art? If you’re a painter, then you paint and you make your paintings available for folks to see. If you’re a singer, you sing. If you’re a poet you poet. But the people themselves make a decision and nobody can determine as to who’s going to pick you and make you special in their eyes. I think that the whole truth lies with what is the commitment of the artist himself or herself. How committed are you to your craft? If you’re committed to your craft, you find a way to get it where you feel you deserve to be. 

And it’s always about work. You know, we have to go back to that work ethic. You gotta be able to work hard. And like, in Umar’s case, for example, he shined shoes and like the old adage, they say necessity is the mother of invention, he sees that I need to be better than this guy. I ain’t got no magazines. I ain’t got no black newspaper to sell all I got is my shoe shine boxes, my tools, and I got a voice and I got a brain and I can do my little song and maybe that’ll be enchanting enough for me to get the attention I need. So he found a way to open up an avenue for sales of his shoebox. And that’s what we have to do. We will have to find a way and I don’t have no quick fix formula. 

What I do in the morning might not be what you want to do in the morning. All I know is that you got to do something that’s going to strengthen and give you the courage to move forward, but you cannot take your hands off the plow. If you about this. Be about it. Don’t tell me you’re about it, be about it.

U: Always be willing to share yourself with little people who got little organizations, who think that you are the type of person who never comes and do some poetry for them. Just show up for nothing sometime, or, you know let people know that you are here for them and you believe in them just like they believe in you. I do that. I show up. Or, you know, if I hear some poets in the streets I’ll come in and I’ll join the poet. They be amazed, like  Wow, man, you came and you did some things with us. Why not? Who am I, a Last Poet? That means I’m some great, phenomenal being who just walk past you? Somebody said earlier, we are public servants. Yes. Thank you. 

You know, you just gotta be open to people if you’re a poet. You can’t be closed because that means you ain’t write no good poetry. What kind of poetry are you going to write if you are closed to people and their situations, who they are and their feelings? You have to be open and not be afraid to be afraid. 

D: That’s true. And it puts you in a spot. There are quite a few people who are poets, mainly because they’re introverted and can’t talk to nobody, so they only talk to themselves on paper. They just can’t share because they don’t know how, because they’re scared to death that what they share might be revealing and what they revealed might not be appealing! One of the reasons why we are here on this planet is to communicate with some other souls. And if you’re not doing that, you’re cheating yourself out of a life.

L: What do you think your greatest poetic achievement has been so far?

A: Having children.

U: That is the ultimate of being poetic. 

A: Epic poems. We both have children. We have children who are a part of our lives, very important part of our lives. They make sure that we still functioning like we should. Those are our soldiers and the fathers have strength and bravado to go out and face the world and bring truth into the world. 

L: So what are you planning to do next? What’s coming up? 

U: I have a book out next. I’m hoping that we can get back over to England soon. And, you know, basically just tryin’ to keep myself in good health and show respect to others who deserve respect and try to be, you know, just part of humanity. That’s all. I ain’t asking for too much, you know, 

A: We have a couple of projects. One of our great piano players, Theolonius Monk, his son, has a project that Umar and I’ve been participating in and it’s very powerful. He’s planning to unveil around Black History Month. He’s doing an epic tale of how we lived before they put us on the ships, our experience on the ships, the experience of being on the plantation, and then our return back to who we really are. 

Every now and then something virtual will come up. I mean earlier, you asked what has changed in poetry since we started.  I never did nothing virtually before that’s for damn sure.

L: What would your top tip or advice to someone starting out on their career be in order to maintain longevity – could you offer some pearls of wisdom? 

A: First of all, poetry comes from the people and if you really want to have some longevity, give it back to the people that will always keep you here. Umar wrote, Niggas are Scared of Revolution. Umar can go to heaven happy today, just because of that one poem because it’s so much appreciated, it keeps you alive. 

When you do something that you want to have longevity, you’ve got to reach, you got to touch the pulse of the folks that you’re that, you’re trying to reach. And if you touch their pulse, trust me, that heartbeat doesn’t ever die. I mean, Langston Hughes has been gone on how many years, and he’s very much alive just because he was able to capture the pulse of his people that he was writing about. His poetry’s mentioned all the time and that’s all, we were only judged by our work. That’s where the immortality comes in.

The house that you’re in, your body, your face, that’s cute, but the truth is, what did you do with the time you were given? What did you do? If you did nothing, then we have nothing to remember you by. If you did something, you will never be forgotten.

U: So, you know, it’s been established now throughout the many years I’ve been doing this, that I am a poet for life. I’m always trying to think how much more of a better poet can I be. I don’t want to look for any other occupation, I have established a reputation for being a poet, so I try to live that way and try to, you know, also help others who think that they want to become poets and keep the essence of being who I am, keep it real and to keep the passion real. Every morning I wake up is to have that passion for what I’m doing. 

Links:

Follow the news and musings of Abiodun Oyewole on his website.

Umar’s first book – From the Inside Out (published at 72!) is available from Amazon.

The Last Poets – Christine Otten. Available from Blackwells.

Watch Painstorms – featuring narration by Umar, piano by John Medeski, bass by Michael Hynes as well as drums and programming by Jeff Firewalker Schmitt. Profits from this song will be donated to organizations that support victims of child abuse.

The Last Poets

Abiodun Oyewole, David Nelson and Gylan Kain were born as The Last Poets on May 19, 1968 in Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York. They evolved from three poets and a drummer to seven young black and Hispanic poets: Umar bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole, David Nelson, Gylan Kain, Felipe Luciano, Jalal Mansur Nuruddin, Suliaman El Hadi, and two drummers Nilaja Obabi and Baba Don.

Modern day griots, fusing politically outspoken lyrics with inventive percussion – The Last Poets spoken word albums foreshadowed the work of hard-hitting rap groups such as Public Enemy. The Last Poets album (1970), is considered the first hip-hop album of all time, and This Is Madness (1971), landed them on President Nixon’s Counter-Intelligence Programming list!

The following is a transcript of a conversation that has been edited for readability.

L: So your careers as poets started 50 years ago, why did you choose poetry as your means of expression above all the other art forms and what was it that poetry could do for you that other art forms couldn’t or didn’t?

A: For me, poetry was the only personal language that I had a control over. With other forms of writing, there are a lot of restrictions, impediments where you don’t always have the freedom that poetry allows. Poetry allows you to curse and you don’t have to apologize about it. I mean, you can express your feelings and I think that there’s no other literature that allows you to express your feelings like poetry.

U:  I’m going to tell y’all the first poem that I ever wrote, it came about when I was a shoeshine boy on the streets of Akron, Ohio eight, nine years old. This guy named Mitchell Lindsay was my shoeshine boy competitor. But not only was he shining shoes, but he also sold Jet magazine. He was always, you know, getting ahead of me because you could read his paper while he was shining shoes. One day though, there’s one lady wanted me to shine her shoes. Mitchell came up and said: “You, read my paper!” And she said: “No,  I want him to shine em for me.” So out of my mouth automatically, I mean, you know, where I come from, I says, 

Shoeshine, Shoeshine, can’t be beat
shoeshine, shoeshine. Give your soul a treat.
I, pop that rag. I click that brush.
A dime and  a nickel ain’t too much. 

And so that’s helped me. It helped me a lot. It was poetry that they helped me make money when I was in the streets. 

L: Maintaining a career over this length of time is no mean feat. Pretty impressive. Was there a moment when you wanted to give it all up? What made you keep going?

U: There are a million moments where you want to give it up, every moment.

L: Why do you keep doing it?

D: We’re compelled to do it. And the truth of the matter is a lot has to do with the people. Umar and I didn’t really define ourselves as the people’s poet, the people did that. I’m proud of both of us because we’ve been able, with the help of God and all the ancestors, to carry it well. 

Felipe was at my house not long ago and he was saying, you know, I’m really proud of what you and Umar have done because you have been the most consistent of all the poets. And that’s because, you know, we have a good work ethic. Umar was raised with a good work ethic. I was raised with a serious work ethic. 

U: … Both of us from Ohio, that’s what makes us keep going, it’s that Midwestern work ethic.  All the plants, it’s about work, get them out working. So we do.

D: That’s the bottom line. I don’t like to give up something that we know is necessary and people are constantly reinforcing that. We can’t go outside our doors without being blessed by somebody who’s listened to us and, come to us and say, man, when I first heard you, you changed my life. And I have to tell them, you change our lives, we didn’t expect to be running around the world, running out our mouth like this for 50 years, but we have, and I give thanks. I’m very, very grateful. They said in the Bible, in the beginning was the word. That’s no joke. That’s the truth. The word can set you free, but it’s got to be the right word.

If you’re going to be in this world, where are you going to use your poetry to try to help liberate yourself and others? You better be honest because if you’re not honest, it’s going to be a real monster down the line. 

L: How has the way that you work changed over the years?

U: I know how to be a little more easily myself. I come to Flint, Michigan. I sat on my sister’s porch for three months. Just sat. Didn’t do nothing. Cause everybody tell me, Umar, you got to know how to relax.  I just sit and relax because I’ve always been somebody moving, moving, moving, moving, you know, from shoe shining to the Last Poets, just moving, moving, moving always in some way, going somewhere, doing something. When I finally sit down I said, This is okay, to relax and just feel yourself out and, you know, be part of something that’s a little more than what you are. 

Right now, today, I’ve learned how to feel much better about myself, you know. I understand why I’m here. And it helped me a whole lot. It’s learning how to relax and to be part of the scene and not trying to overtake this thing, but just to be part of it, you know, so those words can come out now a little more delicate now, little more sincerely now, a lot stronger now.

So that’s part of the growth of what I’ve been going through becoming older. It’s about knowing who I am before I start writing about other people. 

D: You know, Umar’s words are my sentiments. Exactly. I feel I’ve done the same thing. One thing that we’ve always loved about Malcolm [X] was that every phase of his life he evolved. If you don’t evolve, you cannot really say you’ve grown. A growth is an evolution, and I think both Umar and I have been blessed and sensible enough to recognize certain things had to stop. We both became people that are more settled with ourselves and with a better understanding of who we are. 

I had a lady who used to always say the whole process starts with you feeling good about you. If you can’t feel good about you, we can’t expect much good to come from you. But it takes a minute for you to really get to a point where you can feel good about yourself. 

We have been so damaged by outside influences and our own personal insecurities. It’s really hard to come out on top after you’ve been through the ringer like we have been. But I think that we’ve been very, very blessed because we’re here, the virus hasn’t got us, whether it’s a racist virus or the Coronavirus, whatever virus they’ve got for us we’ve been able to overcome, and we’ve been able to sincerely share, to the point we’re being looked up to by the young folks and they give us love.  They want us to connect with them and get some help from people who have been around the block before. So I feel very honored and blessed. 

And I can say honestly, what Umar just said about being able to be with yourself to find appreciation and being a part of a situation, as opposed to trying to take over and be in charge. There’s a joy to that. There is, there’s a special joy. 

Carry on with part 2.

The Last Poets

Abiodun Oyewole, David Nelson and Gylan Kain were born as The Last Poets on May 19, 1968 in Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York. They evolved from three poets and a drummer to seven young black and Hispanic poets: Umar bin Hassan, Abiodun Oyewole, David Nelson, Gylan Kain, Felipe Luciano, Jalal Mansur Nuruddin, Suliaman El Hadi, and two drummers Nilaja Obabi and Baba Don.

Modern day griots, fusing politically outspoken lyrics with inventive percussion – The Last Poets spoken word albums foreshadowed the work of hard-hitting rap groups such as Public Enemy. The Last Poets album (1970), is considered the first hip-hop album of all time, and This Is Madness (1971), landed them on President Nixon’s Counter-Intelligence Programming list!