San Francisco Poet Michael Warr At Third Thursday Poetry, September 17
The Arena Theater and Point Arena Third Thursday Poetry present a virtual Third Thursday Zoom Poetry reading at 7:00pm on Thursday, September 17, 2020. This month features San Francisco poet Michael Warr, with open mic to follow. To watch or participate as an open mic reader, please email blake@snakelyone.com.
San Francisco poet Michael Warr’s books include Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (W.W. Norton), The Armageddon of Funk, We Are All The Black Boy, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex. Michael is the 2020 Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Awardee.
Other poetry honors include San Francisco Library Laureate, Creative Work Fund award for his multimedia project Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and more.
His poems are translated into Chinese by poet/translator Chun Yu as part of their Two Languages / One Community collaboration. Michael is the former Deputy Director of the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and has extensive experience in community-based arts. He is a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
You can read a sample of Michael Warr's poetry here.
My Father’s Favorite Pastime
To Tony Fitzpatrick
On edge of the darkest ghetto
stood Candlestick Park
lit bright as an A-bomb’s flash.
With tiny hands I turned
a Bazooka-scented baseball card
of Willie Mays. Rows of shattering
batting stats dispersed into smoke,
while Willie stuck like skin,
unforgettably black like my Mother,
whose schoolmates called “Shinola.”
Black like her son,
who Abyssinians would one day
adopt as “red black.”
In the shadow of America’s
spectacle still nothing mattered
but Blackness. Against the night’s
cruel chill we huddled against the
Hawk, sipping Ghirardelli chocolate,
in search of baseball’s hearth.
Fat with peanuts and Crackerjacks,
a white man sold us something
silver, shiny, wallet-shaped.
Wrapping it in a velvet pouch,
deep blue and fit for royalty,
my Father handed me the mystery,
warmer than a Sunday oven,
bringing mad joy to my hands.
I kept that warmer for centuries,
in an unlocked chaotic drawer.
Packed with memories, junk,
imagination, the blaze in its metal guts
stealing even Willie’s thunder.
Michael Warr
