Kevin Powell saw poetry in his hometown of Jersey City from an early age. The noted author, activist and current candidate for New York’s 10th Congressional District (covering most of Brooklyn) put down his recollections in his 1995 poem, “Jersey City,” published in his 2008 book of poetry, No Sleep Till Brooklyn:
Like the naïve assumption that Jersey City was splitting in half whenever I saw a new crack in the concrete leading to my building/
Like the sugary nostalgia that kissed my eyes whenever I spotted yet another pair of grimy sneakers dangling from the electric wires overhead.
He’s not the only poet who has been inspired by the state’s second largest city. During poetry month (April), several poets came to a reading series, and others reflected on their published work.
“[Poetry is] the simplest way to capture all those scenes of Jersey City.” – Kevin Powell
________
The Jersey City skyline, a mangle of construction cranes and glass buildings, has got my back/
Between opposing architecture, helicopters buzz up and down over the neutral river on someone else’s business.
The poem was published in a 2009 book.
These days, Buccino walks out of a Times Square office, which he finds “not as interesting,” only enough to snap some photos.
Buccino, who worked in Jersey City from 1999 to 2009, is a news editor for Dow Jones who also writes poems, essays, and other works.
Much of his poetry, Buccino said, was the result of his excursions while out of the office during his Jersey City years. His Jersey City poems were published in a 2009 book, “One Morning in Jersey City” (Cherry Blossom Press).
“I didn’t write poetry for some time but I was inspired to do it again when I used work in Jersey City,” Buccino said last week. “It was like being a reporter in that I was capturing the concrete images in front of me, which were really inspiring.”
Poetry series in JC
Jersey City has emerged in recent years as an incubator for poetry, particularly the spoken word variety.
In the past, venues such as Jordan’s Lounge on Newark Avenue held the spoken word poetry series, The Cypher Movement (which no longer occurs), organized by poetess Dujuana Shareese.
Currently, there are poetry readings done monthly at the open mic series organized by Arthouse Productions, the arts-based collective founded by local actress and poet Christine Goodman.
The open mic is held at their home base located at the top floor of the old St. Francis Hospital nurses building on McWilliams Place. Their last open mic on April Fools’ Day was anything but a joke as several poets took the stage that evening to express freely their poetic flow.
Showing up April 1 were high school friends “Saint Patrick” (Thomas Van Cott) and “Broken English” (Ben Figueroa), both part of a small collective of emerging Jersey City spoken word poets who came out to also show support for Figueroa’s niece, Aishia Martinez, a budding young poet and singer currently attending New Jersey City University, who was the featured performer for the evening.
Saint Patrick did a poem, timing in exactly at three minutes, about what it takes to create a poem – in three minutes. Broken English performed a monologue on being dumped by the woman he’s dating so they can be just friends.
Before their performances, both men, who just started a new open mic series at the Lenape House, a coffeehouse/lounge space located on Second Street in Jersey City, talked about how Jersey City has inspired their poetry over the years.
“It’s a combination of things: being across the river from New York and the mix of people that you see coming through Jersey City,” said Figueroa, who said he has been nominated by his peers to be the “Poet Laureate of Jersey City” and is putting together a book of the poems he has written about Jersey City.
Powell power
Meanwhile, the 43-year-old Kevin Powell, in town recently for a fundraiser for his Congressional run, spoke talked about what he saw growing up in Jersey City’s Greenville section that brought poetry out of him.
“For me, [poetry is] the simplest way to capture all those scenes of Jersey City, all those different things I experienced,” said Powell, who used to star on MTV’s “The Real World.” “Listening to my mother and my aunt, who are from South Carolina, speak – that’s poetry.”
For more information on the Lenape series, e-mail LenapeJC@gmail.com. To learn more about Arthouse Productions, visit http://www.arthouseproductions.org/home.html. Kevin Powell’s works can be found at www.kevinpowell.net and Anthony Buccino’s writings can be seen at http://www.anthonysworld.com/.
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.