Better Than Starbucks!

     BTS: Where did you start writing? Who were/are your biggest influence on your poetry? On your life?

    Erren Geraud Kelly: College..but even back as far as high school, people told me I could write…Coach Wesley  Harris, my Tenth grade civics teacher and father figure told me I had a flar for it; Dude saved my life..he would keep me after class a lot and we would have meaningful intellectual, father and son like talks…Coach Harris, was also an entrepreneur, he owned several properties, and I would help him repair them, mow the lawns, paint the apartments, move furniture..; Coach Harris was also the  track and field/ junior varisty football coach and he was working on a Ph.d. He tried out for the New Orleans Saints. He took the time to be with me and listen to me,  when no one else did..it blew my mind that a black man could be so successful!  A couple of years ago, I saw the movie “ Mr. Hollands opus,” and I was nearly crying by the end, because I thought so much about Coach and the impact that he had on my life…it was disturbing how much influence he had on me. Ms.  Susan Ourso, my 9th and 12th grade English teach was another: she predicted I would become a poet. She tried to get me to go to a magnet high school and get more involved into writing, but I was halfway into high school and even though, I didn’t like high school very much and had few friends , I toughed it out and stayed, I had marching band, I had books, and I was just discovering writing, so I gutted it out and I finished it…Ms. Ourso, made me read “ The catcher in the rye,” when I was in the 12th grade…I wanted to read “Hamlet,” and write a paper on it, but Ms. Ourso insisted that I read “Cather In the Rye,” so I did. Many years later, after I had graduated from high school,  I wrote her a thank you letter for  turning me on to that book. When she told me she predicted that I would write poetry, It freaked me out… When my book “Disturbing The Peace”  came out, I made sure she got a copy. When my next book is published, she will get a copy also.

     BTS: How does Louisiana, and especially your hometown effect your poetry?

     Erren Geraud Kelly: Southerners love to tell stories. Black people have been telling stories,like,  forever, going back to the African Griots. We like to show you our  heritage. We are about music and rhythm;  we are about culture…we definitely love to eat !…we are about community and struggle and persevering  over struggle…we are not afraid to laugh in the face of adversity…I remember when I went  home a year after Hurricane Katrina, there was a billboard in the Ninth ward in New Orleans  that said “ Blown by Katrina ? “ and right under the quote,  was advertising for construction work and roofing…Southerners get knocked down a lot, but we get up and we keep going!…I went to a lot of readings at LSU  and around the Tigertown area and in New Orleans, and there is a rich poetic, literary tradition there…check out Mona Lisa Saloy or Kalaamu ya Salaam, two excellent New Orleans poets…Pinkie Gordon Lane, who was from Baton Rouge, was the Poet Laureate of Louisiana and a Pulitzer Prize nominee; Ava Leavell Haymon is a another fine poet …Rodger Kamenetz is another good Louisiana poet…LSU has always been a top 20  MFA English program, so we have a lot to be proud of…

       BTS: How has California changed you, as a writer and as a person?

      Erren Geraud Kelly: I guess I still see L.A. as an “Entertainment town” …every other person I meet here is either an actor or working on their screenplay, or a musician or singer or a model. I’ve met very few poets…I’ve been checking out different scenes…there was a writer’s workshop in Venice Beach that I was sitting in on, and it was pretty cool. There is an open mike called the  Da poetry lounge,”  that takes place every Tuesday at Fairfax High School…and “The World Stage,” in Leimert Park,  is famous for their workshops and poetry slams…I think the biggest California influences on my poetry were Wanda Coleman, whom I read in College and Charles Bukowski;  he had a way of taking something complicated and making it simple…recently,  I read a upstate New York Poet named Rebbeca Schumejda,  who just published a book called  “ Waiting at the Dead End Diner,” and it was like in some of her poems, bukowski’s dna ran through them…. 

     BTS: I am not sure it is possible to be a poet of color and race not figure into your work, maybe it isn’t possible for any poet to not have race influence their poetry. How do you see social issues, race and otherwise in your writing?

     Erren Geraud Kelly: Like I said, earlier, just because I write about social issues, don’t  always  expect me to always be political, just because I write about other things, I shouldn’t be expected to be bound by those categorizes,  either….i believe that artists have the responsibility to witness and report, but by no means, should  one expect them to be a savior; nor should they be! When I was younger, this dilemma confused me because I was still trying to figure out where I wanted to be in the literary spectrum. I love Amiri Baraka, he is the reason why I became a poet, but I don’t necessary agree with everything he stood for! (I don’t believe in communism; I still have a faint hope that Capitalism still  can work in America)  I don’t think every poem I write has to be a" black " poem…Why can’t I just write about hanging out with my peeps or about a girl I saw on the train?…Even when an artist doesn’t make a statement, he is making a statement; Bob Dylan was notorious for that…But on the other end of the spectrum, I don’t want to be Billy Collins. I am not a safe poet...

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 Coffeehouse Poem # 160

The girl in

The porkpie hat

Takes my mind off

The fight, i nearly

Got into earlier

Her british accent

Makes her lovely

I wish L.A. was baptised

In an English

Rain

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 Coffeehouse Poem #155

She wears tattoos

On her forearms like

Wonder woman bracelets

As she walks always

The melody of clicking boots

Seduces me like

A red cape

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A Prayer For My Hometown

Lord, please one day to

render guns as obsolete

as  a nuclear bomb

that rednecks and swag

will be as pointless

as a fish on a bicycle

and that black and white

will be as indistinguishable

as the blood oozing from

my fingers

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" it might not be so bad, if i never went home again..." Gill Scott-Heron, from " Home is where the hatred is."