Local Lyrics hosted by John Wojtowicz appears on the 3rd Monday of each month. In it, John features the work and musings of a local poet.
The East Wind
rising and falling
the voice of old mother
Joel Dias-Porter
How would you describe your poetic aesthetic?
I think the whole point of having an aesthetic is that it speaks for itself. I do try to reproduce the effects of music on the page and I love playing with structure and structures, obviously my aesthetic also reflects a lot of the poetry I’ve read and admired over the course of my life.
What does your process look like when that all-possible-blank-page is in front of you?
Not a process person and while it appears to be of great interest to many writers I consider conversations about it to be mostly a waste of time. I sit down, play around and try to have fun. That’s it. If I get a poem, I get a poem, If I get a line, I get a line, my goal is just to enter the Temple of Logos and worship for a few.
You often incorporate references and allusions to music (specifically jazz) in your poetry. How does music influence you and your writing style?
I reference a lot of music, R&B, Jazz, Hip Hop, Cape Verdean music, etc. I think one of the great intellectual failures of Western Academic production is that there still is no coherent Theory of Euphony, although millions of words have been devoted to metrical prosody (much of it nonsense when it comes to English). So I created my own and some of its tenets are borrowed from the way I think music works.
You’ve placed first in the National Haiku Slam and second in the National Poetry Slam. Do you have to put yourself in different mindset for writing haiku vs free verse?
I write in many forms, both received and bespoke and it’s all just poetry to me. Sometimes a poem starts out one way and ends up another way. I just try to do whatever produces the best poem.
Do you know which form you are going to use before you set out to write the poem?
I write in a lot of forms so generally speaking no, but I can usually feel if a poem is best suited to a Japanese short form like Haiku or Senryu.
You often post haiku you’ve written in response to current events on your Facebook page. I really loved the one you wrote in response to the confrontation between riot police and the peaceful violin vigil for Elijah McClain. What are your thoughts on poetry as news and the opportunity to respond to events poetically in real time via social media?
Thank you. It’s mostly about self-care for me personally, although I love the fact that I can instantly “publish” and share early forms of my poems this way. Poetry is part of how I process the world and the whole Elijah McClain situation hurt me very deeply, in part because it appears he was on the spectrum.
Your family is from the Cape Verde Islands and you sometimes utilize Portuguese-Creole words in your writing. Are there other ways you incorporate your roots into your writing?
All the ways, my brother, all the ways.
Bentu Lestri
Ta subi ta kai
vos di Mai Belha
The East Wind
rising and falling
the voice of old mother
Where can readers find more of your work? Where can we buy your books?
I don’t have a book. I post most of my Japanese short form poems on Twitter (@diasporter) because there’s a community of those poets there and it lets me leave a contemporaneous record.
Joel Dias-Porter, born and raised in Pittsburgh, served in the US Air Force, and after leaving the service became a professional DJ in the DC area. In 1991, he quit his job and began living in homeless shelters, while undergoing an Afrocentric self-study program. He competed in the National Poetry Slam, finishing second place, and was the 1998 and 1999 Haiku Slam Champion. His poems have been published in Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Callaloo, Antioch Review, Red Brick Review and the anthologies Meow: Spoken Word from the Black Cat, Short Fuse, Role Call, Def Poetry Jam, 360 Degrees of Black Poetry, Slam (The Book) and many others. He has performed on the Today Show, in the documentary SlamNation, on BET and in the feature film Slam. The father of a young son, he has a CD of jazz and poetry on Black Magi Music, entitled LibationSong.
Catfish” John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he serves his community as a licensed social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured in the Philadelphia based Moonstone Poetry series, West-Chester based Livin’ on Luck series, and Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM. Catfish John has been nominated 3x for the Pushcart Prize. He has been a workshop facilitator for Stockton University’s Tour of Poetry at the Otto Bruyns Public Library of Northfield and will be facilitating a haiku workshop at Beardfest Arts & Music Festival at the end of August. Recent publications include: Jelly Bucket, Tule Review, The Patterson Literary Review, Glassworks, Driftwood, Constellations, The Poeming Pigeon, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Find out more at: www.catfishjohnpoetry.com