Kalamu ya Salaam

“Poetry is not an answer. Poetry is a calling.”

Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 1994

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, as Val Ferdinand III, Kalamu ya Salaam was enchanted by the work of Langston Hughes from a young age. By the 1994 conference, Salaam was already a well-respected poet, writer and social activist whose works included The Blues Merchant (1969), Hofu Ni Kwenu (My Fear Is For You) (1973), Pamoja Tutashinda (Together We Will Win) (1974), Ibura (1976), Revolutionary Love (1978), (1979), A Nation of Poets (1989), and others. After the conference, Salaam has continued to publish, such as his recent Be about Beauty(2018). Salaam was the founder of BLCKARTSOUTH, served as an editor for the Black Collegian and QBR: The Black Book Review, and was also founder and director of the NOMMO Literary Society, a New Orleans-based Black writers’ workshop. His awarded distinctions include but are not limited to a George Washington Freedom Foundation Award, a Deep South Writer’s Contest Award, and a CAC Regional New Play Competition Award.

Featured Poems

“The Call of the Wild”

“blues zephyr”

Interviews, Talks, and Readings

/ Kalamu ya Salaam reads “The Call of the Wild”

The Call of The Wild

Poetry is not an answer            

Poetry is a calling                       

         a vision that does not vanish                       

         just because nothing                       

         concrete comes along or                       

         because the kingdom of heaven                      

         is under some tyrant’s foot            

 

Poetry is not a right            

Poetry is a demand                       

         to be left alone                       

         or joined together or whatever                       

         we need to live             

 

Poetry is not an ideology                       

         poets choose life                       

         over ideas, love people                       

         more than theories, and really would                       

         prefer a kiss to a lecture.            

 

Poetry  

         

Poetry is not a government            

Poetry is a revolution                       

         guerrillas– si!                      

         politicians– no!            

 

Poetry is always hungry                       

         for all that is                       

         forbidden                       

         poetry never stops drinking                       

         not even after the last drop, if we                       

         run out of wine poets will                       

         figure a way to ferment rain            

 

Poetry wears taboos                       

         like perfume with a red shirt                       

         and a feather in the cap,                       

         sandals or bare feet, and                       

         sleeps nude with the door unlocked           

 

Poetry cuts up propriety into campfire logs and sits                       

         around proclaiming life’s glories far into                       

         each starry night

Poetry burns prudence                      

         like it was a stick of aromatic incense or                       

         the even more fragrant odor of the heretic                      

         aflame at the stake, eternally unwilling                       

         to swear allegiance                       

         to foul-breathed censors                       

         with torches in their hands            

 

Poetry smells like a fart                       

         in every single court of law and smells                       

         like fresh mountain air                       

         in every dank jail cell           

 

Poetry is unreliable            

Poetry will always jump the fence                       

         just when you think poets are behind you                       

         they show up somewhere off the beaten path                       

         absent without leave, beckoning for you                       

         to take your boots off and listen to the birds            

 

Poetry is myopic and refuses to wear glasses                       

         never sees no trespassing signs and always                       

         prefers to be up touching close to everything                       

         skin to skin, skin to sky, skin to light                       

         poetry loves skin, loathes coverings            

 

Poetry is not mature                       

         it will act like a child                       

         to the point of social embarrassment                       

         if you try to pin poetry down                       

         it will throw a fit                       

         yet it can sit quietly for hours                       

         playing with a flower            

 

Poetry has no manners                       

         it will undress in public everyday of the week                       

         go shamelessly naked at high noon on holidays                       

         and play with itself, smiling

           

Poetry is not just sexual                       

         not just monosexual                       

         nor just homosexual                       

         nor just heterosexual                       

         nor bisexual                       

         or asexual                       

         poetry is erotic and is willing                       

         any way you want to try it           

 

Poetry            

 

Poetry has no god                       

         there is no church of poetry                       

         no ministers and certainly no priests                       

         no catechisms nor sacred texts                       

         and no devils either                       

         or sin, for that matter, original                       

         synthetic, cloned or otherwise, no sin            

 

Poetry                       

 

           In the beginning was the word                       

         and from then until the end                       

         let there always be           

 

Poetry!

/ Kalamu ya Salaam reads “bluez zephyr”

blues zephyr

that man with the whole of doo-wop

in his head entered through his blk eye

spying the significance of all he’s seen, a

wild haired head that manages without haircut, a

head where few would expect beauty to reside, a 

head where pain has a permanent box

& receives mail everyday, that

man

 

that man with the wrinkled khaki trousers

no cleaners will ever see & the odor

of no job in the morning clinging like sweaty

shirt, that

man

 

that man languidly leaning against liquor

store wall, who won’t hesitate to wolf

whistle behind a pretty woman or silently

stare down an approaching cop car without

flinching a facial muscle, that

man

 

that man soul serenaded yesterday’s twilight

for no reason other than that’s what he felt

like doing, singing, in a clear, high falsetto,

enthralling our decaying neighborhood with an arcing

improvised shoo-bee-do which momentarily 

suspended the march of time, that

man 

 

when that man finished singing to the new

risen moon, all any of the enviously staring

others of us could do was amen in chorus

when walter admiringly shouted out to that

man 

 

“go on, cool breeze

you know you bad”

Related Links

Interactive Program Day III

Language, Music, and the Vernacular in African American Poetry