Sojourner Kincaid Rolle Selected as Santa Barbara’s Next Poet Laureate

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle Selected as Santa Barbara’s Next Poet Laureate

How I Lost My Voice and Found It: A Poet's Journey: Sojourner Kincaid Ro...

Sekou Sundiata.

I'm just posting this because I like it.
Sekou Sundiata

http://thenewcurriculum.blogspot.com/2012/03/all-depends-on-skin-youre-living-in.html

And  I found another version!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR0nTMg3kbs

Thanks, For Harriet, and A Thousand Friends

Thanks, For Harriet, and a Thousand Friends

May 1, 2014 at 5:11pm

National Poetry Month, 2014 has been incredibly busy for me.  Great readings with many of my poet friends.  I've shared my work with audiences at the Poetry Zone, The SB Museum of Art, The Book Den, Carpinteria High School, UCSB's San Miguel Residence Hall, and at Alameda Park during two days of the SB's Earth Festival. Its been a tremendous excursion,  Nevertheless, nothing matches my exhilaration at the sudden publication of my current "featured poem" on the For Harriet webpage "Soar". 
http://soar.forharriet.com/2014/04/i-am-that-woman.html

For Harriet also posted it to their Facebook Page which has over 57,000 followers https://www.facebook.com/forharriet
 It was published on April 26 and appears in close proximity to stories about Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Coretta Scott King and Alice Walker.  The poem "I Am That Woman" has already had nearly 900 likes and over 200 shares.  The comments are greatly appreciated.
It is the affirmations from my family, my friends, and all whom I encounter, that fuel my journey.

Sojourner on UCSB Writers Cafe Radio podcast

http://www.kcsb.org/blog/2013/12/31/sojourner-kincaid-rolle-gets-jazzed-writers-cafe/

Ode to Arlington West at Santa Barbara

Ode to Arlington West at Santa Barbara

To honor M/Sgt J.G. Kincaid, Jr.; Lt. Col. James and Shirley Kennedy;

Sgt. Robert Potter.

Arlington West at Santa Barbara

Ten years bearing witness to scores of wartime dead.

Years of toil and dedication and sweat

etched in the silhouette of every faded footstep in the sand

Here seagulls fly over and daily stand in formation like sentries on the beach - come wind or calm

and cormorant perch atop the wooden posts at dawn and in the noonday sun.

Sundays came and went

Crosses went up and were taken down.

Flags were raised and lowered in due respect

Faithful stood and walked among the crowd and loved ones found their loved ones's names beribboned standing duty  in the sand.

Tears were shed for those whose names were written and those whose names we carried in our hearts.

This tear-drenched sand rendered sacred by our presence and, in its ebb and flow, the tide claims its everlasting salt;

its worth forever mingled with the sea.

Here we remember those who died in Iraq and Afghanistan;

and through them every war-dead:

Those who succumbed in a desert storm

and by association those whose wounded

hearts and mangled bodies lived long enough to come back home only to crumble on the doorsteps of their birth.

Here's to those who died from any war - every war -

On rural roads across the desolate plains; on urban streets and boulevards;

in run-down crevices and cracks;

in make-shift shelters from the storms;

their minds etched with horrid acts of inhumanity.

Neither rank nor privilege; no class, no hierarchy nor hoarded stores of grain

can hide from sight the simple crosses -

row on row - all equal in their silent witness; deafening testimony to the awful cost of war.

Here palm trees sway in stately splendor like cedars in ancient Lebanon.

Here white crosses stood like red poppies on a distant battlefield.

Here in the face of every blue-bright morning; in the sight of every red-tinged sunset, memory resides.

Seagulls will still stand facing the sunset. Visitors will still visit this hallowed place

where martyred names stood duty on the pebbled shore.

Here's to the memories of veterans past.

Here's to the hope that there will be no veterans of future wars.

Here's to the Veterans for Peace.

Here’s to the citizens of good-will,

and to all who came and will come

to this place of remembrance.

Here's to Arlington West

at Santa Barbara

Here's to Peace -

Forever.

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle – November 10, 2013

All Rights Reserved   Santa Barbara, CA

Photo by Paul Wellman

La Bloga: Sojourner Kincaid Rolle in the Poetry Zone

La Bloga: Sojourner Kincaid Rolle in the Poetry Zone