PAGE TITLE “because it’s a situation where if you go out on the street, you’re not only exposing yourself to police violence, you are exposing yourself to a deadly pandemic and a virus, and with all of these intersecting issues, it’s suddenly the stakes become that much higher. “It’s like this is so important that we are going to go out there even though it means that we are exposed to this risk. I think that was powerful to me and I’m not – I don’t think of myself as – an activist; I am a writer. So, I don’t think it’s up to me to set the agenda…but I try to ask those questions and to highlight some of the powerful things that did come out of the last few years.” Beneba Clarke first earned her status as a popular slam poet in venues around Naarm/Melbourne. This contemporary street poetry scene owes its Blak grounding to creatives like Shelton Lea, Lisa Bellear and Bruce McGuinness, and Beneba Clarke alludes to the power of observational grassroots poetry in the prologue to the collection: “i said/get the fuck back/i am warning you:/i’ve got poetry/their hands were trembling/their eyes were wild/and I could smell/their fear”. Beneba Clarke and I have known each other for a little over a decade now, back to a time before Australian literature embraced diversity in the canon. She remarks how much the landscape has shifted since then but also how much more work still needs to be done. “There are a lot of uncomfortable conversations to come, and that is part of our job if we want to continue to engage with the fact that this is stolen Blak land and what is our responsibility on this land – as people who have been severely affected by colonization ourselves but are now essentially the beneficiaries of the colonization of another country,” she says. “I think part of our task is to amplify the work of Indigenous writers and engage in those conversations which might be hard and which might require us to do some learning and unlearning, but that is where we are. That is what art is for: art creates this space to have these conversations.” Full of poems that speak to the times we collectively inhabit, in How Decent Folk Behave Beneba Clarke writes with nuance and emotion. Each poem leaves the reader keen to dig a little deeper and learn more about the real-life events that inspired them. In this sense, Beneba Clarke is a people’s poet, an archivist for posterity, like the griots who inspire her. ■ Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / International Network of Street Papers FRANCES FORD LOOKING IN THE HORSE’S MOUTH My friend, safe in a psych ward, doesn’t watch the news unfolding, that we are unbecoming as a hollow monster, so monstrously mythic is our straw horse at the gate, our unraveling. So, envious of her escape, I phone and tell her. I hear background chirps, a little crack in our connection, then soft buzzing oversounds her silence, as if electronic ghosts whisper spite, deserved disdain, through fateful decades of our narrow view, the covered bridge. Our drivers whipped us to longer days and lessened fodder and burned barns. That’s how we got here from there: from a placid riverbank of blue-haired crones checking voter registrations and vaccinated children safely learning science and history to a quicksand shore of ignorant, unbridled ambition and the whip and the spur, forever. WRITING THROUGH HARD TIMES COURTESY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY AND LIGHTHOUSE WRITERS WORKSHOP QUEENE INDISPUTABLE REALISM A twin’s fame, Propelled, and spurred on by an exceptional Twin Flame. A flame of which, THAT duck, and her quack, So officially proclaim. In God we trust, and history tends to repeatedly Unravel life’s clusterfucks. Stunning, and awestruck, Within an undeniable majestic creation. It is just a life-sized masterpiece painting.. A painting, By: Monet, Picasso, or say: Mr. Vincent Van Gough.. Perspective is everything. I’d much, much, much rather look @ life THIS way. I’d much rather brighten the sad realities of my homeless days, by, far! Brighten my “hand-to-mouth” moments in time. I’d much rather implement THIS perspective, and wade through this situation, And to, Be blessed enough, To have these rhymes. The Hard Times Writing Workshop is a collaboration between Denver Public Library and Lighthouse Writers Workshop. It’s open to all members of the public, especially those experiencing homelessness. Each month, the Denver VOICE publishes a selection of writing from these workshops. Virtual workshops: lighthousewriters.org/workshop/denver-public-library-hard-times More writing by these featured poets: writedenver.org MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BIG ISSUE AUSTRALIA / INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF STREET PAPERS April 2022 DENVER VOICE 11
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