Micah Fletcher was the survivor of the three men who intervened when another man was shouting racist epithets and other things to two women on a Portland, OR bus last week. He is a poet. He is autistic.
Madison High School junior Micah Fletcher wins second annual Verselandia poetry slam
By Nicole Dungca | The Oregonian/OregonLive
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on May 03, 2013 at 2:26 PM, updated May 03, 2013 at 3:14 PM
Email the author
on May 03, 2013 at 2:26 PM, updated May 03, 2013 at 3:14 PM
Micah Fletcher performs during the second annual Verselandia, a poetry competition for Portland Public Schools students held last week at the Wonder Ballroom. The Madison High School student won first place after reciting his two pieces, one a protest of blaming victims in rape cases and the other a condemnation of the prejudice Muslims still face after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Courtesy of Andie Petkus Photography
For Micah Fletcher, writing was a way to deal with being a lonely kid.
"I would just sit alone in my room and I'd write," said Fletcher, 17.
The Madison High Schooljunior eventually took forays into poetry and hip hop, taking cues from rappers Aesop Rock and Atmosphere as he crafted his own verses. Over time, Fletcher's penchant for words transformed into something more powerful: He wanted to give voice to injustices he saw in the world.
"I was sick of not being heard," he said, "and I was sick of other people not being heard."
This week, Fletcher's two performances won him the second annual Verselandia poetry slam, produced by Portland Literary Arts and co-sponsored by the Portland Monthly magazine and advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy.
Fletcher has a flair for performing. His voice booms across venues as he paces back and forth onstage. Even when he reads from his black notebook, he can grab the audience with a voice that sometimes shakes with anger.
He wants his poems to become vehicles of change. Spurred to action after learning about a close friend's rape, he railed during one performance against blaming victims in rape cases. In the other, he spoke out against the prejudice Muslims still face after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I just hope that people are listening and try to do something about it," he said.
The competition at the Wonder Ballroom gathered students from every Portland Public Schools high school, as well as the K-12 Metropolitan Learning Center. School held their own poetry slams throughout April, and each school's top three were sent to compete at Verselandia.
Based on the judges' scores, four other students were recognized for their top rankings: the Metropolitan Learning Center's Ke'Shayla Brown placed second; Cleveland High's Jess Faunt placed third; Grant High's Sydney Oliver placed fourth; and Jefferson High's Lauren Steele, last year's winner, placed fifth.
The event was spearheaded by Nancy Sullivan, a teacher-librarian at Madison, and Sandra Childs, a language arts and psychology teacher at Franklin. For Sullivan, who helped Madison launch its first schoolwide poetry slam nine years ago, the competition has become a way of giving students an outlet they wouldn't have otherwise.
Regarding Weldon Kees:
The link below will take you to a review of a new biography and critical study of Weldon Kees and his poetry. I have added some of my own notes below.
In his introduction to Kees’s Collected Poems, Kees fan Donald Justice writes that Kees is “one of the bitterest poets in history,” and that “the bitterness may be traced to a profound hatred for a botched civilization, Whitman’s America come to a dead end on the shores of the Pacific.” The disappointment and aggravation that Kees expressed for an American way of life that he believed could be more beautiful and noble was relevant when he was writing in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, and still has much to offer a contemporary reader struggling to stay afloat in the confusing drift of history. Take “June 1940,” from his 1943 collection The Last Man, which concludes:
It is summer again, the evening is warm and silent.
The windows are dark and the mountains are miles away.
And the men who were haters of war are mounting the platforms.
An idiot wind is blowing; the conscience dies.
I selected this quotation for two reasons, the first being that it is resonant with American life today, at least politically and second to remind us that we all stand on the shoulder of others. To wit that the phrase "idiot wind" became the title of a Bob Dylan song. https://bobdylan.com/songs/idiot-wind/.
Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I can’t feel you anymore, I can’t even touch the books you’ve read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin’ I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory
And all your ragin’ glory
This was written decades ago, still stings.
The Current Assignment
Am interesting personal history here. I was reading “The Iceman Cometh” by Eugene O’Neil before Ed suggested we write something appropriate for posting on the KGB Bar website or blog http://kgbbar.com and had written something about that. So I didn’t write anything particular about a bar of NYC. However, having checked the website I found that the poetry posted there didn’t necessarily revolve around the bar or NYC but was simply pretty good stuff. The place takes its literature seriously. I think in the end we may want to send something either as individuals or as a group. Any ideas?
The Next Assignment
Describe your name, how you got it, what it means to you, how its meaning has changed.
The Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Thursday, June 15, 2017. Bring a friend, goddammit!
Other Jabber
In my irregular look at software of interest I suggest two sites. First, https://www.noisli.com. From a review: “Noisli is all about giving you a little background noise to help you focus. Just load up the site, click the icon of the sounds you want to hear, and get to work. If the sound of fire, coffee shops, or waves doesn't sound appealing, you can also just turn on some white, pink, or brown noise. Once you have your sounds, Noisli matches that feeling with a colored background as well. It's simple and doesn't take up a lot of memory in browser to run.”
I add that there is a timer so you can have it shut off (after you fall asleep) and also a text editor so you can write at the site. You can also combine the sounds so you can get water, birds and wind. Each sound features its own volume control and you can save your favorite combinations.
Having said the above, I confess to listening to rock while I write although once I am engaged, even though I keep turning up the volume, I don’t hear anything to the extent that if someone enters the room and speaks it scares the shit out of me.
Secondly, if I haven’t spoken of it before, or if I have: Phrase Express. It’s a piece of freeware found at http://www.phraseexpress.com. This is a comprehensive program that will automatically insert text when it receives a certain combination of keystrokes. For example, when I outline this meeting I type “Roundtable” and after the first six letters Phrase Express inserts the entire outline. I use it to insert my address and several other things that I repeatedly use. There’s a learning curve but the time of that is more than compensated by the time saved by using it.
