About the Authors
Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani is a native of New Orleans in love with Nadir, Nzingha, Kambui, Camara, Naima, Mama Patricia, gumbo, and words. Mawiyah’s poems have appeared in: The Crab Orchard Review, Dark Eros, Catch The Fire, Freeform Magazine, Beyond The Frontier, Kente Cloth, Fertile Ground, Family Portraits, Chicken Bones A Literary Journal, Survival Digest Quarterly, What We Think: Gender Roles, Women's Issues in the 21st Century, and From A Bend In The River. She is co-writer/director of the play Brown Blood Black Womb. She has performed her poetry at such venues as: The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, The Sushi Theater Art's Festival, The Black Arts Festival, and The African-American Women's Artist Symposium. Mawiyah is an educator who earned an MFA from the University of New Orleans. She currently resides in Louisiana.
Nadir Lasana Bomani is a Baba/Husband/Educator/Poet and founding member of NOMMO Literary Society. A native of New Orleans, This SUNO graduate has published works in Fertile Ground, Kente Cloth, Catch The Fire!!! From A Bend In The River, The Drumming Between Us, Dark Eros, 360ยบ A Revolution of Black Poets, Drumvoices Revue, and Beyond The Frontier. He currently lives in Louisiana with his wonderful wife Mawiyah and his beautiful babies: Nzingha, Kambui, Camara, and Naima.
Friday, February 29, 2008
What Poet/Editor E.Ethelbert Miller Says About The Poets
For followers and believers in Black poetry, the Bomani name appears frequently in a number of anthologies: Fertile Ground, Dark Eros, and 360 A Revolution of Black Poets.I’ve always enjoyed reading their short poems. Bomani poems can be short darts or maybe what a recent generation might call Scuds. The reader is left without radar and is helpless when a small explosion goes off in one’s head.
i have been in debt
since birth when mama put the
phone bill in my name
In the above tercet Nadir Bomani crushes splinters of blue glass into a fine dust. A child is born into a world that is not his making. His inheritance is an unpaid phone bill. The question has always been what does America owe the black man? In Bomani’s poem the reader wonders who the mother has been calling. Long-distance calls to relatives? A husband who left? Is the phone bill placed in the child’s name to avoid the bill collectors?And what about the rent? In the short poem by Nadir one can hear the survival music of the blues.The interior of the African American home, the family and the changing community are the themes one will always recognize under the name Bomani. How does the world collapse on Black people and we still find a way out of no way to celebrate life? Leave it to the poets to gather insight and strength from even how we fix our hair. When I was editing Beyond the Frontier I discovered this “curler” of a poem by Mawiyah:
there is a revolution
brewing
within my hair
and that’s
no lye
Mawiyah leaves one chuckling. The poem works like an old joke one never gets tired of hearing. Mawiyah moves us beyond the frontier with her gem of a poem “tam nguyen.”It’s a long poem with a narrative that touches on values, race, inter-racial love, and changing demographics within the American society. Written in the voice of a Vietnamese woman the poem confronts the growing interaction between Asian Americans and African Americans. Mawiyah writes like an insider. This poem is so good it could become a red light for other poets to stop writing.
Nadir however sits in with Mawiyah like he was Lester Young hanging with Billie Holiday. He is the father talking about raising children. He also speaks for those children who never make it out of childhood. Langston and King are still dreamers. We have yet to wake from the slumber of oppression. It’s a deep sleep and poets like Nadir reminds me of those type of men who followed Garvey and maybe sold newspapers for Elijah.I expect good things to keep coming out of New Orleans. Nothing but saints down there.They keep marching. The best thing we can do is follow. Beat that drum Bomani. Both of you. Don’t let anyone ban you’re drum. Our ancestors are listening in Congo Square. They hear you. Your love for each other will always give birth to poems. There is brightness in the dark. Your work gives me hope.
E. Ethelbert Miller
i have been in debt
since birth when mama put the
phone bill in my name
In the above tercet Nadir Bomani crushes splinters of blue glass into a fine dust. A child is born into a world that is not his making. His inheritance is an unpaid phone bill. The question has always been what does America owe the black man? In Bomani’s poem the reader wonders who the mother has been calling. Long-distance calls to relatives? A husband who left? Is the phone bill placed in the child’s name to avoid the bill collectors?And what about the rent? In the short poem by Nadir one can hear the survival music of the blues.The interior of the African American home, the family and the changing community are the themes one will always recognize under the name Bomani. How does the world collapse on Black people and we still find a way out of no way to celebrate life? Leave it to the poets to gather insight and strength from even how we fix our hair. When I was editing Beyond the Frontier I discovered this “curler” of a poem by Mawiyah:
there is a revolution
brewing
within my hair
and that’s
no lye
Mawiyah leaves one chuckling. The poem works like an old joke one never gets tired of hearing. Mawiyah moves us beyond the frontier with her gem of a poem “tam nguyen.”It’s a long poem with a narrative that touches on values, race, inter-racial love, and changing demographics within the American society. Written in the voice of a Vietnamese woman the poem confronts the growing interaction between Asian Americans and African Americans. Mawiyah writes like an insider. This poem is so good it could become a red light for other poets to stop writing.
Nadir however sits in with Mawiyah like he was Lester Young hanging with Billie Holiday. He is the father talking about raising children. He also speaks for those children who never make it out of childhood. Langston and King are still dreamers. We have yet to wake from the slumber of oppression. It’s a deep sleep and poets like Nadir reminds me of those type of men who followed Garvey and maybe sold newspapers for Elijah.I expect good things to keep coming out of New Orleans. Nothing but saints down there.They keep marching. The best thing we can do is follow. Beat that drum Bomani. Both of you. Don’t let anyone ban you’re drum. Our ancestors are listening in Congo Square. They hear you. Your love for each other will always give birth to poems. There is brightness in the dark. Your work gives me hope.
E. Ethelbert Miller
THICKER THAN WATER
THIS BOOK IS A MARRIAGE BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE. It is a culmination of family tales told richly through the eyes of Mawiyah Bomani and her husband Nadir Bomani. If you sit back and listen these vignettes will inspire a sense of pride, love, anger, and heartache but in the end you will want to thank the cosmos for the beautiful ones you hold close to the heart. So as blood is thicker than water , may your lineage remain forever a circle unbroken.
May the blood of your ancestors shelter you and yours.
Ase
May the blood of your ancestors shelter you and yours.
Ase
Thursday, February 28, 2008
THICKER THAN WATER ON SALE 4/1/08
THE BOOK THICKER THAN WATER
WITH A FORWARD BY E. ETHELBERT MILLER
WAS WRITTEN BY THE MARRIED COUPLE OF TWELVE-YEARS
MAWIYAH KAI EL-JAMAH BOMANI
AND NADIR LASANA BOMANI
TWO NEW ORLEANS POETS
WILL BE ON SALE FOR $15.00
APRIL 1, 2008
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RESERVE YOUR ADVANCE COPY
EMAIL THE POETS AT mawiyah@bellsouth.net.
WITH A FORWARD BY E. ETHELBERT MILLER
WAS WRITTEN BY THE MARRIED COUPLE OF TWELVE-YEARS
MAWIYAH KAI EL-JAMAH BOMANI
AND NADIR LASANA BOMANI
TWO NEW ORLEANS POETS
WILL BE ON SALE FOR $15.00
APRIL 1, 2008
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RESERVE YOUR ADVANCE COPY
EMAIL THE POETS AT mawiyah@bellsouth.net.
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