"Jayhawkers" by Kevin Willmott

i know what the wilt chamberlain bob allen and a kentucky poet have in common they're all part of today's kbr preserved and j mcintyre and on today's program we'll preview the new basketball movie che ha fears and talk with lyons filmmaker heaven will my university of kansas leed center will host the midwest premiere of j harper's this month with screenings february fourteen fifteen and sixteen later this hour we'll also hear from poet nikki finney winner of the national book award from her time at the university of kansas but first i recently had the chance to visit with independent filmmaker kevin willmott about two of his film's characters and destination planet negro jay hawkins is about four gallon and we record wilt chamberlain play there's

really really kind of fault story and then how he brings will tim and then it becomes coach the carb story as well and an ulcer chester franklin murphy story who and frankly murphy was very actually and green but black athletes to campus because he sold as a way of integrating beer and no he wasn't was a segregated but it was kind of a socially sorted and but lourdes was officially segregated and so you know franklin murphy you know it's all this as a mechanism to break things up so the film was revolved around but both the four of them and i think people will be really kind of blown away about what was going on here than an n how different it was in nineteen fifty five than it is now and how far we've come from you know from those days and they also i think he will be kind of amazed at it follow alan i mean he is a you know he's a great great great coach and you know he's the

the father basketball coach i'm a need there really is in basketball coaching until falwell and all the great coaches come out of him they offer up in an ant raft milliron and dean smith all these guys are his former players and their students and so you know i think the film will kind of show all of us you know this amazing kind of legacy that we have but that the legacy didn't just happen on or sell the legacy it happened through struggle and it happened through difficulty and you know the movie's called j hawkers because it's still about the issue of race and is still about the issue of what kind of what kind of cancers are we going to have an you know that was there was a problem and an eating sixty two and it was still the problem and in nineteen fifty five so tell us about the cast of the movie will to live and

who's a legendary actor in these parts allow people to appease a great great great actor who's also with the red between the ears comedy group yes for yesterday's yazzie he plays ali plays falwell and and you know i think the uk at this amazing in the film and any uptick in a lot of movies and been a character actor in hollywood mini mix in fact hip tells a great story that he got his start in hollywood through rob jesmer for their chance to repeat so when he left a huge as a recruit went to be chest at ucla and he's responsible for taking you silly make ucla ucla and it was very much a social activist there as well and it had a lot of hollywood connections and you know he's called a colt for architect of los angeles recovered because i mean he's the guy to kind of broad culture to los angeles and the chorus new the head of the studios and that's how it got his break

annoying small world it's a very small art howe is a very small world you know and and then justin wesley whose korea like a bass for teams here he plays wheelchair one of course the big the big question about phil when i was trying to get a start and make it was who's gonna play will ferrell who's a seven foot two rivals go play this guy right and no one no one got the part it ever end and i think we have the guy in the country one of the few gas mccutcheon i could've played phil campbell and now only does it look like will champion but you know just as a really fine actress well and today very seriously and and i will spin act which is really cool band and i think he could get would be an actor and i think you know it's like it's a shame because a sports fan and other activities in your life they kind of teach you certain skills along the way

that that you know that makes you be able to do a lot of other things besides that skill you know anne and i think just in one reason we cast him was that when you saw many interviews he was always a good interview a very articulate and does a smart guy and i think that that doubles the keys to being a good actor you got to be smart you got a towel want to know about things you get the curious you got a care about things he's willing to go in those emotional places which which a lot of people have a hard time with that and so he really wasn't trained as an actor he had the abilities to do it and he did a really great job and feel so wealthy it's a high chair at the leed center on valentine's day so valentine's day is to premiere in mlb that friday saturday and sundays or be a bunch of screenings that a weekend and so marky mark mark tony keller valentine's day for j octavia sweetie to go see jr

going on destination plant neat rows dsm it's a very different film obviously and it's a satire and it's about what happens in nineteen thirty nine when black leaders get together to strauss albany for a problem and they decide to go to mars and logical solution or sore joints george marshall carter greets iraq if you're the peanut the sweet potato and they out they take off to work to mars but of course something weird happens and in a very different place than remarkable given away but it feels very funny and and i think very telling and very you know we didn't get to do a lot of lot of inching issues and also part of that film was shot here as kansas public radio's yes indeed it was and i'm you guys is you know when you when you're writing a low budget film especially you're always having to think about where you can shoot scenes and and so there's a scientific kind of office romance and i always knew you guys had a

bunch of really cool if i said that here and there and you got to kind of put the issue to hear so you were done really well at home is at screenings right now it's it's to a countering the country various places as the next time is going to be is going to play in february at the alamo trapped houses in dallas are playing a double feature of csa end destination planet which is critical and so it's kind of all over the place of hope will begin city will publish on at liberty hall sometime soon as well kevin your films are kind of all over the math terms of their own the views in terms of their field those on route would like for you as a filmmaker to kind of get to do a little bit of sports and science fiction and history and well you know arrogance in hollywood you wanted to do that i mean you know you're kind of pigeonholed and i will unite make us a certain kind of film and then become better known for that in the job seeker of those fail and soon so out of my i'm a big

woody allen fan and the outcome would be woody allen i grow up in next you know he got to make a lot of it still does to make a lot of different kinds of movies and that's just the fun thing about feel you know we you know we are able to build all the guys i work with were able to kind of find the resources to to tell these different stories and you know the only criteria is is that a good story is a story worth telling you now end does have a point really an and that's that's kind of what we do you know we just try to you know sometimes we have a lot more money than others but that doesn't stop us from doing time telling the story you know and the best way we can but the story's gurdy you can make it work that's the whole slam you tell students of all time that if you know if the audiences want to beat brought along some place you know that you

know so many times movies today or they're strictly commercial enterprises and things and they don't bring you anywhere because they're just kind of like take your money you know an end and sell you on certain things and done with the villas we make we really tried of you know well why would destination for instance you know that film is pretty rare today i mean you know you see a lot of parity today and phil we see very little satire very very little sense to research it really get a saturday night live and a few things but in terms of hollywood movies that are really kind of biting satire is almost doesn't exist in one end and that's because you have to be smart you have to kind of you know those were to ensure store wheat or film premiered in chicago at the gene siskel to chicago and out the man who runs the theater there was a murderous a black couple came up to him afterwards and

he said he could tell they didn't quite get the feel that he realise they did know george washington or us so don't be a problem yet and so you know that's that's why you don't see very much anymore because it mean dr strangelove you had to yeah you know little bit about nuclear weapons you ever know about but war ii had no comment about what was really going on in the news a bit you know and hollywood is unwilling to take that risk in terms of you knowing anything i mean if anything you know we work in hollywood when i work in hollywood you're always have told me people are going to understand the city better kind of tone it down or are changed at something else could people don't know that and i liked learning things from like not understanding everything and going out afterwards and had a finding out what that was all about and that's that's harder to find you know in terms of in terms of rebel hollywood films you know

then there's that cost too much money to really take those kind of risks and so that's left of the independent filmmaker and so a price we pay is that you know where we're becoming a culture and a society that you know instead of a broadening our understanding of things were becoming more more more narrow and you know people can have their own tv channel now and they don't you know little watch anything but their shows you know an economy in shambles but you just really are just watching your your jacket and so you know when we grew up there was three channels and you know we we had a watermark is you know if they had a sewing sewing show on her or the knitting show runner or similar something you know you had to you know you have to go find something else and so you know what a silent movies and old movies black and white movies in the old tv shows you hear it and you know you learn history from these old movies that you had no choice but to watch these old shows that's not the case anymore and so young

people don't don't really get that total view of things and it was a really in a given up the internet is the same thing as the globe the polymer television is that it's personalized to and so you get on the internet and you're only talking in and looking at things that are your interests and so that's a real problem and so that's that i think the biggest challenge of making a film so that's lawrence filmmaker kevin loma his newest movie j hawkers will have its mid west premiered this month at the university of kansas leed center screenings are february fourteenth fifteenth and sixteenth you can find out more about jay hawkers on facebook or at the leed center's website lead that kay you that edu i'm kate mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio this week marks what would have been

the one hundredth birthday of writer artist and lawrence resident william burroughs the lawrence arts center is hosting an exhibit and many events throughout february to commemorate burroughs life and work there are also exhibit at the university of kansas spencer museum of art and the cider gallery in lawrence if you missed last week's programme about burrows it's now archived at our website k pr that kay you got e d u nikki finney is the author of four books of poetry in two thousand eleven she won the national book award for her poetry collection head off and split she teaches creative writing at the university of kentucky and is the co founder of the afro latin poets this reading is from september sixth two thousand twelve it's part of the whole center for the humanities lecture series phineas type is entitled making poetry in our camp for opposing age that turned him for opposing was going to suggest that humans now serve as the

geophysical force that we're changing the climate of our planet and that we're measuring in a new geological period as a result of that change thankyou university of kansas invitation to come tonight if you live long enough occasionally you get the opportunity ah thank someone publicly who we've always want to thank our likely end tonight is one of those nights and i was back in the green room waiting to come out and a man knocked on the door who had not seen in over fifteen years and he was your former chancellor robert hemingway and he was my former chancellor at the university of kentucky and i i guess i had it not been for a lunch that i had with him right before he left

to come here i would not have stayed in the academy and i would have just been a crazed poet trying to get the words right so i think you publicly but i've been thanking you for the last fifteen years i begin with a poem that i dedicate to the beginning way into his wife leah i wrote this point in nineteen ninety four when i was up reverse carriers of kentucky among the learned on the banks of her butterfly time grandmother would stand as fluid as a wonderful teaching with a five and dime cole in her hand be still and listens as she could be heard to

say she would make more good decisions those more control gain and relinquish power care about more people to recycle more energy discerned more foolishness in an afternoon of fishing then congress ever could beat everyone unanimous all democrats all republican my first semester was ever were spent staring at this human university shifting my weight from lead to lead waving first how fly and firefly from all her apron dress and listening to the sound around us there was noise there was instruction there was indeed a difference too this kind of standing stare at stillwater this speaking on the depths of a true life lived full she called a sociology shook prince baked into the softbank geography advanced he's a number of lessons could go on

for days as long as there was sun and eight there was learning to educate means to lead out she told me on the road home had no idea what he was saying or why now had well that night falling between the country but i do wonder why does she stand me they're each morning that hole in my hands gripped as tight as chief full born to a jaw insisting pond water is as good as any book a good teacher can do more than talk about it she'd artist said to me and jane she can see a clear they're on their bank preparing me for a giant workers when she knew full well bram and mullet were all we head touching our lines in those days i left her artisan iron gates ready for labor and anything in between you don't fish just to catch your fish so you can keep so you can put something back the teacher

talk it has less to do with the fish and more to do with your line in the water your hand on the poll with discerning rituals with what you can figure out about yourself while standing there in between the bites no what you will not let corrupt you that you can not be bought or so i assume another will come after you have long gone they're called titan hand as well hoping ketch something put something back whenever you can with a plain plane poll grandmother given a plastic barbara found these days i cast out among the learned and teach to alter sleeping states i stand before the university time and fischer the living will bubble among the learned who know real like the stills no terminal degrees

a poet needs to fly fish sometimes in order to catch glimpses of privileged information that there are too many meetings and not enough conversations going on a poet needs to hopi and hope inside the polished granite of the academy that the newly arrived with their chains dragging in the sands will help but others who have been here all along have not given up i am fishing to know that the learned i'm really hearing the living inside the walls and out and not spending so much time and talk just on our brilliant selves i am testing out a line to ensure that our souls remain olive oil than patients alive and able to hear this area the new ways from the instruction none of us are testing far enough

offshore they're in the dimpled uncharted waters and the undiscovered raging sea where more than what we expect always lives and waits for the courageous to come and tip toe in we have barricaded ourselves away from their scholarship of risk from all the elements that made us feel and fight and therefore three rebirth conversation don't pull your line into fast grandmother would say out of the corner of her eye keep your hope in the water all the way to the edge that's where the great tadpoles swim i've come tonight to be some poetry to talk about something on my mind and i wanted to start with that whole problem because it's still very topical from even today for forty years i have been a

prodigious note taker i have taken note on the world all around me and on the world behind me on the walls of my writing studio in kentucky stand one hundred and thirty nine the journal books that i've kept since the age of fourteen some point i began to not call them journals but rather my personal field guides i began tonight with a small sampling from those forty plus years of paying very close attention to the planet that i live on into its inhabitants and to those things that spin and fall and jump out of those inhabitants now is listen children the earth is a black and living thing they're still clifton american poet he'll die number ninety two to this morning we got

a new barrier the fire smell sweet with hay at the end of the day the road beside the time was jumping with frogs linda keith any field guide number nine june nineteen sixty nine three today a dinner date and said mama with this crazy thing he said good lord willing and the creek don't rise i've never heard that before had to wait until dinner and dishes were done before running to my room and writing it down linda keith any field guide number thirteen nineteen seven and before it was a very sunny day i'm waiting for the full moon to arrive again today a doctor named king was shot mom is crying in the kitchen over the washing machine still land nikki fannie field guide number eleven april sixty eight

hundred us seeing the age of man is a new name for a new geological epoch one defined by our own massive impact on the planet in between my novice whether notices that i just read my notations of small town life and national events i dreamed of becoming a poet since winning the national book award a year ago i've been thinking a lot about what i know and how i've come to know it and what i want to save him at going forward i was a girl growing up in the south in the nineteen sixties after meatloaf brushing my teeth twice mastering certain mammoth absolute respect for women who covered their body but not their faces and their hands and thick black catholic cotton my

mother and father his greatest fillies was in the power of inquiring mind therefore they sat book after book in front of the hardback diamonds i thought with more facets that anyone could possibly count listen children there is a black and living thing as a result of these books i read everything observed everything took my field notes on everything and now i'm maybe halfway through a life trying to save some things with my large net of lyrical alphabet its when we were old enough my brothers and i were given the opportunity to begin the task of choosing own books and magazines like every other critical moment in my life before the age of eighteen it happened in the small carnegie library in my hometown i discovered nature guides detail and the flora and fauna of south carolina could not put them down

magnolia azalea saw palmetto yellow jasmine hummingbird honeysuckle redd foxx and beyond all that i can also tell you what dinosaur ruled the land and when i also could tell you what it like for breakfast and how long wingspan was if it had won had wonderful teachers but it also cultivated early on and a lot of didactic sense for learning i believe that sense had to do with my early desire and disposition to observe i wanted to know who had been here before me and i didn't want to miss what was here now something about my life with songs that in motion a deep and abiding love for the world beyond the safety of my little room the power of really seeing people but also seeing other living things i was interested in

history as ways and means and they came upon the word extinction in my small ten year old mind i made a connection between the extinction of the dinosaur the possible extinction of my own community is as nineteen ninety six or ninety seven i was nine or ten two years before martin luther king was assassinated one year before bobby kennedy was assassinated eighteen months before malcolm x was shot and some months before medgar evers would step out of his car to the sound of a shotgun blasts this was just before fannie lou hamer withstand about the democratic national convention where my father had traveled as a delegate from south carolina where ms heyman would eventually leave her a couple words in the middle of a chicago night she said we are sick and tired of being sick and tired and that some feel guy number twenty four how are these things happen

and how do they help roll up a black girl poet who cares about more than her small wonderful community but who cares about the entire universe in the middle of my communities fight to desegregate the public schools of south carolina i was trying to wrap my head around the head of tyrannosaurus rex for some years after the bodies of goodman schwerner and cheney were found i was out in the woods in the dark counting how many broadcast my grandmother's loaded us and the perfect circumference of the new ban as the yellow jackets thirteen summers at the emmett till somebody was finally found in a swamp and his mother had insisted on opening the casket so we could see when hatred look like i had a long legged sandy haired tomboy of a black girl began a new feel guy i knew no book labeled black girl

feel bad number three dyed to prehistoric life i was most interested in memorizing the evolution of adaptation of plants and animals journalist fish bony fish long fish birds mammals amphibians most plants an animals exist only because they are successfully adapted to their environments all the rest had become extinct that's what was on the far side of the page in feel bad number thirteen page seven on the backside i found this this was the day thirteen years ago that found that little miss in a way listen children the earth is a black and living thing i don't know why i became such a camp with extinction there as asia's markets but it had

most but not everything to do with dinosaurs happen something some big into michigan wondrous just not be here anymore how could something that such a beautiful name like woolly mammoth just one day not be here anymore who was responsible i thought what could we learn from the dinosaur how could we remember their footprints learn from the lesson of their lives and their deaths what could i have my bladder of feel bad makes clear note from my own community leaders of the world what would i have to look like in order from ideal notes to be considered relevant chamber ian order of the key in centurion devonian mississippi in pennsylvanian permian triassic jurassic crustaceans

tertiary quarter neary passel a mesozoic cenozoic as one little black girl living in a sometimes explosive other times past are quiet i was out looking for my tribe know just those who look like me but those who felt like me and knew there were other things that we have to say is that we could not that become extinct listen children he is a black a living thing he has seen officially does not yet exist it maybe permanently so the geologic time scale in twenty sixteen it is the international commission on strategy or three that determines that the nomination and the calibration of different divisions and

subdivisions of geological time which date back to the formation of the earth four point six billion years ago and officially however the term is being used more and more frequently and so the scene was a term that was proposed in the year two thousand ipod jacobson who won the nobel prize in nineteen ninety five for his work atmospheric chemistry of the concept itself the idea that human activity affects the earth to the point where it can cross the new age is not new and data back to the late nineteenth century this and children the earth is a black and living thing sidebar i keep repeating this line this lucille clifton line because my mother and grandmother were seamstresses and among one of a hundred things that they did was this and so i believe in a good strong stitched line

i do not want to lose the power of needle and thread so i remember them as seamstresses and so in my world i'm here or there we are officially still in the house seem but the earth's systems don't seem to be working in the same old way the birth of the twenty first century is warming overcrowded part we get far stiffer and more toxic and ever interconnected than it has been in kentucky where i live that mountaintop removal mining is destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of forest and very nearly two thousand two thousand miles of streams this past june high temperature records were tied or broken across the united states in kansas i don't have to tell you the impact of the twenty twelve drought and agriculture and farming families drought

doesn't hit like a hurricane or an earthquake wrote rick montgomery of the kansas city star you can't see it coming on satellite radar drought creeks first the missouri crop more than the kansas cattlemen thousands of trees he said will begin to die not let not now but very soon if not this year then next what does any of this have to do with being a poet what does any of this have to do with a black girl from south carolina i believe it has to do with her not being willing to give up i believe it has to do with remembering who taught her something and what she believes and what you will not to toss away no matter how bleak picture looks i know it has to do with what we

collectively we in this room engaged ourselves with politics or not human being to human being what we do not separate ourselves from it has to do with not just taking from the earth without hand open but putting something back every time i read a poem every time i go to another place to talk about this thing and other things i feel i am putting something back and shot a scene a period marked by regime change in the activity of industrial societies which began at the turn of the nineteenth century and which just caused global disruptions in the earth's system on a scale unprecedented in human history climate change bio diversity last delusion of the land sea and

air and resource depredation these changes called for a different way to inhabit the earth to say they're thinking these changes that are happening around us are trees that won't die now but next year are calling for a different way for us to inhabit the earth and having the earth in a different way of living beyond the supersonic sweet moment slowing ourselves down looking backwards and forwards for all the things we need but also it really is and also heroin me it's this angel jean yves is back and living thing is covering the outside warms the planet it also seeds into the oceans and certifies them sometime this century they may become acidified to the

point the corals no longer construct reads which would register as a reef get really have market each of the past friday major mass extinctions the most recent one which is believed to have been caused by the impact of an asteroid took place sixty five million years ago it eliminated not just the dinosaurs but the prius swords and ammonites too dr cruz and who started this debate with his word thinks about the anarchist seem much bigger than simply publishing a revised edition to a book his purpose is broader he wants to focus our attention on the consequences of our collective action what i hope he says is that the term answer justine will be a warning to the world

my help as a poet is to give it to you today makes again with my own words and poetry so that you may make something of it that we can use collectively so that the counselor scientific time keepers in twenty sixteen ultimately takes out this matter and besides we don't need them i believe what my parents taught me to believe until i ventured out into the world and found more to wonder more to hitch my little wagon to when i was a girl i wrote and thought as a girl when i became a woman i put those girl waste site writing poetry is that turning around it's bearing the iraq gigantic ancient wild horse slash cow they went extinct and sixteen twenty seven

that is portrayed in the new film out the use of the wild bees of the seven while asked me when that little girl turns and stares that creature in the eye that's me that's why i come here to do tonight is there a scene in the eye i want you to have that image i want you to believe that as well in order to feel that i am not just taking up space in order to feel that i am not just writing to win a national book award this is what i have to do this in children the birth is a black and living thing i am a poet who considers herself deeply connected to the earth a poem feels it every poem is an act of faith with the air that i breathe and the ear they dared takes it in because the toe bone

is connected to the flip on and the foot long is connected to the heel bone in the heel bone is connected to the ankle bone and the ankle bone you know it is connected to and that's siobhan is connected to the hip bone and the hippo is connected to the bomb and you will need several backbones to get this work done last the woman the cheerleading legs has been left for dead she her pace as a movie four days three nights are leaping fingers helium arms rise and fall putting up a week old baby in the bass and they're pointing to the eighty two year old grandmother fanning and raspy and the new orleans saints folding chair ed the mighty know

three times a day the helicopter flies by her in a little coral the grandmother insists i'm not being helpless so she waves a white handkerchief that she puts on and takes off her head toward the camera man and the pilot who remembers well the art of his mirrored i'd posture in his low flying helicopter bombs some don't how jake who she lie he makes a slowly it can't depend on a move known and rescue as the observation pass it's surrounded by broken levee water to people or dark not blocking starving abandoned dehydrated brown accumulates not broking the four hundred year all anniversary of observation begins again amy meaney miami mile the woman with a pompom legs waves her and even homemade sign

it reads please help please and even if the eu has been left off of that please do you know simply by looking at her that it has been left off because she can't spell and therefore is not worth saving was it because the water was rising so fast there was a time a ni nee ni money mo cancer the low flying helicopter does not know the answer it catches all up as unpatriotic take but does not plan and does nudge a dictionary or not our regulations require an ep at the end of any police before any national response can be taken i therefore it takes four days before the national council of observers will consider dropping one bottle of water or one case of dehydrated baby formula on the roof of the ed has rolled off into the flood obviously mom

slash loud enough four days later not the mother but the baby girl but the determined hanky waiver who they were both named four and after has now been covered up with a green plastic window on being pushed over to the side right what i'm missing he was last seen my mother said to pick the very best one what else would you call it was to every child left behind anyone you know ever left out or put i mean anything by mistake potato a towel in the future observation helicopters will leave the world observe south and fly and kanye west was finally right formation it will arise over burning san diego side is here will be put out so well the grandmothers were right about everything people outlive bull whips and bull connor

historically afraid of water and looting effective crocodiles left in the sun on the sticky tar heat of rules to roast like pigs surrounded by forty feet of churning water in the summer of two thousand and five other which is country in the world played the old observation game studied the situation wondered by committee what can we do count it in private a long historical division speculated whether or not some people are surely born ready customs to flood fan fear my mother said to you very fast you are not he says after all it was only pull a new orleans all bastards city of funny spellings nuns when there's a squeeze box accordion accents who would be left behind to care thank you very

much you're listening to poets may keep thinning on kansas public radio whiz is my favorite part of getting an airplane so please take advantage of this moment when i was a young writer and head a moment to talk to another writer i think i would have maybe not make so many mistakes that were made some apparently is yes could you talk to us a little about how you write your poems like the process the filing appears on the morning because i'm a grandmother as a girl many summers is that there's something in me that i can't break even when i want to say like i get up at four am when i'm out on the road and i write is that is the law instead is in buddhism it's also when the

monks get up to meditate and it's thought to be the quietist time of day very important to me still let's have to hear other things from coming out of the poem coming to me i think poetry is the aural oral year and i think we don't talk about that enough we talk about or a little talk about the elusive quest and shuffle out about the power of the ear in poetry and sass as i have to get out because as the quietist time and i can hear things that i can't hear it any other time of day an awful lot riding on airplanes because i can get up and go anywhere so you all this time in a window seat tom and i never thought of the people next to me and i'm a great person to sit beside because i'm and i was telling somebody earlier that the great writer janet yellen's i've told me once when i was probably twenty years old he said you will be a writer is that jack has to

get on the horse get in the saddle hold on to the reigns and ride until the ride is done if you go get tea and go walk that dog and go make some pancakes and go to the movies and go to the j hob game you're playing you know writing at the question i was wondering if you'd talk a little bit about what you see the role of the poet and society actually i'm going to guess wrong probably car and acknowledge legislators of the world and hear your poems time and how it inspired there's that promise on it's about jewish worse that the congolese the rest homes in the middle east evocative fish homes and it all comes together in these interesting ways so my question is a larger question about what you see the role of the poet in contemporary society ready

think what can do what he thinks are the limitations on it now and legislatures that's what i think they do i think you know if i ran for office i would get elected you know whitey went over me because i i would have to be politicians know wannabe politicians tell the truth i do i really believe there are it must be provocative let's bring us together you know i might be writing about and seen you know scientists but i see the world and will be very clearly and a long time ago the writer tony given barr told me something that changed my life i said to my second book she was on her hospital bed dying and she bought me a card debt and she says we do not believe it

do not leave the arena to the polls if ok i will promise a music was going common enemies you avoid that i work on really really high that doesn't matter to the economy i mean the puns about that deals another things are really important and i want them in the room i want them anyway no but that's not what i do and we're not paying close enough attention to what is happening we say oh it was a hot summer now and we've got to leave already get involved in something something it everybody in here change one thing about the way they live now huge impact that recycling whether it being are joining that group whether it be

you know supporting something that you just think i look at it my job as a poet is to look at it and tell you what i see and not be polemical and not be on the top of his gang ranting and raving about it is but to say it's usually just say it to the family and to say a great karen we you know uses this i have to ask could i just ask to myself you've mentioned this word health of the scene it's a vocation is that as many people are talking about judges think about naming him a geological time for ourselves as it were actually helps is called from the issue or does it you know this is the case where there's not much we can do about it depends on the president

to loosen saying i'm not giving you those words so we can walk blindly into which i am saying that we as human beings have that power just say no that's not where we're going and i don't think enough of us understand that i think we'll leave it to these committees and we leave it to cnn and we leave it to you know a doomsday you know it's going wrong but i'm not a pessimist i cant writes and sit there at that desk in the morning and leave this is it you are going down i don't believe that but i also know if we do not become involved in some small way life as we know it is going to change it's going to change it's changing us i don't need to draw attention away from

you because i'm very glad to finally meet you by republicans who are some of the writers who'd been important to you along the way well there is mother earth had so much it will be half of what i came to say because i was a bit odd in time this but langston hughes arm and lucille clifton you and i was talking about at dinner i was talking about rachel carson is not as writers who have meant a great deal to me if people who have them the side i'm going to say this again how difficult it is those are my heroes and shields and they continue to be this secrecy come out to this day so the list is very long as liked using children as pawns can do they

can well first let's say a time you know i really appreciated by horses yourself and resources as you often open it up and one person stood out to me was what would i have to light in order for my field all to be considered you know that's that is academic negotiations i you know you just you know in the beginning you know i'm not a writer but ossa muscle cars sold well you know was that the crisis came to me when i was little and when i was smiling when i was saying these divisions in the community end how how much hated was a part of this beautiful place where i was from and the people so easily and so easily heat and added so much destruction so much violence was insane but as i grew older i had

to make a decision was i going to stop myself because the gaze at it easy on me all was i'm going to become that art of didactic scholar there in a person of other ways of my grandmother in the ways of you know other institutions and keep walking and be prepared for whatever my life was gonna open up to i chose the latter and it's a decision that i think you'd have to make when you realize that we are different that people are judged differently but you know i'm not going to shut myself you're going to have to stop an imminent to find another way in but if you stab yourself then the games got the game's over so yuki making yourself into the person you want to be and think the doors will open i believe that i really really believe in if they don't open it is not an

asset and what way were you insurance story inspired by our chancellor so many people when you become the president when you when the civil war at all because it anymore oh i have to sound like this all about for me the man that i knew at the universe of kentucky stood out like a neon sign like this because he would take on the hard stuff and he would tell the truth about things that nobody wanted to do with his turn a blind eye or you know think about this he'll do it this is the man i'm going to go on about that but think about what you know one of the things that i look at the end of his life years ago squeezing about

evolution was not you know many university presidents spoke no asset when you feel about it let somebody be able to say i don't think i mean how it would sell because this does mean as we gathered be able to compromise and talk about what i believe in what you believe and what he taught me as a young that's poet nikki finney speaking of former university of kansas chancellor robert hemenway she spoke september sixth two thousand twelve as part of the k u haul center for the humanities lecture series before that we heard from lawrence filmmaker kevin willmott his new film j harper's will have its mid west premiered this month at the k u leed center with screenings february fourteenth

fifteenth and sixteenth again next week marks what would have been the one hundredth birthday of writer artist and lawrence resident william burrows if you missed last week's kbr prisons on how the lawrence arts center is marking the occasion that program is now archived on our website k pr that kay you that edu i'm j mcintyre kbr present as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas