#prlf17

"In 1974, I was pretty fearless on the page.”

Pulitzer Prize winner and former US poet laureate Rita Dove’s poetry has always been bold, tackling everything from civil rights history to the sex-filled confusion of adolescence. Some editors would have said those stories wouldn’t sell, Dove said, “But luckily poetry doesn’t sell, so...” Then she laughed, looking out into the audience that clutched gorgeous hardcover copies of her newest, Collected Poems, 1974–2004 in their arms.

Rita Dove was one of the most exciting of the speakers I saw at Printer’s Row Literary Festival on June 10. Dove spoke in a quiet, melodic voice about her childhood, from the way her parents didn’t limit her reading, to a recitation of her first ever poem, titled “The Rabbit with a Droopy Ear.” She didn’t become a writer really until later—she wrote her first good poem, a simmering, angry tale that she didn’t quite grasp herself until later, in college. “On the ground level, we’re all writers,” said Dove, looking out towards the audience, “but a poet has a way of looking at the world and making it shimmer somehow.” 

In 1974, Dove went to Germany on a Fulbright scholarship, and it changed her life in more ways than one—she met her husband there, and it changed her conceptions of her home country. “I understood why James Baldwin stayed in Paris,” Dove said, with a shake of her head. While in Germany, she was able to exist without the visual racial baggage that weighed on her in America—even when others were curious, it was a feeling untinged by fear or disgust. She attributes part of the movement currently sweeping the United States to our failure to deal with the guilt that pervades our culture. “We’re never really talked about it—the ways that slavery built and undermined the values of our country,” Dove said. Black Lives Matter is not news, but rather “an awakening of a great portion of the American population to how deep-seated fear and hate can be.”

“I don’t actually find myself funny,” said Luvvie Ajayi, to a cackling audience at Printer’s Row Lit Fest, “I just say what I say straight-faced, and people think it’s hilarious.”

Luvvie Ajayi is the author of I’m Judging You: The Do Better Manual, the mind behind the blog Awesomely Luvvie, and the cofounder and executive director of The Red Pump Project, a nonprofit raising awareness about the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls. Ajayi started blogging in college because all of her friends were doing it, but her humor started long before that, when she was being bullied as a kid. “If you can make people laugh, you can make friends anywhere.” She is careful to write in a way that preserves her “me-ness”: she sits and writes stream-of-consciousness, and very digital-age, will occasionally go back to edit once it’s published. “I guess it’s just me honoring my voice,” she said—and honoring it certainly works, as she has a NYT bestseller and a tremendous readership. Ajayi has such an iconic backlist of posts that she can follow the news by watching when a piece becomes popular again—like the Twitter stages of a celebrity dying, or her famous “The Stages of What Happens When There’s Injustice Against Black People.”

Ajayi discussed a privilege exercise she does at workshops. Everyone stands in a line, hands on each other’s shoulders, and a leader will read out statements like, “You never had to worry where your next meal was coming from. Take 1 step forward.” or “No one can pronounce your name correctly. Take 1 step back.” When she first did it, she was surprised to find herself smack in the middle. The exercise brings up patterns while also teaching us not to assume about those around us—in one case, a woman COO brought her employee along, and ended up standing behind her. The exercise is vital first because when people recognize their own privilege, they’re empowered to do more and look outside themselves.

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