{"id":19326,"date":"2014-12-20T17:06:02","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T01:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19326"},"modified":"2014-12-21T10:35:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-21T18:35:39","slug":"running-a-literary-reading-series-and-the-politics-of-inclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19326","title":{"rendered":"Running a Literary Reading Series and the Politics of Inclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post has a very specific purpose: to ask those who might be interested to offer feedback on the draft vision statement that appears at the end. The statement is for\u00a0a small literary reading series called First Tuesdays<\/a> that I run in my neighborhood in Queens. While I am very interested in hearing people\u2019s suggestions for and critiques of this draft, however, I am not interested in discussing whether people think such a statement is or should be necessary. I take its necessity as axiomatic, and so if you do not, I will ask that you please not comment. Thanks.<\/p>\n

Background<\/h2>\n

First Tuesdays is an open-mic, featured-reader series, meaning that people from the community and surrounding areas come to share some of their work for the first hour or so and then we get to listen to a featured reader, who is usually (but not always) a published author, share her or his work for the last twenty to thirty minutes. I took over hosting the series three years ago, but First Tuesdays has been located at Terraza Cafe, a wonderful bar and live music venue in Elmhurst, NY for about ten years. The series, in other words, has a long history and, as you might expect, a core group of people has, over the years, coalesced into a strong and supportive community.<\/p>\n

Last month, in November, I read on\u00a0Harriet<\/a>, The Poetry Foundation\u2019s blog, an open invitation to meeting called \u201cEnough is Enough: A Meeting on Sexism and Accountability in NYC Poetry Communities.\u201d They called the meeting, they said, because they were<\/p>\n

fed up with the reality of sexual violence, intimidation, and misogyny that continues to exist in our poetry circles. We are speaking out against the dominant culture that silences and undermines voices of dissent. We are questioning harmful power dynamics within the poetry community. We are determined to forge a more respectful, alert, and conscientious community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I read this, I was concerned. As far as I knew, First Tuesdays was not suffer from the dynamics the Enough-is-Enough organizers were describing. Nor had I heard even a whisper about such things in the literary community in Queens, in which First Tuesdays has played a pretty central role. Of course, the fact that I did not know about it, or had not been perceptive enough to see it, did not mean it wasn\u2019t happening. So I decided to go to the meeting and see what I could learn.<\/p>\n

What I heard was disturbing. From the story of a man who regularly introduced the women who featured at his reading series with lines like, “Please welcome so-and-so and her body to the stage,” to the story of an important male poet, a man known to harass and abuse women sexually, who is nonetheless promoted and celebrated throughout the New York poetry scene and at the literary organization where he works, to the story of a woman whose drink was spiked at the bar after a reading she gave and was then treated abysmally by the men whose reading series it was once they found out what happened, the Enough-is-Enough organizers–who made clear these stories were representative of many they had heard or experienced themselves–described a poetry scene that seemed at best indifferent and, at worst, openly hostile to treating women with the respect and dignity they deserve.<\/p>\n

Still, the meeting seemed to be very Brooklyn- and Manhattan-centric, which served mainly to reinforce my sense of distance, geographical and institutional, from the stories I was hearing. Not that I thought for a moment Queens might be immune from the sexism being described, but I wasn\u2019t sure how I, as the curator and host of a reading series not plugged into the network where these incidents were taking place, was supposed to respond to them. Then someone at the meeting suggested that one measure groups like First Tuesdays could take was to\u00a0make public and explicit in a kind of vision statement our commitment to being safe and inclusive spaces so that the people who participate in our activities know what our values are and understand that they will be held accountable if they choose to violate them.<\/p>\n

That made a lot of sense to me.\u00a0Neither my predecessor at First Tuesdays nor I had given any\u00a0thought to how we might structure the series to address not merely issues of sexism and misogyny, but any form of oppressive or discriminatory or violent behavior *before* it happened. Since it seemed to me willfully naive to assume either that such things had not been happening all along or that they wouldn\u2019t happen in the future, preparing the groundwork for responding to them when they did was a good idea. The draft vision statement you\u2019ll read below is the result.<\/p>\n

Some Considerations<\/h2>\n

Rather than writing the statement as a response to a specific injustice or set of injustices, I have tried to make it an assertion of what I think is most valuable about us as a community. To do otherwise, I fear, would raise questions, at least amongst those of you who’ve been attending readings regularly, about whether or not I had knowledge of something specific that had happened either in the context of a First Tuesdays reading or of the Queens literary community in general. I have no such knowledge. I am open, however, to the possibility that this was not the most effective strategy. Indeed, I am open to the possibility that I need to chuck the entire statement and start again from scratch. As I said above, though, I am not open to suggestions that the statement, or some statement like it, is not necessary in the first place.<\/p>\n

I have sent the draft statement, with a cover letter, to the First Tuesdays mailing list asking them for comments. My plan, once there is a final draft, is to post it to the First Tuesdays website and Facebook page\u2014neither of which is fully set up yet, which is why the First Tuesdays<\/a> link takes you to the page on my personal website. Then, any First Tuesdays publicity that goes out will contain the first paragraph of the statement with a link back to the entire text. I also think it\u2019s a good idea to read it out loud at one or two readings per year.<\/p>\n

ETA in response to<\/strong>\u00a0Grace’s and Matthew’s comments\u00a0below: <\/strong>The paragraph in the vision statement about accessibility is the one that has given me the most trouble. It is clumsy and inadequate. I know this.\u00a0I want very much to acknowledge the limitations of the space at the cafe where\u00a0this reading series has been held for the last decade,\u00a0and I want to acknowledge as well that, were I\u00a0originating a reading series I would be sure to choose a venue where everyone had access; but I also want to acknowledge the fact that,\u00a0right now, I don’t see a viable option for changing the venue:<\/p>\n