Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (September 11, 2022)

Like every Sunday, this one is made of good poems by other people, and we will drink coffee. Today's session, however, is longer than most and dedicated to Sandy Williams, an advocate, leader, organizer, helper, daughter, mother, thinker, editor, friend, ally, mentor, helper, speaker, community radio programmer, and so much more to many of us in Spokane who knew her in a variety of ways and levels, and to everyone who didn't know her but whose lives have been definitely affected by her reach, dreams, intelligence, and work.

Poems read:

• These poems from The Black Poets, A New Anthology edited by Dudley Randall:
• Langston Hughes 
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers (To W.E.B. DuBois)
• Children’s Rhymes
• Words like Freedom
• James A. Randall, Jr.
• When Something Happens 
• Nikki Giovanni
• For Saundra
• Knoxville, Tennessee
• The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.
• "What it Feels Like to Exhale," editorial by Sandy Williams (from The Black Lens News, issue December 2017)
• Excerpts from part III of Citizen, An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Things Get Harder When It Rains by beyza ozer (from Halal if You Hear Me, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 3)
• These poems by William Evans from his book Still Can’t Do My Daughter’s Hair
• Gigi
• Even Though I Love You More Than Anything That Won’t Stop Them From Killing You
• I Turn The Volume Down Because Beyoncé Says Fuck While I Drive My Daughter to School
• These poems by AI from her book SIN
• More (for James Wright)
• The Man with The Saxophone
• These poems by Audre Lorde from The Selected Works of Audre Lorde:
• If You Come Softly
• Progress Report
• A Sewerplant Grows in Harlem Or I’m a Stranger Here Myself When Does The Next Swan Leave
• These poems by Jericho Brown from his book The Tradition:
• The Tradition
• Foreday in the Morning 
• Shovel
• dream where every black person is standing by the ocean by Danez Smith (from his book Don’t Call Us Dead)
• Mothering is Poetry by Nayyirah Waheed, written in commemoration of Afeni Shakur (selected by Sandy Williams for the Black Lens News, issue March 2019)