Local poets fall into distinct camps: Classical and contemporary

By TANYA PEREZ-BRENNAN
The Times-Union
Poetry.

Just this one word conjures images of books filled with the old verse of those poets we read in high school: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost. Poetry is metaphors, similies and images.

As poetry evolved, it brought us the more contemporary voices of Maya Angelou and Billy Collins.

But what about adding to the list names like Black Ice, Suhier Hammad or Mayda Del Valle?

These are the names of some of the cast members of the Broadway hit Def Poetry Jam, which came on the heels of the slam poetry movement emerging in the early 1990s. Russell Simmons, the producer behind Def Poetry Jam, took his successful HBO television series and turned it into the first show to bring hip-hop spoken word to Broadway.

Def Poetry Jam comes to the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts tonight, capping a month sprinkled with poetry events throughout the city. On March 18, Mayor John Peyton formally declared Jacksonville a National Poetry Month city. That has helped bring together a sometimes fragmented community of poets who range from spoken-word performers to more academically-inclined keepers of verse.

The First Coast Poets Society pushed for the idea of a poetry month and sponsored many of the events. Kay Day, local poet and society’s president, said the poetry scene in Jacksonville is primarily comprised of spoken-word poets, those poets associated with universities and those poets who don’t fall into any particular category.

“I try to maintain a foot in each world because I have the attitude that poetry is poetry; if it’s good, it’s good,” she said.

But many say there is a clear division between those who do the hip-hop infused spoken word and those who still take poetry to the page.

“Normally they can be pretty critical of each other,” Day said. “It’s like a dog scrapping over a piece of meat.”

And it is precisely the low place poetry holds on the literary hierarchy that has made it even more competitive and has contributed to the divisiveness.

“Historically, the stakes for poets have been so small; it’s always been a non-commercial art,” said William Slaughter, professor of English at the University of North Florida and editor of the online poetry magazine Mudlark. “The smaller the stakes are, the fiercer the politics and the more likely you’re going to get the divisions.”

By Tanya Perez-Brennan

The commercial success of Def Poetry Jam helped put performance poetry and slam competitions on the map, even though slams were around before the Def Poetry days. It opened a new world of opportunity for poets from diverse backgrounds who fused performance and words to draw different audiences.

Tai Gaines, who runs poetry slams at Boomtown Theatre in Springfield, said slams have brought poetry back to the community. The slams encourage audience participation, since the audience judges the work of the poets.

“I think so many poets get wrapped up in the 15-letter words they learned in graduate school,” Gaines said. “Now, it’s spoken in real-time, real-life English, and it’s just as articulate and intelligent, and the content is still deep.”

But not everyone is quick to label spoken word “true” poetry. There is a whole debate within poetry circles about what “real” poetry is and how spoken word fits into that debate.

“I love poetry in all forms,” said Lynn Skapyak Harlin, editor of Closet Books, a publisher of local poetry. “But I don’t like relying solely on the personality or the acting rather than the word. The poetry that I’ve experienced has been very loud and very little to be loud about.”

Many criticize how slams tend to emphasize the competition over words.

Al Letson, a local spoken-word poet who was on Simmons’ HBO Def Poetry Jam series two years ago, said it all depends on how you define competition in the poetry world.

“If you’re trying to get into a journal, you’re competing,” Letson said. “These academic poets compete every day, it’s just nice and it’s not called competition.”

But Letson says he understands that not just anybody can claim to be a poet, no matter how compelling their performance.

“The poems should be able to paint pictures,” he said. “Performance poetry should start off with the poem and not the performance.”

Tiffany Duhart, who runs the Soul Release hip-hop spoken-word events held twice a month at Boomtown, said the audience learns to weed out the good from the bad.

“We do have poets that just get up there and think they can say the F-word 50 times and that’s a poem,” she said. “The audience at poetry readings aren’t dumb by any means. The first time they’ll clap, but by the third time they won’t pay you any attention.”

Chicago poet Mayda Del Valle is in the current cast of Def Poetry Jam.

She said spoken word fills a special niche.

“I think the issue has to do with relevance and spoken-word poetry is really talking about issues that people can connect to,” she said over the phone from Los Angeles. “I think if you go to any open-mike or any slam, you’re going to be hearing marginalized voices. … It’s definitely a place for people to go and share an alternative world.”

Most of the local poets said that while a division does exist, having different kinds of poetry in Jacksonville adds legitimacy to the scene by providing several options for creative expression.

Mary Sue Koppel teaches poetry at Florida Community College at Jacksonville and is editor of Kalliope, a nationally-recognized journal of women’s art and literature.

“I’m for anything that brings people to love literature; I think the vicarious experience that can come from an excellent writer is something un- equaled,” she said.

Gaines said she joined forces with the First Coast Poets Society to promote the varied forms of poetry in the city. But there’s still a long way to go.

“There are so many poets that can bridge the gap, and it’s just a matter of us taking the time and getting together,” she said. “It’s just a matter of hearing each other out and realizing the value in both our worlds.”

But in the end, it’s all about the words and how they make you feel.

“To me, poetry is that which raises the hair in the nape of your neck,” Koppel said.

By Tim Gilmore
River City News correspondent

A young artist moving to Jacksonville now would find a much different place than Henry Peterson did when he moved to the city in 1976.

Peterson, visiting director of the University Gallery at the University of North Florida, has put together an art exhibit to document this cultural development.

Called “Street Scene: A Decade of New Painting in Jacksonville,” the exhibit will feature 11 artists whose work came to prominence in Jacksonville during the 1990s. An opening reception at the gallery will be from 5 to 7 p.m. tomorrow, and the exhibit runs through Feb. 20.

“It was much more difficult to be an artist in this town then,” said Peterson. “Now Jacksonville is more cosmopolitan, has a larger audience, and there are more people willing to give up the middle-class comforts to be an artist.”

While there are artists in all parts of Jacksonville, Peterson said it is important for a city to have places suitable for “art centers.” In the 1990s, Riverside, and in particular Five Points, became that type of art center.

It was there that Stephen Dare opened the Fusion Cafe in 1991, where the works of artists like Lee Harvey and Christian Pierre were shown. Later, Harvey opened his own gallery in Five Points, and artists Steve Williams and Jim Draper opened Pedestrian, A Gallery of Contemporary Art.

Dare said he once thought of the younger, less-conservative artists as troublemakers and whiners, but a street festival and art fair in Five Points in the early 1990s made him quickly reverse his opinion and take up their cause.

“I thought, surely, if their work was good enough, they would be in the galleries. Then there was this art fair and I walked out of my cafe into this explosion of color and talent, and everything in the streets was so much better than what was being shown in the galleries,” Dare said.

The result of these artists coming into their own against a conservative art establishment was that they became “a new establishment, but still with an underground mentality,” said Harvey.

One key to the growth of the art scene in Jacksonville, according to Peterson, is the presence of a number of people with their eyes on more than selling their own work.

“Several of these people have something more than their own artwork in mind. They can see the big picture,” Peterson said.

Part of the big picture was the opening of the Brooklyn Contemporary Art Center in 1999, a partnership of Williams, Draper, Mark Rinaman and Bryan Mickler. Artists Jerry Smith, Ryan Rummel, Kurt Polkey and Jonathan Lux all exhibited there and have work included in the “Street Scene” exhibit. (Other artists with work featured in the exhibit are Draper, Harvey, Pierre, Williams, Mark Creegan, Marsha Glaziere and Tony Rodrigues.)

When the center had to be demolished for road widening, Pedestrian reopened in Springfield. The Lee Harvey Gallery has also reopened in Springfield, next to Dare’s Boomtown Theatre, and other galleries have opened nearby.

Springfield’s success in becoming an art center only further proves that the Jacksonville art scene has truly developed.

“I think what’s happening in Springfield will be even bigger than what’s happened in Riverside, but what’s important is that the scene is now big enough for several different arts areas to exist,” Peterson said.

Williams said Springfield’s success is important, but there is a danger in neighborhood patriotism.

“Most of the artists who complain about Jacksonville as an art market are lazy and are sitting on a lot of old work, rather than continuing,” he said. “Jacksonville is Jacksonville, and it doesn’t matter so much what neighborhood you’re in. People ask me, ‘How are things over there in Springfield?’ and I want to say, ‘Where are you, Montana?’”

Mark Creegan is another of the artists featured in the exhibit. Creegan’s acyrlic, oil and linoleum on canvas is titled Brown Djembe.

In fact, Springfield and Riverside have much in common, Dare said.

“It’s really the same dynamic, and there are now more than 100 artists working together over here, and in fact, I think it’s even more inclusive racially and intergenerationally than Five Points,” he said.

The “Street Scene” exhibit is funded by UNF’s Student Government Association, Office of Academic Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays to Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Fridays.

1. Boomtown Theater

This 5,000 square-foot open performance space near Eighth and Main streets is scheduled to be used for a variety of entertainment, including spoken word, poetry readings, experimental theater, jazz and ballet.

On the calendar for the last week of April is “Blue Horse.”

“It will be a very versatile space,” said owner John Harrett. “It will be a medium for what you can’t see anywhere else. The City needed it. Jacksonville is limited to educational theater, a few coffeehouses and some open mikes sparsely scattered. People realize there is not much to do in this town for their art form so they leave.”

“We are hoping to form a nucleus for performers and writers in the area,” added his partner, Stephen Dare.

2. The Loft

Originally Dare’s residence, the tradition of eclectic productions will continue in his new home at Eighth and Hubbard streets. The large open area is conducive to small performances and three-dimensional art work and sculptures will be on display, too. It is located next to the 8th Street Art Gallery.

Both The Loft and Boomtown Theater are seeking original work to be performed in either space.

3. 8th Street Art Gallery

Owned by artist Ray Castro, the contemporary gallery will showcase local and non-local original art in its 1,200 square-foot space. Shows will feature a particular theme; others will be one-man shows. Castro envisions using the attached residential units to rent studio space to exhibiting artists.

“I have experience with lots of art galleries that go under because they base all their overhead on sales of art,” explained Castro of why he chooses to simultaneously operate a hotel.

“The concept is that when we have gallery openings, they [the artist-tenants] can have their studio doors open for people to view what they’re doing in their work space.”

4. Lee Harvey Gallery

Adjacent to Boomtown, the art gallery will showcase 2,000 square feet of his art and five other artists the gallery will be representing plus guest artists. The entire frontage of his business is lined with windows. Artist/owner Lee Harvey intends for them to be eye-catching by displaying controversial pieces.

5. Eden’s Performance Cafe

Formerly a seedy topless bar, this site at Seventh and Main streets is being renovated into a cabaret lounge. Live jazz, poetry, female and celebrity impersonators and two-person plays are what’s planned. Food, beer and wine will be served as well. Acting workshops will be held during daylight hours. It will provide a mixture of local and professional talent. Dressing rooms are planned to accommodate large shows and a wrought iron fence will box the entrance where a patio will be constructed.

“Variety is what will keep Springfield alive,” said proprietor Wade Davis. “We want it to be a place where you can have conversation and a great time. We want to target it to everyone.”

6. Artist loft

Across the street from Eden’s is Pateh’s Sandwich Shop. The bottom floor of the building will be remodeled to a Sicilian restaurant. Upstairs will house loft space for artists. The remainder of the block will be renovated as a pocket park. Trees and a mural, which will rotate every two months, will comprise the park.

7. Bookstore and Recording studio

Up the block from the Lee Harvey Gallery is Miami Fashion. The structure will be remodeled to tout books, music and comic books. The space above will be converted into a recording studio for music and spoken word demo tapes.

“It will be a place for musicians to jam and work on music together,” said Dare.

Both facilities are unnamed at this point. The partnership is still being negotiated.

8. Deco Theater

This weather-beaten red brick building next to the abandoned Episcopal Church just north of Eighth and Main streets will be completely revamped to host plays, dances and films. Craig Van Horn will operate the enterprise.

“This will be the first stadium theater for live action in the City,” remarked Dare. “They’re probably going to put a movie theater in there as well.”

9. The Main Street Gallery

Located at Ninth and Main streets across from Popeye’s, this art gallery will add to the new entertainment/arts district feel. Arts developer Paul Shockey will display all genres of paintings from artists based in Atlanta and Dallas.

10. Einstein’s Revenge

Next door, just south of the Main Street Gallery, will be a music club operated by Dare, Davis and Harrett. All new genres of live music will be featured: French kitsch, world beat, experimental music, Australian lounge, shansons [the French form of political songwriting] and ethnic pops.

“We’re going to feature the type of acts you never, ever see in Jacksonville,” said Dare. “Downtown needs to be paying attention to this. We don’t need gigantic buildings; we need small businesses open at night.”

By Ivette M. Yee
Times-Union staff writer

Don’t be fooled by the “shimmy poles” on stage at the new Eden Cafe and Cabaret in Springfield, those are just for fun. They are reminders of the different kind of performances that used to go on in the building, a former strip club.

After months of renovations, Eden Cafe and Cabaret owner Wade Davis hopes to revive 1950s-style cabaret in Jacksonville and offer contemporary entertainment in the historic district. A handful of other business owners, including local arts pioneer Stephen Dare, share that goal and plan to open art houses in Springfield.

Ten art houses are scheduled to open in Springfield over the next two years. What’s more, a growing number of artists and musicians are living and working there.

Springfield’s proximity to downtown and cheap real estate have lured hopefuls to the area. But it’s a new vision for the arts that keeps them there.

“There really isn’t a place in the city that has a local voice,” said Dare. “You can get all the Oklahoma you can stand over at the community theaters, all of the flamingo art and palm trees that you can deal with in the gallery scene, but there is no place for contemporary dance, cabaret and spoken word poetry. What we are trying to do is come up with a scene that is intellectually stimulating and has a space for dance and performance.”

Dare’s Boomtown Theatre, a comfy, frumpy couch-filled performance venue at 1714 N. Main St., will hold its grand opening at 8 p.m. Saturday with live music and spoken word poetry. Davis’ opening at Eden Cafe and Cabaret, 1648 N. Main St., is scheduled for the same night, at 10:30. Next month, Lee Harvey, a Jacksonville artist who once operated a gallery in Five Points, will open a gallery in the front of the Boomtown.

In addition, Springfield artists will showcase their works during the Springfield Preservation and Restoration Arts Committee’s home tour May 18 and 19. SPAR organizes arts events in Springfield regularly.

Business owners say Springfield’s new arts venues will contribute to Jacksonville’s downtown revitalization and perhaps create the arts hub that cultural patrons have dreamed of for years. They are certain that artists will be the springboard for these efforts and are glad that City Hall is taking notice by investing in Springfield’s infrastructure.

“Springfield is a different kind of neighborhood than it was three years ago. It just needs the support services and entertainment venues to support the people that are already there and those that are coming,” said developer Craig Van Horn, who has invested $2 million in renovations in Springfield since 1998. Former Dallas developer Paul Shockey is also spearheading residential development in the area.

Though Van Horn and Shockey have concentrated on residential development, they’re ready to jump headfirst into entertainment offerings. By next year, Van Horn should have the Art Deco Center Theatre, a 240-seat performing arts center at 1800 N. Main St., ready for opening.

Creative outlets like spoken word poetry and modern and alternative dance call for progressive audiences. Springfield’s art house owners are confident there will be a steady audience.

“People will see such a change in Springfield,” Davis, 29, said. “It will be the new place to go, the exciting place to be because you are going to see art forms that you never dreamed of in a hillbilly town. You won’t see anything like this in another part of town.”

Others say the new venues also will give artists a place to go.

“Within the arts community, especially over the last few years, you see a new desire among artists that want to express themselves creatively but don’t have a place to do that,” said Courtenay Bowser, a life-long Jacksonville resident involved in the city’s performing arts scene. “Especially young people in their 20s and 30s.”

Bowser said she supports the Springfield art scene because she thinks it will cater to different kinds of artists.

The city is also giving Springfield a vote of confidence by funding street renovations, lighting and landscaping,with the major work taking place where most of the art houses are. Some say it is another indication of a Cinderella-like makeover.

But it’s not completely there yet.

One clear obstacle to Springfield’s growth is its reputation as a rough area of town.

“I think it’s great that there’s a possibility that there will be new venues in Springfield, but I must admit that I still don’t feel safe there,” said Brandon Choy, 29, an arts patron from Jacksonville Beach. “They’ve done amazing things in that community, and I can only predict more progress. In two or three years, I may very well frequent the establishments there.”

Bowser said she would go to Springfield for entertainment, but only with a group of people.

People like Bowser and Choy are who the developers and art house owners hope to attract, a younger crowd that can appreciate performance art with an eclectic kind of feel. And Choy appreciates that they are trying to offer it.

“I absolutely think that there should be a wider variety of entertainment options in Jacksonville and the surrounding area. As a city, we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress … there’s room for more,” Choy said. “As the city gets more diverse, the need for different forms of entertainment increases. ”

The question becomes whether arts owners can afford to wait out a complete renovation, which is still a few years off.

Davis and Dare say yes. They say they are in it for the long haul.

“There really is no way to fail,” Harvey said. “This is our life. This comes from the fact that we want to be entertained. And everyone else is just as bored as we are, and they’re looking for us for entertainment.”

Adds Davis: “We are investing all of our time, our love, our energy into these venue, and I think it will be an extreme success. If it fails, we fail, and that’s not something we’re used to doing.”

By Charlie Patton
Times-Union staff writer

There’s a new effort underfoot to create an arts district in Jacksonville, not in Five Points or downtown, areas on which earlier discussions have centered, but in Springfield.

This effort has the backing of two significant non-artists, Rita Reagan, volunteer director of Springfield Preservation and Restoration (SPAR), and real estate investor Craig Van Horn.

Reagan has hired Stephen Dare as a programmer to place arts events and organizations in Springfield venues. And Van Horn is converting an old church fellowship hall on Main Street into a multi-use arts venue that will include a theater, artists’ lofts and an open-air exhibition space, he said.

He’s also leasing property he owns at the corner of Ninth and Silver streets to artists Ryan Rummel, Betsy Czigan and Lee Harvey, who will open a gallery there. Van Horn said he is offering the artists favorable terms because of his belief that Springfield is ready for a redevelopment that can be spearheaded by artists.

Reagan cited the same motive in explaining why SPAR is now pushing to attract artists and art groups to the neighborhood. “We want to create an identity for the community,” she said. “Arts create a buzz.”

Rummel is relocating for the second time in the past two years. He had studio space in the Brooklyn Contemporary Art Center, but left there after the state announced it would take that property to build an off-ramp for the new Fuller Warren Bridge.

He and Czigan then opened a gallery on Duval Street near Hemming Plaza, across from the block where the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art and the new downtown library will be located. But he is being uprooted again by plans to turn that block into a parking garage.

Dare, who once operated the Fusion Cafe in Five Points, is also being dislodged. He has been operating the Loft, a combination arts venue/apartment, from a space above the Czigan-Rummel Gallery, hosting poetry readings, art exhibits and regular cabaret performances. Now he plans to move all of these events to Springfield.

The first official event in this transfer of cultural programming to the Springfield neighborhood will be a screening of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which will be shown on the side of the SPAR headquarters building, inaugurating the Movies on Main Street series. Programmed by Tim and Tanya Massett, whose Subterranean Cinema series has been showing in San Marco, this movie series could eventually move inside Van Horn’s rehabilitated fellowship hall, which is being named The Deco. The Deco is on Main Street between Eighth and Ninth streets, next to the old Klutho apartments, which are being redeveloped by Fresh Ministries.

Other arts groups planning to move to Springfield include:

The Spoken Word Coalition, which will begin presenting poetry performances and readings at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum on Sept. 1.

Improv Jacksonville, an improvisational comedy group, which will begin presenting weekly shows at the Historic Springfield Woman’s Club building at Seventh and Silver streets on Sept. 15.

DCBrella, a group representing dancers, composer and choreographers, which will present Ghost Dance, a multimedia dance festival in Klutho Park on Oct. 27.

Dare’s own cabaret series, renamed Klutho’s Cabaret, which will replace Improv Jacksonville at the Springfield Woman’s Club building on Nov. 10.
The goal, Dare said, will be to “encourage emerging art” by making new artists aware of the opportunities Springfield presents for relatively low-cost housing, studio space and gallery space.

Van Horn, who grew up in Gainesville and currently lives in St. Augustine, was previously involved in inner city restoration projects in Atlanta, where he spent 10 years. Last year, he received an award from the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission for his rehabilitation of the 1800 block of Laura Street in Springfield.

Earlier this month, he said, he spent a day talking with an architect about what could be done with the old church fellowship hall. They speculated about how appropriate it would be as an arts venue, but he dismissed the idea since he didn’t know any artists, Van Horn said.

The next day, Reagan e-mailed him that she was hiring Dare and launching an effort to attract artists to the district. “The next day I met with about 30 artists,” Van Horn said. “It all kind of worked together.”

With The Springfield Gallery and The Deco, he said he hopes to draw the attention of artists willing to make Springfield their home. “Springfield is still relatively inexpensive compared to Riverside and San Marco,” he said. “It’s a good placed for artists who are not afraid to put in some sweat equity.”

Van Horn said he expects this to be the beginning of something important. “… I’m in it for the long haul. I want to build the community. Jacksonville needs an arts center. … This is Jacksonville’s chance to really concentrate that effort. The encouraging part about it is there’s just a lot of people coming together all at once.”

Harvey, who used to operate his own gallery in Five Points, said he was initially skeptical about going into business with Rummel and Czigan in Springfield. Then he attended a potluck supper sponsored by SPAR at which the artists interested in the area were greeted warmly.

“That’s the way it has to start,” he said. “The community has to back it. Where there is inexpensive real estate, that’s where the artists go. But what matters is that Springfield is supporting this. They see this as a cornerstone, see culture as the seed that makes the neighborhood grow

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My life has been an open book, and always will be.

We all have our ups and downs, and I don’t remember having pastored a church anywhere, but this type of stuff is why no one ever really likes to do things in the Jacksonville indie or alternative community.

Just spiteful mean little pettiness.

Luckily this type of stuff doesnt really bother me anymore, but says a whole lot more about the people who post it than the person its directed at.

Im proud of my work, and proud of my career and unashamed by any part of my life, and nothing will change that.

And I don’t ever stop working on my projects, never have and never will.

I suppose its important to point out that Im also a dirty little bisexual and overweight as well?

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