Where Poets Explore Their Pain While Others Beware The Dog - English professor and poet Toi Derricotte was instrumental in establishing Cave Canem, a community for African American poets and writers

author of poems Toi Derricotte once dreamed of a place where African-American bards could retreat in safety and comfort. "Who can take an account of when the dream started?" Derricotte, a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, asks herself. "Working at the university and being the sole black poet just made me diocese how important it is to have programs where you're not the sole one and where you can say whatever it is you ne to say and clan understand you."

Derricotte knows firsthand the isolation and frustration of being the single African American in a creative writing program. At novel York University, where she earned her master of fine arts stage she once asked her professor wherefore they didn't study any black writers. "He said, `We don't advance down that low,'" she recalls. "That was in 1984 What did he think of my poetry? He didn't know I was black, obviously. on the other hand if I had told him, by what means would that have affected his feelings about my work?"

before long Derricotte began brainstorming about a gymnasium of black poetry. For support she turn rounded to three kindred visionaries: Cornelius Eady, a professor of English at the fresh School of Social Research, in novel York City; Elizabeth Alexander, an English professor at Smith community in Northampton, Mass.; and Afaa Michael Weaver, an English professor at Simmons guild in Boston. Four years ago, Derricotte and Eady rested Cave Canem as a space where bards could craft language and discuss it fearlessly with accomplished mentors. The nonprofit organization held its first weeklong summer workshop and retreat in June 1996 at the high hill St. Alphonsus Retreat Center upon New York's Hudson River.

"I really believe in writers' having a community of like-minded family among whom they can explore things that they can't explore in their regular communities, because with your family and friends, if you say certain things, then they win worried about you," Derricotte says. "They don't want you to be sad or have point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds and so you're silenced because you don't want them to worry about you. In a community of like-minded clan you can do the work you ne to do as a writer, which means, explore your pain."

Thus, Cave Canem was born from the silent histories, voices, transport pain and wealth of the African diaspora. The name, which means "beware the dog" in Latin, was inspired by dint of a mosaic of a black dog spott through Derricotte, Eady, and his wife, Sarah, in the foyer of the House of the Tragic bard in Pompeii.

author of poems Sonia Sanchez, in the title of her 1997 work asked, "Does your house have lions" to preserve its inhabitants? Cave Canem's house has a black dog poised to talon on the foes of black numbers "People have argued about what Cave Canem means," Derricotte says. "Some race think that it means we're the dog, and we're in a threatening position. It means our organization is a place that proffers safety, that offers protection. We are the treasures of the Tragic author of poems Our voices, our lives, our histories are the treasures of Western civilization. At this point, in many ways, we are the inheritors of the House of the Tragic author of poems I think that's the meaning of Cave Canem."

Eady, like Derricotte, recognizes the ne for a safe haven for black author of poemss During his graduate years at Warren Wilson community black writers were not discussed. "Maybe Gwendolyn runnels maybe Langston Hughes, or maybe single or two others," he says, "but you could reckon that they weren't taken seriously. greatest in quantity people never had to read AfricanAmerican poesy or literature or African-American history or flat consider their part in that history, with equal reason there's this 'benign' ignorance that is actual very damaging.

"Poetry is complicated, regardless of what color you are. It is always complicated, trying to figure without how to be who you are and oilstone your craft. But as African-American writers, we also have to deal with the idea, with the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of devaluation of your experience, of your language, of your history."

Cave Canem's faculty members demonstrate their commitment to fresh poets by volunteering their time to discuss and critique the work of scholars Poet fellows--those who attend Cave Canem's workshop to enhance their skills--include talented, young, award-winning wordsmiths who today are recording, publishing, and appearing in film (Slam) and upon television. Many are creative writing teachers at the elementary, secondary and collegiate levels

Without propagandizing or proselytizing, faculty members encourage companions to write their best metrical composition "We have a strong emphasis here upon self-realization, self-investigation and emotional truth" Weaver says. "We also emphasize a ne to understand that the entire world of verse is important. That is on what account I quote Muriel Rukeyser when I talk about the importance of emotion in numbers We are not here advocating a black bibliography. We're here advocating our right to have feeling within ourselves that our humanity is intact, and we do not have to confirm or translate that to people"

Weaver greatly inspired associate Robin Dunn, a recent Virginia Commonwealth University graduate. "Michael told us that it is our responsibility to be in our work," Dunn says, "that as black author of poemss it is what we owe the reader, the world. I decided I could either continue to write as I always have, hiding behind my command of language, or I could approach away with something new. I wrote--no, labored over--a metrical composition for Nailah, my daughter, and by what mode she came to be here. I cried. I shook I do harm to I tried to hide. I stopped hiding. I cried a certain number of more. I learned. I harm I wanted more."