In this 1995 interview culled from BOMB Magazine’s digital archives, poet June Jordan talks about race in Los Angeles, crime television and how she ended up making an opera. HT to The Root.com.
BOMB THE ROOT: The June Jordan Interview
by John Kun
“I still do not recognize a necessary conflict between the sonnet and the bow and arrow,” wrote June Jordan in 1986, “I do not accept that immersion into our collective quest for things beautiful will cripple our own ability to honor the right of all human beings to survive.” Through a dazzling range of poems, essays, articles, lectures, speeches, and reviews, June Jordan stands at the interstice of beauty and politics. Her work demonstrates a rare and unceasing commitment to the realization of social justice, political equality, and to the unseen possibilities of true human coalitions across race, sex, and class.
Currently a professor of African American studies at The University of California at Berkeley and a regular columnist for The Progressive, Jordan is the award-winning author of 21 books, including 1992’s collection of essays Technical Difficulties (Vintage) and the recently published book of poems Haruko Love Poems (Serpent’s Tail/High Risk). Poetry for the People, a book project with her students, will be published by Routledge this fall. Always urgent, inspiring, and demanding, Jordan’s work has left its indelible mark everywhere from Essence to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and from theater stages to the floors of the United Nations and the United States Congress. But sitting in her light-filled living room in Berkeley, Jordan was most eager to discuss her libretto for I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (Scribner’s), an experimental contemporary opera created in collaboration with composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars. Featuring sets painted by California graffiti artists and music by a jazz, funk, and rock fusion ensemble, the story in songs of this “earthquake-romance” centers on the young lives of men and women in Los Angeles struggling to find and articulate love in the midst of moral and physical devastation, tragedy, and upheaval. Like all of her work, the opera strives to bear witness to the human ability to survive nightmares of injustice and embrace visions of a more hopeful future.
by John Kun
“I still do not recognize a necessary conflict between the sonnet and the bow and arrow,” wrote June Jordan in 1986, “I do not accept that immersion into our collective quest for things beautiful will cripple our own ability to honor the right of all human beings to survive.” Through a dazzling range of poems, essays, articles, lectures, speeches, and reviews, June Jordan stands at the interstice of beauty and politics. Her work demonstrates a rare and unceasing commitment to the realization of social justice, political equality, and to the unseen possibilities of true human coalitions across race, sex, and class.
Currently a professor of African American studies at The University of California at Berkeley and a regular columnist for The Progressive, Jordan is the award-winning author of 21 books, including 1992’s collection of essays Technical Difficulties (Vintage) and the recently published book of poems Haruko Love Poems (Serpent’s Tail/High Risk). Poetry for the People, a book project with her students, will be published by Routledge this fall. Always urgent, inspiring, and demanding, Jordan’s work has left its indelible mark everywhere from Essence to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and from theater stages to the floors of the United Nations and the United States Congress. But sitting in her light-filled living room in Berkeley, Jordan was most eager to discuss her libretto for I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (Scribner’s), an experimental contemporary opera created in collaboration with composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars. Featuring sets painted by California graffiti artists and music by a jazz, funk, and rock fusion ensemble, the story in songs of this “earthquake-romance” centers on the young lives of men and women in Los Angeles struggling to find and articulate love in the midst of moral and physical devastation, tragedy, and upheaval. Like all of her work, the opera strives to bear witness to the human ability to survive nightmares of injustice and embrace visions of a more hopeful future.
Read the Full Interview @ BOMB
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