Books by Kalamu ya Salaam

The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement  /   360: A Revolution of Black Poets

Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology  /  From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets

Our Music Is No Accident   /  What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self

My Story My Song (CD)

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Interview with Award Winning Neo-Griot

Kalamu ya Salaam

1

NOMMO Literary Society

Rudy:  Kalamu, I'd like to begin our talk with  a discussion of your work with the NOMMO Literary Society. How do you keep the Society together? How do you keep the poets coming, working seriously on their writing skills?

Kalamu: I don’t. Folk either want to come and do so or they don’t. What I do is be very consistent. Except when I am out of town, every Tuesday I am there. I have a magnificent library of both books and music as a reference to help writers develop. I also assist in pointing people toward publishing opportunities.

Rudy: In your direction of NOMMO, what approach do you use? I mean how do you get a young writer to reconsider their topics or techniques? Do you sometimes shoot from the hip and say that’s crap, that’s not fully baked, or say go back to the woodshed with that one?

Kalamu: My approach is to offer a wide array of examples and influences. As to how effective I am, I think some of the members can answer that far more accurately than I can. There is no formal membership. Folks come and go. It’s wide open.

Our three-part format is 1. collective study, 2. announcements (which we call housekeeping), and 3. reading of original work and receiving of feedback. Generally, I am responsible for selecting what will be the subject of the collective study. Whatever it is, we take turns reading aloud and then discuss what we have read. This way we ensure a minimum common level of information.

The pieces range from formal studies of writing to creative work to essays about various topics. Less than 25% of what we study is specifically black-oriented. Announcements usually take only a few minutes. Reading original work and receiving feedback varies based on what folk bring to the table. In general, we are brutal with ourselves in giving criticism to regular members and very, very considerate of new members. We generally have more prose writers than poets per se. I think that is because NOMMO emphasizes "writing" rather than "reciting." Performance is seldom the focus of any of what we do. As a result, the young poets who pass by from time to time don’t usually stay for any extended time.

As for telling folk what to do, or what to write, or how to write, I freely give comments, but I am not the only one and I am careful to make sure that the comments of others are valued. Plus, our associate workshop director, Paulette Richards, is a Ph.D. who teaches English and creative writing at Loyola University. Other dynamics of our workshop are covered in an introduction I have done for the next collection of workshop writings, "Speak the Truth to the People."

Rudy: Is your work with the Society related to your teaching radio production and digital video to high school students? Do you find recruits for the Society among these students?

Kalamu: So far, there has been no overlap between the students I teach at the high school level and the NOMMO workshop. I have been teaching in the "students at the center" program for four years now. It is a learning process for me, a major learning process. Learning to teach what I know. Teaching has forced me to conceptualize and organize my information so that I can share it. I do very little recruiting for NOMMO.

Actually, I am not trying to increase the size of the workshop. We have a steady, core group of five to six writers and that seems to work well in terms of development. And from year to year there is always a turnover. Some folk moving on, new folk joining. Oh, one other thing. There are a couple of folk I mentor long distance via the internet, telephone and occasional in-person get togethers. Those are exceptions. And I certainly don’t want to take on any more. But that is another aspect of what I do.

Rudy: I still do not have a clear picture of the writers who are members of NOMMO. I assume they are all black. When you took me to a poetry set one night in New Orleans, I assumed some of those young people were in your group. Were they? How would you characterize those who are in NOMMO? Who are some of the writers who are now in NOMMO, who have passed through NOMMO?

Kalamu: If I remember correctly, only one of the writers you heard that night was a NOMMO member. Yes, NOMMO is a workshop for Black writers. At least 75% of our writers are female, and the majority are in late twenties to mid-thirties. Our youngest member is Sukari Ua, she is a 16-year-old high school student. I am currently the oldest at 55. We have a couple of folk in their early 40s. Some of our writers are self-taught, as I am, and others are formally trained.

We don’t have any writers who have made a big splash nationally, although a number of our writers are included in recent anthologies such as Role Call, Step Into A World, the Def Poetry Jam anthology, and E. Ethelbert Miller’s new anthology Beyond the Frontier, as well as Afaa Weaver’s new anthology about African American families (due out in August 2002) [These Hands I Know]. Freddi Evans, one of our older members, both in terms of age and in terms of how long she has been in the workshop, recently published a children’s book [A Bus of Our Own] that won a major award. We plan to publish a second book by Freddi, the History of Congo Square.

Rudy: NOMMO is more than just a group of people. You have a place, a building in the middle of the community that is emblematic of a poetic, writing activity that goes on. Can NOMMO be duplicated in other cities? Does it need someone like Kalamu ya Salaam to make it work, long-lived? Do you think NOMMO will exist beyond you? Has NOMMO been duplicated in other cities?

Kalamu: Can NOMMO be duplicated as a writing workshop in general, yes; in particular the way we do it, probably not. Yes, our approach needs someone to take the responsibility of setting up a literary liberated zone, collecting and maintaining a library of books and music, and having the patience to work at the same project for five or ten years without getting tired. I have not even considered trying to duplicate NOMMO in another place. On the other hand, I hope that we can serve as an example to others and, in fact, be surpassed by what other folk are doing.    

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