I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
ADRIAN MATEJKAIt was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.
More Adrian Matejka Quotes
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I learned a new language for it all in the 90s. Which in some ways isn’t bad.
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The 1990s were also when a bunch of the soft-shoe language for race, gender, and class became paramount.
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So while I loved not being hungry and having new gear, etc. I missed the sounds of my neighbors and the kind of generosity people who are struggling together often show.
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The contrasts between the haves and have-nots is so complicated.
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One of the hardest things for me to do is be fully open in a poem.
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I wanted to be like Kirk because he had magnetism and the ladies loved him.
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It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.
ADRIAN MATEJKA -
I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing.
ADRIAN MATEJKA -
You should check out William Shatner’s album The Transformed Man.
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Because before that I wasn’t thinking about systems or food insecurity or whatever.
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I was a poor, geeky black kid in Indianapolis. There is nothing mythological about that.
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By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.
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It was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.
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I was fortunate enough to get a job at my alma mater, which brought me back to Indiana after being gone for twenty years.
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That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems.
ADRIAN MATEJKA