@ UC Berkeley
After a decade of teaching at the university level and after a few years of joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, Professor June Jordan, one of the most published African American writers in history, founded, designed, cultivated and directed an academic course and artistic movement unprecedented on this, or arguably, any campus: Poetry for the People.
Professor Jordan wrote, however, that “I did not wake up one morning ablaze with a coherent vision of Poetry for the People! The natural intermingling of my ideas and my observations as an educator, a poet, and the African-American daughter of poorly documented immigrants did not lead me to any limiting ideological perspectives or resolve. Poetry for the People is the arduous and happy outcome of practical, day-by-day, classroom failure and success.”
With her arrival at UC Berkeley beginning with the teaching of courses in the African American Studies and Women’s Studies Departments in 1989, she soon undertook the presentation of African American Poetry and Contemporary Women’s Poetry. With both courses, she ensured that student writings occupied equal space and time, along with James Weldon Johnson or Adrienne Rich, for example. And after sensing something inert to their studies, she sought to publish the students’ poetry in their own anthologies and to distribute these books at public student readings organized and publicized with at least as much care and determination as might be given a campus appearance by a visiting “Hot Shot Poet.”
Eventually, given the diversity of students in her previous classes, and the campus as a whole, Professor Jordan decided to try and vault beyond the demarcations of Women’s Studies and African American Studies and, instead, offer something called “Poetry for the People.” She identified the need to revise and to devise reading lists and a method of handling diverse writings so as to identify, and embrace what was personally relevant to every young man and woman sitting in the classroom. So she raised funds from the African American Studies Department, the Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Department of English.
Her dream and vision was realized in 1991 when Professor Jordan officially established Poetry for the People. During its first semester, and every semester thereafter, the course attracted students from Freshmen to graduate students in their last year at Boalt Law School, men, women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, Arab Americans, Anglo Americans, gay, lesbian, straight, abled, disabled who could take this course in poetry without any prior writing experience.
June Jordan crafted Poetry for the People with three guiding principles in mind:
June’s vision for the reading and writing of poetry stands out from other university poetry courses. In an interview with the Daily Californian on November 19, 1998, Professor Jordan stated that the goal of Poetry for the People “is to make audible the inaudible, and visible the invisible.”
Then, after the huge success of the third semester of the program, a core of young poets wanted to make P4P a way of life. As a result, Professor Jordan decided to try and institute a course called “The Teaching and Writing of Poetry.” Interested students would work closely with her and then they, in turn, would become teachers of other students. This proved to be quite successful, and the practice continues today as undergraduates and graduate students facilitate groups, lecture on various topics, and assume various positions of leadership.
African American Studies 158A (fall) and 158B (spring) serve as this teaching practicum for STPs in the process of doing small work with the main introductory spring class, African American Studies 156AC, known as “The Big Class.” The students in these courses conduct extensive research into the poetic traditions under consideration for the Big Class. Each student is required to give an in-class presentation on an assigned poetic tradition and write an essay, in addition to an intensive examination of pedagogical issues. Much of the time in the spring is spent discussing teaching strategies, exploring solutions to pedagogical issues, and coordinating projects. The STPs also form and facilitate a poetry-writing group under the Director’s leadership and complete all the assignments the students in the general class are given, in addition to certain specific exercises in poetic craftsmanship. This group of STPs also provides personnel for the various outreach programs and is encouraged to perform at community events and readings in the Bay Area.
The success of P4P is evidenced by the dozens of poetry programs across the country that are led by former P4P students and whose designs are based on the program. In 1995, after Professor Jordan and several of her students published June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint through Routledge Press, hundreds of organizations throughout the country have adopted this blueprint not only as a reference but a guiding principle in their own poetry workshops and programs. The book tour to promote this unique and thoroughly singular publication brought her students to New York City and such institutions as Hunter College, NYU, Academy of American Poets, Pen American Center, Nuyorican Cafe, Barnard College, and the New School. Moreover, numerous former P4P students have been anthologized, published, and celebrated with prizes.
Thus, from its humble beginnings of around 15-20 students in 1991, to its current 132-person enrollment, the once-tenuous experiment of Poetry for the People has emerged an institution on the UC Berkeley campus that has engendered dialogue and created connections across every conceivable line. P4P has emerged a beloved community of young American women and men devising their individual trajectories into non-violent, but verifiable, power. P4P has emerged a democratic state in which differing peoples can trust the names they have invented for themselves and for each other.
Professor Jordan has said, “Poetry has been falsely viewed as a province for privileged folks and for the extremely gifted. [But] poetry derives from an oral tradition throughout the world. It comes from the people and needs to be given back to the people.”
Today, there is no doubt that June Jordan rescued poetry and has given it back to the people. Poetry for the People is a fully accredited, three course sequence of classes wherein students present their work in an on-campus public poetry reading every semester and self-produce and then publish a professional anthology of their poems. In keeping with the university’s goal of public education, Professor June Jordan expanded this program to Berkeley High School, Dublin Women’s Prison, Glide Memorial Church, Mission Cultural Center, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Professor Jordan steered all of these outreach programs while tirelessly championing poetry to reach everyone she could get a hold of.
Every poetry reading she helped organize was a standing room only affair — in mammoth campus spaces such as the Life Valley Science Building Lecture Halls, Lewis Hall, and Wheeler Auditorium. Over 22 anthologies have been published!
In 2001, Professor June Jordan went on leave while hoping to have P4P continue without her at the helm. Given the student demand for the course and the popularity of the program, the University sought to find someone to direct the program and asked June Jordan to nominate individuals. In keeping with her faith in her ability of students to teach other students, she nominated Junichi P. Semitsu to direct the program. In 2005, the African American Studies Department hired another P4P alum, Maiana Minahal, to continue June’s vision.
The Program has continued to bring countless “hot shot poets” to campus for readings to her students and the general public: Adrienne Rich, Ntozake Shange, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Joy Harjo, Sandra Cisneros, Juan Felipe Herrera, Bei Dao, Janice Mirikitani, Ruth Forman (a former P4P student), Marilyn Chin, Haas Mroue, Martin Espada, Cornelius Eady, Lorna Dee Cervantes, E. Ethelbert Miller, Sekou Sundiata, Kevin Young, Dennis Kim, Leroy Quintana, Li-Young Lee, Naomi Shihab Nye, Francisco Alarcon, Sara Miles, Donna Masini, Luis Rodriguez — to name a few.
The current ever-evolving syllabus continues to extend to new cultural areas for further, broadening research and eventual curricular inclusion. Designed to constitute a one-semester crash course of world literacy in poems, the syllabus typically focuses on three distinct American cultures, which often rotate year after year. Our Spring 2005 semester focused on the poetry of Arab and Arab Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and African Americans, and their intersecting trajectories in the United States.
Professor Jordan passed away in June 2002. Thanks to her vision and the sustained efforts of her students to continue her legacy, the African American Studies 156AC course remains strong and alive. Indeed, the class continues to build a legacy as one of the most visible, vibrant, and energetic communities on the Berkeley campus, in continuing Dr. Martin Luther King’s wish of a beloved community.