Cover to Cover, KPFA 94.1 fm, Friday, 3 pm
Tribute to Mary Rudge
Listen, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014 at 3pm when host-producers Jack Foley and Nina Serrano combine their KPFA-fm radio programs to honor the memory and poetry of poet laureate of Alameda Mary Rudge. Rudge passed peacefully in January of this year leaving behind a body of published and recorded poems. Poets Foley and Serrano are offering an exclusive KPFA multi-media package, consisting of a CD of her interviews and poems and a 28 minute DVD by Ben Goldstein ,”Jack London and the African-American Community: an interview with Mary Rudge.” It will be available only as thank you gifts to listeners who donate on October 1 to the KPFA upcoming fund drive. The graphic designer for the CD and DVD is Paul Veres.
Rudge is best known for her cultural activism, her sharp poetic insight and spiritual view. Her poetry is accessible, lyrical and passionate. As poet laureate of the City of Alameda she brought poetry into the forefront of a myriad of activities though out the San Francisco Bay Area and the world. She especially focused on encouraging young poets in the schools and in the movements for world peace. Mary Rudge was crowned in Italy as “Princess of Peace.”
BLESSING
by Mary Rudge
May every place you look
stones become bread
may mangos and papayas
and pineapples
fall into your hands
may you feed the hungry
and give them flowers
May swallows fly in the winds
of your passing
may monkeys dance
in the path before you
may children of all people
be your children
and all people be your family
may singing of small birds
in air surround you
may poems always be in your mailbox
coming in to praise you
going out to right wrongs
Remember you have the blessing
of all women before you
combing their hair by the lake
naming all beautiful things after
themselves
remember the women
who learned to walk on fire
lit your way
remember
the women who breathed fire
have blazed your path
remember
the women whose fire burned
pentcostal from forehead and brain
transformed your vision
remember your ancestress
the temple dancer
remember your ancestress
the Queen of the Euphrates
remember your ancestresses
Esther and Ruth
the mother who bore you
the woman you might have been
in another life
remember the women in chains and
whipscars,
with barbed wire wounds.
You are the one
whose sisters were buried alive
you are the one
whose sister drowned when
the river rose
whose sister died of famine
and drought
you are the one
who worked in the fields
of California
and slept by the roadsides
harassed in the marketplace
in a far country sent to Siberia
for speaking out,
locked up as insane
against your will
you are the woman imprisoned
in burnoose
with clitoris cut in ritual
whose husband was chosen for you
you are the woman burned
for your dowry
you are the woman whose feet
were broken and bound
who could not walk
You are the woman who
leaped over walls
who leaped into hearts
whose heart leaped forward
May others embrace and join you
May everywhere
you walk
stones become bread.
Published in “Beat, She Can’t Be Beat” by Mary Rudge
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