Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. If you commuted through Newark this morning, did you fight the urge to start rhyming? I wouldn't be surprised if you had to, since downtown Newark is the venue now for the country's largest poetry festival. Did you know that? With events free and ticketed, in-person and virtual, through tomorrow. This marks the 20th iteration of the festival, with an expanded program that's been active in the community all year.

To tell us more about the mission of the festival and some of the events to catch and to talk a little bit about poetry itself, I'm joined by two guests, David Rodriguez, NJPAC's executive vice president and executive producer; and Caridad De La Luz, known as La Bruja-- We don't have La Bruja yet? Okay. Known as La Bruja, an Emmy-winning spoken word poet, activist, actor, and executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, as some of you know, who, by the way, was named a Bronx living legend as well by the Bronx Music Heritage Center.

Dave Rodriguez, welcome to WNYC.

David Rodriguez: Thanks for having me, Brian. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: I see we'll have La Bruja on the line in just a second. Dave, you want to start by just talking a little bit about the scope of the festival this year and what's left for later today and tomorrow?

David Rodriguez: Sure. It's the 20th anniversary of the festival, which means it happens every other year. This is 40 years, and it certainly has spent almost the last 20 here at New Jersey Performing Arts Center here in Newark. As I said, it's the largest in the country, and it's a poetry festival for everybody.

I think particularly this year, it's a little different than what it has been in the past because we're really focusing on issues of diversity, issues of social justice, and I think we're also expanding the definition of poetry from what has been in the past. You'll be able to come here and hear amazing poets read from books and all of that type of thing, but you'll be able to see Nikki Giovanni work with Christian McBride and Javon Jackson, different jazz artists. You'll be able to see hip hop artists work with poets. You'll hear Joan Baez talk about lyrics from the '60s and how they relate to social justice.

Basically, the hope is this is a festival that you don't need a sommelier. You can come in with whatever's in your pocket, whatever's in your mind, whatever's in your bag, and you're welcome. This year also, we cut our festival passes in half so that whoever you are, there's a space for you here at the festival.

Brian Lehrer: Newark's Mayor, Ras Baraka, will be performing in the program, I see. The festival predates his becoming mayor, but it can't hurt when the mayor is a poet and the son of a very famous poet, of course, Amiri Baraka. Mayor has performance chops?

David Rodriguez: He does. I think his father and his mother were poets. Amiri was a dear, dear friend. I used to work a lot with Max Roach, and that was one of his favorite people. We just actually did, through Dodge Poetry, a performance of Max's Freedom Now Suite, which included Sonia Sanchez and Ravi Coltrane, a number of other people, Cassandra Wilson, that premiered here. Then actually last weekend, I was at the Kennedy Center where it opened up their jazz season.

What's happening at the festival is really resonating beyond Newark and across the country, so we're really excited about that. The Mayor will be part of tomorrow night's hip hop and poetry program, and he's electric. I mean, the guy is on it, no doubt.

Brian Lehrer: I think during lockdown, at the beginning of COVID, I never saw one, but didn't he end his press conferences with a poem each day?

David Rodriguez: Absolutely. I think we as an institution at this point, are doing the same. I think most of our meetings start with a poem. I think that's a way to start the day, opening up your mind a little bit. It's also a path to empathy, particularly when you're listening to the words of other people speaking from their shoes instead of your own. I think poetry and spoken word is a real healthy thing, whether you're a politician or an art center.

Brian Lehrer: Dave Rodriguez, NJPAC's executive vice president and executive producer, talking about their poetry festival, the Newark Poetry Festival, which continues through tomorrow. Now we do also have La Bruja, Emmy-winning spoken word poet, activist, actor, and executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and a Bronx living legend, officially, as named by the Bronx Music Heritage Center.

Hi, La Bruja.

La Bruja: Hi. Wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to talk about why poetry-- As an activist, what does poetry get to that other ways of addressing issues maybe can't?

La Bruja: I think poetry gives the words sometimes to what it is that people are going through. We all may feel something, but we don't find the words for it, but poets are tapped into the pulse of humanity. Poets are able to articulate the pain, the injustice in such a way that makes it easier for other people to express it as well. It gives words to what we're experiencing and to what we want for change.

Brian Lehrer: That's a good way to put it. I see you're involved in a few of the events, including one that gets underway a little after our show, around 40 minutes after noon. Describe some of what you'll be doing.

La Bruja: Oh, so today at 12:40- from 12:40 to 1:50 in the Prudential Hall, I'm going to be alongside dear friends in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe community: Paul con Queso LaTorre, legendary Nancy Mercado, who's from the original generation, and Emanuel Xavier. We are going to be talking about the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. On Halloween, we celebrate our 51st anniversary. This whole year we've been celebrating our 50th year, and we're going to be talking about that legacy in the East Village of the Lower East Side, aka Loisaida. That's the Nuyorican way of saying Lower East Side is Loisaida. We'll be sharing poetry, storytelling, and discussing that history that is just so meaningful to all of us.

Brian Lehrer: On the history; was Halloween night, the opening night for the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, on purpose, having something to do with Halloween, if you know?

La Bruja: I really don't know, but Halloween, me personally, has such significance. My parents were married on Halloween. I almost treat it like my birthday. When I found out that the Nuyorican Poets Cafe anniversary was on Halloween, I knew it was kismet. Total alignment. It's a spiritual day. It's the un-holiday of holidays, and so it makes a lot of sense that they would have opened on Halloween night, 1973.

Brian Lehrer: I see you are prepared to honor us with a short poem. What you got?

La Bruja: Oh, okay. This is brand new. I haven't been writing because I've been working so hard with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe renovation. We're calling it Nuyorican construction. Just the other night, I had that inspiration at 3:00 in the morning, and this is what I wrote. It's called Brute Force.

[Brute Force]

Hatred planted a seed whose branches bleed from the heart of the leaves that hang from the trees

Strange fruit pitted against the land and the free

Bastard child. Call it patriarchy, whose mother is dead, whose father is deadbeat, that looks in the mirror and hates what it sees

It just isn't pretty like empathy seems, so it strangles innocence till no one could breathe

It only knew greed

Natural born killer that was happy to grieve

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Harsh.

La Bruja: [laughs] Harsh. We're living in harsh times.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Dave Rodriguez, NJPAC's executive vice president and executive producer, had you heard that poem before? La Bruja said it's brand new. What were you thinking as you listened to it?

David Rodriguez: I guess I was just thinking of how fortunate we are at the festival and at NJPAC to have people like La Bruja here and to have those points of view. When you get brilliant people together on one stage as a producer, brilliant things happen. Tomorrow night we're going to get a chance to see her with Mahogany Browne, with the Mayor, with Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, and MC Lyte. You create a stage with brilliance and brilliant things happen. Sometimes when I just hear things like that, I just think about how fortunate we are to live on the planet at the same time, and how fortunate I am to share a stage with people like that.

Brian Lehrer: Dave, I see, and I mentioned it in the intro, that the festival has a new mission as of this year, not just this weekend of poetry, but a year-round program for the community. You want to talk about that?

David Rodriguez: Sure. We're going into community centers, the public schools, so on and so forth, every week doing poetry workshops, giving people a forum to share their words. We're also doing larger events, like the Freedom Now Suite that I had mentioned. We did a tribute to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe over the summer. We just had Meshell Ndegeocello do a tribute to James Baldwin at 100 last week. We're actually just about to announce a program with Malala.

A lot of our programs are dealing also with the changing politics that we're dealing with right now. It's been a long time since we've banned books and truly assaulted people for their words, people like Malala, people like Salman Rushdie, so on and so forth. How do you operate as a creative in that kind of an environment? I think that part of the programs-- actually, all of yesterday was dedicated to programs about how do you function as a poet, whether it be from a business point of view, whether it be from a creative point of view. There was one about poetry in the middle ages, so many people are becoming poets after their 50s. How do you make that turn? How do you create that balance? It's an exciting time, and it's a time worthy of that kind of dialogue.

The other really cool thing coming up is tomorrow we're going to do a free festival in Military Park, which is right across the street from NJPAC. There will be poets all day on stage, drum circles, face painters, acrobats, about 25 different community groups gathered, from poets signing their books to the giveaway of free books; something for everyone, and it's all free. Yes, it's an exciting time this week in NJPAC.

Brian Lehrer: From poetry of the Middle Ages to poetry of middle age, sounds like the [crosstalk]--

David Rodriguez: Exactly.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: La Bruja, speaking of young people and poetry, I wonder if you think Amanda Gorman has played any role in drawing attention to that potential. With the poem that she recited at the Biden inauguration and then just this summer at the DNC, she's gotten so much notoriety, more than most poets.

La Bruja: I think she inspired the younger generation to see the importance of poetry, which was-- We felt it at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, this whole influx of just passion from the younger students wanting to-- and even seeing poetry and writing as a career. When I was growing up, that wasn't really even a possibility. In my family, they were like, "When are you going to get a real job?" [chuckles] I think Amanda Gorman has solidified it for the contemporary generation to really get to writing and see the importance of their voice, and connecting it as well to politics and to current events and all the things that affect us as a community and as a society. I met Amanda Gorman before she gave her amazing speech. She actually shared that she used to have a speech impediment, and look how far she's come, using poetry to change that and becoming a voice of our nation.

Brian Lehrer: Dave, you want to tell people, in our last minute here, anything more about the events that remain in the Dodge Poetry Festival underway now in downtown Newark? I know you can get tickets at njpac.org. This goes through tomorrow. You want to get any more specific than that?

David Rodriguez: Sure. Once again, it's njpac.org, N-J-P-A-C.org. There are festival passes for discussions all day. You can find out what's happening on the website. There are programs like the hip hop and poetry program tomorrow night. We actually are going to have the Slam team from Nuyorican Poets on our stage tonight at about six o'clock, which will be very, very cool. We have Joan Baez at seven o'clock tomorrow night in discussion with Christian McBride, and we have Nikki Giovanni at two o'clock in our Victoria Theater. There literally is something for everyone and a way for you to share your point of view. We hope you'll be part of this weekend, and we hope people will come to NJPAC for our poetry events and other programs throughout the year. It's a special place.

Brian Lehrer: Dave and La Bruja, thanks a lot. Thanks for taking time out from this to join us for a few. Thanks.

David Rodriguez: Thank you.

La Bruja: Pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Our interns this term are Andrés Pacheco-Girón and Olivia Green. Stay tuned for All Of It, and have a great weekend.

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