February-April 2011 - Dee Allen

Joshua Boylan, An Underground Mainstream Co-founder and featured poet in Out of Our Magazine, recently had the privilege of speaking with fellow poet and Sausalito, CA resident Dee Allen.

I first met Dee Allen at a poetry reading in Sausalito at The Taste of Rome (formerly Café Trieste). I became an instant admirer of his work when I heard him recite one of his most requested pieces entitled “Brick by Brick,” which is a poem regarding the oppressive state which led to the wrongful imprisonment of Mumia Abu Jamal and is also a cry for his release.

Can you take a moment to talk about your early life? What was your childhood like? When did you come to the bay area?

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Atlanta in November 2002, but ever since early childhood, I've always been in love with the written word. I did the creative writing thing as early as junior high school. My earliest attempts at such took the shape of science fiction short stories. My folks always said I had a great grasp of the English language compared to other children. During the end of my later childhood, shortly after graduating high school, I began writing song-lyrics and working with several Heavy Metal bands that never made it past the garage.
All those years of sitting in my room listening to un-popular music and reading the lyric-sheet to Dio/Metallica/Megadeth/Iron Maiden/Judas Priest/Kreator/Black Sabbath albums paid off. Those early song-lyrics were also, to an extent. politically-charged.
Blame it on growing up in the shadow of Reagan & Bush. Everyone across society's expansive board hated them. That and I listened to Hardcore Punk, too. Hardcore Punk opened me up to political beliefs I still hold today.

Because I consistently wrote song-lyrics, my three friends of mine talked me into writing love poetry for girls they were dating. My earliest attempts at poetry are vague. Opaque. Hard to figure out what I was trying to say on paper. I'm so glad I didn't save any of those!

By 1991, I morphed from Metalhead to Punk. Alongside song-lyrics, I also wrote poems. By mid-1992, I'd gotten better at writing poetry. By late 1992, I did my first nervous, knee-shaking public read at a house party, opening up for a hard-edged, female-led Alternative band called False Sacrament. To this day, I don't remember the name of the poem or how it went, but it was a political poem. One of my guitarist friends from back then talked me into doing that performance. At the end, folks cheered. My first Spoken Word performance ever…

I consistently kept up with the Spoken Word performances, at house parties, at the tavern's open mic night, coffee shops, nightclubs; usually opening up for a local or national touring band. At the same time, I was getting my so-called writing published in underground 'zines/newsletters/newspapers and a few hardbound anthologies by the National Library of Poetry [ R.I.P. ] & Sparrowgrass Forum [ same ]. This was how I spent most of the 1990s. Until the winter of 1998, when I became the victim of backstabbing, from my old entire underground scene. To recover and lick my wounds, I spent four miserable years by myself-----by choice. I stopped drinking, too.
Between 1998 and winter 2000, I still wrote and submitted writing, but I didn't do public performances anymore. Apathy and a heartfelt hatred for the human race followed.

Then I did the dumbest thing: After forcing out an abortive poem with a good starting line, I got pissed off and threw that poem out, along with six, 3-ring binders worth of writing in the trash. That one act led to years of writer's block.

Much of your work seems to draw heavily on social issues, such as poverty, homelessness, racism and the like, what would you say is your primary role as a poet/artist?

I see myself as a freedom fighter, philosopher, storyteller; and just another dude having a conversation with his readers/audience; in order for the public to support the idea of social insurrection [or to simply change their current individual living situation], culture is important in inspiring that.

You are [a] self pronounced Anarchist, can you speak a bit about the impact that has had on your development as a poet and what it means to your life?

As I stated earlier, Hardcore Punk opened me up to those political beliefs. It took reading books from the usual suspects to expand my knowledge on what Luigi Galleani called "the ideal" further. Pyotr Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Nestor Makhno, Noam Chomsky, Buenoventura Durruti, Colin Ward, Crimethinc and so forth. Even the song-lyrics of 1980s English Punk bands like the Subhumans, Crass, Conflict, Antisect and Amebix helped to teach me about the true pathologically-destructive, controlling nature of Capitalism, government, organized religion and their appendages - White supremacy, male supremacy and human dominion.

It means a great deal to me to help lay down the groundwork for a more free society, one that I won't see in my lifetime: A stateless, classless society based on voluntary cooperation, mutual aid and respect for the lives & autonomy of all life. Animals, environment, humans, all races, sexes & sexualities. The total polar opposite to what already exists under Capitalism and Socialism. It sounds pie-in-the-sky, I know. But that's the motivation behind all that I write and do. Except for that funky four-year period between last century and this one, "the ideal" has been a huge part of my life. I'd like to help others at the bottom get there as well. That requires building for the future in the present.

Who would you cite as primary influences on your work?

Not who but what-----The Totality. As in: The Totality of life under Capitalist class society continues to inspire and influence.

Who are your favorite poets?

Etheridge Knight, Haki R. Madhubuti, Amiri Baraka [ despite his obvious Obama worship ], Sunni Patterson [ MLK's oratory successor, listen to her Spoken Word performances sometime & you'll see what I mean by this ], Queennandi Xsheba, Muteado Silencio, e.g. bailey [who did a live cover of my poem "Face Down" at a indoor Minneapolis police brutality event in 2009], Dr. Sonia Sanchez, Arthur Sheridan, Mark Kockinos, Diamond Dave Whitaker, Claude McKay, Robert Hayden,
Melvin B. Tolson [teacher of the Great Debaters], the late Lucille Clifton, the  late great Langston Hughes, Gil-Scot Heron, The Last Poets [precursor to all Rap groups past & present], Jehanah Wedgwood [rest in peace] and Jack Hirschman [despite his political affiliation-of-choice].

How would you describe your style? Did it develop formally or informally?

I’d describe it as informal and sometimes formal. From first glance at my writing on paper, fluctuating between blank verse and free verse, with occasional forays into formal verse structures such as haiku, tanka and mostly lyric-verse. From my earliest song-lyrics onward, my writing developed informally. My poems and song-lyrics are basically conversations with the reader/listener on pressing social issues of the day. Sometimes, they're character studies, sometimes lessons. However it comes out on paper or on the mic, it's a conversation.

Do you have any personal favorite pieces of your own work?

"Face Down" was among one of my favorite poems to write and perform. I felt that one needed to come out of me and be released publicly, primarily because if I was on B.A.R.T. on New Year's morning 2009, what happened to Oscar Grant III could've happened to me. Shot dead by subway cops. Unprovoked.

Other personal favorites of my own written work include"Shelter", "Kingdom Of Ash", "Sacrificial Lamb", "Anxious" [something a little personal, erotic], "Warning Signs",
"Frontline Hero", "Fragment 2007", "For Oberc" [something philosophical], "Without Teeth" [I'd like to see that one published/posted somewhere someday], "Strength" [both versions], "Pledge" [another personal one], "Unwritten Law" and "Invertebrate".

Where is your favorite place to perform? Can you talk about some of the more memorable readings/events of which you have been a part?

I can’t say I have a current favorite venue. The last couple of times, I've featured at S.F.'s Sacred Grounds Coffeeshop. Then there was the very first Revolutionary Poets Brigade book release event at S.F.'s Kaleidoscope in November 2010. I was also the very first act on stage at Mumia Abu-Jamal's birthday/book release event for "Jailhouse Lawyers" at Oakland's Humanist Hall in April 2009 [we rocked the house out the gate!]; or performing dead last before a packed house at City Lights Bookstore for Laborfest 2009. Those are examples of some memorable gigs-----for me.

What does poetry mean to you? Do you think it’s more or less of a force in the world than 100 years ago?

It depends. Depends on who has the ear & the patience to listen/read poetry or not. Currently, poetry is deemed as unmarketable. A literary form that no one can make money off of or a literary form that only has relevance in a high school or college English class - it’s seen as a type of literature whose books don't sell well to mainstream programmed audiences too inundated by moronic reality television programs. Unless it's served to them in a sound-bite of thirty seconds or less, mainstream U.S.A. will not give the time of day to poetry.  But I'm not in this to make money or become the next Oprah Winfrey Book Club favorite.

Poetry, unfortunately, is less of a force in the world now than a century ago. But in the right hands, it can be and should be liberated completely from high school/college classrooms. I'd like to see poetry return to where it began from: The street.

Talk briefly about “street poets” and their influence on society.

Street poets should be listened to, because they have more to say than what corporate-owned television news programs are offering the public; because reciting about sunsets, house wren birds & oak trees isn't interesting enough to be considered
poetry, by modern standards, because street poets talk about shit as real as the nose on your face. The public passes undiscovered talent each day on their way from work. Poets whose work should be noticed, posted, published, shattering everyone's pre-conceived notion of what poetry is. If you really think about, even Rap lyrics, without the music or the slick production, is a form of street-level poetry [though some approaches to Rap are worse than others].

What do you hope to accomplish with your body of work?

Put out as many books and do as many Spoken Word performances as I possibly can. And be remembered for it. Until folks get sick of me. If what I've written/recited reaches one person and they get it, then I've done my job.

ॐ An Underground mainstream ॐ

Dee Allen is a poet and activist living in San Francisco, CA.