Interview with Dr. Joanne Gabbin, History 150 Spring 2020, Conducted by Veronica Dance, March 24, 2020.

Biography:

Dr. Joanne Gabbin a professor here at JMU in the English department and the founder of the Furious Flower program, the first African American poetry center. Joanne Gabbin grew up in Baltimore and got her BA degree in English at Morgan State College in 1967. She then got her masters and Ph.D from University of Chicago. She then traveled and worked at many universities before settling at JMU in 1987. She formed the Wintergreen Women Writers’ Collective group and the JMU honors program during the late 80s. She then organized the first conference on African American poetry, Furious Flower, which later became a poetry center her at JMU. Her Furious Flower program is longest running African American Poetry Center in the Country. She has also published a couple of books over the years.

Background information:

Dr. Joanne Gabbin grew up during the Civil Rights Era and when women were starting to enter the work force. During the Civil Rights Era and still to this day, African Americans still fight to have a voice here in the United States due to racial oppression and social and economic inequalities. The creation of the Furious Flower program gives African Americans a voice and a platform to showcase their works and talents.

Sources:

“Joanne V. Gabbin’s Biography.” The HistoryMakers, www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/joanne-v-gabbin.

Gillisjc. “Dr. Joanne Gabbin: Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center.” James Madison University, www.jmu.edu/furiousflower/fightandfiddle/staff/gabbin-joanne.shtml.

“About the Founder.” Furious Flower Archive, furiousflower.org/about-the-founder/.

Transcript:

Veronica Dance 0:00
Um, so it’s this it’s a history class. And like, it’s about social change.

Dr. Gabbin 0:07
Okay

Veronica Dance 0:08
And we’re interviewing like people we know that have like, lived through social change made like aspects. So I was just questions about like, Furious Flower and like The Wintergreen Woman’s Writers a little bit.

Dr. Gabbin 0:21
Okay. Okay. Great. I’d love that.

Veronica Dance 0:25
Um, do you mind if the record like the conversation is recorded?

Dr. Gabbin 0:29
No, not at all.

Veronica Dance 0:30
Okay. So to start, what inspired you to make the furious flower poetry center?

Dr. Gabbin 0:39
It started as a reading that I was putting together for Gwendolyn Brooks [1917-2000] the renowned poet from Illinois, who was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize, and she received that prize in 1950. And I met her in 1969 in Chicago, and I became friendly with her and in a sense, was just really excited to be a part of the movement that was happening in Chicago with the Black Arts Movement that had really started in New York with Amiri Baraka [1934-2014].

So I was so much a part of that because I was teaching later on at Roosevelt University and discovered that when older books had been considered there to be a teacher in creative writing, and I was so surprised when one of my colleagues told me that she was turned down there, because she didn’t have the normal credentials that they expected. And I thought how foolish these people were to turn down a woman who 20 years before, had made history by being the first person of color to receive a Pulitzer Prize. So, I made up in my mind at that point that every time I would go to a different school that I’d be blessed to teach at a school, I would invite her to that particular university.

And so as it happened, I taught at Chicago State University, and I brought her there I taught at Lincoln University, and I brought her there and then at Chicago at James Madison University, in 1986. I brought her for the first time to speak at James Madison University. So in 1993, I took my students to hear her read her poetry. Piedmont Community College which is close to Charlottesville, in fact, you pass it as you go home. And my students were just so blown away by how gracious she was and what a genius poet she she was.

And so they asked me could I invite her to come back to James Madison University. And so I did the next day I called her hotel. And I asked her if she would come to James Madison University that year, because my students were just so excited to meet her. And she said she wouldn’t come in 1993. But if I wanted her to, she’d come back in 1994. And so what began as reading her coming back to read to my students ended up growing into what became the Furious Flower poetry conference.

And so that’s how it all started. I know that’s a long answer to that question. But you have to sort of see the trajectory from a friendship to a kind of mentor ship that she gave me to my wanting my students who were celluloid film or my mentees to meet her and, and that’s how it all started. And now, I really didn’t expect, Veronica, that it would turn into a center. And but as the years continued, and the first conference was so phenomenal, such a groundbreaking and historic occasion that people heard about it, and wanted to have the second one and I thought after five years, it would be a possibility that I could do it again but I asked my friend so you Sanchez, if she thought I could do it after five years and she said, “That was such an all encompassing decades-defining conference that you need to wait a while.”

And so. So I waited another five years and in 2004 had the second serious flower conference. And after that, then President Linwood rose asked me if I wanted to have a center poetry Center at JMU. And I, of course said yes, at that particular time, as you probably know, I was director of the honors program. And so by taking on the directorship of the furious poetry center, I had to give up the Honors Program which I had developed for the past 19 years. So that’s how that all happened. And so we set a pattern 1994, 2004 so the next conference didn’t happen until 2014. And by that time, the center was already, you know, nine years old. And so you were fortunate enough to be to at the gala that we had in DC and that was of course in 2019 and that represent a 25 years of the whole concept of Furious Flower. So yeah, so you so you and your grandmother have seen the overall trajectory of furious [flower] Laura you for shorter time, of course, but she has been involved in every conference that I’ve done over the last 25 years.

Veronica Dance 6:46
Do you think waiting those 10 years was the right move? For the program waiting those like 10 years for the next conference, the right move for the program?

Dr. Gabbin 6:57
That it helped the program

Veronica Dance 6:59
Yes.

Dr. Gabbin 7:00
Oh, I think so i think so because what happens with that particular conference, unlike other conferences that may happen annually, or every two years, people know about it, and they have a kind of mystique about being present for the next one, because they know that by the first time at the, at the conference, that when they get to the next conference, they would have really developed into the poet that he or she wanted to be, you know, so it gives you 10 years to really let that experience wash over you and for you to see the results of 10 more years of development in your craft and in your love of the of the field. So What was so interesting to me is that the young poets who were present at the first conference in 1994 have become superstars in the field of poetry.

And you saw at least two of them, the night of the gala that they were on Natasha Trask away. who read at furious flower with a group called, Gosh. Well, they did. Oh my gosh, I’m forgetting the name of the group. But they, she read with Kevin Young, Major Jackson, Sharon Strange. And Thomas Ellis all of those people were there as a part of the dark room collective. It just came to be I just, I just kind of blank on the dark room, dark room collective. And they were all young graduate students. They were slightly older than you because they really grad school. But they came, they did a reading. I didn’t, I didn’t say Tracy K Smith because she was a part of the doctrine collective. But she didn’t come to that conference. But she was certainly a part of that particular group. And you saw her read at the gala for the 25th anniversary.

So now, Natasha Trethewey was a national Poet Laureate. Major Jackson is a faculty member and has a great reputation for award winning books. Kevin Young is an award winning poet and also director of the Schomburg Center in the New York Public Library. And I could and Sharon Strange is a respected teacher at Spelman, and head of the creative writing project. So I’m saying that we saw at the in the 1994 conference, these young poets who will go on to be respected in their fields, if not at the top of their field. Yeah. And so, by answering that question by having it every 10 years, people sort of mark their progress by furious flower conferences. And so at the 25th anniversary, we had people at the Museum of African American History and Culture, talking about How furious flower has influenced their careers and what furious flower has meant to them personally and professionally. So yeah, I think I think it was a good strategy. It didn’t start out like that I had no vision that that would happen. But as I look back, I’m very grateful that it happened just the way it did. Because if you were you were present there at the gala, you could see the amount of work that just went into two days of programming. Imagine what we had to do to have three or four days of a conference that involved hundreds of people. And, and hundreds of poets, you know, so and most audiences at the at the conferences, were between over 1000 people to maybe 600 people. We never have Audience is smaller than 600 people.

Veronica Dance 12:02
Wow.

Dr. Gabbin 12:04
Yeah. So it’s really quite quite a legacy. And so when in 2024, we have the next conference, the fourth conference, I don’t know whether I’ll be here to direct it, but we will we have it. I know that my predecessor, or my, or my successor will be, um, you know, we’ll have that history to to go forward. Yeah.

Veronica Dance 12:35
Um, what, if any inequalities have black poets face in the past and currently?

Dr. Gabbin 12:42
Well, I think it was, the racism is, is a beast. I mean, it affects most areas of professional lives of black people. But you could really see it in the area of poetry. Because if we look back to say Paul Laurence Dunbar who was at the poet at the turn of the century, and in a very popular poet, he talked about the fact that his poetry was not always received, as other poetry might be received by a poet of another race.

He, he has this line about, they turned to praise a jingle in a broken tongue. I’m paraphrasing here, but the jingle in a broken tongue was his dialect poetry, that he was very popular because he had poetry that was in the the broken language of uneducated black people, but he also had very serious poetry that sometimes was not considered as popular by the general public. So he did poems like we wear the mask, we wear the masks that grins and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades, our eyes. This debt to human gal we pay with.

Let’s see, well, you can look that up. I’m trying to remember that all the lines, but we were the mask was was a poem that really helped to talk about this double consciousness that black poets had to have where they, if they didn’t have poetry, just like white people, the poetry was considered inferior. So and you look at a person like Langston Hughes, who was one of the first professional poets in media that he could, he could live off of his poetry, he could write enough poetry and perform it in spaces that he could actually make a living through his poetry. But he even complain that often publishers, if they had poetry by one black person, for a year, then they didn’t need any others. So the field was sometimes limited. And yeah, and then you get to the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. And you have another kind of racism that affects the poetry where you have people who are so sick and tired of being, you know, oppressed, that they lash out with another kind of poetry that people are now afraid of, and they talk about the violence of the poetry And the poetry that is seeking to harm the general public or white. And so, here you you have another kind of way racism comes into play. Here. These poets are using poetry as a weapon, they are not using guns or knives, but they’re using poetry to bring information to their people and to help them become more self reliant and, and depend upon themselves. But it’s as this particular poetry is seen from the outside, it is viewed as something that’s violent, that belittle this destructive. And so there is always that problem with perspective. So I think those are probably three three issues that are clearly there and are there because This society has has never given black people and certainly not black poets an equal playing field.

Veronica Dance 17:12
What were the challenges you faced when making the Furious flower Program?

Dr. Gabbin 17:17
What challenges that I face? Well, you know, there’s always the challenge of money, you know of funding. I was fortunate that the president of the university was behind, you know, establishing this particular center, but I had to make sure that in at having it established that I had the kind of funding that was needed to not only have access but to put on the programming that would make the the center viable.

So we got a location on for to the location was on the very edge, I suppose was in the hinterlands of the campus over by the UREC Center. And it was a it was a local unit It was a trailer. So there was no space on the central campus for furious flower. So I moved from the central location of Hillcrest which I had diligently held on to as the home for the Honors Program and move basically out of the best office on campus into a trailer where, you know, you had small offices and you had a mess room and and of course it’s not, you know, I don’t care how well you fix up a trailer inside when someone comes to see you in that trailer. They think my goodness, this has to be temporary, you know, very accomplished poet by the name of Cornelius Ed came to visit. And he said, Joanne, please don’t invite any other poets here because we have such a different impression of where you are and where you might be on this campus. And then we see the reality and we are shocked, you know, so after he said that I got a little ashamed of bringing people to the trailer. Yeah, even though it was well decorated inside. We had photographs up you know, it was clean. It was it was you know, it was usable, workable. But after a while, I just said no, this this has to be so by 2013 so we were in that trailer for seven years. We will get into the trailer in 2005, and we didn’t leave until 2013 so that’s eight years. We were in that trailer. And and so we were able to get into this new space, which is still on the outskirts of the campus, but it’s a little house and it certainly presents better than that trailer did. You know so, so location was a real issue. Also I said funding, we had the funding to establish the the center with furniture and equipment. But we didn’t have the budget that we should have had to have a full time administrative assistant. So all the 25 the I suppose it would be down 14 or 15 years that I’ve been here at part of the center. We’ve not had a full time minister. assistance. So that’s, that’s a problem. That’s a problem because we have a lot of turnover because if you don’t have a full time person, that person doesn’t have benefits and retirement. And those things that make the job more permanent. So we have a lot of people moving in and moving out. So that’s the second problem location, lack of full time administrative assistant. But the one advantage I have had is that I’ve had a budget. And so with the budget, I’ve been able to hire a part time administrative assistant. And also, we have within our budget, an opportunity to have an assistant director. So the center has basically run with three people.

Veronica Dance 21:53
That’s impressive.

Dr. Gabbin 21:54
Yeah, so we’ve done all of this we’ve done video anthologies, We’ve done textbooks. We’ve had a very active program in terms of a lecture reading and lecture series. We have a children’s poetry camp, we now call it the children’s creativity camp, as you know, because you were a part of it for one year. We’ve done so much programming with our high school students and middle school students. And we’ve even now branched out and taken furious flower abroad. So we took serious war to Trinidad as well as to East LA Tini, which is in southern Africa.

Veronica Dance 22:42
I didn’t know it was international.

Dr. Gabbin 22:44
Yes, it really is international. Mm hmm.

Veronica Dance 22:48
Why do you think it’s important to have the Furious Flower outlet for the African American community?

Dr. Gabbin 22:56
Well, I think that because poetry is is such a I would say is such an important medium through which we determine our humanity. I mean, like other forms of art and music and, and the visual arts, as you know, dance it those arts show the human element we lot of us sometimes talk about how do we distinguish ourselves from the animal kingdom? Well, we, we know how to win we think we know how to, we know how to think, but also a part of thinking is being creative. And probably, poetry gives us one of the best outlets that we have to express emotion to express important ideas. To express complexity, to express our humanity. So my saying it like that makes poetry important to all people. Now in terms of the furious flower for the black community, it’s it’s a way of showing off the particular kind of genius that comes from having lived the black experience. So, we have just done a poetry prize, where most of the participants in this poetry prize are black. And I’m sure that was a wonderful outlet to talk about experiences that are sometimes unique to our community and to our culture. A lot of people talk about the uniqueness of African American music. But when you think about the blues, when you think about jazz when you think about bad time. You also realized that these were genius forms of music that have now been adopted by the overall American, if not international community. So, um, so African American poetry is like that, even though it helps to express a different culture, it is embraced by all of humanity.

So, is that what you were looking for?

Veronica Dance 25:33
Yes.

Dr. Gabbin 25:34
Okay. Yeah. So it is important, I think, specifically on the campus. For our black students. I want to encourage them more to participate in the activities that we offer. Sometimes we have a poetry reading, and I might see three or four African American students present and the rest of Are the white students or the other students on the campus? So we have a real challenge in getting our black students to embrace something that is culturally familiar to them.

Veronica Dance 26:20
Yeah, I think part of it could be the not much diversity at JMU.

Dr. Gabbin 26:27
Yeah, there’s not much diversity. So when there is some you would think that the students would come seek it, but often even listen to for Multicultural Student Services, which was started as a center that wanted to help. African American students feel more comfortable here now it has been expanded for for all students of color, but sometimes I will talk to blacks For those who’ve never gone to the Center for Multicultural Student Service services, they can only call it seen this. And so. So they are, they are issues to get some of the students of color into spaces where those, those cultural aspects are discussed, talked about in really, really significant ways. So, I think that we do have a challenge sometimes to some, some of our students of color are so well adjusted that they think they don’t need that, you know, they think that, you know, they have a cohort group and they don’t need CMS, so they certainly don’t need to go to poetry readings that are that emphasize the African American culture. That’s fine too, if they don’t seem to need it, but I, I would think that they’d want to embrace it like other people, I think those people who come always leave knowing something more about themselves because as I said, this poetry is is so complex and so profound. anyone listening to it, anyone reading it can get something out of it. Because, you know, black people, Asian people, Latino people are not from Mars. They are from here. So their experiences integrate with the experiences of all people. So that’s our challenge. We want to make sure that we reach out to everybody, but I especially would be gratified if African American students and other black students would participate more fully in our programs.

Veronica Dance 28:55
Yeah. Switching gears, What is the purpose and goals of the Wintergreen Woman’s Writers Collective Group.

Dr. Gabbin 29:05
Well, that has a history too, and I won’t, I will give a long history. But in in 1987 we first organized The Wintergreen Women Writers collective, but it started the idea for it came in 19. Well, early 1987, you know, or maybe, yeah, it was early 1987. That’s when it was. And it happened when Nikki Giovanni [1943-] came to James Madison University. You can see, the time I came to this university, I felt that it was important to invite us, you know, poets of color to the university because I feel very strongly that all of our students should be exposed to genius. And we have a particular brand of genius in people like one of my books and the Giovanni. So when Nikki came to read, and after her reading, we were talking at dinner and I was asking her what she was planning for the next year. And she said, Oh, by the way, I’m gonna be here in your state. In September, I’m going to teach four semesters with the professor. And, and I said, Oh, that’s wonderful up just down the road, you know, from us. And so really, you know, Virginia Tech [where Nikki Giovanni teaches] is only two, two hours away in Blacksburg, and so I said, you know, do you know, writers in the origins other than myself, and so she said, No, she didn’t know any right. Isn’t it? Well, you know what, I am going to plan a little get together for you to welcome you to Virginia.

Because and when I did that, because my, my coming to James Madison University was a little traumatic. I mean, I had a very rough year, my first year at James Madison University, James Madison University was not ready for this black woman, and they weren’t ready for any person who was outside of their vision. They had not even thought about having African American literature as a part of the curriculum. They were upset that the President and Provost of the university, in fact insisted that they still align in the English department with a an African American scholar. And so I got the brunt of that in terms of my reading. exception by the department. So I realized that Nikki, even though she was a famous poet was going down to a university that also did not have a significant number of black people there.

I don’t know, she was the first black in the English department down there as well. So I said, not to her, but to myself, I need to have this particular gathering so that when she runs up against some isolation, some difficulty, some subtle racism, that she’ll have someone to talk with about it. And that that was my plan. And so I asked your mother, you’re not your mother, your grandmother. I asked, oh Bohr, who was a friend, who was suggested by Daryl and Trudy Harris and Sandy Govan and at least six other people would they join me for a retreat with Nikki Giovanni, I first thought I was gonna have it at my home. But my husband was he said, we’ll join if you have it at your house, you’re not going to have a good time, you’re going to be running around being hostess and getting towels and, and trying to do makeshift beds. And you should have it someplace where that is all done for you. And so that’s how we went to wintergreen and it was just by a stroke of luck that they didn’t have enough rooms in the end for all 12 of us. So they said they just on that particular date didn’t have the accommodations that we needed, but they said have you thought about moving into a house where you could all be together in a kind of you know, weekend pajama party. It was just the best suggestion that The Wintergreen resort staff could have given because is that the whole pattern for Wintergreen, so for 32 years, this will be the 33rd year. And we have met consecutively every year, the only year that we didn’t have a full retreat was the year of Hurricane Hugo. I think that was 1989, Hurricane Hugo and, and that was the only time that we didn’t meet as a whole group. But for 32 years we have met every year. And it’s been just one of the joys of my life. You know?

Veronica Dance 34:54
What does the program do, exactly? Is it just like a retreat to read people’s work?

Dr. Gabbin 35:00
Yes, yes. Is the retreat to Yeah, you know, you would think that it was just a party, but it is a way of writers coming together and most of us are writers who are teachers as well. So we come together to talk about our writing, we have a ritual, that on Saturday night before the end of the retreat, those people who want to breed sections of their to work can read usually we have as many as 10 of the 14 of us reading on any on any given retreat. And, and then, we also used Friday, our gathering data to talk about our concerns as educators. Most of us are college professors, or researchers. So we talk about our work we talk about The programming that we do in our schools. In fact, I’m really convinced that if I had not had the wintergreen women writers collective support that that first conference probably wouldn’t have happened. Because I used their inspiration, their spirit and also their participation, to have the confidence to do that, because, think about it. I have. I’m a director of the Honors Program. I am a teacher in the English department.

And I have very few colleagues in the English department who would have supported such a huge activity, but I knew that I had in the background there my Wintergreen sisters, who if I needed them to be a panelist if I needed them to do a reading, if I needed them to work in logistics that They will do that, you know. And so I give a lot of credit to them for helping me to do this mammoth work that I’ve done in Furious Flower. And in fact, the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective has also participated in all the conferences, as well as the readings for Memorial readings that we’ve had. We had something called 73 poems for 73 years, a tribute to Memorial tribute to Lucille Clifton, and we had wintergreen women reading as a part of those 7373 poets. And then we get something called throw your head back and sing a memorial tribute to mine. Angelou and it was totally a program put on by the wintergreen women and those of us that furious flower. And I don’t know whether your mother, your grandmother told you about the tribute that we did for Toni Morrison at Virginia Tech. But we also participated in that. So every time I do a major program, I involved The Wintergreen Women who so they have been the sisterhood that has strengthened my resolve to do something that has turned out to be internationally important. And I’m very grateful to them.

Veronica Dance 38:45
They’re like your stable group. They’re like a stable friend group.

Dr. Gabbin 38:51
Yes. is stable friend group. Yes.

Veronica Dance 38:53
Yes. So my last question is, where do you see both programs going in the future?

Dr. Gabbin 39:00
Well as I really see, because of the work that we did before the anniversary year, we established an endowment for the furious lateral poetry center. And so it is even though it’s a slow down, but it gives a message to the university that we intend. And a lot of people out there in the public intend furious flower to go well beyond my, my term as founding director, I, you know, I’m approaching the age that I should consider retiring. And so I do expect to retire within the next year or two. And I’m hoping that that endowment as well as my doing some good succession planning will put furious flower in a good position to go on. For not only the next decade, but several decades in the future. Also, we have been very fortunate to attract the attention of the Mellon Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation. And we have a planning grant that will help the furious flower archive be developed by the JMU libraries. And so that’s a good sign that there could be a large amount of film datian money coming our way. Even though even though in the past we’ve not really gotten large grants from foundations we’ve been supported very nicely and and often by the Virginia foundation for the Humanities now it’s called Virginia humanities. We’ve also been supported by the Virginia Commission for the arts. And we have been supported by the Poetry Foundation and by other foundations, but the, the amounts have been small. So we’ve never gotten a six figure grant from anyone. So I’m looking forward to that first six, you know, figure you know, Grant. Yes.

Veronica Dance 41:27
That’s all I have.

Dr. Gabbin 41:29
Okay. All right, well, good.

 

Conclusion:

The interview was conducted over the phone due to the coronavirus but did not require any editing. Due to limited resources of being at home, I used my laptops voice memos to record the interview. With the coronavirus, I was not able to do what I originally planned of interviewing Dr. Gabbin in person and to use some of the technology recording devices that the campus libraries have to offer. The interview went a bit longer than expected but I believe the interview went well as Dr. Gabbin was able to share lots of information about each topic. I was able to ask more of the important questions which made it easy to go off script at times.

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai