Hamer shares life experiences at poetry reading

By Richard Nieva

Forrest Hamer read aloud through a microphone in the St. Clare Room, sharing a story about his father, a black Korean War veteran whose life was saved by a white man. He found out later that the man was a prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

The poem, "Moving On," was one of many Hamer recited during a poetry reading sponsored by the English department, The Santa Clara Review and the Office for Multicultural Learning at the Learning Commons on Monday evening.

The audience of about 60 people listened intently to Hamer's accounts of growing up in the segregated South and his family's experience of being black in America, trying to find their place in its history.

The crowd settled down after some minor motorized window shade malfunctions in the room. What began as a minor inconvenience of the sun blinding some first-row audience members became a poignant scene as the sun set outside the bay windows to the soundtrack of Hamer's work.

"I felt like the audience was really listening, really paying attention," Hamer said immediately afterward. "It made it really easy to do."

Hamer, the university's writer in residence, also spoke about his writing process and personal reflections at a question and answer session an hour prior to the reading.

He sat in an armchair across from Rebecca Black, English professor and advisor for The Santa Clara Review, who facilitated the town hall style discussion.

"The thing that continually strikes me about Hamer's work is its refusal to collapse the self into any particular category," Black said in her introduction.

He answered questions related to the complexity of his writing and dealing with difficult topics such as sexuality and religious belief. Hamer pointed to the liberation of freewriting and letting one's mind take one where it wants to go.

He mentioned the struggle of dealing with fear while not letting it mushroom to the point where it begins to compromise the writing. "I was becoming less afraid about the things I was beginning to feel, beginning to think, beginning to say," he explained.

Hamer, who also practices psychology for a living in the East Bay, stressed the importance of engaging in play while writing.

He cited early childhood experiences as giving him the writing bug. He recalled being a 10-year-old in segregated North Carolina when a teacher assigned a poetry writing assignment during Negro History Week, Black History Month's predecessor. He wrote a poem called "The Negro" and remembered impressing his teacher.

"It was such a profound experience," he said. "I wanted to be engaged in something powerful."

He also credited his grandparents with instilling in him the value of storytelling. Later on, he would write about them in his "Goldsboro Narratives" collection, recalling his job of mowing the lawn at their graves, at a cemetery that had a plot for unnamed slaves.

"I was intrigued just to listen to them. They were such graceful poets, and I missed them," Hamer said. "I wanted to bring them back to life."

He continued, "They represented my relationship to the past."

The discussion also focused on specific writing practices, including revising techniques, and Hamer's walks along the Emeryville, Calif. marina, where he lives and "breathes in" the water.

He also spoke about learning how to write with the purpose of publication.

Kelsey Maher, editor of The Santa Clara Review, mentioned that niche. "As students interested in poetry and writing and art and publishing, we like to get people to come and speak to that industry and profession."

While introducing one of his poems, Hamer mentioned the profound time our nation is in with the election of our first black and bi-racial president.

He later pointed to the monumental task his peer and friend Elizabeth Alexander had as the official poet at Barack Obama's inauguration.

"I was not envious of her," he chuckled, saying it was unfair to expect one person to sum up an entire moment.

"One person can't do that," he said when asked what he would say. "We need more of a chorus."

Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of three poetry collections, titled "Call and Response," "Middle Ear" and "Rift."

Contact Richard Nieva at (408) 551-1918 or rnieva@scu.edu.