NYS Poet Laureate Promotes Belonging, Advocacy at SU Reading

(Photo: Alicia Hoppes) New York State Poet Laureate Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones moved to New York City with her friends on a whim after graduating college. She spent her first few months couch-surfing with about $3 in her pocket.

“A week after I moved there, people were asking me where to go,” Spears Jones said. “Clearly, I was supposed to be in New York City.”

On Thursday evening, Spears Jones visited the Shinder Theater at the YMCA in downtown Syracuse as part of the Syracuse Symposium series. Spears Jones, the current New York State Poet Laureate, read poems from her newest collection, “The Beloved Community.”

The collection, released in 2023, aims to capture the “volatility of the world,” especially in this current political climate, she said. Spears Jones said the collection isn’t just about empathy and sympathy, but also rage and the complexity of community.

“How do we bond together, and how do we make a world where we bond together instead of fraying?” she said.

Spears Jones has been writing poetry since she was young, and thought being in NYC would provide her with opportunities to write. She signed up for a poetry workshop at the recommendation of Ted Greenwald, another NYC poet. This gave her the opportunity to collaborate with other poets and writers who were passionate about their work.

“It was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life,” Spears Jones said.

The Syracuse Symposium series, organized by the Syracuse University Humanities Center, is an annual public events series that goes throughout the academic year. Each year, the Humanities Center selects a single word to serve as the guiding theme for its programming. When selecting a theme, the Humanities Center looks for one that has potential for several ways of thinking, said Vivian May, the director of the Humanities Center and a professor of women’s and gender studies. This year’s theme is "Community."

Spears Jones’ entire body of work has consistently spotlighted Black women artists and other women who haven’t previously been recognized for their poetry work. She’s also worked as a professor and currently advocates for inclusion within the literary world. In all ways, Spears Jones embodies the symposium’s theme of community during a fragmented and divided time, May said.

“Seeing people come together to think about, ‘What does that mean to be in a community, or what does community mean to me? Or, how can the arts or the humanities help me think about belonging and a sense of community?’ has been nice,” May said.

Philip Memmer, the district executive director for arts and education at the YMCA of central New York, started the YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center, which hosted Thursday’s reading. Before Memmer founded the center in 2001, he felt there wasn’t a place where locals could regularly attend poetry workshops or readings outside a college campus. The partnership between the Writer’s Center and Humanities Center allows for the introduction of new artists and voices to the Syracuse community.

“At the end of the day we can only write what we are passionate about, but I think that as people who host poetry events and who promote poetry to audiences, our job is to ensure that we are presenting a diversity of voices,” Memmer said. “It’s on all of us who support the craft of poetry through our work to ensure that voices are heard.”

The title of Spear Jones’ collection, “The Beloved Community,” echoes what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about when he popularized the term. Spears Jones reread some of his work while writing this collection. The titular poem discusses a time when Spears Jones witnessed her neighbor become overcome with grief as she learned of another neighbor’s death.

While she directly sees the “Beloved Community” reflected in her own neighborhood, this concept spans far beyond just city blocks, Spears Jones said. Everyone you encounter is a stranger at one point, and you witness them experience moments of deep sadness or joy — or “accidental instances,” as Spears Jones refers to them.

The poems she read feature these instances, along with imagined stories about artists and activists she admires, like a scenario of Malcolm X and Etta James meeting at the Audubon Ballroom. Spears Jones likes to take the reader to different places through her work, whether it’s a CVS Pharmacy in Virginia, the streets of Brooklyn or the Mediterranean Sea.

Spears Jones also uses her work to advocate for those living in poverty and bring awareness to the killings of Black American activists, like Fred Hampton. She recounts this murder in her poem, “Fred Hampton Born This Day.” Spears Jones believes writing poetry is intrinsically activism, and that it’s her responsibility to use her talent to advocate for the world she wants to see.

“How we use our citizenship in our work is up to each and everyone of us,” Spears Jones said. [Read the full Daily Orange story.]