Tribute
Remembering Pat Parker
Sunday January 31, 2010
$10-$20 sliding scale. - 7-9:30pm
Join us for the annual tribute to Pat Parker featuring Anastasia Dunham-Parker, Genny Lim, Phavia Kujichajulia, Mamacoatl (La border crossing Diosa), Melanie DeMore, Ava Square-LEVais, Kaylah Marin, Avotcja & Modupue, Judy Grahn, Blackberri & more. Proceeds will benefit Anastasia Dunham-Parker.
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Pat Parker (January 20, 1944 - June 19, 1989 Houston, Texas) was an African-American lesbian feminist poet.
Parker was involved in the Black Panther Movement. in 1979 she toured with the Varied Voices of Black Women, a group of poets and musicians which included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins & Gwen Avery. She founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council in 1980, and she also contributed to the formation of the Women's Press Collective, as well as being involved in wide-ranging activism in gay and lesbian organizing.
Parker worked from 1978-1987 as a medical coordinator at the Oakland Feminist Women's Health Center. Parker gave her first public poetry reading in 1963 in Oakland. In 1968, she began to read her poetry to women's groups at Women's bookstores, coffeehouses and feminist events.
Judy Grahn, a fellow poet and a personal friend, identifies Pat Parker's poetry as a part of the "continuing Black tradition of radical poetry"
Cheryl Clarke, another poet and peer, identifies her as a "lead voice and caller" in the world of lesbian poetry., designed to confront both black and women's communities with, as Clarke notes, "the precariousness of being non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual in a racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperial culture." Clarke believes that Parker articulates, "a black lesbian-feminist perspective of love between women and the circumstances that prevent our intimacy and liberation."
Pat Parker and Audre Lorde first met in 1969 and continued to exchange letters and visits until Parker's death in 1989.
