By Sharon Hori Daily Bruin Senior Staff
If anyone doubts that poets are busy people, then they obviously have not seen Derrick I.M. Gilbert's schedule for the past couple weeks.
Gilbert, better known to his friends as "D-Knowledge," traveled by plane and by train from Los Angeles to New Haven, where with the release of "HennaMan," his first volume of poetry, he has read his work on the radio and has spoken to newspaper reporters galore. The discussions will continue with Gilbert's return to UCLA, where he will speak at noon at the McClure Stage of Westwood Plaza.
Gilbert, a UC Berkeley graduate who received his Ph.D. in sociology at UCLA almost two years ago, submerges poetic word into the pools of two centuries of African American ancestry and withdraws them glistening in newfound perception. His colorful look at the oddities of life - politics, sex and race - sheds light on the dark realities often overlooked in everyday life, and also captures a chapter of his life.
"I would say that that chapter was essentially filled with many awakenings, but also a chapter for me meant that there had to be some sort of beginning and some sort of closure. I would let the book do that describing," Gilbert said in a phone interview from Yale University.
Real life experiences spark inspiration for his works, the Long Beach native said, as he recalled the time he walked out of his hotel and came face-to-face with a drug dealer who pushed a bag of weed in his face. As a walking receptacle for poetic images, Gilbert said his senses can depict the poems as they happen.
For example, Gilbert's poem, "Why I Would Never Buy a Jeep Cherokee," embodies his disgust for America's endorsement in honoring Native Americans by naming sports teams after them. His prose, "Devil's Advocate," depicting his encounter with an African American stereotype in an empty movie theater, uses a Dr. Seuss rhyme scheme to emphasize the experience's silliness.
The poems, which he wrote in a six-year period beginning in 1993, move into a transition from when Gilbert said he was deliberately writing to appeal to his audience to the point where he learned to write for himself.
"You come into a point of taking the craft of writing seriously, practicing it, working with people, sharing it and going to workshops," he said. "It's at the point that I think I have a use of language that's somewhat identifiably mine. It's almost like the birth, the nurturing and the adult awakening of the poet."
Not every poet jumps into a busy, successful career spewing polished, publishable pieces. As Gilbert recalled his first poem - which he had written for his high school crush, Lisa, about her favorite color, yellow - he shuddered with an embarrassed laugh.
But all poets must start from somewhere. And continuing his education at Berkeley sparked his inspiration to learn. Gilbert's active mind led him to question professors. Always caught with a book in hand, he read outside material ranging from the history of Africans to issues of oppression with Native Americans, Chicano history and women's studies.
"I never found a period that I was that passionate," Gilbert said, adding that during this "nationalism phase" he wore red, black and green clothing and medallions and listened to Public Enemy and X-Clan. "I always find myself studying the lives of people who had been struggling."
The perfect combination of Gilbert's success in class and his inquisitive search for higher understanding earned him the nickname, D-Knowledge -- "You do the knowledge, you're D-Knowledge," his friends would say.
With the promise of meeting beautiful women, a friend convinced Gilbert to attend his first poetry reading at UCLA. Since that evening, Gilbert has viewed poetry with a different light.
"I was blown away," Gilbert said. "I found myself speaking in poetic terms. It wasn't a choice. It was definitely divine intervention or poetic intervention because I got into that scene and into a movement. There's a whole other life that is born when you become part of a community of writers."
Within the next year-and-a-half, Gilbert received offers to act in films and tour with major music groups. He had a role in John Singleton's movie, "Higher Learning," and later made an album with the legendary Quincy Jones. He read his poetry as the opening act for singer Me'Shell Ndege'Ocello. He also toured with music group Earth, Wind and Fire.
As editor for "Catch the Fire!!!: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry," Gilbert said he learned the value of hard work in exchange for a thankless result.
The anthology includes a mixture of traditional poets, as well as works by Chuck D., M.C. Lyte and Shaquille O'Neal. The best part, Gilbert said, was interviewing poetic legends and talking about generational issues.
"It was a very rewarding book but it's a thankless job," said Gilbert, recalling how he typed each word into the computer himself. "I can't imagine how these folks put these anthologies together back in the '60s before they had e-mails and fax machines because I was barely making it."
Gilbert's playful works provoke thought through the power of logic. When performed, his poetry turns to music and his rhythmic syllables pound meaning from the page.
The poem, "HennaMan," after which the book is named, describes a man whose racial identity changes with a tattoo, wrapped around his body, that morphs on a daily basis.
"I know every way that people have said black is beautiful. And with race in general I think that we've really bombarded ourselves with cliches," Gilbert said.
"So I've created this character (HennaMan), who imagine if somebody was not of a racial identity but actually made out of a tattoo - not just any tattoo, but a tattoo that could change on a daily basis so you could go from one classification to the next in a day or two," Gilbert continued. "HennaMan tries to play off the insanity of what we've done with race."
Gilbert insisted that listening to the performance of the poem brings new meaning in comparison to reading the words on the page. He plans to perform his animated reading during his discussion today at UCLA.
As a poet, Gilbert said the best way to kick off a writing career is to step up to the opportunities that spontaneously appear.
"A lot of these times these opportunities come by, you blink and they're gone. I try to jump on everything and make every interaction extremely meaningful. You got to look at living life like writing a poem. That's the only advice that I give poets: Take it seriously. Because everybody, regardless of if they're poets or not, has their own voice. And that's what the language gives us."
POETRY: Derrick Gilbert will discuss and sign "HennaMan" at noon today at the McClure Stage of Westwood Plaza.