Adrian Matejka
Photo by Stephen Sproull
Bio
Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003), which won the New York/New England Award, and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His third collection of poems, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His most recent book, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017. Among Matejka’s other honors are fellowships from the Bellagio Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He is the Ruth Lilly Professor of poetry at Indiana University Bloomington and is the Poet Laureate of Indiana.
Time and fiscal support are two of the most valuable commodities for any writer. Time allows the opportunity to immerse oneself fully in a project, while monetary support allows one to stay immersed without having to resurface to tend to the very real grind of the non-writing life. Lately—and especially in this fractured moment of blowhard politics, flag-waving racism, and aggressive suppression—I’ve had no choice but to attend to the external noises and bruises in so many moments when I wanted to be excavating with an internal voice.
Because of this, I’ve stumbled much more than I’ve strutted the past couple of years as I tried to balance writing, living, and the need to fight back. Institutional ignorance and bigotry create unrelenting anxiety and I know I’m not unique in my distresses. So it’s serendipitous that I got word I had been selected for this unbelievable fellowship while visiting a college in South Carolina that was built over a former planation. The history of oppression was all around us even as the generous students and faculty pushed back against that history in support of poetry. They were active in their resistance and didn’t allow our bifurcated nation or the muddy antiquity of the campus to interrupt them. It was so inspiring to see.
Those young listeners and learners were reminders that while time and money can’t disappear violence or racism, they can activate the interrogation and protest necessary for real resistance. Real space for activity is what the NEA fellowship allows me in 2019. It enables the kind of uninterrupted protest in which I hope to immerse into fully and boldly. Whether I succeed in creating the project I’m envisioning or not, I’m deeply grateful for this creative exploration made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts.
from "The Antique Blacks"
Without the lonely singing of lead in & lead
out, the moon is the same shape as a record
which is shaped the same as a luminous afro
which frames the face in the same way a crown
of stars would if crowns were stars for anyone
other than Sun Ra—13 of them clustered around
his elbows & ears & the hardworking tape deck
circling itself like a brass heliosphere when
he said: My story is not part of history. Because
history repeats itself. But my story is endless—
it never repeats itself. One hand fingering
an allegory of astronaut & ancient prototype
on the fat piano bench in Auntie’s front room
back on the East Side with plastic-covered
furniture. She is blind & her phonograph spins
jazz most of the time—right down the street
from a pool hall ringed by posters for DJ throw-
downs & Under-21 battles of the bands. All
of that razzmatazz, those cluttered side tables
& decorative lamps—how did she get around them?—
the closest we’ll get to explorers & outer space.