Fumilayo Bankole: Zoom Zooms n Wham Whams

FUMILAYO BANKOLE has self-published her chapbook Zoom Zooms n Wham Whams. This effort was somewhat influenced by the lively commentary provided Michael Datcher’s poetry workshop in Leimert Park here in Los Angeles, California. However, I feel that Fumilayo has a strong sense of her own voice and can intimately articulate her visions of the world.

To be awake and alive in African America is a very difficult way to live. To speak from this literally strange place requires considerable discipline and focus. On one extreme, the African American writer can live in the past, celebrating the days before Columbus—or further, during the Moorish occupation of Spain—or even further, before the Greeks set up that trading port at Miletus.

On the other extreme, we can write about the ruins of our civilizations and pastoral cultures—and each Portuguese bacterium that caused the downfall. We can come of age and discover European concepts of slavery and want to tell the world of our discovery.

credits