POETRY : OPWC to feature performance poet Eric ‘Bear Dance’ Breland
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Living/62564/
Ozark Poets and Writers Collective will again start meeting the last Tuesday of each month beginning at 7 p. m. on Feb. 26. We are excited to announce our new location at Nightbird Books, Fayetteville’s best little independent book store. The February feature will be Eric “ Bear Dance” Breland, who is active in the Dallas slam scene.
Breland was born in Pascagoula, Miss., and has worked as a sign language interpreter for the deaf for the past 10 years. He has a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation counseling, with a minor in chemical dependency counseling from the University of North Texas at Denton. Breland is currently working on a fiction book based on his experience growing up with the 733 foster children who passed through his childhood home.
“ My family was poor growing up, and my parents were basically gypsies traveling around looking for a bigger and better future for me and my one biological brother, ” Breland said.
Breland began writing poetry in high school. He couldn’t sleep one night and wrote about his grandmother who had recently passed away. His parents found it and were so touched, they framed it and hung it up in the living room.
“ I was beyond embarrassed, ” said Breland. “ Writing poetry wasn’t a very macho thing to do for a teenage male in Mississippi. ”
In late 2006, Breland started writing performance poetry. One well-known Dallas poet does a poem in which he “ signs. ” Breland was furious when he first saw it because more than half the “ signs” were made up, and he felt they were done for dramatic effect and to play on the unknowing hearing audience’s heart strings.
“ I cherish my experience with the deaf community and for someone to pretend to be a member of that community, taking advantage that most people don’t know [American Sign Language ] and getting very positive reactions for it was infuriating, ” said Breland. “ It would be as if I pretended to be African-American, Chicano or another ethnic group in which I don’t belong. ” That is when he started writing performance poems and fell in love with the art form.
The name “ Bear Dance” came from another member of the Dallas 2007 Pugsley’s Library Slam Team, Colin Gilbert. Breland sometimes makes a hand gesture when he talks or performs and one day Gilbert called them “ bear feet. ” Breland responded, “ Yeah, I have ‘ bear feet, ’ and I can make them dance. ” He then went on to do a comical freestyle dance using that hand gesture. At the very next show, Breland did the dance and garnered tons of laughs and a huge reaction from the crowd, and the name stuck. Breland has done the “ bear dance” a couple of times, and it always gets a huge reaction.
Breland’s advice for aspiring writers or slammers is to “ be true to yourself first and foremost. Be honest with the art form even if you can’t be honest with yourself at times. Write the world as you see it. ”
Much of Breland’s inspiration comes from knowing foster children and his work with the deaf community. This is a poignant story about Jeremiah.
“ I want to tell Jeremiah that I feel guilty for not being able to trade places
Even if it’s just for 30 seconds So, it’s 30 seconds less he has to face his reality And be disappointed with a world that never speaks his name 30 seconds less he has to worry about tomorrows Wishing well pennies he can’t afford and knows never will come true anyway, so why waste the money his starving family needs for food. Just 30 seconds he gets to be normal, and I get to be him But I’m not a magical woodland creature He is just a 6 year old boy crying in my lap And I know he will not be the first or last weeping child I’ll hold tightly in my arms during this lifetime
But I want him to be...
I wish for this like little kids who still believe in Santa Clause when the kid in their class tells them otherwise
I wish for this like the rape victim wishes to never see his face again, but finds it around every corner she turns
I wish for it like he wishes to see his mother one more time tonight
I want to tell myself that everything will be ok
But I gave up lying to myself long ago. ”
Breland also has one poem in American Sign Language written about a deaf friend who committed suicide. The majority of the poem is solely signed and no voice translation has ever been given. He has another poem about a victim of the Taliban who became deaf at the age of 6 due to a bomb. “ Poetry tends to be so multidimensional and can mean different things to different people, and I try to always think about making sure my writing has a clear point of view and message that if it was going to be translated, it would be possible, ” said Breland. “ Of course, this is easier said than done. ”
The spoken word poets whose work Breland most admires include Buddy Wakefield, Andrea Gibson, Colin Gilbert and Ed Mabrey. His favorite written poets are Charles Bukowski, Walt Whitman, e. e. cummings and Allen Ginsberg.
Breland currently hails from Arlington, Texas, has never been married and has no children though he has two cats that are like his children. He has two self-published chapbooks, “ Haunted House ” and “ Mirrors. ” Both will be available at the show, or you can contact Breland at BrelandASL @ Yahoo. com to mail order. He is also on myspace. com.
Join OPWC, the longestrunning live poetry venue in this area, the last Tuesday of each month for an evening of powerful performance poetry by Eric Breland. We encourage open mic performances where any kind of creative writing is welcome and each performer has four minutes to share original work or a “ cover. ”
Admission is free, though a hat is passed to provide a stipend for the featured guest. The UA Press generously gives away a book each month. In addition, OPWC will also give a gift card from Nightbird Books. OPWC is a friendly forum for wordsmiths from beginners to veterans. For more information, visit www. uark. edu / ua / mmasull / opwc.
We appreciate the opportunity to have met at George’s this past year and look forward to a bright future with Nightbird Books.
Dr. Michael Heffernan, professor of English at the University of Arkansas and author of several books of poetry, will be featured at the Poets Northwest meeting at 1 p. m. Saturday in Room 222 at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale.
Cat is a nontraditional undergraduate student in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas and lives in Durham with her husband, two sons, two pugs and 30 chickens.