On April 8, many RWC students took a break from the boredom of a Monday morning and watched performance poet Liza Jessie Peterson recite several of her intense, often comical, but always serious, poems and prose writings. The morning performance was well-planned, with an appropriate introduction of Liza and poetry-like amplification.
Liza began with a poem about her love for ice cream, and how men’s sexual thoughts ruined her ice cream experience one day. “Ice Cream Fiend” was a journal entry written by Liza that she skillfully converted into a brilliant poem.
With her next poem, “The Waitress,” she addressed her identity as an African-American woman and how a customer in the restaurant she worked at questioned it. She made reference to the “wound” of her African-American heritage being the inspiration for this poem.
“Wake Up My Little Pretties” bluntly resembled the racial issues Cincinnati is experiencing. Liza wrote this poem in response to unarmed murders of black people by white cops in New York City.
She then, in a poem about energy and its effects on society, mentioned Hamlet and stated that he was not crazy, simply “crafty,” like the energy companies.
For an encore, Liza selected a poem that was a “work in progress.” This was a long prose performance dealing with her experience working with children of “Reagan’s Drug War.”
Following her performance, Liza left it open to questions and many students took advantage of the opportunity.
She is currently working on her book, but in the mean time, you will soon be able to view some of her exceptional writings at her website www.heavyhitaz.com, which she expects to be completed in a couple weeks.