密歇根新闻广播 底特律诗人新书关注非裔美国人传统

Poetry can have a way of pushing you out of your comfort zone and into a place that challenges your perceptions and makes you question your beliefs.

The Dozen is a new book of poems released by Sibling¹ Rivalry² Press. The poems in these pages will really make you think.

The author, Casey Rocheteau, was the recipient³ of the first Write A House permanent residency in Detroit in 2014.

Rocheteau tells us the book's title refers to an African-American tradition.

"It's always difficult to describe," she says. "'The dozens' being sort of, you go back and forth⁴ snapping and sort of insulting each other, and it's this idea of, like, I'm going to tell 'yo momma' jokes to toughen you up because when you go out into the real world, there's going to be way worse things that happen to you."

"So I took that concept of the dozens, and I wanted to flip⁵ it on its head and sort of aim it at these things which oppress us," Rocheteau says.

It's almost impossible to talk about Rocheteau's work without talking about racism⁶. For her, it's a topic that started at home.

She tells us her uncle started stealing cars when he was young, and spent time in jail as a consequence. She says he fell in with the Aryan Brotherhood⁷ behind bars, and "really took it to heart."

"When I was nine years old, he had left a hit list with his cellmate in Denver that included some cops from my town, and then pretty much every single family member who was black, or who had married or had children with a black person," she says. "It's been one of these things about my life that's been sort of hovering⁸ over me in certain ways, because at a very young age, I really understood the extent to which racism was turned into violence, and how that violence was aimed at me specifically."

Rocheteau has a lot to say in her powerful, sometimes gut-wrenching poems. In pushing her readers to examine themselves and the world around them, to "think about the things that maybe you don't think about," Rocheteau wants to foster a sense of connection and understanding.

"I think overall, who I want to hear my poetry, anyone who can connect to it. Anyone who can find any sort of solace⁹ or even empathize and say, you know, I've been through that too, and this is really hard, and I want to connect with this person," she says.

Rocheteau strives to lend a voice to those that society often chooses to ignore: the oppressed, the misunderstood, the others. To that end, she tells us it's not hard to find inspiration.

"I mean, look at America," she says. "It's to me so evident that when we talk about the people that are oppressed and groups that are facing all kinds of different obstacles, societally, that's actually the majority of people, and we're lead to believe that it is actually the minority."

"Some poems will start as little vignettes of things that just happen to me in my day to day life … and then sometimes it's something that I want to think about a little bit more broadly or something that's troubling me, and usually those are the things that I write into, is what what troubles me at the core of my spirit."

Casey Rocheteau is an Artist in Residence at InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit and an editor at The Offing.

In our conversation above, Rocheteau shares more about her writing and reads from The Dozen.

1 sibling   

n.同胞手足(指兄、弟、姐或妹)

参考例句：

• Many of us hate living in the shadows of a more successful sibling.我们很多人都讨厌活在更为成功的手足的阴影下。
• Sibling ravalry has been common in this family.这个家里，兄弟姊妹之间的矛盾很平常。

2 rivalry   

n.竞争，竞赛，对抗

参考例句：

• The quarrel originated in rivalry between the two families.这次争吵是两家不和引起的。
• He had a lot of rivalry with his brothers and sisters.他和兄弟姐妹间经常较劲。

3 recipient   

a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器

参考例句：

• Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
• Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。

4 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

5 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

6 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。

7 brotherhood   

n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊

参考例句：

• They broke up the brotherhood.他们断绝了兄弟关系。
• They live and work together in complete equality and brotherhood.他们完全平等和兄弟般地在一起生活和工作。

8 hovering   

鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• The helicopter was hovering about 100 metres above the pad. 直升机在离发射台一百米的上空盘旋。
• I'm hovering between the concert and the play tonight. 我犹豫不决今晚是听音乐会还是看戏。

9 solace   

n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和

参考例句：

• They sought solace in religion from the harshness of their everyday lives.他们日常生活很艰难，就在宗教中寻求安慰。
• His acting career took a nosedive and he turned to drink for solace.演艺事业突然一落千丈，他便借酒浇愁。