Welcome everybody to the San Francisco Public Library and welcome to this month's First Peoples Edition of Kim Shuck's Poem Jam. I'm John Smully and I'm a librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. While we're waiting for everyone to join us, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about a few of our upcoming programs. On behalf of the Public Library, we wanna welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatushaloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that the Ramatushaloni understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor the Ramatushaloni peoples for their enduring commitment to war up Mother Earth. As the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatushaloni have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as First Peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatushaloni community. We recognize that to respectfully honor Ramatushaloni peoples, we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge in how we care for San Francisco and all of its peoples. On Saturday, December 4th, please come to hear philosopher Lewis Gordon and author Justin DeMung discuss the creative relationship between the radical movement within Afro-American classical music known as Free Jazz and the parallel development of the Black Power Movement in international politics. On Sunday, December 5th, clean energy activist, Andreas Corellis discusses his new book, Climate Change. The following week on Sunday, December 12th, please come to SFPL's free screening of Red Poet, the film about Jack Hirschman, the renowned poet, translator, activist and former poet, Lauer of San Francisco. The screening takes place in the main library's Coret auditorium. On Monday, December 13th, a panel discussion of authors, including Dodie Bellamy and Eileen Miles, will be discussing the legacy of Bellamy's pioneering influential and experimental letters of Mina Harker, as well as Bellamy's new memoir, Be Reaved. This ends my announcements of upcoming programs. I have one more brief announcement about today's program, which celebrates indigenous poets. Our usual host, Kim Schuck, selected today's readers, but due to unforeseen circumstances is unable to attend herself. So in her place, the marvelous poet, Lauer of Kansas, Denise Lowe, has agreed to stand in for Kim. So please give a warm welcome to Denise Lowe. Thank you. Thank you, John, and welcome everybody. It's really great to see you and to renew acquaintances here on Zoom with everybody. I'm introducing our first reader, Lyndon Noel, who's a native Californian who grew up in Willets. She's the former poet, Lauer of Ukaia. And I want to explore with her, I just read that she first published with Strawberry Press in 1983, which is a legendary press that Maurice Kinney edited and published, and he was such a force. And I want to hear about that someday, Lynda. So first I want to hear your wonderful poetry. Thank you, Denise, and thank you for bringing up Maurice. I sometimes feel like he doesn't get the acknowledgement he deserves. He is very in contact to that magazine. That was something. Yeah, so thank you. I'm gonna start with an acorn poem because it is acorn season. Several years back, well, more than several, I was commissioned to do a poem about acorns for UC Berkeley, and this is what came of it. And then I got invited to Princeton to read it also. Where the circle, okay. Where the circle began in this creation, a sprout from a seed, from a nut, fallen from the tree, it would sprout. White oak, tan oak, red oak, black oak, leaf and bark, ripe food fallen on a moon. A seed, a nut to feed a people. A seed, a stem, a leaf, a tree, a nut, a seed, surviving through cement in a field of debris. Your leaves glitter immense and above glass and black rubber. Heart of oak sprout through asphalt, fed by rain by sun. From green to brown to naked to new leaf, uncurling to acorn to seed. A circle of sprout and food. Circle of seed, of sprout, of food, ripeness. Wind or time unhinges your bounty right on time. Each autumn day you are undressed by wind. In shadows of oak, creation lingers, lives in a circle of seed and sprout, of stem and leaf, of trunk and branch, of leaf and acorn, nut, seed. In the sunlight through oak, sustenance remains and dwells in flesh, pulp in shell, in hole, in drop, in crack, in the worm, curled into a circle within an acorn and gall. Green leaf, yellow sprouted falls with beside, with and beside acorn. They are relatives of trunk, branch, and bark, gathering acorn in autumn's gold angle, light, voice of harvest on every fallen leaf. We are brought to your shade to gather your fallen fruit. We assemble beneath your strong arms, harvest of flesh, of oak, fruit. Because of oak, we gather, we eat, we breathe the same circle. Human and oak, interwoven, deer and woodpecker, connected by food of oak. In the old way days, a million nuts might not make you wealthy, but you'll survive the winter. Another circle made of oak and acorn, woodpecker and deer. Like salmon, like deer, willow and mushroom, like humans and moon and sun and earth and daylight and darkness, oak feeds our existence. Having traveled in the mouth of woodpecker to the oil-slicked power pole and fallen from there, you sprout and stretch to the vibration and buzz. Between the beak of woodpecker acorns fate sealed, basket full of acorns can lighten the dark of winter. There is rhythm in stone on stone, stories told in the pounding seed between each stroke, stories told, show me the grind and the swing of stone in hand to stone of stones, from seed to meal and ancient doing with stone and swing, stone on stone, acorn flesh between. Washed by cedar, sweet, your bitterness varies. Cedar washed again and again and again, cedar washed, bitter, cleansed, smooth scent of cedar. Hours spent at the edge of sand dripping water into the ground, heart of acorn cedar laced. We talk while we wash you. We sing softness and sweet cedar into your taste, into our mouths. Cedar and sand brought together to soften, to sweeten, to please our waiting tongues. Call it labor, making a circle from tree to food. Make a meal out of nuts, out of tree, out of an acorn, out of the flesh, ground, fine, given to food. No sand in my mouth, only warmth, only goodness. We live together since the beginning, into the forever you feed us. We make offerings of song, of prayer, of thanks. Together we make a circle.  Together we make a circle. So I am going to just finish with one more because it's the full moon and I am just very fond of the moon.  Oh moon, my friend, thank you for always being there. A thin bone shoulder, shadowed circle, nearly closed eyelid. You offer comfort when comfort is needed. Through cloud cover, marine layer, you always come through. Cradle me in your thin arms, cleanse me in the pond of your fullest self. To birth light while waiting on darkness. I have cried on your shoulders many times. Your mirror embracing all of me. Thank you for your enduring friendship, your beauty through oak or redwood, your midnight glean off any river, your snowy grin. Oh moon, you could never be my lover, not that I don't ache for your white bone presence. And though you lift and release me with your rising and receding, such intimacy with whom I have prayed to would undress skin, flesh and bone. My marrow too naked to distinguish itself from you, my friend. Fleck of gold, summer, ice, pocked granite. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. That was just beautiful. I'm so glad to hear you read. And I'm sorry I was a little bit late to on the introductions. I had to work late, but what beautiful and kind of result. I'm glad you made it. And like I said, I've got to run on and I apologize to everybody else, but please have a good night and thank you for having me. Thank you for your beautiful words, Linda. Thank you. It's always a pleasure. Likewise, have a good one. You too. Thanks. Safe travels. Thank you. All right, y'all. Well, I'm so happy to be here. My apologies I had to work late today, but I am here now to enjoy and introduce the rest of the readers for the evening. And yeah, so what an exciting night it is. Hey, John Smalley, how are you? I'm fine, E.K. Would you mind introducing yourself? I asked Denise Lowe to introduce the readers. Since you are here, you can split those duties, but why don't you just- Sure. Yes, Denise has been communicating with me on the chat. So I'm E.K. Keith. I am a poet and a teacher librarian here in San Francisco at a public high school. And I'm really pleased to be here today. So that's me. Our next reader, I believe, just to shift into the show is Georgina. And I have a little bio here to share with y'all. Georgina Marie is a poet from Lakeport, Northern California and the Lake County Poet Laureate for 2020 through 2024. The first Mexican-American and youngest to serve in this role for the county. So that's pretty cool. In June 2021, she was selected as Poets Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. She's the literary coordinator and poetry out loud coordinator for the Lake County Arts Council, co-creator of the Blooms Poetry Column and poet-in-residence for the Bloom. She serves co-editor for the Middletown Art Center's Resilience and Restore, Collections of Written Word, funded by the California Arts Council. Georgina Marie, I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you so much. I wanna say a quick hello to my friends, Brenda and Allie. Thanks for coming tonight. So I think I'll read about four to six poems tonight. And this is my second year at the poem jam. I'm sorry Kim couldn't make it, but it's an honor to be here. So this first poem is called Praise Be the Shape of Continuity. That after the sharp metal crash briefly cut into the shape of nature, all of my bones remained intact. That after the silver collision of man-made machine with cedar hollow hair, life and lung were granted a continuous mine at the least. That since birth, I still don't know if there is a God, yet the heavens, if you call it, didn't care. That when the blinding of ice white headlights met sable-buck eyes to arrive at an agonizing stillness, I couldn't look away. I saw grace and tragedy.  That when the officer said he was gone and antler-missing, I mourned the coronet, purling main beam of his anatomy. That making spirit contracts with four-legged creatures makes me feel less alone, but their deaths burn. That the moon glint on a still pain body pain to no end. So that dog death, sister death, dear death sprouted me a golden backbone. That silhouetted beings in the night could have been watching, could have swooped down, torn my words, scratched and clawed straight through larynx. That life is a dance to avoid orifice and oathful. That the length of trauma covets a shorter way out. And this next poem is a fairly new poem. Brenda's heard it before, otherwise you think it's new to everyone else. A poem is a landscape is a soft place to fall. This thing comes as waves unfailingly, in unison with blorets of grass swaying on terra firma, purple needlegrass, melliga, wild rye, field-blade snake-like from intermittent zephyrs. Feel this to feel alive. Somehow I believe I was born into grief, always knowing death was narrowly on the other side. I once woke my mother, eight years old, crying morning for her death, afraid my father would use the weapon under his pillow on any given day. Home was not a safe space to land in. Grass is a natural water collector, even in summer how it feels velvet, moist, an understated bed heaven for bare feet and consoling. California Oat, green's heat sedge, native. So much in this life is a hardened surface. So much is unmoving, holds you still and stagnant from reaching well-being. I remember the darkest soil being the safest haven. The Anura, bullfrog, earthworm, and Alita. There was no fear in the earth's cradle. I dear dance around words for wild grasses because they are easier to say aloud than to say abuse, to say hurt, to say wounded, to say that in my mind I am a little girl flying alone on a backyard trellis, avoiding the inside of a home I feared, a domestic legacy of hitting and shouting and demeaning, my legacy a soft poem, feather soft memories of being saved by land. Thank you. Let's see, I think I'll do two more poems. This next one is Morning Poem on a Rustic Table. And this was inspired by a prompt I gave myself from Joy Hardrop poem. And the lines are, you have gutted me, but I gave you the knife. You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire. Morning Poem on a Rustic Table. A blank page, no words, imprinted, basil plant unwatered, oak bowl of dried moss, artifact of first world wanting. I dance around the stories that have already written themselves into my body, sanctified, black ink tattooed to inner linings. The ceramic elephant in the room tells me, I can be such a small thing sometimes. There once was a man who tried to steal my identity. There once was another who crushed my identity, like a regno with a stone mortar and pestle used for flavoring traditional Mexican meals. My father once shouted at me for crushing a watermelon. One man died from suicide after I called him a coward. One didn't die, nevertheless left when I offered confession of his shortcomings.  I once feared I would never understand what I did to attract these men to my life. I was once enough to be taken, not enough to be equal, made of you, but not enough for you. I boil water for cacao and slowly add honey, lavender buds, doses of shame, pour into chosen mug, see how long it takes to seep into the heart. And I'll end with another very new poem. And yeah, I'll just go for it. This is called Archipelago. The only island I can think of is Bloody, young girl survivor of native genocide, survival via Tully. Small Town County refuses to change the names of towns named after her family's murderers. If I owned an island, I'd call it Silver, Silver linings in isolation. Is it a sin for a brown girl to plan her own elegy? So many of her kinds struck down daily without consent. Consent is an island America would never live on. My uterus is an island no one will touch, except white Republicans in offices that cost more than my life. Call me an animal. Call me by my true name, war child, socialist child. In Mexicans, I believe I pledge allegiance to compassion. Hope is a thing with feathered birds that aren't yet extinct. Dip me in lavender. Pour me honey and mint tea and a paper cup. Hope for a decent night's sleep. Thank you so much for having me. Georgina Marie, I also pledge allegiance to compassion. That is just really, really like nailing something real for me. Thank you so much. Is there a place where we can find your work or purchase a book or are you performing anywhere soon? Yeah, thanks. I think John put the link in the chat to my website and I do have a newsletter for folks can sign up for. Keep track of events. Thank you so much, Georgina. That was just really beautiful. All right, y'all. So what a great night of words. So our next reader is Viola LeBeau and real quick Viola, did I say your name right? Nope. Could you help me with that, please? It's Viola LeBeau. Viola LeBeau, thank you, Viola. I'm glad that you're here. So I'd like everybody to welcome Viola LeBeau. She's a queer, indigenous, interdisciplinary artist and poet with a background in community organizing, traditional knowledge and photographic processing. She's a member of the Hamawi Band of the Pitt River Nation and a descendant of the Kauia Maidu and Cheyenne River Sioux. Born in Sacramento, home to the Nisanon and guest on the traditional territory of the confederated villages of Lisjon and Wichin, also known as Oakland, California. She received her BA in sociology and studio arts from Mills College and now works with the Segoria Tay Land Trust to help return indigenous lands, sacred sites, artifacts and remains back into the hands of indigenous people. That is incredibly important work. Her experiences navigating indigenous activism and arts has created a foundation for her work that lends to cultural empowerment, survival and reflection of land, relations and body. Everybody, please welcome Viola. Thanks for being here. Thank you, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so I have a couple of works tonight. This first one is creation. Light from the stars, leaves of mugwort muddled into ash, breath of valley racing down the hills. The sun tips as they reflect off the horizon of mountain bit by the great snake of its peaks, crack of dust from a corn shell before its ground to flower underneath the stone of mortar and pestle, grinding rock. This next one is memory. I hold your hands and mine, wrinkled skin slide across your bones embellished with precious stones. Show me your ring that you've had for years. I heard last night you turn the gas stove on and walked outside. So we've taken off the knobs and changed the locks on the doors but it hasn't stopped the tears you cry for home. And night after night you ask for your mom.  The hills once said that the boulders were created when the colonizers came rampaged through the lands, slicing through the earth as if the world were their butchery. So the buffalo asked the great spirit for everlasting life and laid themselves to ground, calcified their bones, pardoned their flesh so they could watch over us until the end of time. Burden, keep me in the water like deer grass for coils, waiting to be dyed deep, wine of Junkis sail, splinted sumac bite the ends with your teeth, wrap me piece by piece until your hands turn blue, keep the skin supple to bow, boil my bones black like the juniper in the fire, sail to itch, sit your body down to dirt, Indian style on burnt umber, twist me into the vision, you hang on the walls, leave on your kitchen table, fill with moss papery extract until I no longer remember my roots. Okay, and then I have two more for tonight. This one is titled Anties. I used to feel hands squeezing my ribs like a lemon burdened with juice to live up to your name, the day of your birth, the kindness in your heart because your eyes hold more softness than what I grip in all of my bones, already grown dry and calloused and twined in layers of sinew where I am stiff, you are tender like fresh tanned hide caressed by plumes of pine but I have always been more like your sister's tongue sharp to cut like the whispers in the kitchen, buck knife against flesh. And the last one I have for tonight is Bead. I have known sadness since before my birth, born to use a violet that nearly became my namesake, yet my mother thought she won't be purple for the rest of her life.  I have felt despair since I left the womb, safe, warm, soft, and I yearn to return. My mother once told me she would watch Seinfeld while pregnant and it made sense that when I stayed home from school, sick with the flu or sick of kids and turned on the TV to the sounds of a 90s laugh track, I would feel homesick. Rocks in my stomach and a heart heavy with mourning for my mother's womb. But my favorite home taught me my first misery.  And during those nine months, my mother's sadness coursing through her beaded veins, she fed me sorrows through her umbilical cord and I ate her sadness, consumed it bite by bite. Yet I often wonder why this desire to die will not leave my stomach when it's the first love I've ever known. It's tied into knots along my intestines coiled through the layers of my body like a basket. And I can't help but think about my grandmothers and the sorrows that must have been passed from generation to generation, addiction, relocation, colonization, genocide through our own mother's wounds. That's all I have for tonight. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Viola. It's been a real pleasure to hear your work tonight. And do you wanna tell us where we might be able to hear you again soon or if you've got a book where we can find out a little bit more? Yeah, I don't have a lot of stuff out there at the moment. I'm in the works with my first chat book, working on getting that out sometime in the new year. Otherwise, I can put my Instagram in the chat and that's all I have for right now. That would be awesome. Please do. Thanks, Viola. Well, this is turning out to be like a really rich night of thinking and it's a good way to unwind because I work in a public school and we've had a lot of long days lately and so this is really wonderful. Our next poet is former Kansas poet, Laureate Denise Lowe. Who is the author of 12 books of poetry? That is impressive to me, including Melange Block by Red Mountain Press and Ghost Stories of the New West published by Woodley Memorial Press in 2010. A Kansas Notable Book Award and recognized by the Circle of Minneapolis as among the best Native American books of 2010. That is pretty cool. So please welcome Denise Lowe and let's hear some poems, Denise. Okay, thank you so much for having me. I am on a Pomo land near a former village in Sonoma County in Healdsburg. My son has been working here. We have Delaware heritage, Ladape Buncie and we are not enrolled. But I have ties to Oakland. My grandfather used to ride the rails out here and other things. And what I really don't feel is given enough recognition is, excuse me, the slavery, the issues of slavery of Native people. So this poem I wrote on Juneteenth this year. An indigenous song for Juneteenth. Farmer's market music is jazz. A set of riffs drifting over stalls of plums, goat cheese and fennel. An elder wearing a long white braid, maybe Pomo, plays piano chords that a solo of tumbling tones. Maybe it's his grandson on drums tapping the snare and sounding the big drum on its side, the bassline. A white guy plucks a stand-up bass vial. He watches the drummer his fingers flitting like hummingbirds. I remember how Spanish enslaved California peoples for work in the vineyards forced servitude with whips. I remember stories from a black Indian about Bermuda where Algonquin war captives died in fields with Africans. I remember my Delaware grandfather who labored in orchards and Oakland shipyards who lost his nation but lived. I remember Joy Harjo, Muscogee saxophone player and poet, her healing songs, her courage, her stories of Creek Indian chants. I remember the strength of African-Americans who persist throughout these centuries alive, still making music today. The drummer ripples cymbals as a woman stands to dance. The band contours joy this day, a new Juneteenth. And in Oklahoma and throughout the many trails of tears of the Delaware people, there were Cherokees and the Cherokees are living side by side in Eastern Oklahoma, part of some areas. So in Tulsa, Tahlequah. So this, I took some Cherokee classes. I have a very small amount of Cherokee heritage, but the thing I really enjoyed or not enjoyed but respected about my Cherokee teacher, Andy Gurdie, was that he would never carry a $20 bill. So this poem is Andrew Jackson, I See You. I spindle, wad and trade you for tens, but banks dispense more of your face, flaring hair, horsey face, sharp cheeks, arrogant look of moral rightness. I see an outlaw who betrayed creeks, double crossed the Supreme Court, seized Cherokee farms and gold mines and ordered many trails of tears. Today, your bills are common trash.   That is... And suddenly got a little allergy fangoid here, I'll lubricate. I grew up in the Great Plains, in the Plains area and one of the wonderful heroes of indigenous American life is a woman named Mokie. And this is a poem that celebrates her life and also that country, Cheyenne country. The afterlife is snowy foothills lifted into mirage of clouds, white on white, spirits of murder Cheyenne's drawn near. Sand Creek braids of yellow quirt where soldiers killed Mokie's mother. She seized her grandfather's gun fired. When pale sun rises out of night, its disc spins a circle in chaos. Around it, skies race boil restlessly. Bent sport lies beyond rebuilt for tourists but shell casing still litter hard pan. The Arkhensis River snakes through gulches. Morning stars shine over Adobe ruins. Talent hawks, hunger for meat dropped from heights, kill. Hearing the massacre, Mokie shot a soldier before he raped her with grandfather's rifle she fought for years, woman warrior, Mokie, still her stories live. Optics, maybe I glimpse Bigfoot, a hulk blur across Adlon Road, not bear, not feline, not wolf. Twitch and a liminal spectrum, my husband sees it with me. Little people of the forest live in caves, Ireland to Greenland, Vinland to the Ozarks, deer avoid them. My toddler stares at a hovering light globe, he calls it angel. Dark mist hovers around a man with cirrhosis, I see that. Fate melody of my sister's violin weeps across all these sequences. Betty Smith teaches me to glance oblique at sun in Cherokee, Calaga, it's four trails firebrand my eyes. And two more, green again. Our primate eye cones absorb blues, greens, reds, sight range, blossom pigeons. My love, your eyes taste of willow groves, not mangoes. Pond water pools in my mouth, the Cherokee word is it's a Oostie, make green, renew oneself, Oostie, young one. We plant seeds, jade maize emerges, the child in my belly dreams green. Underfoot, azalea, grass blades rise, they feed everybody. Our hunter eyes scan, brown like soil, our fingers rustle, sedges, waver barely visible in swamp water. Gentle motion of khaki catfish whiskers, barbells, smell and taste in a single chest, you're always hungry. Thank you and in the grasslands where I grew up, fire is benevolent. It's used every spring as the snow thaws to clear fields of brush. And so when we moved to California a couple of years ago right before the Kintaid fire, it was a new experience to be afraid of fire. But I still cannot help but relish the beauty of fire. And this is this moment of danger, Walbridge fire 2020. Crows on pavement hop sideways, one-footed like the powwow dance, crow hop, the zigzag in the half light, leathers, feathers, shine taffeta black, smoke from burning redwoods, muddle site, masked strangers walk by us not threatening, but shielding from an invisible plague born on breath, lugs quiver inside our chest, studying a two-step song of murmurs. To Uno mountain sits wordless as haze, circles its ridgeline of pints and live oaks. Morning sun barely remembers to return to the moon valley of vineyards and goats. Months ago, I crowded into a bar to hear a band sing, la caia a sta, it's fuego, a song for dancing a cruise of me, fuego, fuego, fire, fire, streets of flame, danger, danger and beauty. Thank you all for having me. Thank you, Denise. Your words just really paint a picture in my mind. I get a lot of images, and I appreciate that. Is there, can you tell us also, is there someplace where, aside from any bookstore, where you watch your work? Hardly any bookstores carry the things. I do have a couple of recent books from that these poems are mostly from Red Mountain Press, the Small Press Distribution. And I just don't know, and you can check with me, I'll give you a discount. You know, send me postage at a few dollars and I'll mail you anything, so. That's very generous. Thank you so much for being here. This has just been a really, a wonderful night of work. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you so much for your words. And especially like celebrating indigenous peoples. And I think that's all of our readers, right? But I want to just, before we run away, I actually had picked out a poem that Kim suggested a couple just to close things. And so a few days ago, a very important indigenous author passed away named Lee Miracle. She is a Canadian First Nations author. And I'm certain that everyone here knows about her, but just in case you don't, I pulled up a little bio about her from the Toronto Public Library. In the 1970s, Lee Miracle, a grandmother of indigenous literature was among the first of many indigenous authors to be published and help forge a path for indigenous literature as we know it now. Her debut book, Bobby Lee, Indian Rebel, was released in 1975, and many other stories she's written have been critically acclaimed. In all, she published over a dozen books in various genres and had works featured in many compilations. And the poem of Lee Miracle is that I would like to read just to bring her into the circle. Everything begins with song. The sweet mountain breath of wind whispering through cedar earth's symphony. Wind taps out tunes to the valley floors, even the howling storm. Wind sing agonizingly beautiful songs. Arias, a painful transformation we come to love. Songs hooked to the language of wind lessens this burden of being. Couples itself to the promise of language. Voice elevates being. Renders life manageable. There's power in the breath of the wind. Renders life manageable. There's power in the breath we pass over vibrating vocal chords. The words carry a charge. The spark invites response. The hum of song points receivers in the direction of the good life. The breath of others takes their own journey through the body. Passes breath through some imagined future. Passes breath through some imagined future. So that was a piece from Lee Maracle. And I want to just thank you all. Thank you Viola. And Denise and Georgina. And also to Linda who has driven away from the reading. This has been a really wonderful celebration of your voices. Thank you. And thank you. And thank you, San Francisco Public Library. Thank you, John Smalley for, you know, doing all that you do. And to everybody who showed up tonight, I really appreciate y'all. Yeah, let me a second what EK said. Thank you, Denise Viola, Georgina and Linda. And please come back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thursday of each month. So second week of December. Hope to see you again. Have a good night, everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a good night.


Good afternoon and welcome back to the touchline on Y25, my name is Maxwell Waseke, we are now three on the set and our guest has joined us in the name of Michala Baraza, she's a bodybuilding athlete and we're going to speak about the development of bodybuilding as a sport. It was in the village of public domain some time back but it is standard dwindled in between what happened, of course we will be getting into that to see what happened and going forward what is the expectation like in terms of revival of the sport that you know a few people are passionate about. Good to see you, Christine. Lovely to see you, Celestine.  Michala Baraza, I actually quite like Michala Baraza. It's a good name, a very beautiful one. Thank you. How is it like outside there though? Bodybuilding wise? Yes. It's tough, it's extremely, extremely tough. We just completed our last tournament of the year last Friday, it was supposed to be held on Saturday but turns out with the presidential address we couldn't hold it on Saturday so it was rushed and we did it on Friday evening. By the standards it was a success, like we did our best, it's called the annual Kamukunji annual talent search. It's done by this bodybuilder called Christopher O'Keech, he's the world's strongest man in Dubai and Kenya and he's also a bodybuilder who's performed very well in the international bodybuilding association competitions. How was the talent search? Did you get a few people the upcoming potential? Definitely, definitely. It was very beautiful, like it was a lot of talent considering the short time span and considering the pandemic times. The guy that won is I think 26, a 26-year-old guy and he packs a lot of muscle for his age and for his physique. He's I think at most five foot seven and is in the 90 kgs. I wish I could show you a picture. He's actually very big and very good. So I know Ken is wondering, because bodybuilding is not a sport meant for, there's a perception that it's a sport meant for men. You sought to demystify this myth by joining the sport. What was the driving factor, what's the inspiration behind you starting to love bodybuilding as a sport? So this is a question for Ken. No, maybe we read it on the same screen. I come from, I always come from a place of what is it that I cannot do. Like the human body for me is limitless. So you cannot just tell me, by the way I'm an advocate of the High Court of Kenya by profession. So what you guys call a lawyer, those are two very different things, but that's a story for another day. And most of the time they'll tell you a lawyer cannot do ABCD. A lawyer cannot be seen walking on stage in what is most likely just their underwear. And for me that was actually one of the motivating factors.  But the fact that it's a very masculine sport, it's really not about just how we've been conditioned to think. Because women are a bit scared to get on stage in their underwear. But when you think about it, there's nothing big to eat. My inspiration has always been what a man can do, a woman can do better. And what is it that I cannot do? But there's a lot of things that women can't do or I can't do as a person. But if there's something that I can put my foot out there and try my hand in, I will always try and poke that hole as long as it's of interest to me. Ken? My question to you would be, you said you're a lawyer and you're also into bodybuilding. And both of these things require complete immersion into the trade. Law is very serious and bodybuilding, to follow a routine daily is very serious. So sometimes you have to pick one of the two and if you have to pick one, which one would you say this is my go-to thing, if it's law or bodybuilding? So let's start by saying law pays my bills. Law enables. So any day, any time, I'm sorry bodybuilding community, but any day, any time my fallback would always be the law.  You're up 12, 13 hours a day. The rest of those hours I'm doing my law thing. I'm doing whatever my side hustle is. Because bodybuilding does not take your whole day and that's the other misconception people have that you'll be the whole day in the gym. No, it's not humanly possible for me to be the whole day in the gym, but it's possible for me to take two hours out of my day. There may be one hour that my friends go out drinking and the other one hour that they spend in bed. I take that one hour for the bed and the one hour for drinking and I immerse it into something that I love. And that's how I balance the two. So you don't drink. Well... You won't disclose publicly. No, we'll talk about it anyway. We'll talk about it off the set. So has it been like in terms of the experience and journey since you joined this sport that needs and relating commitment and in terms of journey, the experience, has it been very difficult, the challenges you've come across and even the beauty about it? When I started, I really struggled. I really struggled with the balance and I also really struggled with where I draw the line of what people say and who's going to give me support. And initially when I said bodybuilding I never used to put... I would never come to this platform and told you I'm an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. That was always out of the question. So I used to treat them as two complete opposites and that's one thing I struggled with for two, three years. Then after I gelled into it and the legal community started being accepting towards my bodybuilding journey because I'd been consistent, it became easier. Commitment wise, I will not say the struggle was too much because it's something that I've actually liked doing and the beauty of the journey is actually what you were just talking about with you before I came on set. The competition in India. So I go to this competition.  Everyone else is light, white and even the dark Indians don't have this kind of skin. But you get on stage and you do your thing because you're given one minute.  Which was a very big deal for me, a very big deal for my gym and actually a very big deal for Kenya if you're listening to this, I'm in a Mohamed. It was a very big deal for Kenya and I feel that is one of my highest moments in bodybuilding because it was something that I did for myself, for my gym and for my country like it was good. So after girl and show overseas in India during the international competition where you say you are probably the only African who was taking part in the competition did you feel appreciated having back the medal of course a margin second overly? By the country? Yes. No, by my gym very much. Why not by the country? Because you know me from social media so I'm not asking you. Did you know I had a silver medal in India? No. Exactly. That's exactly why. Like there's a very small crop of people that one know about bodybuilding, two know about women in bodybuilding and three know about even the international competitions that bodybuilders go to. So I guess it's just what it is for a lot of women in sports. That's just what it is. We want better. We hope our sports ministry does better but no I did not feel. By the country no. By my gym, by the pole in bodybuilding very much appreciated. Good. And the question is has there ever been a private person who's like walked in and said I'm going to support something between all the gyms or it's just every time there's a competition you guys look to the government or is there a private body or investor who does, who shakes things and makes these things happen? Aha. So that is the question I was actually waiting for. For me all the competitions that I've gone to have been supported by my coach in my gym. So my gym is called Ultra Fitness Gym. It's in Kilimani. Any time I go for a competition anywhere be it local, be it international they'll brand me, they'll pay for my ticket they'll pay for my supplements, they'll pay for my training like they'll make sure I actually go out there and do my thing. And it's like that with a lot of bodybuilders. The competition that we just completed in Kamukunji, the guy is sponsoring six athletes I believe to go and compete in Romania. And this is one of those things that I wish and I feel that the sports ministry should be looking at and saying actually these people are going for an international natural bodybuilding competition because there's a lot of issues around doping in bodybuilding and probably that's one of the reasons why the sports ministry might not want to associate itself with a lot of bodybuilding but this person is taking people to a natural it's actually called the International Natural Bodybuilding Association. So this is where they can come in and actually help Chris with some of the sponsorship for these athletes. There's been a concern over existence of briefcase federations in the country. Lack of activity has been witnessed from Kenya bodybuilding federation. I don't know where you sit objectively speaking as a player. Do you think much has been done in terms of even enlightenment putting in place structures, policies to ensure that these sports grows from where it is right now to another level? Not to rain on my federation's parade but I think we at the moment might be the sport with the laziest federation and I say this with a lot of pain but also a lot of love because I know I see the heart and commitment that bodybuilders put into training for a competition. If we took even just half of that into building what kind of federation we want would have an amazing federation because when you look at it objectively the way you're putting it in 2018 is the last time we had an international Miss Kenya bodybuilding competition which again is a title I still hold to date so the people that held those titles in 2018 those titles have not been challenged so if you ask who is Miss Kenya Bikini right now they'll tell you mihalais simply because in 2019 and 2020 there were no competitions and in 2021 it's looking like there's not gonna be another competition but we have to wait and see who will come up and say oh well I want to run for the federation elections and be the chair and probably do another competition which in my opinion will be another 2 or 3 years I don't see it even happening in 2022 honestly I see it starting from maybe 2023 onwards Maybe as players do you think you should take the challenge in your hands and why for these positions rise to the mantle be in charge and do whatever you want to wish you want it done for the sake of the growth of the sport I feel like that's a very small percentage of players because when you look at it and Ken will agree with me on this I hope a very small percentage of players want to actually be involved in the politics you just want to go to the field or to the stage and just play and just do your craft and just be the best at what you do unless the time has come for you to exit the sport and actually take a more active role in the leadership you just want to play and if you're being a leader like me I try to be a quote-unquote leader from just being a bikini athlete that I let the bikini athletes that are coming up look up to me I help them with 1, 2, 3 things but I'm not running to be the chair of the federation tomorrow honestly because I still want to play this sport Of course we're talking to Mihala Baraza the bodybuilding athlete talking about the development of the sport in the country she's also an advocate of the high court and she's put things into perspective saying that there is a difference between being a lawyer and an advocate of the high court and it looks like she was addressing me because I've been misusing the two thanks for coming through in terms of that rectification and of course she spoke very well with regards to how she's been juggling between the two good question from Ken and multitasking she says hasn't been that a concern of course between law and between the sport she loves now let's talk about the way forward of these sports even olympics is around the corner we've seen how those perceived to be small sporting disciplines are preparing we've seen even badminton guys preparing to go to Tokyo Japan to take part in this global sporting extravaganza you think if there were concrete association in place locally bodybuilding would also be taking part in the qualifiers for Tokyo so I'm not sure bodybuilding features in Tokyo but our olympics is called Mr and Miss Olympia so I feel like if we had a solid federation solid federation that would help us get points because I think it's just like any other sport it's point based the more points you have the easier it is for you to be able to qualify for Olympia I think we would get there because when you look at it we have had bodybuilding athletes like Crashid Gift Issa Evelyn Okini Oala Meshako Ching Shital Kotak Farah Ismail that have actually gone out and performed exceptionally well in bodybuilding events different bodybuilding events around the world so if you put all of these athletes together and say well we won't have a team of say 10 athletes to take to the Olympia if we had a solid federation yes we would actually be preparing for something close even if it's not Olympia something very close to it this year Ken are you seeking joining bodybuilding because you said age is not a factor and anyone can enroll even at 40 but you are too young engineer I don't think I joined bodybuilding but I do work out bodybuilding is something really serious proper emotion but I had a question like you said the federation is defant it's not working it's not there does that mean that are there lesser gyms who are willing to step up and hold these competitions or there are a lot of gyms apart from your gym which other gyms are really stand out when it comes to competitions and stuff so my gym is in fact exclusively a boxing gym so the good thing that they did we have two bodybuilding athletes myself and some the current Mr. Kenya physique but there's different gyms that are actually very willing to support and bring up talent in bodybuilding there's a gym initially called fitness empire you'd be surprised it's actually a gym initially that is very big on bodybuilding it hosts the two time Mr. Kenya Rashid gift ISA there's a gym called hood gym and that's all the way in Kawanguare it supports bodybuilding there's colosseum fitness center that is the gym that my mentor goes to that is also another gym that supports bodybuilding in terms of them coming together to hold a competition that's something I'm not sure they've ever considered I'm not sure they'd be close to it but it's not I've not seen them consider it in the past before so bodybuilding is classified under fitness sports and there are plenty boxing wrestling what's the relationship what's the similarity and compare and contrast for someone who is a boxer can they comfortably become bodybuilders or wrestlers well I think for anyone that has played as sport before it might be easier for them when they join bodybuilding because you really know the commitment discipline that goes with it that being said also I think another thing I have appreciated about bodybuilding which is similar to every other sport is you get to do the same thing over and over every day like it's monotonous but it's structured so I feel like the relationship comes in the commitment and the discipline that comes with it the difference comes with the skill because they say bodybuilders are very stiff so I'm not sure if is it true? I don't think so I move quite well but the skill is the difference but the discipline, heart and commitment is where the similarity is at how many people you've enrolled yourself after talking to them especially for ladies who think that probably this sport is not meant for us and you've spoken to them or they have watched you in the gym playing even overseas have you managed to leave a few? I think I could say maybe five or so but the one that I have actually gone through the journey with and taken her up to the stage with me is one and that was in 2018 and that was a very proud moment for me standing next on stage with someone that I have actually mentored and trained with for 12 to 16 weeks it was a very proud moment for me and she was 39 at that time and on that note let's just take a short commercial break it's 2pm then we will back to continue with development of bodybuilding as a sport in the country