INTERVIEW

The Power of Words.

Stanley Banks is a poet. He’s published five books and won countless honors including the Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry. He’s also a professor at Avila University.

But before all that and still, in your heart, you are the treasured grandson of a bootlegger grandmother.

I write a lot about my grandmother, Georgia. She was a bootlegger but held the family together. She held the neighborhood at 10th and Vine together. I’ve had people, all races, say she sounds like their grandmother, or they wish their grandmother was like that. Forget telling me that you like my rhythm and the technical stuff, that’s the best compliment.

My grandmother was always telling me that I was going to be somebody. To everybody else I was just a sloppy little kid. She was speaking me into existence. When I went to college, people would say “Boy! Georgia said it about you, and, hey, you actually did it.”

You know, I’ve said before, when they make my tombstone, whatever else it says, it has to start with “the grandson of Georgia Banks.”

In addition to being a poet, you are a teacher. Teachers have a special place in your life, don’t they?

Eleventh grade at Southeast High school changed my life. The teachers lifted me up. Ms. Gale in Current Affairs gave me freedom to be creative. I am still in touch with her to this day. She’s like a surrogate mother to me. Another teacher, Ms. Kizine, had the nerve to teach Shakespeare to a bunch of inner-city Black kids. Macbeth! “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.” I was the idiot! I didn’t have a plan. It made me realize I had to find my way.

I went back to Southeast to do my student teaching. Eight weeks for no pay. I had been away for about three and a half years, and, for some reason, these students had heard my name. In those days there was a popular TV show called “Welcome Back, Kotter.” I walked in the classroom and the students started singing, “Welcome Back … welcome back ...”

Was it in 11th grade that you decided this poetry thing was your path?

I was chosen to write the poem for my junior prom. So, I wrote about the traumas of life. Murder. Suicidal thoughts. Gunplay. Well, I had to sit down with about seven teachers. It was like an intervention. They said, we like what you’ve done here but a prom poem is supposed to be uplifting and positive. So, could you write something else. Now, my artistic self was insulted. But, then, I thought, People actually care what I write.

What sets a teacher apart from the rest?

A great teacher will make you do something great. The summer between 3rd and 4th grade, they sent a note to my grandmother saying I needed to be in summer school. I wasn’t reading the way I should have been. I was crushed because there goes my summer of playing baseball. The note said they would provide graham crackers and orange juice. I loved graham crackers and orange juice. The first day, Miss Bartlett, another amazing teacher, said, “Come in here babies. I hear you don’t like reading but I’ve got all these books up here about dogs and mountains and so many things.” Then, after we’d read, she had us talk about it. She made it so easy and nonjudgmental. By the end of summer, I read 50 books. Miss Bartlett said, “I’m gonna write your report and say y’all should never been in this class.” But I should have because I really didn’t appreciate books until then.

What is your process like when you sit down to write?

There will be something that serves as inspiration, but when I really start making concrete progress it’s usually after midnight. I attribute it to my bootlegger blood. I’d be up with my grandmother, listening to the voices in her bootleg beerhouse. I heard the German voices, the Italian voices, the Jewish voices, the Polish voices. So, today, I think those midnight hours take me to that place.

Over the last few years, for good and ill, we have all seen the power of words. For a poet, it must come as no surprise.

Selection of words. What you can do. You can motivate them or depress them. You can either destroy people or pump them up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joel Nichols has been interviewing fascinating people from Kansas City and around the nation for 35 years. Today, he does freelance work for a number of area organizations, as well as emcee events in our town. Please, visit Joel Nichols Communications, online.