Meeting a poem halfway: Dr. Jeffrey Champlin publishes article on language and avant-garde writing

Dr. Jeffrey Champlin recently published an article titled "I know you can cant': Slips of the Mother Tongue in Fred Moten's B Jenkins" in the edited volume Untying the Mother Tongue. In the article, Champlin discusses the idea of the “standard” way of speaking and writing. He analyzes slang, dialect, political poetry across the Middle East and Berlin, and the Black Arts tradition, and relates it to BCB’s own Language & Thinking program.

The article focuses on a line in which the poet, Moten, says to his mother, “I know you can cant.” Champlin explains, “It seems to be a play on ‘cant’ being slang—‘I know you can speak slang.’ But I think it's also related to ‘can’t’ like ‘cannot.’ It seems like he's embracing the way his mother passed along her way of speaking and her understanding of language… and it turns from his mother's language into poetic, creative language.”

Throughout Champlin’s work as an educator, he has explored this phenomenon of turning forms of language traditionally thought of as intellectually inferior—such as slang or non-standard English—into poetry that demands equal respect. In 2015, Champlin taught at Al-Quds Bard, Bard College’s partner campus in East Jerusalem. Working with Palestinian students in the wake of the Arab Spring, Champlin notes how the poetry of Moten particularly resonated in this context.

“Fred Moten’s whole work is concerned with poetry, social change, and creation,” Champlin explains. “He's working with the Black Arts tradition, the idea that the African-American community has to take a stand in the wake of the civil rights movement and create a new vision. So it's drawing on a range of rhetoric from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Malcolm X, but it's being very proactive about new artistic forms in relation to new visions of equality.”

These ideas resonated with the students at Al-Quds. “Students were fascinated with how poetry was so important in the Arab Spring,” Champlin notes. “Visual art and the language of protest took over the streets in Cairo. People broadcast declarations on Facebook and other social media. So students were wondering, how is poetry in this context related to social change, to bringing people together, to having new ideas that were very urgent?”

Discussing these events, Champlin says, “The students in Palestine would often use imprecise or grammatically incorrect language, according to standard English, but it was their way of making the language their own as they engaged with the poems and other texts.”

Champlin notes that non-traditional language continues to inspire students, even here in Berlin. At BCB, one of the key texts of the Language & Thinking program, required of all students, is Fred Moten’s “Statement in Opposition.” Champlin notes that the poem uses precise emotional language in an abstract setting, and students interact with it in creative ways, bringing in the context of current events and their own interests.

“We use ‘Statement in Opposition’ in these classes to help students see that they can interact with something that's very difficult, even avant garde, through adding their own context,” Champlin explains. “The idea is to give an opportunity for students to meet the poem halfway between their imaginative perspective and what's on the page.” Just as the themes of the Arab Spring and Middle Eastern politics more broadly were on the minds of Palestinian students in 2015, in recent years the topics of climate change and gender have been particularly prominent in BCB students’ analyses of Moten’s work.

The entirety of Champlin’s open access essay can be read online through ICI Berlin, as well as the other works that make up the volume Untying the Mother Tongue.

By: Sophia Paudel, Bard College Berlin Communications

Post Date: 10-26-2023