August 2020 Featured Artist - Febo
/// About the Artist///
Anthony Febo is a Puerto Rican poet, teaching artist, and new dad living in Arlington, MA. Febo has been performing and teaching poetry and theatre for over a decade in the greater Boston area. His ability and love of remixing different forms got him featured as part of WBUR's The ARTery 25. In the classroom, Febo treats each workshop as it's own celebration. He draws on his experiences in theatre spaces, museums, non-profits, and art centers. On the stage, he's toured the country individually and as half of Adobo-Fish-Sauce: a cooking and poetry collaboration. His work examines what it means to actively choose joy in the face of what is trying to break you. Weaving performance into his writing, he examines issues such as toxic masculinity, family, culture, identity, and the role representation plays into a person’s development. His first full length book of poetry, Becoming an Island, can be purchased at Game Over Books.
Links to additional works and projects -
Buy his book! - https://www.gameoverbooks.com/product-page/becoming-an-island
White Space Part II - https://vimeo.com/737756325/315cefee85
(More info on White Space - https://www.upabovecreative.com/whitespace.html)
Featured Piece - grown from
I was grown from arroz con gandules
from sofrito and adobo can fix any meal
from my house on Sundays looking like a Goya commercial
I was grown from music
from calling Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoz my godfathers
learning Spanish like
tu amor es un pedriódico de ayer
from calling Big Pun and Terror Squad my cousins
learning my own language like
dead in the middle of Little Italy
little did we know that we riddled two middlemen who didn't do diddly
I was grown from cobblestone streets
from hearing
I can't wait to leave this place
from knowing what it's like to run for my life
from having outsiders know more about my city than I did
from being surrounded by people that hate their own skin
I was grown from this skin
from not being dark enough to hang with the Ricans
from not being light enough to hang with the Whites
from being confused where to sit at lunch
from not knowing who has my back when I get into fights
I was grown from hers
from my mother bringing me into this life
from my best friend showing me what to do with my life
from my first love making me question my life
from my second love making me question my life
from my current love making me thankful for life
from being thankful
I was grown from being thankful
from knowing what love is from parents who love each other
from knowing what love is from parents who hate each other
from knowing that sometimes
that's what love is in a Spanish household
from having lived in the city and in the campo
from falling asleep to police sirens and to coquís
from experiencing all four seasons and summer all year round
yea I was grown from du-rags and Timbs
from buying XXL tee shirts and 40” waist jeans
when I weighed 135 pounds
from not knowing where I fit in
from waking up every morning and wearing clothes that I did not fit in
I was grown from the pen
from listening to Mos Def and reading Shakespeare
was just a common weekend
from losing my notebook in high school and swearing
I would never write again
but I was grown from trying again
from my mother
being forced to drop out of school to watch over her siblings
then getting her GED
grown from - poem 3
then getting her Bachelor's
then getting her Master’s
then becoming a teacher
just so she can come home with enough time
to tuck my sister and I into bed
from my father
being the youngest of twelve
watching his father die from Alzheimer's when he was nine
then watching six of his siblings do the same in the past ten years
knowing it will happen to him
but waking up yesterday
running seven miles then going to work
and waking up today and doing the same thing again
see I was grown from being proud
from wearing the red, white, and blue and one star on my chest
from having the Merrimack flow through my veins
from having Febo as my last name
I was born with Febo as my last name
and if I had to be born again
may I be born with everything exactly the same