As Madison's poet laureate, Fabu Carter Brisco hopes to spread her art form to the masses

Haiku heard from every hilltop. Pentameter proclaimed in parking lots. Poetry slams in the streets. Just where is this magical place of all poetry, all the time? Why, it’s Madison. At least, the Madison that Fabu Carter Brisco envisions. As the city’s newest poet laureate, Fabu Carter Brisco known simply as Fabu (meaning “beautiful woman” in an East African language) is passionately pursuing her goal of exposing the population to poetry in unique ways and unusual places across the city.

“I’ve never seen anyone connect people in this community like Fabu can,” says Karin Wolf, Madison Arts Commission administrator. “During her first year as poet laureate, we’ve seen poetry from across our diverse community appear in the most unlikely places. I predict that by the time her term is over, we’ll see poetry everywhere, from Metro Transit buses to the scoreboard at Camp Randall.”

Fabu is Madison’s third poet laureate, following in the footsteps of Andrea Musher and John Tuschen. The three-year volunteer position is now under the umbrella of the Madison Arts Commission to create greater visibility for the poet laureate, poetry and the literary arts in general. And it’s making a difference.

An early love of words

Fabu was born in Mississippi and grew up in Memphis, Tenn., in the ’60s. Her father was a career Army man, and the family traveled across the South and overseas. This experience allowed Fabu to feel comfortable around people from all backgrounds. “I don’t have an American or Southern perspective,” she says. “I’m an international person. I can be who I am and allow others to be who they are.”

She attended school in France and the United States, then moved to Kenya for five years, where she worked on her graduate degree. She is grateful for the perspective on her own heritage that her time in Kenya provided, and still keeps in touch with extended family there. “In Kenya, I blended in,” she recalls. “I would stand and feel the relaxation and peace of looking like everyone else. It was a gift.”

In the late ’70s Fabu moved to Madison to attend graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She feels a deep affinity for the city, and considers it home as well. “It’s helped me sort out and reflect about my family and the South, and has given me perspective and distance,” she explains.

From an early age, Fabu found the pen a helpful ally in understanding the world around her. In 1968, her father went to Vietnam and her mother marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “So much was going on in my life, heart and community, and the country as a whole, that I had to write about it,” she says. “It was so overwhelming and traumatic living [at that time]. Writing helped.” She intended to be a novelist, but her fifth-grade teacher red-marked her first novel. She decided to start smaller with poetry, and fell in love an affair that continues to this day.

“I don’t feel completely well if I don’t write,” she says. “I don’t feel whole. I write in my head. As a child I thought that was weird, but it’s not. When I write poetry, I feel happy. It’s just that simple.”

Everyone and everything inspires her. “A poet looks at the world with different eyes. Poetry is as elusive as faith. It comes from the spirit, the soul. It’s a spark of divinity, a calling. It used to be hard to be me. I was hypersensitive and a dreamer. I’m an introvert who likes people.” Poetry has allowed Fabu to truly come into her own.

Inspiring others

In addition t o poetry, education has always been important to Fabu an education she shares with others. Fabu has a master’s degree in African languages and literature and African-American studies from UW-Madison. “My education grounds me and gives me strength,” she says. “As a scholar of history and culture, I know who I am and where I come from.”

Fabu’s writings have a multicultural perspective from the eyes of women, children and African-Americans. In 2003, she published “In Our Own Tongues,” a chapbook of her poetry. A manuscript titled “African-American Life in Haiku,” will be published by Parallel Press in 2010. In addition, she’s received a grant to publish a book of her poems for children to leave at area schools and libraries. A fixture in Madison’s literary arts scene as an artist and teacher, she’s a private consultant in literary arts, education and African-American culture, and is also an outreach consultant for the Wisconsin Book Festival.

Throughout her career, she’s worked with children and volunteered with adults, single parents, men in prison and seniors. She uses her poetry to address the social issues that concern her most: education, particularly the education gap between white and African-American students; prisons, specifically the incarceration of African-American men and its effect on children; and women’s issues. She writes poems encouraging women to be more than they ever dreamed possible. As a member of the Hibiscus Collective, a group of five women writers dedicated to promoting cultural artistic expression on the south side, she’s brought literary arts to the South Madison Health and Family Center-Harambee. She’s also the former editor of Umoja’s annual poetry issue.