Description
DeWayne Barton, affectionately dubbed “B-Love” by all the young kids to whom he has freely given his time to help, was born in the Burton Street Community of Asheville, North Carolina. His family moved to Washington, D.C. when he was a young boy and he grew up in the Southeast side of D.C. Barton joined the Military and served four years with the Navy, stationed out of Norfolk, Virginia, after which he returned to Burton Street in Asheville. Since then, he has been actively engaged in his community focusing on environmental issues and social justice. He co-founded the Burton Street Community Peace Garden, a multi-use garden filled with art, education, and fresh vegetables that are shared in the community. He co-founded Green Opportunities, a non-profit that trains young men and women in green jobs. He is a member in good standing of the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP. His artwork has been shown in many galleries and museums, including the Smithsonian Institute and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture.
Hood Huggers International: Return to Burton Street is a declaration, a collection of poems that ring out like street corner anthems, sung to a drum call with both love and rage. Each poem burns with questions. Each poem is lit with compassion declaring us to rise. B-Love’s call is for all, but especially black people battered by a historical legacy that plays out personally and collectively today. He deals directly with how our hoods have been hard pressed. He is concerned with the State of Black Asheville, the State of Poor America in these poems. His gaze does not look away but at the devastation. He is not without hope, because he also sees beauty and strength in our neighborhoods. In this work he asks ultimately for us not only to witness, but to act – for us to gather around and reclaim our greatest circle: community.
—Glenis Redmond, Poet and serves as the Poet-in-Residence at The Peace Center.
Asheville activist DeWayne Barton’s resume reads like a template of commitment to and advocacy for his community, so it’s not surprising that when his alter ego BLove collects his poetry together in the volume, Return to Burton Street, he produces a taut, jazzy, hard-knuckled drumbeat of personal and historical indignation. Consumerist society, colonialism, and still radically not post-racial America come in for some hard scrutiny. The street style is suited to the direct urgency of the matter, low on trope, high on grit, a known and necessary song sung to a familiar tune, all the better to dance to, as many of us will.
—David Hopes Hopes is the author of Bird Songs of the Mesozoic.
