Verse from the Village

     The poetic recollections and reflections of a white American male born in the 1950s, created with the help of people for whom white American males born in the 1950s have been historically problematic.

      When Mike Bonifer got introduced by the poet and playwright, Peter J. Harris, to the Anansi Writers Workshop at the World Stage in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park community, in 2013, he heard voices “reporting from the streets,” as one writer there said. Voices marginalized and oppressed and shunted to the shores of mainstream, mass-marketed narratives. Voices raw and altogether original. He kept going back week after week, just to listen. Until one day, the voices emanating from the stage inspired him to begin writing poetry of his own.

     White Men My Age is a collection of poems Bonifer workshopped between 2019 and 2025 at the Anansi Writers Workshop and in the Community Literature Initiative, where writers from underserved communities get their voices heard and see their writing through to the printed page. In the process, these fellow artists became his muses, his sounding boards, his kindred spirits on a journey  to celebrate one another in their most meaningful and authentic light. Sometimes the light is comedic. Sometimes it’s angry. Other times heartbreaking. Always it’s honest.

     Bonifer describes the poems in White Men My Age as “A report from a spy in the camp of the oppressor.” It is his acknowledgement of his privilege. It is also an observation that we are all complicit in one another’s stories. The more clearly we can see and honor that reality, the better all our realities can be.