Author: Sheree

My Voice is My Weapon

| Sheree

My Voice is My Weapon.

Starting to write the Living Wild Studios Studio Notes today for my subscribers, I created a zine.

I’ve been struggling to put into words, public words what I feel about the current state of the world, particularly in relation to the murders, police brutality ad racial injustice which is happening in America, right now and has been for the past 11 days, or 400 years.

Please read this zine and share if you must. But do something else and more to make sure the rally cry #BlackLivesMatter, doesn’t fall on deaf ears and closed hearts.

May Readings

| Sheree

This month was a hard month to concentrate on any longer reads. My reading was bitty and more about current affairs with The Guardian newspaper getting many hits. Other featured websites were The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Orion and The New York Times.
The readings was what it was, what it needed to be to get me through each moment, each day.
The one book I read, while I started many, was A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson. A poetry collection exploring the Grenfell disaster intimately which went on to win the T S Eliot Prize in 2019.

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Becoming in May

| Sheree

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I was attempting to complete my second round of #100daysofblogging while also creating a poem a day for National Poetry Writing Month in April. I was going well. I past the mid-point, and I just ran out of steam. And I also think enjoyment. I wasn’t really inspired with what I was writing. I think I was writing for writing sake. To fulfil the challenges and not my soul. Sometimes this works for me. I know in the past, I’ve created daily words for years and thought nothing about it. But I suppose I’m getting older and wiser and also figuring out what’s important to me and no one else. What my gut has to say about things takes precedent.

I have been writing in other places though during this impasse on the blog. I have a piece over on Medium for the The Binderful Blog titled, ‘Learning to Stay Inside,’ and documents my journey with the Coronavirus. I have also returned to my mixed-media memoir and I’m happy to say we’re in love. We spend a lot of time together getting to know each other again and working out what’s working between us and what’s not. We’re open and honest with other, basing our relationship on our vulnerabilities. I’m more than satisfied with how things are working out between us. I know I have to keep honouring this process by turning up each day and just touching in.

Turning up here today to find some words I needed for the memoir, meant I took the time to read over some past posts. See where I was at different times over the last five years. While reading, I gained a sense of perspective as well as pride for what I have created here. I love my website, because it’s attempt to present me and my process to the world. And it’s not polished or professional but it is real. It gives you a glimpse behind the curtain. It’s honest and vulnerable and it is so me.

So I’m not going to beat myself up for not completing a challenge. And I’m also not going to beat myself up if I miss days, or weeks before coming back here to blog. I’m learning to treat myself with more grace. And how that’s looks it still a work in progress but I do know as Michelle Obama wisely said, it is becoming.

” Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. It’s forward motion, a mans of evening, a way to reach continuously towards a better self. “

April Readings

| Sheree

499101E6-7BA1-4776-816D-D64A7195244AMy reading habits this month have been flitting here and there and everywhere. I’ve found it difficult to concentrate and be disciplined enough to see a book through to the end. Being that said, when I did get into a book such as An America Marriage by Tayari Jones, I finished it in a day. Demonstrating that I just needed a book to grab and hold my attention to keep with it. But isn’t that usually the case? This book was fiction, something I’ve not been reading for a couple of months and the main characters were African-American. And it sang from the page right up to the end.
Still got all the books I’ve started this year on the go. Nature non-fiction book really, linked to my work, so with the lockdown, it makes perfect sense that I’m not rushing to complete these.
Here’s April’s readings:

1. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
2. Afro-Persimism: An Introduction by Frank B. Wilderson III
3. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr Joy Degruy
4. All Yarrow Magdalena’s zines
5. Black Girl Magic edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, and Jamila Wo

Day 16 – All that you are is all that you need

| Sheree

To cool down after a hot shower, I sit with my flesh exposed.

From the open window, a cool Spring breeze caresses my skin.

I feel delight in the simple pleasure of air, of space, of me.

Seagulls squawk and voices mumble across yards. Cars roam.

Hanging baskets of white and pink blooms sway.

I seat and soak it in, swelling from the inside out with love.

In this moment, I am beautiful. I am all I need. I am enough.

Day 15 – NaPoWriMo – Musician

| Sheree

black and white bus stop sign
Photo by Autumn Dunne on Pexels.com

Ted Blaine, musician
After Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I journey back sometimes
and remember when I was riding
up front in that hot metal can.

I could see her in the rear mirror,
patting down here hair
and fixing her lipstick.

I should have done things
differently, little things,
like carried her bags

into the service elevator.
Let her know that I didn’t
think it was right, the way

they treated them Negroes.
One time, I heard her humming
while watching the world whizz by.

It was awful sweet the way
she could drift off into the music.
My mama was the same when she

had breath in her body. Sometimes
I dream of singing. Mostly
it’s that Billie’s comes back.

We’re traveling in the hot tin bus
but we’re upfront together
and she’s telling me

a thing or two about improvising
as the trumpet runs off
dancing with the piano.