Author: Sheree

Sakura – Day 16

| Sheree

At the tail end of winter,

loaded with blousy, pink,

double flowers with frilly edges,

are Japanese blooming cherry

trees. At mere sight,

I become mooncalf,

mooning over their delicate

blooms. Reborn.

For a few weeks at least,

hope trembles through

the boughs.

The present moment

like each pink, soft cluster,

is cherished.

An ars poetica poem* – Day 15

| Sheree

“I write only because

There is a voice within me

That will not be still.” ― Sylvia Plath

Poetry is where we are ourselves – Elizabeth Alexander

i try to connect beauty using words as healers of possibilities from the state within, the voice, a teacher, a sage, where my poetry winters, where I can see the ‘I’ like a clearing through the trees, where imagination lingers inch wide mile deep, conjuring for change and connection. i try language, not to trick or demonstrate my intellect, but to spark simple, stretching blossoms into ‘we’ rather than ‘them and us’. from the state without, i’m a beast, caged and muzzled. swallowed. cornered and supposedly cowered, i come out writing, wading into dangerous waters, owning my imagination to practice potential futures.

*“An ars poetica poem is a poem examining the role of poets themselves as subjects, their relationships to the poem, and the act of writing.” —Poets.org

Tell me what you’re looking for in a relationship in one sentence – Day 14

| Sheree

Ohhh good question.

Laughter and fun, with trust and communication, honesty and commitment but not in a heavy sense but much love and affection and respect and joy, I spent a long time in a relationship that wasn’t joyful and really what’s the point, life’s too short to waste time and energy on people who don’t treat you right or who aren’t happy in themselves, I want to be with someone who makes time for me and us, just like I make time for them and us, hey I get it, people are busy, leading busy lives but I’m of the belief that if you want to be with someone you make time and effort to be/do just that.

Fugitive Practice

| Sheree

For those of us who live at the shoreline… Audre Lorde

It will be 10 years this August that I started my visual journaling practice.

Then it was called Dreaming on Paper, as I completed the course of the same name by Lisa Sonora.

I needed a safe space to explore the tumult of my feelings and thoughts. I was going through a traumatic experience of escape really. Escape from the life I’d spent the past 12 years building up, that was took away in the flick of a Facebook post.

I ran away from the public, the writing community, my home as I travelled into the Scottish Highlands and Islands. To heal.

Visual journaling helped me heal. Helps me continue to heal.

Overtime, I’ve come to understand my visual journal practice as a fugitive practice. Within these paints, images and words, dreams of freedom are planned out and eventually come to fruition. Projects, happenings, events – all on my own terms.

I mean, the whole point about escape is that it’s an activity. It’s not an achievement. You don’t ever get escaped. – Fred Moten

Within these visual journal spreads, I work out how to escape, how to get outside white supremacy culture while still having to be living on the inside. Coming to terms with the thought of that the outside can only occur from the inside. Being here.

Visual journaling is me trying to create an opening, a break in the fabric in which to slip on through into the otherside/ outside, into the woods running between the trees with the dogs barking at my feet. Creating beauty, creating a beautiful space in which to linger in while the terror rages around me.

Visual journaling is a safe space, is a nurturing space, is a free space.

Tender, Undoing Self Within Night’s Skin – Day 13

| Sheree

I say to myself : stop. Stop undoing yourself within night’s skin.

Tell myself a promise to sort out my living habits so I don’t die prematurely like my mum.

Imagine the tenderness: like soft beige rolls of fat, like soft pink tongues languishing in wet mouths, like soft woollen blankets tickling toes.

I may no longer be the second daughter, the misfit who could conjure a soul’s reflection through colourful art.

Please night as you stretch out your skin one more time, please be tender with my damaged, twisted stars.

Couplets – Open Heart – Day 12

| Sheree

Feel the breeze through the trees. Even the leaves strive

to stay alive. The energy is flowing through you, my love.

Pause and feel its spinning. The way of this world , freedom

is for the taking with every breath, linger

in the outside, the black outside while still enclosed within,

for now.

Revisions – Day 11

| Sheree
Come Again

Day 9 – Goofing off Revisions/ redrafting

Ten years. Ten long years of changes, I’ve been dreaming on paper.

I had to give myself permission.

To create again. Safely.

I was fearful. Fearful of the word. Images are safer. Images speak to the soul.

Paint. Takes me back to being a child and all I wanted was love and joy.

Tapping into this feeling of being with self, I show up to the page. Each day.

Each day, I have the opportunity to start again.

Each day I have the opportunity to meet the sunrise anew.

The Belly of a Mountain – Day 10

| Sheree
Glencoe, Scottish Highlands

We obscure the outline of the belly of a mountain*

when we write about nature

we enter the realm of words being useless

we enter our narcissistic imaginations instead of being in with the mountain

I miss the mountains, the Highlands, Glencoe

At some point, I became marred by immobility, by staying close, staying safe

Now I return in my dreams, awake and grapple to describe their grace and poise

Abstracted longing. Never enough, never true enough to capture their form, their presence

I wait for my return. To sleep within the belly of mountains,

the mountains I’ve always felt are old Black women resting together, safe

*Day 10 prompt was: Find a single sentence someone else wrote that sticks out to you and use it as your first line. Let your poem unfold from there.

This adapted line was taken from ‘Against Nature Writing’ by Charles Foster.

Goofing Off – Day 9

| Sheree

I made a journal this week.

Recycled a print out of the Darkling manuscript.

I needed to get centred, grounded, focused.

So I stitched the printed sheets together into a book.

Then I applied paint to each page, blotted off any excess.

I had a journal of colourful pages.

I had a safe vessel to capture all my thoughts feelings and to-dos.

I had been feeling overwhelmed.

Like treading water and getting nowhere.

Creating this journal was fun.

It felt like goofing off my day-to-day responsibilities.

This journal helped me get my ducks in a row.

And tick(le) them off into the sunset!