This wasn’t the way he promised it would be.
Bare floors, five to a room, babies’
faces lined with hunger, piercing
cries towards an empty oil lamp.
Love squeezes out of lives.
Boys shooting boys as regular as angel
dusting on banana leaves, long
and glistening. Violence standing
caged on corners with broken
standpipes, living next to dread.
The seething and faltering silence
as the dreamed for life
bobs on a distant horizon.
The moon is nowhere in sight.*
*Laventille, Smokestack Books, 2015
Do not allow those people who hurt you
Do not allow those words that damaged you
Do not allow those situations that pained you
Do not allow those occasions that destroyed you
To turn you into the person you were never meant to be
Taken from Darkling
Morchella Elata- Black Morels
Fruits from March to June in copses, woodland and mulch.
To survive under such harsh conditions, is deemed a strength.
Sometimes resilience and resistance can be tiring and dangerous.
I share my new poetry collection Darkling, come 7 November, 6-7.30 pm (GMT). I’m excited about speaking these words aloud in company. There’s something magical happens when we give voice to our creations. Allow the words, language to reverberate through our bodies. We come to the words almost anew, a fresh and feel all the emotions and meanings as they enfold again and for the first time.
I know it’s going to be an emotional session to share as this book was a long time in the making. I’ve changed so much in its creation. But I’m ready.
I share a poem with you today from Darkling. And please join me in its launch next week.
found poem: we arrived here with stars in our hair and needles between our toes*
after drea brown
be autumn/ be siskin/ be slick
twilight licks our dark skin
deep within the forest
straining through spruce/ larch and pine
(trial & error I learnt their names/ names
are never easy on black bodies)
living within the unknown (out)side
where history is wet/ with memory/ & muchness
within the shadows/ within the wake
we search/ for a tenderness in the brokenness
breathing in/ in-between spaces
tongue locked/ tongue packed/ tongue tied
we be/ but not be/
unfurling like tight fisted ferns
brown bruised/ violence against ourselves
into the woods/ in flight/ in creep creek/
in restless/ motherless moan
shapeshifting/ combing the black air/
what would happen/ if we linger
in the midst/
/////////slow////////down////////slow//////motion///////
refusing to be absent for ourselves/////////slow///////breathing//////
together/ listening to each other/ listening
to this haunting presence/refusing to play dead/
stay dead/
*the title is inspired by something within Paul Taylor, ‘Black Aesthetics’, Philosophy Compass 5/1 2010.
<https://sites.hampshire.edu/blackaesthetics/files/2017/03/taylorpaul-blackaesthetics.pdf>
Hey I’m just sitting here minding my own business but you still want my attention.
Still crawling up the back of me, lurking to steal my thunder and steal my power.
You don’t want me. You don’t want me near you. You don’t want me to shine.
And yet …
You can’t leave me alone. You can’t turn away because you know I’m mighty fine. You know I’m divine.
You know I hold the secrets of what it means to be fire. You know you can’t hide your desire no matter how hard you try to hide, to blend in, to mystify.
You can’t hide your desires because of your long, ugly, harsh venomous tongue dipping lies is always going to give you away, betray your cold and encrusted lying heart and mind.
I must make my heart, my queen for the love she once poured out, an ivory tower, a silent, giant, jagged-edge mountain of harsh rocks, wood and ruin.
Reaching up under a pale night sky, reaching for the stars, for some kind of spark, being witness to so much unnecessary, preventable violence, l choose to transmute fear into rage.
l choose to transmute fear into rage.
l choose to transmute fear into rage.
Do not mistake these rose-tinted cheeks as doll-like innocence or fairness. I’ve grappled with my myths and the myths you’ve fed me about my place. And passion, flames and fire have risen yet threatens to consume you more than it could ever harm me.
Burn whiteness to the ground. Burn that construction of whiteness and all that shit down to the ground once and for all. For all.
See I’m still carrying that tired old play script that a Black Woman is the mule of the world, saving everybody else when no one gives a fuck about me.
I’ll keep working on that, my queen, my heart, fixing that ivory tower to remain out of reach and impenetrable and safe.
I’m not sure how much I’ve shared here. I’m not sure if I wanted to speak it into existence out of fear of jinxing it. Maybe.
Last year, my last publisher Andy Croft got in contact with me asking for my poetry collection. Smokestack Books is planning to close its publishing doors and Andy wanted to go out having published my next collection.
We have a history as Andy published Laventille (2015) and stood by me throughout the whole ‘shit-hit-the-fan’ experience when my life and profession and writing were ruined ( or there was an attempt to ruin me as I’m still here to tell the tale).
So I said yes, maybe naively. As since then I’ve been on a rollercoaster of feelings as I attempted to bring the collection into existence.
Darkling was the result.
At some point I will share some of the poems within the collection. Some of the poems started within this blog. But even though I just got asked last year to complete this collection, I feel, no I know, this collection has been nine years in the making. Ever since Sheree Mack was cancelled in May 2015, I’ve been making my way back to Sheree Mack, someone I didn’t even know existed until she was forced to start again from nothing to building a much stronger and truer foundation.
Darkling is Smokestack Books swan song. Darkling is my rebirth song.
There will be a reading planned of the collection with special guests as support. Check out the details here. Thursday 7 November, 6-7.30pm (GMT).
So last week saw me launch the chapbook, for blackbirds pushing against glass, with some amazing writers.
It was a lovely intimate celebration online and I’ve got the recording to share with you now.
You can still make an order for all four chapbooks here.
I love this season. This is my season. This is birthday season. And I usually have so many things planned that I blink and miss the season. And I also feel a bit gipped because this season is taken up by Halloween and Christmas celebrations that no sooner that I have my autumn leaves wreath on my front door that I’ve got to replace it with the Christmas one.
So as a gift to myself as well as some breathing space, this season I’m bringing out the poetry and I’m writing a poem a day to cherish the moment. To live and breathe into the season.
I hope to share my creations here.
I know I have a lot to share here about the last few months too. I’m not sure what I have shared here. But I do know it feels good to take the time each day to exercise my imagination and be inspired to write again for me. But I’m sharing too.
I was thinking this morning back from the school run what can I do this season to support myself. Support the ease into hibernation mode but still get through the last few commitments and chores of the year. And I feel in my heart that writing poetry or attempting to dive into my dreams ( and nightmares) is a way of giving myself that much needed support. Keeping me creative but also keeping me sane.
I hope you join me in this journey one more time.
Living Wild Studios 