So Day 4 of #GloPoWriMo and I’ve managed to read poetry and write some for the last four days. I’m pleased with that as it’s the most I’ve written all year!
I’m sharing this little surreal prose poem that came my way by Franz Kafka that really inspired me. The illustration is by Aimee Pong and you can find more illustrated poems by Kafka here too.
This is what I wrote jumping off The Sirens-
The sirens of waiting – a surreal prose poem
Waiting. Seductive voices floating through the dark night draw me in with the promise of beauty; laying down my load and being rescued.
Thick velvet air, their song like the Sirens overwhelm my senses leading me to think I’m safe and wanted and loved. Isn’t this how all men ( little boys in grown up clothes) draw their prey in?
The Black Madonna, another mother for all white people. With my eyes sharpened through carrots, I’m no longer waiting for someone to come and save me. There is no one. There is no such person. It was a construct fed on a reel since the day I took my first breath. A falsehood fed like life itself.
I’m the one I’ve been waiting for. Me in all my fucked up glory is the one who will save me. I see it now. I feel it now. I hear it now in my lament sung aloud. Listen. Doesn’t it sound so beautiful?
Day 3 of GloPoWriMo and I promise the last one from Lucile Clifton ( for now!).
And this poem, I just love the tone, the softness which for me mirrors the moving of the boats out with the tide into the deep waters.
The smooth cruise of wood on water is a the sight to behold. But there is love here and a turning away from fear and a floating off into the future with hope.
This is not about boats this is a blessing, a wish on how to live our lives. And I totally buy into it with an open heart.
To keep that innocence, to keep that hope within our hearts against the odds, against our day to day struggles is a gift. Is a blessing.
I’m sticking with Lucille Clifton today for day 2 of GloPoWriMo because I don’t think I read enough of her. I don’t think anyone can read enough of Lucille Clifton.
I came to her writing late and I’m not going to beat myself up to catch up. I’m going to savour every poem I read of Clifton’s as I don’t believe her poetry, her words should be rushed.
Clifton’s words have the ability to live in the bones of a person and that’s where I want them to lodge and not let go.
So today I share ‘cutting greens’ because of this poem’s ‘kissmaking’ – nature and humans as one.
In the dream, he comes back to me, whole and young.
He was always young in my eyes. When I used to ask him at each birthday how old he was, Daddy would answer, 45.
He was always 45 in all the years I knew him. All the years I was living, he was dying.
In the replaying of images, I play it differently.
I keep my distance until he asks for me to bring his slippers or newspaper. I offer them with bowed head. I don’t throw them at him as I used to. Escaping his rage, escaping the beats.
I keep my distance, but I want to be close to him. To hold him. To feel his love for me. Then and now, still needed after so many years gone.
To serve, he brought me up, to serve. Instead of getting the vacuum clearer out, he had us on the floor picking up the bits of fluff and crumbs. To hear his pride at a job well done was enough.
When I enter the chapel of rest, it’s like I’m floating on air, light as the flowing curtains concealing a prize. I see him now, as then …
he‘a surrounded by gold satin, his mahogany black skin shines, relaxed and unlined, sea-black lips wave-curled and still.
He looks younger than 45. Even though the plaque on the coffin lid reads 1920 -1981 – he was 61. And the time he was dying. I was living.
(Speaking about Robert Lowell’s poetry) “Lowell removes the mask. His speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal.”
M. L. Rosenthal’s article “Poetry as Confession.”
I’m taking a four week confessional poetry course with midnight & indigo. Founded in 2018, midnight & indigo is a small publisher and literary journal that provides a space for Black women writers to share their narratives with the world.
Tw weeks in and I’m loving the course, Tell Me Something Real: How to Write Confessional Poetry. Not only is the tutor, Schyler Butler knowledgeable, and thorough providing great examples for poetry within this genre all from Black women, but the group of writers signed up for the course bring it every week with their insight and feelings around each poem we read and discuss.
And then we get to trial out what we’ve learnt through these close writings within our own writing, as the sessions finishes with time to write a first draft of a poem and then share it with the group. I’m enjoying what I’m coming up with after being inspired. Because in all honesty, from time I’ve been a confessional poet but have never smashed the term on it.
Confessional poetry in essence can be distilled to 4 main components.
Be of an intimate subject matter.
Use the first person.
Be autobiographical or seen/ appear to be.
Use skilled craftsmanship.
I’m working on a new body of work now. So still in the draft stage but I’ll share a poem from time here, as evidence of my appreciation and dance with this form of poetry.
White Women
Within my family, there are white women. White women who married black men. I forget, neglect the fact that their blood flows through mine.
Trace the past, a sea of faceless white is mine. The black men forefront, a mist of women behind. Their names, I don’t know or forget.
They are the enigma, shadows. Forget the cleaning and cooking, their duty and mine, they went against the grain, steadfast women.
In the corner of the frame, you white women are not forgotten. Your spirit is mine.
I have a little series of poems inspired by fungi: mushrooms, toadstools and the like.
I’ve always enjoyed looking at pictures of fungi. I’d draw them from books and colour then in with coloured pencils. I started a collection of them, when a child. In real life, I’m not too sure, I like fungi up close. I think something the way they feel puts me off. And that they are alive!
Also the idea of spores frighten me. Obviously, the fear comes from a lack of understanding and knowledge about them.
What I do know is that they are vital to life. And that whole underground system they have going on of passing nutrients and messages between plants and ecosystems and other organisms is truly remarkable. And has to be respected.
Anyway, I was thinking of pulling these fungi poems together into a mushroom zine. I do love my zines. What do you think?
Of course I have to find the time to create it. But now I’ve stated it here, it lends some kind of accountability to completing the task.
Anyway, above is a brief extract from one of the poems. I think I have about 5 or 6 of them. So I’ll keep working on them and start thinking of some cool design to go with them.
Of course being here now, saying all this, is me thinking out loud. Making some kind of commitment to a dream and making steps to seeing it through.
Living Wild Studios 