Essay

Life Writing

| Sheree

During my time of hibernation, (have I mentioned that here?) I’m resting of course but I’m also writing and dreaming and catching up on the things I want to do with my time and energy.

Another one of my abstracts was accepted for a special publication by Demeter Press around mothering and life writing. I completed an essay in 2023, around my Black Matrilineage and last year I complete an essay around Black Mothering and Creativity. This is probably going to have to be redrafted this year, but in all honesty I was just happy to submit something, as I had a major block around this essay. I think it was because I allowed my creativity and energy to be sucked into other people’s creative dreams and lost sight of my own last year. So when it came to writing the essay my well was dry.

Anyway, I’ve started the reading and writing around my third essay now which is all about Black mothering and fugitivity. I love fugitivity and it is one of the supporting words for 2025. As I mentioned before, I’ve been exploring fugitivity for the last few years and what this means as a practice. So I’m mighty pleased in having the time and space to explore it further and deeper through writing this essay.

While going over my abstract again and riffing off from it, I remember my creative non-fiction novella I created called rubedo. I think this came out in July 2016, after the 2015 shit hit the fan episode in my life. rubedo was my exploration of this time in my life and how I got through it. It was through finding myself after years of repression and not listening to my inner wisdom that I came to be who I am today.

Anyway, I revisited rubedo with this chapter/ essay in mind, realising that 2025 is 10 years since this episode in my life. It sometimes feels as if it was just yesterday. I know I felt it keenly last year when Darkling came out. Darkling is my first poetry collection since Laventille (2015) and the shitstorm episode. And to tell the truth, I’m waiting for the the shit to hit the fan again, as I’m sure there are people picking their way through Darkling as I type to try and find evidence of plagiarism again. As they say once a plagiarist always a plagiarist! It’s not a term or label I identified with then or do now. As that’s not me, that’s not who I am but that didn’t stop people then or now from looking for the evidence to prove/support it.

But I’m not here to talk about that. What struck me about rubedo is the raw honesty of it all. And how writing, writing it all out literally saved my life. I’m so grateful that Ian brae enough to pick up my pen and writing through the shit to now.

Here is what I wrote about my capacity to love no matter what:

“But something does inside die this day. And the days that follow. Something
inside of me, the capacity to have patience and make allowances for other
people’s bullshit was destroyed during this lynching. No doubt, using the term
‘lynching’ will invite criticism. I know when Andy Croft my publisher used the
term to condemn what was happening to me on social media he received a
fair amount of criticism. But I do not use this word lightly.


Ironically, in the months leading up to my death by social media, I was
researching and writing poems about lynchings in America. I was referring to
the postcard images that were collected as souvenirs by the spectators of
lynchings at the time. There were those people who got their hands dirty
during a lynching, who actually tied the knot of the noose, beat the victim,
mutilated the bodies. And there were those who came along to watch the
spectacle. Viewing the death of another human being as just another social
event, a festival, something to be enjoyed. Both killers and spectators relish
the sport.

This in my opinion is what happened to me. A public lynching and
souvenirs where taken. One person on Facebook, joined in the thread of
conversation with a comment as a means of marking it. This person was
rubbing their hands with relish, saying that they didn’t want to miss a thing as
this spectacle was just too good to let pass by.


When I died this cruel death something inside broke. I’ve recently come to
realise that is was my heart that broke that night. I’ve been visualising my
heart with a rose in the centre. This rose is closed. This I read as a symbol of

me shutting down, dying inside, shutting off the natural flow of love from my
heart for my family, friends, for the world around me. My heart was broken, so
I have been denying myself and others love. I’ve been living in fear, fear of it
being hurt again, fear of my heart being broken again, fear to love.
In a way, this had to happen to me. For one, I’ve always disliked that capacity
in me to keep forgiving others, letting them back into my life when they’d let
me down and not lived up to my expectations. I’ve taken on board the
responsibilities of others, thinking I’ve had too high standards and I’d been
unfair. That capacity has been obliterated. I can’t take anybody’s bull shit
anymore. But at the same time, this capacity to forgive is part of my large
capacity to love. And if this is who I’m really are , then I shouldn’t fight it any
longer but accept it.


My true self is my capacity to love, to love fiercely and powerfully. I accept
that now and I’m no longer blocking up my love. I can’t live in constant fear of
being hurt, of getting my heart broke again because then I would not be living
true to my capacity, true to me. I would just not be living at all.“

I’m so pleased that since then I have found others, such as bell hooks and Joy James, who write about revolutionary/ radical love and validate my ways of loving, which at times hurts me but also brings me a while heap of joy also. You can’t love without the expectation or knowledge of getting hurt.

The Mother Wave

| Sheree
Book Cover

Demeter Press is thrilled to announce the publication of 

The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism.  Edited by Andrea O’Reilly and Fiona Joy Green 

With 19 chapters

My Mum

Price: $49.95 Cdn.; Page Count: 472; Publication Date: September 20, 2024; ISBN: 978-1-77258-505-6

Utterly thrilling. A potentially world-changing, game-changing work. This is the book that will help us transform the institution of motherhood.

– Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence

The Mother Wave offers a welcome critical perspective on the liberal feminist orientation toward gender equality by showing how the focus on equality does not remedy patriarchal systems of oppression that continue to challenge women’s lives, nor does it account for the emancipatory potential in mothering experiences and the affirmation that diversely situated women continue to find in motherhood.

Foregrounding the lived experience of women and others who do the work of maternal care, the contributors make a strong case for matricentric feminism as a new framework: one that treats the maternal as an issue of both biological difference and a set of complex social identities. Informed by the African American feminist commitment to the epistemological importance of lived experience, on the one hand, and third-wave feminist commitment to intersectionality on the other, the collection claims and demonstrates through multidisciplinary analyses that maternity matters more than gender.

– Tatjana Takseva, Department of English Language and Literature / Women and Gender Studies Program, Saint Mary’s University

Toppling and recasting the idea of “waves” that, until now, correspond to stale time periods and stages of the feminist movement, The Mother Wave allows us to begin seeing matricentric feminism as a core feminist theory and burgeoning politic. Positioning mothers and motherwork at the center of feminism, and motherhood as perhaps the uniting experience among most women, O’Reilly and Green allow for a new “wave” of feminist scholarship and mother experience to take hold and crest – a matricentric wave. The editors introduce a vast array of scholarship and creative work within this volume that collectively helps us understand both consistent themes and new surges within this subfield of feminist thought and experience.

– Heather Dillaway, Illinois State University.

Matricentric feminism seeks to make motherhood the business of feminism by positioning mothers’ needs and concerns as the starting point for a theory and politic on and for the empowerment of women as mothers. Based on the conviction that mothering is a verb, it understands that becoming and being a mother is not limited to biological mothers or cisgender women but rather to anyone who does the work of mothering as a central part of their life. The Mother Wave, the first-ever book on the topic, compellingly explores how mothers need a matricentric mode of feminism organized from and for their particular identity and work as mothers, and because mothers remain disempowered despite sixty years of feminism. The anthology makes visible the power of matricentric feminism as it is theorized, enacted, and represented to realize and achieve the subversive potential of mothers and their contributions to feminist theory and activism. Contributors share the impact and influence of matricentric feminism on families and children, culture, art/literature, education, public policy, social media, and workplace practices through personal reflections, scholarly essays, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, and photography. The mother wave of matricentric feminism invites conversations with others and offers a praxis of feminism that aims to coexist, overlap, and intersect with others.

This is where you’ll find my own chapter called

‘I Am Becoming My Mother: Conjuring Black Motherhood on Our Own Terms’ which is a hybrid piece exploring my matrilineage which I mentioned throughout 2023 here.

Get your copy while you can and support Demeter Press.

 

Black Aliveness

| Sheree

“We are not the idea of us, not even the idea that we hold of us. We are us, multiple and varied, becoming. The heterogeneity of us. Blackness in a Black world is everything, which means that it gets to be freed from being any one thing. We are ordinary beauty, Black people, and beauty must be allowed to do its beautiful work.” Kevin Quashie describes in Black Aliveness, or, A Black Poetics of Being.

The Motherhood Essay

| Sheree

I think I heard back about my abstract being accepted for Demeter Press collection The Mother Wave: Matricentric Feminism as Theory, Activism, and Practice back in November 2022. And really haven’t engaged much with it since.

I submitted it on a whim off the back of the afterglow from BALTIC exhibition A Country Journal of a Blackwoman( Northumberland). 

I wanted to continue this work as I felt as if I’d just got started mining this seam. But really I feel as if I’ve always been working with memory, family and archives throughout my whole creative journey. There’s always been a desire to fill in the gaps around my origins. Who be my people? Where did we come from? What makes us tick?

So I submitted the abstract changing Blackwoman to Black Mothers, as that’s what I’ve been exploring my matrilineage, our bodies with/in nature and healing.  I just wanted to continue this through a different medium; before ‘art’ now ‘word’. But really all hybrid.

I’ve surrendered more and more with each creation, that to fully express myself, my identity, ideas, passions and preoccupations, hybridity, multidisciplinary creations/ renditions are a truer take on things. More of a fuller picture/ form is rendered. 

My first draft of the essay has to be submitted by May 1st ( now changed to 10 June!). As it happens, I’ve been away house/ dog sitting for the first two weeks of April, alone in Buckinghamshire. Prime time I thought to dive deep and immerse myself in the writing process.

I’ve been using my Patreon supporters as accountability buddies, these past few weeks while working on this essay. I’ve been updating them on progress reports along the away. With my time coming to an end down here, I thought I’d use what time I have left to reflect on the process and progress so far. And I’m sharing the post with you here.

I’m using this reflection as a place marker for progress as well as evidence for when I go home and think I could have done more, or start to beat myself up about wasting time. At least I’ll have this reflection to fall back on.

Black Motherhood, Conjure and Poetry

| Sheree
Wallpaper created for A Country Journal of a Blackwoman(Northumberland)

I recently talked about the coming of April and how more poetry would be appearing on here as I attempt to ‘play with words’.

You can not imagine the delight as well as confirmation I received this morning while reading an article for the commissioned essay I’m writing at the moment around (Black) Motherhood.

A bone of contention with me is when I see the words ‘mother’ and ‘motherhood’, even though I have birthed children, I do not see these terms applied to me. ‘Mother’ and ‘motherhood’ come with the connotations of white and whiteness for me.

Test it yourself. Be honest. When I first mentioned ‘mother’, what image came to mind for you? If not a white woman and child. I’ve seen image after image of the idea of motherhood, the natural beauty of ‘The mother’ and nine times out of ten the image is of a white woman and child. As if a Black woman is not/ cannot be seen as a mother, even though a Black woman is the source of the whole human race. Go look that one up!

Anyway, I’m going off topic here ( but not in terms of the hybrid essay I’m writing for the forthcoming special Demeter Press collection, The Mother Wave: Matricentric Feminism as Theory, Activism, and Practice (2023)).

Reading this article this morning, ‘ Conjuring the Ghost: A Call and Response to Haints’ by drea brown, there is a mention of poetry lying in the body, coming from that dark place within where our true spirits lies hidden and growing, argues Audre Lorde. But poetry is also our way, Black people’s way, or theorising and making sense of things. Through our stories, narratives, riddles, poetry; playing with words and language, we not only gain an understanding and reimagining of our lives but these are also tools of surviving.

As Black women, speaking from my lived- experience here, through our creativity, through our playing with language in such a spirited way, we enter in the process of not just theorising and strategising but also self-making and through this practice passing this on to others. Passing on this power to others. It’s what we do, have been doing through time. Starting with the mothering we do of ours and others babies

Black Fatigue

| Sheree

It’s been one hell of a week. And it isn’t over yet. I just feel exhausted, drained and a bit bruised and a battered with the world. Can I say the system?

No. I’ve stopped using these kind of non-descriptive terms along with the likes of ‘institutional racism’. As these are terms used to conceal the truth, to deflect attention away from the people who create racist policies and practices. Who act on their racists attitudes and ideas. Who internalise racism and reflect it outwards against others that look like them.

I’m so sick and tired of being made to feel grateful for the crumbs that are thrown my way. That I should shut up and put up and a smile sweetly if I’m invited to the table. That I shouldn’t rock the boat, that I should be shamed or struck by fear into silence. Smile sweetly and just nod my head.

I’ve played the game and helped others tick their boxes as at the time I believed it would bring about change. That once I’d convinced them of my humanity, explained my existence and displayed my intelligence and worth then they would have to listen to me and take me seriously.

I’m sick and tired of this being played out again and again. All I can do is speak up. All I can do is work hard to create opportunities and experiences that weren’t there before for others and myself.

All I can do is call out injustices and imbalances in power and access where I see them. To not stand on the sidelines bickering but creating change on my own terms to make society a more equitable place.

I’m no longer gonna allow others to be putting their labels, insecurities and lenses on me. I know what my intentions are and I know they come from my heart. And I’m not sure everyone can say that when we live in a world which celebrates the achievements of one over the many and rewards the ones who are amenable saying the words that others want to to hear rather than speak their truth.

Guilty was the verdict in the George Floyd murder trial for another bad apple. This is hardly justice if the murders of Black and People of Colour by the Police, through state sponsored terror continues. There needs to be more accountability, there needs to be a cutting down of the whole rotten tree, there needs to be a redistribution of power.

I’m so sick and tired of the infighting, of the lack of listening, of the personal agendas and vested interests. Why are we living as if everything is scarcity, therefore everyone’s in cut-throat competition. Instead of embracing the reality of abundance. There is more than enough to go around except a few insist on hoarding a majority share. If everyone was given the right conditions, their rightful share/ place/ space to thrive, we would each fulfil our own potential.

Just like nature displays. Just as she sets the example. Today on International Earth Day, I just wish more individuals connected with nature, and therefore themselves and each other. The most powerful energy is love. But too many people continue to feed and act on hate.

And I’m just sick and tired of this being the case.

Flaneuse roundup and other things

| Sheree

The month draws to an end. And so does my challenge of walking out every day, taking photographs and reflecting on the practice. I didn’t manage it every day as mid-way through sickness hit our household. But I do think I completed more walks than if I wasn’t trying to complete the challenge.

Today was a glorious window of light, that I’d be a fool to miss out on. So it was a quick dip in the bay and it was bitterly cold. And then a brisk walk along the shore to warm up. It was a great way to start my day and help with productivity for the rest of it.

As promised to my Patreon sponsors, I delivered my first essay from the forthcoming mixed genre memoir. I’ve made a commitment to share one essay and reading list that I used to complete the essay at the end of each month for the rest of the year. Yes only four months but still that’s four essays done than not.

The theme was climate justice this month and I enjoyed writing it once I got into it. This essay’s been brewing since I first came across the work of Wretched of the Earth. So the time and space and audience to finally complete the beginnings of an essay around this. This is just a draft but at least I now have something to work with moving forward. Making this commitment made me accountable. For which I am thankful.

You can jump on Patreon for as little as $1 to read it if you want. And as always, I appreciate feedback, comments and arguments.

Here comes October, my birthday month. Yay!