fugitivity

An Ivory Tower Heart

| Sheree

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.

How might we divest from the human?

| Sheree

I’ve been reading. When I read, I feed my wonder and imagination. When I read, I fill up with ideas and dreams and plans.

Reading expands my mind and expands my understanding of the world I navigate.

I cannot stress or emphasise enough how much my world has been rocked or even burnt down since my reading and continued reading of Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu.

This isn’t like anything I’ve read before because it goes against everything I’ve been trying to do for the last 50 years; to prove the humanity of Black people, of myself so we can finally be accepted and loved.

But what if we’ll never be accepted? Never be accepted as human beings because who gets to claim humanity is bound up with whiteness, bound up with white supremacy culture?

What if being a human is a construct and is defined by those with the power and was never constructed to allow us, people of the global majority to be as such?

So if I claim non-human what are the possibilities for my being?

This is where I’m heading. This is the space I’m navigating now. I’m making changes from the inside out. In a cellular level this speaks truth and blessings to me. How I {BE} is changing and it includes a whole more ‘fuck offs’. Well that’s how it’s shown up my so far!

For Blackbirds

| Sheree
Book cover

Things are happening this Autumn.

I was invited to submit my chapbook, for blackbirds pushing against glass, to a new press, The Wildheart Press, created by Eleanor Cheetham.

I was part of Eleanor’s Soulbook course offering in 2023 where I had the time and space to explore my creative fugitivity. Breaking the rules were welcome.

So Eleanor was familiar with my work when she approached me to submit my feral words to her press. I jumped at the chance because the words were already created. This was an opportunity to share my words further. And I just love supporting a person and a press who recognises that I do not colour within the lines. My writing does not stay on the straight and narrow path. My words like to wander and meander and that is mighty fine with me.

I’m grateful to find a home for them in The Wildheart Press.

Website image

Please consider ordering an advance copy of the chapbook. There are four other chapbooks coming out for the Autumn series too. Go and check them out

There will be a launch reding event on the evening of 26th September if you’re interested in meeting the writers and hearing our words.

Check out The Wildheart Press for details.