What’s the trait you value most about yourself?
Things have been busy over here. At some point, probably at hibernation time, I’ll be at rest to share the developments. But for now …
My trait that I value, particularly at this time of year and in this time of busy, is my ability to pay attention.
To take a moment to breathe, look around and savour the beauty. Some beauty at each moment.
The days are growing shorter. The nights are drawing in. And I’m very grateful for a number of things. One of them is that I spent some time this summer getting back into reading.
Maybe it was the long drives or the long light nights, but I scratched an itch and came out 10 books down by the end of August.
I rested up over the summer and I also pulled out some books and dived head first into a bunch of summer reads. Physical books, kindle books and audio books.
I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions as I made my way through some class act reads and I wasn’t sticking to my usual crime.
I’ve read romance, erotica, literary and comedy. And now with September here, I’ve continued. I’m also keeping track. Keeping a record of my reads.
There are times I’m knee deep in a story and I have to stop because I’m reading that fast and I want the goodness to last.
You know that feeling right?
Other times I have to stop because I’m enjoying myself so much, loving the story and have to give thanks for finally getting back into a reading streak.
I’m not sure how it happened. I think I just kept turning up. Kept turning up to the page. I think it helped that I found a good book series too. And then I found it being read by actors so well that I was hooked.
I found BookBeat and Amy Award’s Cocky Kingmans. I’ll write more about this series and what it opened up for me but if you’re interested in getting a free trial of BookBeat for 70 days just check it out here.
No catch just the chance to get into reading/ listening at a good time of year to snuggle and get cosy with a good book.
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.
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.
The bunches of berries are coming!
You’ve got to love Saturday mornings. The promise of the weekend ahead. The mix between wanting to lie in and getting out there and {BEING}.
I’m loudly advocating for what I want this morning and that is time to write and muse and drink coffee after coffee.
So I’ve been over on the Earth Sea Love Substack page sharing about a recent literary project I’ve been involved with. I wrote about creativity, motherhood, blackness and publishing on the Substack.
And being a Black mother in the publication.
Entwined: an Anthology of Creativity & Motherhood
A collaborative anthology and art journal to kindle creativity in motherhood. Edited by Sarah Shott.
My writing is included in this anthology of creativity and motherhood and I thought you might want to check it out!
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
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.
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
A word that I don’t think is used enough by me and by anyone else, even though it’s favourite of mine is LUSH.
Lush is a word that vibrates off the tongue and can if used properly can bring the whole body into the expressing it.
Lush to describe the fullness and luxuriate and attractiveness of anything and everything is such a luscious word to use in itself.
So I use the word lush a lot but I’m never gonna give up using it.
Join me with bringing back the extensive and joyful use of lush!
#lushiscomingback!
This summer has been the summer of hydrangeas. Everywhere I’ve been this summer, on my travels and just walking the neighbourhood, I’ve been met by these blooming bountiful heads of colour. Big bushes bursting with these delicate four petal bunched-headed flowers. And every time my heart has sung at the sight of them
And as the summer comes to a close, with the changes in temperature and of light, these flowers will start to turn brown and in this flitting beauty of autumn, they will still make my heart sing as in their beautiful fragile death there will be rebirth.
Living Wild Studios 