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.
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.
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.
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.
I forgot to share my recent creation featured on Nine Muses Poetry website because I was getting lost in the wilderness with the Black Women’s Leadership Program with the Earth Sea Love nature project. But now I’m back and got my head turned around and ready to share. Check it out below. Thanks.
One Poem by Sheree Mack
OCTOBER 20, 2019 ~ ANNEST GWILYM
Written in response to this month’s Special Challenge.
Listen
… to the geese gathering
honking at all hours, they have arrived
to wait out the winter on these shores
Listen
… as they take to the clear sky
together, in formation, whining, squeaking,
as their wide wings caress the cool air
While away from here, I received some good news that really reaffirmed my decision to pick up the pen again and write the way I want to write.
The lovely Annest Gwilym over at NineMuses Poetry has nominated one of my poems for Best of the Net 2019 award.
Check out the poem which has been nominated ‘The Last Black Women’ here.
And I’m not fake bragging here but I’m just honoured to be nominated as this was unexpected and Annest had over 400 poems to choose from to come up with a short list of just 6 poems.
This nomination means such a great deal as there was a time that I wasn’t going to write, submit or share my writing again. I’m glad I decided to reverse this decision because all I was doing was denying myself a whole heap of healing and pleasure by not creating. I’m grateful for this recognition.
I forgot to share my recent creation featured on 
Living Wild Studios 