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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.

PAD/011 – Carnival, 1976

| Sheree

Each August Bank Holiday weekend,

Notting Hill’s West Indian community 

celebrates Caribbean culture. Calypso.

Crates of records. Stacks of speakers. 

Reggae, ska, groove, and samba 

vibrations of Carnival.

Mid parade, sweaty bodies wining

bodies growing, red stripe flowing. 

Pure joy seen as suspicious. 

The boys in blue are sent in, in force.

Black batons meet black arms, legs and heads.

Slicing through bodies like cutlass through cane. 

Cutdown revellers hauled into hospital 

or prison cells. Carnival; a unique

expression of love of self, freedom 

and resistance. Therefore it’s spirit

has to be demonised and destroyed.

PAD / 010 -trying to love your two mothers is a dangerous game if you have to put your life on the line in the name of justice

| Sheree
Black Britain: A Photographic History edited by Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy

PC Gumbs, London’s first black policeman
image 09/09/68

My mother says to rub vaseline into my neck
and the collar, to stop the rub; soften the wool.
They say make sure you wear the white bands on your arms,
otherwise they’ll only see ya teeth in the dark.
Only good enough to direct traffic, they roar with laughter.
Brillo pad hair. Toilet set lips.
I say nothing. I recognise the privilege
to wear serve Queen and country.

They say I’m a coconut, sell out, slave
to the white man and Babylon.
They do not spare their vitriol against me.
I survive in the liminal spaces, in the shades of grey.
No one admits the fight has to be from within.
The ranks have to unfiltered by difference.
My mother brought me up on wishes
from velvet green isle;

always with an eye and heart on the other mother.

My birth mother is proud even if this adopted mother
chooses to turn her back, allowing my brothers
in blue to kick the shit out of me too.

It continues this write for life

| Sheree

If I was following the book along meticulous, then I’d be starting week 4, of the Julia Cameron book, Write for Life. But hey life gets in the way and SLOW is my mantra. I wouldn’t be digging deep if I was to rush through this text as it’s like mining gold really, there are gems everywhere.

What I’m reading is speaking to my soul. I mean receiving reminders that my best writing, the only good writing comes from being vulnerable. Which means I have to lead the own with my heart, through by heart, by my heart. Otherwise, it would be false, untrue, and boring.

Being vulnerable is my strength. It’s one of my superpowers!( You see what I did there, right? I said ‘one of’. Because I have many superpowers).

Being vulnerable on the page means writing what disturbs me, what fills me with fear and what I’m unwilling to say but will share it anyway.

Being vulnerable means being willing to spilt myself open again and again on the page as Natalie Goldberg says. Because then I’m being honest, daring and authentic. Writing how I really feel opens myself up to myself.

I might be behind in the book reading, but I’m not behind in terms of being vulnerable and writing from the heart. And this means I have to be patience with myself and tender. As writing with heart is a tender way of being. And takes care, attention and love.

Spring Blossoms

| Sheree

I’m not sure when my love affair with cherry blossom came into being. I’m not sure where I was when my heart began to swell at the mere beginning buds of cherry blossom on the trees. Bradford, where I was born and stayed until I was 10? Or Newcastle, where I enjoyed my formative years before escaping to London for my degree?

I’m not really sure when or where my deep appreciation and joy at seeing these puff balls of pinks or white or cerise came to be part of my being. I just know that I experience a child-like delight when I come across a tree in full cherry blossom bloom. My heart skips a beat and I’m jumping with glee, inside and outside, when cherry blossom comes into view. And the blossom is never here long enough for my liking.

Using the delicate pinks of cherry blossom, collaging with the images of cherry blossom in my visual journal, is my way of keeping the blooms alive, in my eyes and in my heart. Not just the sight of cherry blossom in my journal keeps these fragile blooms alive, but the feelings of joy and delight that they bring to my heart is kept alive too.

I created a special spread of cherry blossom for the BALTIC commission last year, that ended up being blown up from an A3 spread in a journal to an A0 poster size on a gallery space wall. In the middle of that spread is a Black woman smiling, almost dancing between the blossom, exuberating lush joy. This is me sharing my jubilation and love of cherry blossom with others.

This is my love letter to cherry blossom as well as giving thanks for the beauty of nature and how we are connected. How we are one.

PAD/007 – History Repeating Itself

| Sheree

“There can be no repetition because the essence of that expression is insistence, and if you insist you must each time use emphasis and if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis.”

“That is what makes life that the insistence is different, no matter how often you tell the same story if there is anything alive in the telling the emphasis is different.”

Gertrude Stein—from “Portraits and Repetition”

the sky feeds us continuous greys and harsh words from ugly white mouths, and yet we enter the frame

clasped hands in lap or right hand on chest, like in allegiance, mouth forced upwards as best clothes stiffen backs and resolve;

a practised pose, easy to send back home as proof of promises made good, mother country come good, it’s expected

the camera will point and lie for generations; the flash will blind us, to our naivety, to their hate and ungratefulness

PAD/005 – Protest

| Sheree

Cinnamon sky rumbles
as electric clouds jag
over glass shop fronts.
Scarlet waves fire street

corners, claiming them forever.
Coppers and politicians
worry the faultlines
left behind.

PAD/ 004 – We are here, because you were there

| Sheree
Magnolia Tree

In pursuance of the powers vested in me by section 32 of the Police Act 1964, I, Right Honourable William Whitelaw, one of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, hereby appoint the Right Honourable Lord Scarman to inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10 to 12 April 1981 and to report, with the power to make recommendations. *

Stories keeps being told, this is a tolerant country. It’s official.

Britain is tolerant, fair and just. There isn’t a race problem. Never was.

People who are different are treated the same. Tolerated. As long as they don’t make a difference.

Small minorities are accepted as long as they stay small.

Get to ‘swamping’, and then these minorities become a threat.

They start to threaten the whole fabric of the superior British characteristics.

Tolerance, liberty and civic duty. Values out the window, when the nation’s anxieties are raised.

Fear. And the country’s doors are closed.

The drawbridge raised.

Their shields are driving them back.

* The Brixton Disorders, 10-12 April 1981, Report of an Inquiry, By the Rt. Hon. The Lord Scarman, O.B.E, November 1981

Pages/ Soul of Dark n Light

| Sheree
Visual Journaling Spread

In the garden, warmth of sun on right cheek. Dark skin soaking up the heat.

Other cheek caught in the shade and cool breeze.

Body experiencing so many different sensations at the same time.

Gratitude to be in this body in this present moment. Present. Visual journaling outside.

Page black paint and collaged blossom papers. The light catches upon the pages, illuminating the wisdom and joy within.

Gratitude to be in this space in this present moment. Present. Visual journaling inside.

Soul dark hued and sadness rage collaged. The light catches upon the soul, remembering the true nature within.