voice

Poem A Day – Reflections

| Sheree
New Visual Journal for May

April was National Poetry Month in the States. I attempted to complete and share a poem a day for the month.

On the whole, I just missed a few days towards the end of the month. Things went a bit off the boil, when things got a bit busy. What with birthday celebrations and friends visiting, my attentions were distracted and my energy levels were depleted.

But hey 20+ new poems which didn’t exist before this month is always a win in my book. I feel when I do these challenges, what I produce is hit and miss. Because of the necessity of creating something everyday, the time needed to go deep into a subject or issue is lacking. Surface shenanigans are usually the case.

Speed is needed rather than depth. But now, as May rolls along there is time to revisit and redraft and build upon what is already there.

It’s time to slow down the poetry creation process and spend some quality time going deep. Do some more research, collect some more stories and facts as inspiration and see what happens from there. Let the poems sit and fester and start to speak for themselves.

My poetry writing muscles have been flexed and they’re primed to continue lifting heavier weights of meaning and impact now.

I’m looking forward to see which pieces develop, which ones will fall by the way side and which ones will become pure steel.

28 days of gratitude

| Sheree

I’ve been leaning into my gratitude practice, but sometimes I’ve forgotten and let the simple task of listing one thing per day for which I am grateful for, slide.

What can I say, habits are made to be broken as well as upheld. And the bad habits always seem to be the ones we hold onto. While those habits that can actually benefit us and bring some joy, peace and happiness into our lives, we fuck up!

Gratitude is one of them. Gratitude helps people feel more positive about their lives. It fosters positive emotions as people reflect and savour and relish good experiences and events and relationships.

Gratitude improves people’s health and makes them more satisfied with what they have rather than focusing time and energy and regret on what they do not have.

It’s been proven that being more grateful makes you happier.

Well I could always do with being happier. Everyone could. And that is not to say that I’m not grateful for the life I have, the life I’m living and the people in it. But I could do with a reminder and become more consistent in my appreciation and gratitude.

Hence the next 28 days of gratitude. Holding myself to account in order to re-engage with this positive habit and hold on to happiness.

I want to wring out as much gratitude for each experience and happening and being in my life as I can. As life is a gift but sometimes I forget. So today we begin again.

It’s day one of my gratitude practice.

Today I am grateful for the lie in I managed to have before being woke up.

But I’m not complaining as I was woke up by Miss Ella for a cuddle. I’m grateful for my morning cuddle in bed with my daughter.

I’m grateful today for the hot black fresh brewed coffee that helped me wake up fully and engage with the day.

I’m grateful to have completed a big application and submitted it today and it helped to have company while completing this work.

I’m grateful for the time I got to be alone and focus on the tasks I had to complete today and not be distracted or interrupted.

I’m grateful today for the chocolate I managed to stuff into my face after said application was complete and I could rest

I’m grateful to be able to lie in bed now, warm and sleepy and write this gratitude list without having to think too hard about what or who I am grateful for today because I have ample choices to draw upon to share.

PAD/019 – i am becoming my mother

| Sheree

Commentary: years ago I wrote a poem titled ‘ i am becoming my mother’. I think it’s in my first full collection Family Album, Flambard Press 2011.

A few weeks ago while attending one of my late night across the Atlantic poetry group workshops, I had an inkling to revisit this poem with the intention of bringing it up to date. To try and incorporate all the ‘Sherees’ that have developed, spored since the first poem, since my mum’s death and teachings have passed into decades gone by.

So I created this piece. Same title but definitely more expansive.

i am becoming my mother

Dehumanising the Black woman. Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, Bitch.

The black woman is seen as one dimensional; the mule of the world, carrying the heavy burden of mothering all others except her own.

Her own children are lost; lost to the auction block, the ocean, the noose.

A Black woman is a source of strength and love. Passing on power as well as pain.

Her body carries stories, carries histories, carries an archive.

as a black woman,

resting deep within the meadow,

held in softness,

grass tickling shins,

dress billowing about

like blossom,

is a political act.

PAD/ 017 – for god’s sake, we must stop this coloured invasion

| Sheree
Stop the Coloured Invasion Protest Meeting, Trafalgar Square, London, 1959. Taken from Black Britain: A Photographic History, Ed’s. Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy

a white banner shifts against Nelson’s Column, ‘KEEP BRITAIN WHITE.’

a bright white suspension of unwelcome and hate

ladies and gentlemen with heads turned up as if taking direction from God himself, listen to the message

from a man, on the platform, with Union Jack legs

as if whiteness and rightness runs through him like quickening sap/

the threat is real murmurs through the crowd/ a gathering searching for answers to stop the invasion

let me enter the scene/ from the extreme right/

let me mingle at the back/ near the man in a flat cap

let me feel the heat of the air/

let me sense the crackle of fear in their white, wholesome bodies

my body would be one of those coloured they want to stop

my body would be one of those aliens they want to exterminate

but what they don’t care to know is that this body belongs to a love evangelist

who’s at pains to show them how love can save us all

if only they’d part their ways and let me through

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