Increasingly, I’ve been feeling the unreality of my reality. In moments, the buildings around me—brick-walled factories built 200 years ago on stolen land or wood-framed condos built just last month on the same stolen land—shimmer in and out of solidity, casting insubstantial shadows. As cars stream down the street, spewing exhaust and driven by exhausted people, for a fleeting moment I look right through the metal, plastic, wires, flesh, and bone into the gaping hollowness of a way of life built around the highway, the car, commerce. Rolling my cart down the highly air-conditioned grocery aisle, boxes upon boxes of cereal shake in my wake, threatening to disintegrate into molecules of cardboard and genetically engineered corn.
I know I am sensing the near-disintegration of structures that otherwise seem so solid. Structures by which our lives are organized and run. Structures that humans (mostly white and male) created, held in place by will power and forced power. Devastatingly harmful and completely unsustainable structures.
And I’m seeking ways to divest from these structures. How do I undo my belief in these structures? How do I withhold my participation in them? And how do I start to build new structures with others around me who can also see the buildings shimmer and know they must come down?
After I wrote those paragraphs above, my partner shared with me adrienne maree brown’s latest blog post. It’s a long, beautiful, necessary read that delves further into the crumbling of this world, offers some answers to the questions I raise, and grounds in love. I hope you read it.
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This month, the Poetry Foundation featured two blogs I wrote as part of my search for how to divest from the structures I have been born into. It’s about navigating capitalism as a poet and my experiment in the gift economy. In lieu of a longer newsletter this month, I’m offering a few excerpts, and the links to the whole piece:
The poems that arrive on the page are not mine. Or, the best ones are not mine. They are gifts that I channel or craft, that I labor over or dash off in a moment and return to years later to reconfigure whole. They are echoes from the ancestors or rumblings of the earth that I scoop up or spill across the page. They are hours of my life forgotten and then suddenly appearing in tercets.
The only claim I have to these poems is the same claim that a riverbed has to the water that flows over its mud, that a dandelion has to the crown of seeds it creates, that a catalpa leaf has to the shade it casts. I might be a vessel, a carrier, a creator of poems, but they are not wholly of me and they are not mine to keep. They are only mine to give away.
…
Perhaps poetry is just not meant to be bought and sold, in the same way that stones are not meant to be traded for money, nor sunflowers, nor water. Capitalism has found a way to turn all of these things into commodities, but that doesn’t mean it feels good or is sustainable.
…
Poetry can wake us up to the truth that we need each other, that we are of each other, that we have a responsibility to ourselves, each other, to all beings. What would happen if poetry was recited every morning on TV and radio, everyone carried a book of poems wherever they went, and eager fans awaited the latest “drop” from their favorite poets? How much more receptive might people be to the reality that we need to tear down our current structures and systems and create new ones that will ensure the survival and thriving of all creatures?
You can read the whole thing here: Part 1, Part 2.
Prompting
I recently released the teaching guide for my new poetry collection, Last Days. I also invited other writers of color with new books to write guides for their collection, and I’ve posted all of them here. If you are a teacher, facilitator, or workshop leader, I hope you check them out and share them with your colleagues.
I wrote the Last Days guide to be used in both traditional classroom settings as well as for retreats or discussion groups for organizers, activists, and cultural workers. Here’s a slightly edited prompt from this guide:
Think about a time when you, your family, and/or your community went through a difficult time. How were you supported or not supported during this time? Did you heal from it, and if so, how? What support or healing do you wish had been available to you, your family, or your community? Freewrite for five minutes on this last question.
Now imagine someone else is going through a similar situation, and you had magical powers to provide the kind of support or healing you wish you had access to. Let yourself feel in your body what that might be like. And let your imagination run wild—dream up the most beautiful healing process you can imagine.
Write a myth about this healing process.
Engaging
It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to devour a hefty novel over a few days. But that’s exactly what I did earlier this month with N. K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. For lovers of New York City and fantasy (either or both), it’s a book not to be missed.
“We are living in the incarceration of a single way, the monolithic enterprise of the highway, and we’re being invited to fall off the highway like fugitives.” So begins this stunning conversation between Prentis Hemphill and Bayo Akomolafe on Finding Our Way, my new favorite podcast. Akomolafe spoke of ruptures, of re-thinking what power looks like (“when things spill away from their containers and become something different that we don’t know how to name yet”), of what he finds at the end of hope, and of his commitment to getting lost. Hemphill called the conversation challenging and invigorating, and I found it exactly that.
Community/Announcements
Last month, I wrote a little bit about my conversation with Cecily Sayers of Typewriter Tarot on filling my artistic well. It’s out today! Take a peak and try the Tarot spread we discuss.
I’m thrilled to announce the full line up for “Seeds Bursting Open in Fire: A poetry and social justice catalyst event” on October 6. I am so looking forward to this final event of the Last Days project. It will bring together writers, cultural workers, and organizers, many who have been part of the project in various ways over the past year, and invite audience members to participate in collective dreaming and writing. You’ll hear from me, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Gabrielle Civil, Lisa Doi of Tsuru from Solidarity, Jasmine Butler from the Power Shift Network, and Chanon Judson from Urban Bush Women.
The event will be ASL interpreted and have closed captions. All participants will also receive graphic notes, taken by the illustrator Cori Lin during the event.
You can sign up to be notified when registration opens, or just keep your eye on this newsletter!
That’s it for this month’s August full-moon missive. I said I was taking a break for September, but I will be sending one announcement next month when registration opens for the October event. In the meantime, I hope you rest, connect, and feel how you are loved.