In an interview on the Poetry Foundation with Saeed Jones, Patricia Smith talks about poetry being a political weapon and how people look to poets for truth.
She says,
“That’s really been clarified lately because truth has been in such short supply. I went to Germany once, and there was a group of poets on a train, going through the German countryside. They would get off and everyone had decorated the town. People would sing, and there was food, and they would do poetry and get back on the train to go to the next town. I was in Berlin when the train came back for the last time. And there were so many people on the platform they had to shut down operations.
“People were carrying placards with poets' faces on them and lines from poems. And then they opened the doors and the platform was so crowded they passed poets out over their heads. And I thought, there are some places where you go to the news for the news, and to the poets for the truth.”
There’s a march in our town in January where marchers are supporting women’s reproductive rights and sharing the poem of Haitian-American poet and translator, a reading of Muriel Vieux’s poem, “It’s not about birth control, it’s about control.”
And it made me think of the power of poem and what truth is, what truths that we want to convey in our stories (not just our poems), but also lives. What does it mean to define who we are ourselves, what our community is, what we want to be? Can we break through the same-old, same-old scripts and formulas and become what we actually want vs what we are told we want. How do we see what is rather than what we are told to see.
The power of poems is mighty and so is the power of words and story.
I’m going to think on that for a long while this week.
This link leads you to Patricia Smith reading her poem, Katrina. I think it’s a pretty valuable motion into truth and giving voice to the people that nobody saw, which is what much of her work is about.
Writing Exercise
This is from MasterClass, which has eight other poem writing exercises at the link.
“Take a walk. Go on a walk and bring your notebook. Look around and write down observations on what you see: a tree, a person, a neighborhood. Try starting a poem by using some of these descriptions. Make a decision about its structure: what will the stanzas look like? Will you use enjambment or will you use punctuation? Do you want to use long sentences or short?”
Place to Submit
Directly from its site.
On Rivers
Call for Submissions
Editors: Teresa Dzieglewicz and Laura-Gray Street
Consulting Editors: Lucien Darjeun Meadows and Irene Vázquez
Open for submissions on February 1, 2023
All submissions are due by April 15, 2023
On Rivers
A river is a body of water. It has a foot, an elbow, a mouth. It runs. It lies in a bed. It can make you good. It remembers everything. — Natalie Diaz, “The First Water is the Body”
“For this upcoming issue, coeditors Teresa Dzieglewicz and Laura-Gray Street, with consulting editors Lucien Darjeun Meadows and Irene Vázquez, invite submissions of prose, poetry, visual art, and hybrid and multi-modal work pertaining to rivers. Rivers are deep sources of connection and memory, holding very different meanings for different communities, and this issue seeks to honor the many types of relationships we have with rivers.
“We welcome a wide range of perspectives and types of writing and art, including experimental and/or speculative work; interviews; graphic memoir, poetry, or fiction; scholarly, legal, or scientific prose written for a general audience; and translations (with originals). We seek work from activists, artists, creatives, environmentalists, writers, and all who are deeply engaged with rivers, regardless of academic, professional, or publication history. We’re looking to create a collective view on rivers that is expansive and surprising.
“We welcome work that might engage, among other themes:
rivers as water bodies and bodies of water
rivers as hydrological networks
rivers as transport
rivers as centers not edges of habitation and meaning
rivers as human connective tissue
rivers as capillary action
rivers as fluency and artistry
rivers as influence and confluence
rivers as political ecologies
rivers as entities with legal “personhood”
rivers as living beings and relatives
rivers as sites of memory
“If you would like to pitch a specific idea for an interview, please email us at blackearthinstitute@gmail.com.
“We look forward to engaging with your art and learning about your rivers!”
Hey! Thanks for being here with me. I’ll have more posts throughout the week. Here are the stories from last week.