Yet another YouTube video of Sarah Kay, giving a Ted talk on how and where she finds poetry. A quote --
“Maybe it’s not my job to invent something new. Maybe it’s my job to listen to what the universe is showing me and to keep myself open to what the universe offers so that when it’s my turn, I can hold something to the light - just for a moment, just for as long as I have. The universe has already written the poem that you were planning on writing, and this is why you can do nothing but point at the flow of starlings whose bodies rise and fall in inherited choreography, swarming the sky in a sweeping curtain, that for one blistering moment forms the unmistakable shape of a giant bird flapping against the sky. It is why your mouth forms an O that is not a gasp, but rather the beginning of 'oh, of course.'”
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Sarah Kay reads Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie's poem "Titanic", a poem that I watch probably once a week. You can find the poem below.
--What’s wrong? Titanic asked me this morning, when she found me lying on the ocean floor with all my suitcases strewn open. Oh, I dunno, I moaned, I was looking through National Geographic and saw some pictures of you, and thought I might come and chat. you looked great, by the way, in the pictures. Me? No. Titanic smiled. If anything I seem to have become a Picasso. and I have a beard. It was true; she looked more like a collage of a ship. Strangely two dimensional, in a crater of her own making: French doors, boilers, railings every which way. And she did have a bit of a beard-rust icicles hanging in red strands from her iron engines. sitting up in my own little crater, I sort of blushed. To be honest, I told Titanic, My honey’s leaving town soon and I’m afraid it’s gonna wreck me, so i dove down here. Well come on in, Titanic said, but I’m not sure I’ve got what you’re looking for. So in I climbed between, through a window between two rust stalactites, and began to pace her great promenade. (which would have been awesome, by the way -walking by the ghosts of all those waving handkerchiefs - except that I was in that feeling-sorry-for-yourself state where very hallway is the hallway of your own wretched mind, every ghost your own ghost, so I didn’t take a good look around.) When I got to the turkish baths, I sat on the edge of a barnacled tub and watched weird crabs scrabble at my feet. I was hoping you’d teach me how to sink, I said. You, who have spent a century underwater with 1500 skeletons in your chest. I don’t know, said Titanic, I’m kind of a wreck. Exactly! I said, Me too! I’m here to apprentice myself to wreckage. I’m here to apprentice myself to you! Great bearded lady, gargantuan ark, you floating hotel. With enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone I’ve ever loved. My heart has an iceberg with its name on it, I told Titanic, so i need some advice. Tell me, did you see the iceberg coming? I did, Titanic said. And you sailed right into it? It was love, Titanic said. And the band just kept playing? And the captain stayed at the wheel? What did it feel like to swallow seawater? Tell me, Titanic, how did it feel? It felt like a hole in my side and then it felt like plummeting face first into the ice-cold ocean. She’s a straight talked, the Titanic. Alright, I said. Now let’s talk about rust. When my love leaves, I’m planning to weep stalactites from my chin. I will wear my sadness in longs strands. Like you, I will be bearder by it. Then I made a terrible noise. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrkkkkkkkkkkk! I’ve been practicing the sound of wrenching metal, I told her, for when my love leaves. But you aren’t made of metal. Titanic said to me. I’m a writer, I said, I could be made of anything. Well then, be a writer. She said. Be a writer? I paused, anemones between my toes. Okay. When my love leaves i’ll start with SOS. I will Morse code odes as the whole world goes vertical. I’ll write nosedives as my torso splits in two. And the next day i’ll write the stunned headlines, and the next day i’ll write the obituaries, and the next day I will write furious accusations, and the next day I will write lawsuits, and the next day I will write confessions of my wrongdoing, and the next day I will write pardons, but i won’t really mean it, and the next day i’ll write sonnets, but they won’t fit the schema, and the next day i’ll write pleas, please, please come back. The next day I will write epitaphs, navigation maps, warning for future generations about the hubris of human love. I will write quotas and queries and quizzes, I will write nonsense, I will write nonesense, I will write nonsense all the way down and no diving teams will find me, no robot arms will retrieve me in pieces. never will i be reassembled and played air. No, I will remain whole, two miles down, with my suitcases strewn open, and in 100 years i will still be writing about this feeling, though my heart be a Picasso, though my heart be bearded at the bottom of the sea. The Titanic let me cry for a while, my sobs echoing off her moldy mosaics. Then she said: Girl, you’re too young for a beard like this. You’re never gonna get some if you rust over now. I sniffled a little and scratched my name into the green slime of the tub. The trouble with you humans is that you are so concerned with staying afloat. Go ahead, be gouged open by love. Gulp that saltwater, sink beneath the waves. You’re not a boat, you can go under and come up again, with those big ol lungs of yours, those hard kicking legs. And your heart, she said, that gargantuan ark, that floating hotel. Call it unsinkable, though it is sinkable. Embark, embark. There are enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone you’ll ever love. That’s what the Titanic told me this morning, me, lying next to her on the ocean floor. There are enough ballrooms in you. - Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie I can’t stop thinking about Elijiah McClain. He was murdered by police in Colorado on August 24, 2019. Colorado, here -- a place that prides itself on ideas of paradise and peace, and sells it. Elijah was a peaceful, introverted massage therapist who played violin to stray cats in his free time. As the officers who assaulted him injected him with ketamine, he pled -- “Let go of me. I’m an introvert. Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking. I can’t breathe.” Who is allowed to breathe? To have peace? Who is granted the privilege of a life lived simply and well, without interference from those who think themselves more powerful? No one is questioning my right to be in any space I occupy. I can be here, outside, with a mask on and my hands in my pockets, without fear of being considered a threat to power. It is a privilege to threaten the power and get away with it. Too many people have died for the rights we all deserve - the right to exist in a place, be ourselves, and feel at peace. I am a hybrid body on stolen land, with light skin and a cisgender, femme identity. It’s a life with few conflicts, and my body looks like it belongs in most spaces. It definitely isn’t assaulted, abused, or murdered the way that black bodies are in America. And yes, I feel guilty as hell. But guilt is useless, and I want to do something with it. I’ve been taught media a lot as I’ve been taught social advocacy, environmental justice, and civic engagement. It probably comes with the territory of Generation Z, of trying to grow up in the midst of a climate crisis, a digital renaissance, and a pandemic. I’m pretty good at talking through screens and keys -- less good at the in-person stuff. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how to use my privilege to speak and act in a world where we can’t get close to one another. I make videos. I write blog posts, and poems. I watch videos, and read blog posts and poems. This is a space in which I like to engage with the minds of others, and I feel comfortable bearing my mind to the world. It is also a place where we can have discourse, hopefully, free of violence and threat. (allow me to note that this is a space that is increasingly becoming restricted, manipulated, and censored). I can’t stop thinking about Elijah McClain because I can’t stop thinking about the world that enabled him to be murdered. The world full of manipulated narratives, hurtful stereotypes, and implicit biases that taught one group of men that they had the right - the responsibility - to see him injured and killed. That taught them to believe that his body was less worthy of occupying the same space, of doing what it wanted to feel at peace. What can I do to help Elijah McClain? Nothing. He’s dead. So are George Floyd, Ahmed Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and countless others. But I can turn inwards and recognize what it is within me and the ways I move through the world that have enabled their deaths. And I can ask you to consider the same. Where is it in your world where you can advocate and act for change? For me, it’s here, on my laptop - learning, reading, and trying to synthesize the work that I am doing in my own world, in my own mind. For others, it’s protesting, giving aid, donating time and resources, or actively reconfiguring the structures that enable hate within our society. I watched a youtube video earlier about the idea of finding your mission -- the intersection of what you love and you’re good at with what the world desperately needs. I don’t know my mission yet, but I know that the world needs a lot of active caring, compassion, and re-learning. It needs us to talk about these things and recognize where we have failed one another. And talking - nay, typing - is something that comes pretty naturally to me. Listening and learning come less naturally, but I’m actively trying to create space for humility and openness - I don’t have the answers, and I need to try to seek them out. We are all on this mission together. We cannot continue to let our communities down. We all deserve the space to breathe.
Olivia Gatwood is my favorite poet. She writes poems about girlhood, body, and shame, but mostly she writes about things like summer, swimming pools, and first kisses. I still don't know how to write a poem, but in this video, she explains how she writes poems, and why writing poems is important.
"The Green New Deal’s underlying logic shares something foundational with the prison abolition movement. Prison abolitionists like to say that our objective isn’t so much the abolition of prisons as it is the abolition of a society that could have prisons. Prison abolition isn’t just a movement against cages. It’s also a movement for alternative ways of living together and building social infrastructure.
Similarly, the Green New Deal is about abolishing carbon pollution and stabilizing the climate. It also recognizes that the only way we can do these things is by transforming the economy and the social-environmental relations that constitute it." As an intersectional environmentalist, newfound prison abolitionist, and Green New Deal enthusiast, I found this article a super insightful read as to how the Green New Deal and the prison abolition movement share similar goals, and both aspire to have communities in America that invest in social welfare, infrastructure for healthy living, and environmental justice. This kind of Green New Deal would redefine public safety to include social and economic stability. A jobs guarantee would help reduce incarceration, if it explicitly allowed everyone to be eligible, regardless of previous arrests or convictions. It would also require investment in high-quality education. Over the past 30 years, spending on jails and prisons has increased at triple the rate of spending on P-12 public education. The increase of cops in schools has led to school-based arrests increasing 300-500 percent since the 1990s, and this criminalization disproportionately affects black, brown, and queer kids. A Green New Deal for Decarceration would reinvest in public education and resources for troubled kids, as opposed to their criminalization. It would include investments in housing security, which would greatly reduce the risk of incarceration, and provide resources for vulnerable communities as opposed to funneling at-risk kids into prisons. It would empower care workers and disempower the police. Communities would have the opportunity to invest in restorative and transformative justice, as opposed to a justice system rooted in vengeance and punishment. Justice does not need to be criminalized, and indeed, if we want to see out communities grow and take care of one another, that criminalization is exactly what needs to be avoided. We have an opportunity here to end both carbon and carceral dependence. Right now, both climate-vulnerable communities and those most at-risk by a militarized prison and police state are subject to surveillance, behavioral micromanagement, criminalization, and incarceration. What they need and deserve instead is healthcare, housing, jobs, education, and public health. "We urge a transition not just to liberal formulations of restorative justice, which prioritize restitution between individuals, but also a structural restorative justice among people, institutions, and society. Not just restorative justice, in other words, but redistributive justice. And we suggest that redistributive justice is and can be ecological and economic justice, too; a justice that fits squarely into the objectives and ambitions of the Green New Deal." -P
How do we take care of and build up support for one another during this time? If you're like me, you may be struggling to feel like you can engage in the conversation when social media is incredibly loud, active, and impermanent right now. If I can only access the world through my phone and my computer, the ways that I engage with that world become incredibly important. My work, social life, passions, and hobbies are all here, and all of them need to take a moment and redirect their attentions toward the issues of race in America.
I chose to make this playlist - a compilation of some of my favorite black artists and friends, and invite you to help me build it, share it, and grow it. Do you know any black artists who could use some love and support right now? Send them my way. -P
This is a video that has been circulating around the internet, and if you stream it in the background, it not only generates ad revenue to support Black Lives Matter, but also supports incredibly talented black artists and musicians. Give her a stream! See what you learn.
While I have you here, here are some links. Black poets/artists/creators how to financially help BLM with NO MONEY/leaving your house (Invest in the future for FREE) This video project was created to offer people a way to donate and financially contribute to #blacklivesmatter without having any actual money or going out to protest themselves. Investing in our future can be difficult for young people, so 100% of the advertisement revenue this video makes through AdSense will be donated to the associations that offer protester bail funds, help pay for family funerals, and advocacy listed in the beginning of the video. PLEASE share this video, make sure to leave the ads running, repeat the video, and let people know about this easy way to help. Jacqueline Woodson reads "You Lose Something Every Day" Tabia Yapp reads "Magical Negro #217: Diana Ross Finishing a Rib in Alabama, 1990s" unfortunately I have a body and I’m the only one in charge of it you know what I eat the bones too I’m in the world I’m in the world Nobody cares where I came from. Raych Jackson reads "Church Girl Learns to Pray Again" José Olivarez reads "I Loved the World So I Married It" https://twitter.com/_joseolivarez I found all of these words beautiful. I want to support these creators. If there's someone I should add, or some other way to help black artists and creators, let me know!
To be able to rest is a privilege. As we slow down, stay home, or, otherwise, agitate, work hard, and take to the streets, I found it valuable to reflect on the luxury that is being able to rest. Tricia Hersey reflects here about the science of sleep, black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, reparations theory, and afro-futurism. She reminds us that "rest is resistance. Rest is reparations."
I am not an expert, and I am not black -- I want to make this clear. But, I have had the privilege of being able to rest, think, grow, and heal during this time. This privilege is inextricably linked to my situation -- my family is upper-middle class, I am white-passing, and we live in a place that has access to clean air, water, and nature. Many BIPOC people in America do not have this privilege - they have been forced into housing projects that are in environmentally vulnerable places, are often part of the essential service workers who are on their feet daily feeding and providing for America, or, these days, they are in the streets, protesting and demanding justice for centuries of inaction. I'm not protesting right now. My little mountain community is small, and our healthcare facilities are limited, so I'm trying to do what I can from home to help bring this movement forward, and learn with you all about how we can make these places - the internet, our communities, and our planet - safer and more comfortable for black bodies. They deserve to rest. For the Wild is a podcast that I've found incredibly helpful these days. It was first recommended to me by Pi Greg, a Coloradan living in Thailand, and a teacher of yoga, seed-saving, permaculture, and environmentalism, and an instructor at Where There Be Dragons. Greg is one of those teachers I've been looking to during this time, to find guidance, and help steady me. Are you resting? Do you have the privilege to rest? I do, and a lot of people don't. I'm going to regenerate while I rest, listen, learn, and engage in dialogue, with the intention that, the more I move through this space with a goal of deliberate action, community-building, and learning, black people may get some rest. And to my black, BIPOC friends - those in the streets, at home, working, resting, protesting, or healing - wherever you are right now, I see you. I hear you. I'm listening. Get some rest. Lotsa love, -P |