[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
my poems aren’t poems
if you can’t exchange them for groceries
my poems aren’t poems if they don’t wear
bonnets if the satin doesn’t stretch to
protect you my poems aren’t poems if
they aren’t pills lexapro a Sistina
hitting the back of my throat if you
know my poems then you know what makes
them poems on seas asking for fingers to
scrub my mother’s kiss and cuddle my
poems aren’t poems if they aren’t
threats all my poems are silver daggers
my poems aren’t poems if they don’t roll
in with other poems the way cousins
shuffle in with other cousins poets
shuffle in with other poets all of our
loved ones our poems stretched over
bones a skin we get used to my poems
aren’t poems if you can’t live in them
and they wouldn’t be poems if you
couldn’t die in them too we live in a
country that has been studying black
women for hundreds of years
white men and women have taken their
pens to illustrate the calculations of
our skulls has given us cartoon faces
and tried our dialect for their
televised humor we are America’s
punchline our anger makes great jokes
and it rationalizes fear in a world that
has been writing about us for so long
poetry is a way for us to write the
diagrams of ourselves poetry is really a
black woman’s dynasty in poetry a black
woman lives it’s really a method of
diagnosis in a world that refuses to
recognize our sorrows poetry arrives as
a prescription I started writing poetry
when I was 15 and I was really depressed
and I needed a way to articulate the way
that I was feeling but I wasn’t that
happy about writing poetry I didn’t
understand how it could be a black
woman’s armor I was taught poetry as a
white man’s landscape we all know Frost
his Road pose obsession with heartbeats
it means obscene adiy which I’m kind of
a fan of but I needed somebody who I can
immediately recognize myself in and it
wasn’t until I got a little older that I
realized that I was standing in a
lineage of tons of black women who had
been writing for me and about me now I
couldn’t talk about poetry if I didn’t
talk about miss Gwendolyn Brooks now
Gwendolyn Brooks once instructed poets
write what’s under your nose and in
saying this she was speaking to a kind
of poetry that took the mundane and put
it on a pedestal not all poems can be
about flowers y’all and now all poets
have the privilege or the time to be
talking about flowers
Brooks understood that there are poems
and train cars there were poems in front
lawns
there were poems and microwaves and tea
kettles there’s so much value about
black domestic life being made visible
and being celebrated and being
investigated by black people themselves
now another poet I want to talk to you
guys about is Margaret Burroughs
Margaret Burroughs and her artist
statement talks about being one of the
people who made the DuSable museum
possible and in talking about that she
talks about how everybody on that team
they were all ordinary folks and she
uses that terminology ordinary folks and
I love that language I love how both
Burroughs and Brooks have an obligation
to the ordinary and feel like they need
to take the ordinary and paint it as
something that is worth being painted in
her poem omage the Black Madonna
Burroughs attempts to write black women
as the icons they’ve never been
considered she paints black women as
something being worth painting there’s a
stands in that poem that really sticks
out to me when she says gentle black
women while being hated yet teaching
love being scorned yet teaching respect
being humiliated and teaching compassion
I’ll sit with that the last poet I want
to talk to you guys about but not the
last Poe y’all are gonna talk about
right because we’re going to go home and
Google
poetry right it’s a viewing I have to
talk about even if I’m going to talk
about poetry because Eve represents not
just the passing down of poetry from
generation to generation and in decades
and different types of lineages but also
teaching and engaging with students
about poetry if we want to do the work
to affirm young black girls if you want
to do the work to validate their
emotions and show that their emotions
can be complex ultimately black women
are gonna have to do that work too black
of other black women and black girls
because the world is not considering us
in the same way that we can consider
ourselves Eve has a poem called why you
cannot touch my hair I love this poem
there’s a specific line that I always
return to when she says my hair is a
technology from the future and it was
sins your fingertips be careful my hair
doesn’t care about what you want
passing poetry down means passing
visibility down that poem why you cannot
touch my hair would be so valuable in a
black classroom in a classroom with all
black kids because so many of those
classrooms exist if a black student
could engage with a poem like that if
they could engage with that visibility
they’re ultimately engaging with
themselves and figuring out how they can
be complex and create borders and write
about their hair it’s important to note
that Margaret Burroughs was a CPS
teacher Eve taught and CPS the
conversation of poetry’s are ongoing one
all of the poets that I mentioned to you
guys today have the lineage that they
can turn to they have stories they
remember from their growing up they have
artists that they saw themselves in we
need to continue this family tree of
poetry this lineage that I am a partner
of and that so many other poets are a
part of it took me so long to understand
that I wasn’t even the first person in
my family who was a poet I wasn’t the
first Jackson with a pen and an idea so
I’m going to end this talk with a poem
about my family called first the women
in my
Emily have bones in the right places
bridges on their cheeks structures of
caution where the fat might get in I am
the daughter with the round face the
women in my family have noses like
compasses each sniff a sharp indication
of home Carrie is old now but a young
woman sits in her face like a bug
trapped between glass then Bernie who
walks like a Cherokee rose by never
walking Deborah’s bones firm in their
residents face permanent as a coffin the
women in my family are so beautiful they
don’t have to use their bodies they get
two bags of flour for the price of their
jaws scam grandpa out of the last of his
taxi money my mother’s face is a disco
whistle that moves my father for catfish
for pine nuts for the remote I am the
first ugly woman spun out of this blood
where is my asking chin
what will they make of my age it’s there
a young woman sitting in me who’s ready
to make orders if my daughter writes
poems will she make a flower out of me
thank you
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
my poems aren’t poems
if you can’t exchange them for groceries
my poems aren’t poems if they don’t wear
bonnets if the satin doesn’t stretch to
protect you my poems aren’t poems if
they aren’t pills lexapro a Sistina
hitting the back of my throat if you
know my poems then you know what makes
them poems on seas asking for fingers to
scrub my mother’s kiss and cuddle my
poems aren’t poems if they aren’t
threats all my poems are silver daggers
my poems aren’t poems if they don’t roll
in with other poems the way cousins
shuffle in with other cousins poets
shuffle in with other poets all of our
loved ones our poems stretched over
bones a skin we get used to my poems
aren’t poems if you can’t live in them
and they wouldn’t be poems if you
couldn’t die in them too we live in a
country that has been studying black
women for hundreds of years
white men and women have taken their
pens to illustrate the calculations of
our skulls has given us cartoon faces
and tried our dialect for their
televised humor we are America’s
punchline our anger makes great jokes
and it rationalizes fear in a world that
has been writing about us for so long
poetry is a way for us to write the
diagrams of ourselves poetry is really a
black woman’s dynasty in poetry a black
woman lives it’s really a method of
diagnosis in a world that refuses to
recognize our sorrows poetry arrives as
a prescription I started writing poetry
when I was 15 and I was really depressed
and I needed a way to articulate the way
that I was feeling but I wasn’t that
happy about writing poetry I didn’t
understand how it could be a black
woman’s armor I was taught poetry as a
white man’s landscape we all know Frost
his Road pose obsession with heartbeats
it means obscene adiy which I’m kind of
a fan of but I needed somebody who I can
immediately recognize myself in and it
wasn’t until I got a little older that I
realized that I was standing in a
lineage of tons of black women who had
been writing for me and about me now I
couldn’t talk about poetry if I didn’t
talk about miss Gwendolyn Brooks now
Gwendolyn Brooks once instructed poets
write what’s under your nose and in
saying this she was speaking to a kind
of poetry that took the mundane and put
it on a pedestal not all poems can be
about flowers y’all and now all poets
have the privilege or the time to be
talking about flowers
Brooks understood that there are poems
and train cars there were poems in front
lawns
there were poems and microwaves and tea
kettles there’s so much value about
black domestic life being made visible
and being celebrated and being
investigated by black people themselves
now another poet I want to talk to you
guys about is Margaret Burroughs
Margaret Burroughs and her artist
statement talks about being one of the
people who made the DuSable museum
possible and in talking about that she
talks about how everybody on that team
they were all ordinary folks and she
uses that terminology ordinary folks and
I love that language I love how both
Burroughs and Brooks have an obligation
to the ordinary and feel like they need
to take the ordinary and paint it as
something that is worth being painted in
her poem omage the Black Madonna
Burroughs attempts to write black women
as the icons they’ve never been
considered she paints black women as
something being worth painting there’s a
stands in that poem that really sticks
out to me when she says gentle black
women while being hated yet teaching
love being scorned yet teaching respect
being humiliated and teaching compassion
I’ll sit with that the last poet I want
to talk to you guys about but not the
last Poe y’all are gonna talk about
right because we’re going to go home and
poetry right it’s a viewing I have to
talk about even if I’m going to talk
about poetry because Eve represents not
just the passing down of poetry from
generation to generation and in decades
and different types of lineages but also
teaching and engaging with students
about poetry if we want to do the work
to affirm young black girls if you want
to do the work to validate their
emotions and show that their emotions
can be complex ultimately black women
are gonna have to do that work too black
of other black women and black girls
because the world is not considering us
in the same way that we can consider
ourselves Eve has a poem called why you
cannot touch my hair I love this poem
there’s a specific line that I always
return to when she says my hair is a
technology from the future and it was
sins your fingertips be careful my hair
doesn’t care about what you want
passing poetry down means passing
visibility down that poem why you cannot
touch my hair would be so valuable in a
black classroom in a classroom with all
black kids because so many of those
classrooms exist if a black student
could engage with a poem like that if
they could engage with that visibility
they’re ultimately engaging with
themselves and figuring out how they can
be complex and create borders and write
about their hair it’s important to note
that Margaret Burroughs was a CPS
teacher Eve taught and CPS the
conversation of poetry’s are ongoing one
all of the poets that I mentioned to you
guys today have the lineage that they
can turn to they have stories they
remember from their growing up they have
artists that they saw themselves in we
need to continue this family tree of
poetry this lineage that I am a partner
of and that so many other poets are a
part of it took me so long to understand
that I wasn’t even the first person in
my family who was a poet I wasn’t the
first Jackson with a pen and an idea so
I’m going to end this talk with a poem
about my family called first the women
in my
Emily have bones in the right places
bridges on their cheeks structures of
caution where the fat might get in I am
the daughter with the round face the
women in my family have noses like
compasses each sniff a sharp indication
of home Carrie is old now but a young
woman sits in her face like a bug
trapped between glass then Bernie who
walks like a Cherokee rose by never
walking Deborah’s bones firm in their
residents face permanent as a coffin the
women in my family are so beautiful they
don’t have to use their bodies they get
two bags of flour for the price of their
jaws scam grandpa out of the last of his
taxi money my mother’s face is a disco
whistle that moves my father for catfish
for pine nuts for the remote I am the
first ugly woman spun out of this blood
where is my asking chin
what will they make of my age it’s there
a young woman sitting in me who’s ready
to make orders if my daughter writes
poems will she make a flower out of me
thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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