Where to begin?
build on a poem
hard packed earth
(hogan-floor-packed)
dirt tamped down
by millions of footsteps
shuffling and scraping smooth silica
(molecules now aligned)
becomes our blank page
where we begin
writing the poem
the act
poiesis
where we start
where we make
poems are our song
our laments
our anger
our healing
our imagination
our manifestations
the how
where we go to ask the questions
our poetry bends
rules
bends around us like a blanket
protects us
as we make new
make different
make safe
world-make
I know I promised to have more analysis on manifestos, but I have been reading senior thesis work done by Alexa Cucopulos1 (I’ll get back to manifestos in the next post!), but it does lend to this work of making. Cucopulos’s work is how they define and utilize poiesis2 as a method of resistance and/or creation, and reading documents as poetry. Wait, what? Yes, by reading documents, archives, history, and even our lives as poetry (this is what Foucault does in Lives of Infamous Men, according to Cucopulos). This thesis is brilliant and I’ve linked out to it in the footnotes. However, this blog post diverges a bit in the use of poiesis and even reading our lives as poetry (not so much in the sense that Foucault was reading poem-lives in the archival record), I want to utilize the concept of a poem-life, and poiesis as it pertains to world-building that grows out of our lived experiences (our poem lives, if you will). Another cool thing about my research thus far is knowing this kind of work has been happening, it’s full-grown in Its theory and practice, and there’s a lot of inspiration, marginalized folk have been dreaming other worlds while hacking a life out of this one—that does not accept them as they are.
Another note, in my readings (including Cucopulos’s work) I keep seeing these words: dignity, movement, embodied/lived experience, settler colonialism, colonization, extraction, community, safety, and care, which in turn leads me to ask what is the music, literature, dancing, songs, poetry of this community? I’m thinking here in terms of the creative nature of the poem. As I read other manifestos, I’m taking a lot of notes and now I’m working on a poem of sorts. Keeping in mind: poiesis(making) and building, and building specifically with (community-defined) words, but also building with a whole language we make. So, I’m taking a crack at the process of making/manifesting, utilizing a manifesto in poem form.
Ahh! This might be amazing or not. But here goes! I’ll keep on with researching other declarations as references and guides. I’m also thinking about the words we don’t know about yet or maybe are just whispers right now. And certainly, about the words that we need to make. If we don’t see it there, if they don’t exist now, we need to make it.
As mentioned above, I’ve been reading the work of Alexa Cucopulos. Their thesis is an analysis of (Foucault’s If poetry is a transformative genre like Cucopulos says), and manifestos make us know, let’s declare, make our declarations, make these in poetry. Using the poem as our form, a living form, to express our wholeness: our feelings, experiences, when even our words exceed this form, we morph it to it morphs itself to meet our need to communicate with each other and with you.
I know you know the power of poetry. And believe me, I still feel very new to it, but I have fallen so completely for it and I’m here to read it ALL and learn from it as much as I can about how to wielding it, building community with it, and healing with it. I also acknowledge the evolving nature of language and expression and its power to transform as well. The possibilities are infinite, and I want to imagine some of it with you so I will continue to show you my commitment to ongoing exploration and creation in the realm of making and manifesting through poetry!
1 Cucopulos (1994-2020) went on to do doctoral work in the Literature program at Duke University. Their thesis was used for the Black Feminist Summer School, taught by their colleague Dr. Amanda Bennett.
2 Cucopulos defines poiesis in this quote from their thesis: ‘The Greek etymological root of poetry, “poiesis,” means “to make.”’
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