Tag: poetry

Black Girl Magic: A Poetry Anthology

Posted on by Alison Cooper

In Black Girl Magic, the second volume in the BreakBeats Poets series, the Black girl magic is an undeniable force, igniting the pages and speaking necessary truths. Edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, and Jamila Woods, the anthology collects poetry from the canon of Black women. The poets write from a range of intersections within the diaspora. But in each poem, there is that special spark of magic. As Simmonds writes in her introduction: “When a Black woman dares to speak her truth, she redefines understandings of womanhood. Her voice echoes out, disrupting and delegitimizing tired stereotypes and tropes. In short, there is magic.”

Exploring themes from self-love and black beauty to white supremacy and the Trump administration, the poems in this anthology offer what Browne describes as “mantras, praters, and promises of our survival.” The voices collected here provide healing and support for other Black women. The collection is also an opportunity for those who aren’t black and/or woman-identified to listen.

You can purchase copies of Black Girl Magic at Philly AIDS Thrift at Giovanni’s Room for $19.95 (plus tax). Drop by the store or order online today!

 

Danez Smith’s Electric Power

Posted on by Alison Cooper

Danez Smith’s Electric Power: Don’t Call Us Dead

by Alison Cooper

To experience the poems of Danez Smith is to witness electricity. I had the privilege of seeing Smith perform in 2015 at a small but packed art gallery in Minneapolis. The performance of their poems, the lyricism and urgency, sent the room into a buzz, igniting conversations that rest in the mind for days that roll into months then years. How incredible to witness a poet whose work remains so poignant and salient with time.

Following the success of their stellar [insert boy], award-winning poet Danez Smith returns with their second collection of poems titled Don’t Call Us Dead, which was nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry. Danez Smith explores the intersections of their identity as a queer person of color who is also HIV-positive, and how these identities are politicized in the United States. This is an important and necessary collection.

A link follows from poem to poem: the body that houses this multiplicity of identities. The black body is as a body at risk. Whether at risk to be murdered in the street as in the poem “summer, somewhere”, a 26-page elegy for those boys who have died because of police brutality, or to perish from a chronic, exhausting fight to HIV as in the poem “1 of 2” that begins: “On February 23rd, 2016, the CDC released a study estimating 1 in 2 black men who have sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.” Often, the threat is both.

Speaking to the intersection of these identities, the poem “every day is a funeral & a miracle” meditates on Smiths’ race and HIV positive status. In a surprising and effective metaphor, Smith compares the virus in his blood to the police:

hallelujah! today i rode
past five police cars
& i can tell you about it

now, what
to do with my internal
inverse, just how
will i survive the little
cops running inside
my veins, hunting
white blood cells &
bang bang
i’m dead

To be a heightened risk of both police brutality and HIV, Danez Smith articulates that “some of us are killed / in pieces, some of us all at once.” At the intersection of race and sexuality, Smith translates these oppressions into power. To read Danez Smith is to witness this electric power.

Purchase copies of Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith at Philly AIDS Thrift at Giovanni’s Room for $16 (plus tax). Drop by the store or order online today.

✕