Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics Across North America

Poetics Statement: Ignoring Poetry (a work in progress)

M. NourbeSe Philip | 279 poetics statement Ignoring Poetry (a work in progress) Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people. —adrian mitchell How does one write poetry from the twin realities of being Black and female in the last quarter of the twentieth century? How does one write poetry from a place such as Canada, whose reality for poets such as myself is, more often than not, structured by its absence? How does one write from the perspective of one who has “mastered” a foreign language, yet has never had a mother tongue; one whose father tongue is an English fashioned to exclude, deride and deny the essence of one’s being? How does the poet confront and resolve the profound loss and absence of language—a language which can truly be the house of one’s being? How does the poet work a language engorged on her many silences? How does she break that silence that is one yet many? Should she? Can she fashion a language that uses silence as a first principle? This was the first paragraph of a letter covering my manuscripts She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks and Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence sent to publishers in 1987. Some seven years, twenty-five rejections, and eventual publication later, the questions answer themselves. i. how does one write poetry how does onepoetry from the twin realities Black and female One doesn’t. The realities aren’t twin. Or even same. ii. how does one write poetry from a place 280 | Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century a place structured by absence One doesn’t. One learns to read the silence/s. iii. how does one write poetry from the perspective of “mastery” of a mother tongue—a foreign language an anguish One doesn’t. One fashions a tongue split—two times two times two into poly & multi & semi vocalities iv. how does the poet how does the poet how does the poet “confront” how does the poet “loss and absence” how does the poet an absence of language resolve She doesn’t She listens to the silences\s—the interstices of time; she listens again v. how does the poet work engorged on her many silences M. NourbeSe Philip | 281 how does the poet work her many silences how does the poet work a language engorged on her many many silences Carefully vi. how does she how does she how does she break that silence that silence is one is many how does she break one into many Loving ly vii. should she should she what could she could she what should she could she Possibly viii. can she fashion a language (what presumption!) can she fashion a language using silence can she fashion a language using silence 282 | Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century as a first principle can she She must All of which brings me to messin with the lyric: In “Discourse,” by cramping the space traditionally given to the poem itself , by forcing it to share its space with something else—an extended image about women, words, language and silence; with the edicts that established the parameters of silence for the African in the New World, by giving more space to the descriptions of the physiology of speech, the scientific legacy of racism we have inherited, and by questioning the tongue as organ and concept , poetry is put in its place—both in terms of it taking a less elevated position—moving from centre stage and page and putting it back where it belongs—and locating it in a particular historical sequence of events (each reading of such a poem could become a mini drama). The canon of objectivity and universality is shifted—I hope permanently disturbed. (Notes from a Working Journal) Black and female—untwinned realities—subversive realities. Is this why I challenge the lyric voice—my lyric voice of authority—authority? Why should anyone care how the “I” that is me feels, or how it recollects my emotions in tranquillity. Without the mantle of authority—who gives me such authority—without the mantle of authority—what gives me such authority—whiteness? maleness? Europeanness? without the mantle of authority what is the lyric voice? We seldom think of the lyric voice as one of authority—poetry and authority seem strange bedfellows—but it is, with the weight of...