I have been writing poetry since I was 8. My journals are filled with little Black girl poems…often sad and sorrowful at the time. My mom sent a few of my poems to Gwendolyn Brooks, and she gave me a little poetry primer. I took my love of poetry to the University of Iowa in 1985 as a freshman. And at Iowa, in the Black Poetry class taught by Professor Melba Boyd, I learned by painful lessons of editing. I was so hurt the first time Professor Boyd handed my little poems back full of red marks. I wrote a poem about it. I wrote on December 8, 1985:
Don’t reject me
Any part of me
My Poems
Speech
Laughter
Body
And Love.
Just don’t.
….
Accept
My poems, with or without sounds and imagery
My speech, with our without dalect
My laughter, nervous or real
My tears, with or without purpose
My body, pure or used
My love, fresh.
Don’t shove back my poems
Engulfed with red marks of
Hatred and coolness
…
Don’t hand it back
Don’t.
And so, throughout my life, at different moments, I’d be inspired to write a poem. Poems need space and inspiration. A few years ago, I was inspired to write a poem for Jarvis Christian College, where my mother went to school — a small historically Black college in Texas. They had invited me to be a keynote speaker for their Founder’s Day.
For Jarvis
May the grace and goodness of God guide you
May the alums and ancestors anchor you
May you always feel the love of the Negro Mother
And remember her passionate plea:
Don’t sit down; don’t turn around; don’t give up
Because you finds it a lil’ hard
You have seeds of survival and strength that have been
Watered by your ancestors’ tears of sorrow
Cherish those seeds within with compassion
Even as you water them with your own tears
Of struggle
So that you can be a tree
Proud and powerful
Strong, yet sensitive
Tough, yet tender
Able to bend and not break
with branches
Upon which others will
Climb
To their destinies of greatness.
And, then Nikki Giovanni, always inspires me. And so, I had to write poems for her. I wrote 4 poems: The Only One; Courage; Tears for Humanity; and Walking the Talk. I shared them with Nikki and she sent a wonderful handwritten thank you note. She is so gracious and kind. (You can read the poems at the post below called “A Tribute to Nikki”).
And so, for this Black History month, I felt inspired to write a poem. It is called An African-American Love Story
I, I am an African-American Love Story
Birthed from the Ultimate Mother – the Divine Mother
The Motherland of Africa
A place of old wise ways and wisdom
Pyramids and temples,
ancient ancestral energy
I, I am an African-American Love Story
From the Motherland to the Fatherland
From Africa to America
Baptized in the Middle Passage through trauma and trials
Through rape and ravaging
Required to recreate a new language.
I, I am an African-American Love Story
And every love story needs a song – a love song.
A love song, bathed in rhythms from slave ships, cotton fields,
Plantations of tobacco and paddies of rice.
A love song to comfort and caress.
Spirituals, gospel, rhythm and blues, jazz, reggae, rap, and hip-hop,
Soulful and sometimes sorrow full
Drums pulsing to my beating and bleeding heart.
I, I am an African-American Love Story
Fed with soul food, leftovers made magical,
Reviving and restoring my soul’s empty spaces
I , I am an African-American Love Story
Shielded
Shrouded
Shored Up and
Sheltered in the Secret Place of
the Most High
A God of my weary years
A God of my silent tears
A God who has brought us thus far on the way
A God who resurrects unborn hope.
And so let’s lift every voice and sing
Let’s sing,
A song full of faith
Let’s sing,
A song full of hope
Let’s sing
A song full of love
For the greatest of these is love,
And We
We are an African-American Love Story
The poem recitation is excerpted below, but the full video as part of Menah’s Matinee: Music and Musings, is available on Menah Pratt-Clarke YouTube channel and included at the end of this post.
I do think of myself as African-American because my father, now an ancestor, was born and raised in Sierra Leone, West Africa. My grandmother took me to visit my ancestors in the cemetry in Freetown and she introduced me to them and poured libation for them. I have a deeply spiritual and personal connection to the Motherland. But, as an American, I have a loyalty and pride in my American identity. As the great granddaughter (my mother’s grandmother) of enslaved ancestors from Alabama, I feel that connection to the legacy of slavery in America. But I also feel the power of a people who have survived and are surviving, and trying to thrive in this land. Our country.
And, so the African-American Love Story is a testament to the hill we have climbed so far, and are still climbing as Amanda Gorman so eloquently shared at the inauguration.
Let us keep marching on. Ever forward.