Dark Angels Note 166
Dearest Friends
Welcome back to our Friday Note – our weekly collection of writerly thoughts.
Observing
Today, 31 years ago, American writer Audre Lorde died (18 February 1934 – 17 November 1992).
Lorde was a professor, poet, essayist and autobiographer who used her art to speak out against racial and social injustice and give voice to silent struggles.
In her life, she wrote eighteen books of essays and poems including The Cancer Journals, her own account of her struggle with breast cancer which is ‘regarded as a major work of illness narrative.’
Lorde also co-founded a publishing house, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, that launched in 1981 and ran until shortly after her death in 1992.
Reading
“Lorde understood the power of poetry – the power of words mortised into meaning and tenoned into truth, truth about who we are and who we are capable of being”.
Read more here: Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing on The Marginalian.
Writing
In her essay, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, Lorde makes a case for poetry being an essential tool in bringing to light the things that we feel before they become thought or action.
Spend five minutes feeling rather than thinking. Try putting it down into words.
Sharing
This week’s Sharing is from Maureen Evans, who wrote in response to the prompt from Note 162 and inspired by David Bowie’s 5 years.
We have 5 years, that’s all we’ve got
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
And still we stood there, consuming and using
The dying planet, the proof of the pudding
We have 5 years, even that long?
Limitless collecting and lack of regrets
Where shall I go next, what shall I see
Visiting the dying planet to satisfy just me
We have 5 years, still it’s all about us
War and human conflict, is it not enough
To see the planet nurture and grow
And support human beings 7 generations from now
We have 5 years
Photo by Mykola "Kolya" Korzh on Unsplash