HOW TO BE ALONEby Tanya Davis, poet, songwriter and singer. Her style is primarily spoken word set to music. She performed in this video, which was directed by Andrea Dorfman. Andrea did the animation. She is a screenwriter as well as a director.
The film was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As of this writing, this poetry video has had more than 7,620,000 views, which is a league of its own when it comes to poetry videos. As far as I know the only poet who gets those numbers – actually twice as much – is Shane Koyczan, also a Canadian and a spoken word poet.
After making the film Tanya and Andrea put together a book, How to Be Alone (Harper,2013) with the poem and illustrations. Tanya also has a published poetry collection, At First, Lonely (Acorn Books, 2011). The former, I think, makes a good gift for someone after a break-up, separation or divorce. The later explores falling in love and out, searching for truth and for roots. The writing is intimate, very personal.
“your severed daughter
laughing our name into echo
all the world shall remember ”
Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems
I discovered Audre Lorde when I happened upon From the House of Yemanjá (below). Wow! She’s been peaking in our window, I thought. How could she know? I was very young and didn’t start really delving into her work until recently. Time sadly lost.
How many women and men grew up with two-faced mothers who took care (albeit resentfully) of the pragmatic aspects of motherhood, but were unable to love and demanded perfection of their children in return for their own unhappiness. Many, no doubt; but no one writes about the experiences of being marginalized in the home – or in the greater world – like Audre Lorde, a seminal poet. She had a keen mind, courageous spirit, was stunning in her crafting and had a gift for expressing emotion.
“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”
Audre Lorde was born in New York City, the child of immigrants from Caribbean. She was a writer and poet, a radical feminist, a womanist and lesbian, an activist for right and the rights of the marginalized.
“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.”
Lorde was New York State poet laureate in 1991 and until her death from liver cancer in 1992.
“The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”
From the House of Yemanjá
My mother had two faces and a frying pot
where she cooked up her daughters
into girls
before she fixed our dinner.
My mother had two faces
and a broken pot
where she hid out a perfect daughter
who was not me
I am the sun and moon and forever hungry
for her eyes.
I bear two women upon my back
one dark and rich and hidden
in the ivory hungers of the other
mother
pale as a witch
yet steady and familiar
brings me bread and terror
in my sleep
her breasts are huge exciting anchors
in the midnight storm.
All this has been
before
in my mother´s bed
time has no sense
I have no brothers
and my sisters are cruel.
Mother I need
mother I need
mother I need your blackness now
as the august earth needs rain.
I am
the sun and moon and forever hungry
the sharpened edge
where day and night shall meet
and not be
one.
– Audre Lorde (1978)
“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.”
Virginia Woolf (1881-1941), English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the 20th Century
“After completing the manuscript of her last (posthumously published) novel, Between the Acts, Woolf fell into a depression similar to that which she had earlier experienced. The onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work.[20] On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself by filling her overcoat pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse near her home. Woolf’s body was not found until 18 April 1941.[35] Her husband buried her cremated remains under an elm in the garden of Monk’s House, their home in Rodmell, Sussex.” Wikipedia
A sad end for a complicated soul and a hugely talented one, but her gifts to us live on as we continue – seventy-five years after her death – to read her writings, to share her preoccupation with transformation through art.
One of my favorite Woolf quotes has – predictably – to do with poetry and women . . .
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
… and with silence and simple daily things …
“Better is silence..Let me sit with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.” – Virginia Woolf, The Waves
For Virginia Woolf fans, Rebecca Brooks created a blog dedicated to everything Virginia Woolf: her life, death, writing, context, relationships, mental illness, literary techniques and more: The Virginia Woolf Blog; The life and legacy of Virginia Woolf – Recommended. Enjoyable and informative. Bravo, Rebecca!
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
today
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 