Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well.
April is Arab American Heritage month. Today's Meditation comes from Andrea Sanderson, "Nigra Sum." Other Arab American poets you may be familiar with are below, including Kahlil Gibran and Naomi Shihab Nye.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION 638: Celebrating Arab-American Andrea Sanderson "Nigra Sum"
Nigra Sum
Nigra sum, nigra sum sed Formosa
I am that opal colored onyx stone. Black bone soul
jones in the midnight dreary.
My soul is a weary kind of blues; and you know me
for my ebony hues. Nigra sum.
Like Solomon, the wisest king, with a pigment from
the descent of a chocolate crescent beam. I am the depth of Africa’s dream do
you see me gleam shining a fluid monsoon. Nigra sum.
I am bellowing coal smoky soul. Young and old,
just depending on the century you first got a glimpse of me. The obscured
regions of earth foretold my destiny. I grew from the continent of Mahogany in
full bloom. Nigra sum.
Just mention me to Cairo sands. Echo the song of the
motherland, walking hand in hand with Pharaohs and Abraham. I stand by Cush and
push the seeds of Noah in the land. Water them with the words from my lips. I
am the darkness of every solar eclipse from January ‘til June. Nigra sum.
Do you presume to know my fable? Sit with me at
the Passover table. I was able to break bread with the unleavened. I kissed the
lamb of heaven just before he was betrayed in Gethsemane that day. When the sky
turned pitch from gray, I was the one who sprayed the firmament with my tears.
It was the color of fears and doom. Nigra sum.
Like the daughters of Jerusalem gathering to be
concubines, veiling brown eyes for the wise one, scorched by the sun, double
coated in sable with prose sweeter than molasses and rum maple. I am hune like
their groom. Nigra sum.
Like the inside of tombs, like iron and fumes,
like licorice perfume, like the bottom of a lagoon, I am black, but comely.
Nigra sum.
My skin is baked and burnt melanin versed with the
ink of my pen. I am in the abyss of every woman, waiting to be birthed as life
from her womb. From the den of each uterus I am exhumed, consumed in the
richness of raven shades. Vamp clay made the frame of my being. I am the
blanket overseeing the night as it dances across the expanses of the
hemisphere. It is clear that I too have been touched by the sun so much that I
can absorb the breath of the moon. Nigra sum.
For we must learn to love the skin God put us in
even when the world would condition us to hate it.
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson is a poet, singer, and hip hop artist. She is the poet laureate of San Antonio, Texas. In 2021, Sanderson was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
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Spend time with selections from Kahlil Gibran’s Sand and Foam: A Book of Aphorisms (Knopf, 1926), which entered the public domain this year, in honor of Arab American Heritage Month.
Gibran Khalil Gibran, born January 6, 1883, in Ottoman Syria (present-day Lebanon), was a Lebanese American poet, writer, and visual artist. He was the author of many collections, including The Madman: His Parables and Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1918) and The Prophet (Alfred A. Knopf, 1923). Gibran died on April 10, 1931.
Mahjar Movement
Mahjar, derived from hijra, Arabic for “migration,” refers to a movement of poets and writers from Syria and Lebanon to the Americas that began around 1850 and continued into the twentieth century.
Against Heaven
Happy publication day to Kemi Alabi, whose collection Against Heaven, winner of the 2021 First Book Award, is out today from Graywolf Press.
“Against Heaven activates multiple lexicons, seeking to construct the immensity of Black queer subjectivity with guile and formal virtuosity. At once sonic and disruptive, these poems pull together everything in a world where nothing is sacred.” —Claudia Rankine, 2021 First Book Award judge
Purchase your copy of Against Heaven here and read more of Alabi’s work.
Honoring Richard Howard
“Even though we give (give up) ourselves to this mortal process of continuing, it is the movement that creates the form.”
We remember Richard Howard, who passed away on March 31 in Manhattan at age 92. Howard authored several collections of poetry, including Untitled Subjects (Atheneum, 1969), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize, and was president of PEN American Center (1979–80) and poet laureate of New York state (1993–95). In addition to a prolific career as a poet, translator, and educator, Howard was Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets.
“Young people can pick up so much verbally and nonverbally. It’s those moments that go beyond words that really come across in the poetry.”
—Read this interview with 2021 Poet Laureate Fellow, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, on her work in San Antonio.
“I do not save drafts. If a line or a stanza goes, then it’s gone. And that adds to the excitement, the immediacy. This could go on for two or three days. Going back every hour.”
Read this interview with Colm Tóibín, whose debut poetry collection, Vinegar Hill, was recently published by Beacon Press. Read more about Tóibín here.
Don’t miss our signature National Poetry Month virtual reading, Poetry & the Creative Mind, with masters of ceremony Richard Blanco and Terrance Hayes, and featuring readings of favorite poems from Rosanne Cash, Willem Dafoe, Ann Dowd, 2022 Leadership Award recipient Joy Harjo, and more luminaries from across the arts and culture.
This signature annual gala celebrating poetry’s important place in our lives, raises critical funds to support the Academy of American Poets Education Program. Join us for our live broadcast April 28, at 7:30 p.m. EDT, free and open to the public. Learn more at Poets.org.
Poem in your Pocket Day
The twentieth annual Poem in Your Pocket Day will happen on Friday, April 29, to culminate this year’s National Poetry Month. All are encouraged to celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day in classrooms, libraries, bookstores, workplaces, parks, and homes, as well as on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem. Read more about how to participate here and our National Poetry Month initiatives.
The Trayvon Generation
Happy publication day to Elizabeth Alexander’s book, The Trayvon Generation, named one of TIME magazine’s most anticipated titles of 2022. Alexander, Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is the recipient of several honors including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes. Alexander read her poem “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Purchase your copy here and read more of Alexander’s work.
Sponsored Content
Comprising more than forty manuscripts, broadsides, and first editions, Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poet’s Work In Community, on view through June 5, 2022, celebrates Brooks’s roles as a poet, teacher, mentor, and community leader. Plan your visit at themorgan.org.
#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: WeHo Reads: Trans | Future | Poetics
Check out our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: WeHo Reads: Trans | Future | Poetics, a virtual reading hosted by West Hollywood City Poet Laureate and 2021 Poets Laureate Fellow Brian Sonia-Wallace, featuring Ryka Aoki, Harry Josephine Giles, Simba the Poet, and Ava Dadvand. Wednesday, April 6, at 6 p.m. PT / 9 p.m. ET. FREE. Register here.
Scholastic Inc. in New York City is seeking a full-time associate marketing manager.
University of Nevada, Reno, is seeking a full-time assistant professor in creative writing.
Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye discuss her curatorial approach and her own creative work. Read more about Shihab Nye, the author of Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (Greenwillow Books, 2020), plus poems here.
Revisit last week’s Poem-a-Day selections with us on Poets.org:
March 27: “The Spring Has Many Silences” by Laura Riding Jackson
March 28: “My Local Dead” by Mark Wunderlich
March 29: “Farnaz” by Farnaz Fatemi
March 30: “Lion” by Tina Chang
March 31: “We Dream The Dreams Dreaming Us” by Brian Tierney
April 1: “The Aunty Poem (Mi Privilege Es Su Privilege)” by Mohja Kahf
April 2: from “Sand and Foam” by Kahlil Gibran
Thank you to the following 2022 #NationalPoetryMonth sponsors & partners who help make possible the largest literary celebration in the world: 826 National, AGNI, ABRAMS Books, Alaska Quarterly Review, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., American Booksellers Association, American Library Association, American Poetry Review, The Betsy South Beach Hotel, Blue Flower Arts, BOA Editions, Ltd., Bright Hill Press, CavanKerry Press, Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, Changes Press, and City Lights Books.
Upcoming Events
(more details to follow)
Holy Thursday 7:00 PM on Zoom Eucharist of the Last Supper
Good Friday 7:00 PM on Zoom Women of the Passion
(we also invite you to join us from 12:00-3:00PM in person at the State House to witness for non-violence and peace with Agape & Pax Christi)
Easter Vigil 7:00PM in person and on zoom: Our Comminity Celebration of Easter
Note: There is no Gathering of The Spirit of Life Community on Easter Sunday itself--as you are with family or even alone, may God bless you abundantly as you incarnate God's love in the world.