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Hello loved ones!
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Welcome to Resurrection Sunday,
#2 of our 21 week series
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in honour of black lesbian warrior poet icon exemplar, chosen ancestor, Audre Lorde.
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So, today we're gonna be working with a much less known poem by Audre Lorde about survival.
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The poem is called "Prologue",
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and in "Prologue", Audre Lorde is addressing
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some narrow definitions of blackness
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in her chosen community of black arts poets
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that is so hard and so deep
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that she actually embodies
and takes on subjectivity of a vampire
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in order to say what she needs to say.
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So I think this poem is amazing
and strange and weird,
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which is probably why people don't read it so much;
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and, you can see how I think about this poem
and how I see it as a precedent
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and as sort of a foundation for black queer futurism
and black feminist vampire fiction
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in this book, "The Black Imagination".
Check it out.
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OK. So, here is "Prologue", from Audre Lorde's 1973
book "From A Land Where Other People Live".
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"Haunted by poems beginning with I
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seek out those I love who are deaf
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to whatever does not destroy
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or curse the old ways that did not serve us
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while history falters and our poets are dying
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choked into silence by icy distinction
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their death rattles blind curses
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and I hear even my own voice becoming
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a pale strident whisper
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At night sleep locks me into an echoless coffin
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sometimes at noon I dream
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there is nothing to fear
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now standing up in the light of my father sun
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without shadow
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I speak without concern for the accusations
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that I am too much or too little woman
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that I am too black or too white
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or too much myself
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and through my lips come the voices
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of the ghosts of our ancestors
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living and moving among us
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Hear my heart's voice as it darkens
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pulling old rhythms out of the earth
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that will receive this piece of me
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and a piece of each one of you
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when our part in history quickens again
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and is over:
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Hear
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the old ways are going away
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and coming back pretending change
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masked as denunciation and lament
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masked as a choice
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between eager mirrors that blur and distort us
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in easy definitions
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until our image
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shatters along its fault
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while the other half of that choice
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speaks to our hidden fears with a promise
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that our eyes need not seek any truer shape--
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a face at high noon particular and unadorned--
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for we have learned to fear
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the light from clear water might destroy us
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with reflected emptiness or a face without tongue
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with no love or with terrible penalties
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for any difference
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and even as I speak remembered pain is moving
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shadows over my face, my own voice fades and
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my brothers and sisters are leaving;
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Yet when I was a child
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whatever my mother thought would mean survival
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made her try to beat me whiter every day
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and even now the colour of her bleached ambition
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still forks throughout my words
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but I survived
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and didn't I survive confirmed
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to teach my children where her errors lay
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etched across their faces between the kisses
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that she pinned me with asleep
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and my mother beating me
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as white as snow melts in the sunlight
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loving me into her bloods black bone--
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the home of all her secret hopes and fears
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and my dead father whose great hands
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weakened in my judgement
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whose image broke inside of me
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beneath the weight of failure
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helps me to know who I am not
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weak or mistaken
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my father loved me alive
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to grow and hate him
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and now his grave voice joins hers
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within my words rising and falling
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are my sisters and brothers listening?
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The children remain
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like blades of grass over the earth and
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all the children are singing
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louder than mourning
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all their different voices
sound like a raucous question
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but they do not fear the blank and empty mirrors
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they have seen their faces
defined in a hydrants' puddle
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before the rainbows of oil obscured them.
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The time of lamentation and curses is passing.
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My mother survives now
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through more than chance or token.
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Although she will read what I write
with embarrassment
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or anger
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and a small understanding
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my children do not need to relive my past
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in strength nor in confusion
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nor care that their holy fires
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may destroy
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more than my failures
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Somewhere in the landscape past noon
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I shall leave a dark print
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of the me that I am
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and who I am not
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etched in the shadow of
angry and remembered loving
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and their ghosts will move
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whispering through them
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with me none the wiser
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for they will have buried me
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either in shame
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or in peace.
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And the grasses will still be
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Singing."
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So, there is so much in that poem,
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and it is amazing to work with that poem,
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and its vampire queerness, this weekend,
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after an amazing Octavia Butler
Parable of The Sower potluck this weekend,
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and after our all day poetry retreat here in Durham,
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working with some of Lucille Clifton's
most mystical poems.
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But for me, what is so brave
and incredible about this poem,
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is that there is this challenge of:
what does it mean to be alive?
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What does it mean for our words to survive,
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when we launch our words into a community
that may or may not be ready to hear them?
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And we feel that we may be excluded
from the communities we love.
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We feel like we may die
if we speak the truth that we need to speak.
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And so Audre Lorde becomes un-dead,
becomes vampire,
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speaking about this fear of reflection,
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the fear of the abundance of our
reflection of each other.
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And I think it's incredible
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that she makes that space through
the use of the vampire and the un-dead,
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and the multiple generations,
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to do the work of healing the
internalized racism within her own family.
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Her mother survives in her poem.
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She projects that she will survive,
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into this moment past whatever
we are projecting onto her.
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She leaves a dark print of who she is,
and who she is not.
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Whooo!
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I love it!
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It's Sunday, I could talk about this all day.
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But what I want to assign us to do
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is to speak that truth
that we are afraid to speak.
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Like, that we really feel that we will be rejected
unto death if we share in the communities we love,
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and to share it, to make the space to share it,
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because we know that the future deserves a present
where our truths were spoken.
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Where our reflection was brave.
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Ah! Hmm! Mmm! Praise the lord!
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And, because it's Resurrection Sunday,
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I read this poem 26 times today,
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really reflecting and meditating
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on what were the words that Audre Lorde used
that started with the letter "A",
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or started with the letter "B",
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and I pulled out a new poem from the words
that she used starting with the letter "R",
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especially as a blessing for us
on Resurrection Sunday.
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And... here it is:
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So these are the words in the order that they appear
in the poem that start with the letter "R".
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"rattles, rhythms, receive, reflected, remembered,
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rising, remain, remain, raucous,
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rainbows, read, relive, remember."
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Even the mini-poems inside her poems
are like the best poems ever.
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So, if you want a special poem from Prologue
dedicated to you or someone that you love,
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as a School of Our Lorde blessing to you
and the truth that you need to speak,
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check us out on the School of Our Lorde website:
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And that can happen! That can happen.
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And until next time,
happy Resurrection Sunday.
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May Audre Lorde live on, through our actions,
through our boldness, through our braveness,
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through our love.
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Mwah!