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Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday #5: Call (Aido Hwedo is Coming)

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    Hi, it's me, Sister Doctor Lex,
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    and welcome to week 5
    of Audre Lorde Resurrection Sundays.
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    Can you believe we've already been doing this
    for more than a month?
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    Thanks for watching again.
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    Right now, I am in Anguilla visiting my family,
    and I am so happy to be here,
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    and definitely feeling very close
    to the energy of my ancestors
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    and the divinity that I always feel
    when I'm here.
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    So this week's poem is called "Call",
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    from Audre Lorde's 1986 collection
    "Our Dead Behind Us".
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    And she explains the name of the goddess that you will hear repeated in this poem,
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    Aido Hwedo is the Rainbow Serpent,
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    and also in this powm,
    the name for all those ancient divinities
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    whose names and faces have been forgotten.
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    "Call
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    Holy ghost woman
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    stolen out of your name
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    Rainbow Serpent
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    whose faces have been forgotten
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    Mother, loosen my tongue or adorn me
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    with a lighter burden
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    Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    On worn kitchen stools and tables
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    we are piecing our weapons together
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    scraps of different histories
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    do not let us shatter
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    any altar
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    she who scrubs the capitol toilets, listening
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    is your sister's youngest daughter
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    gnarled Harriet's anointed
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    you have not been without honor
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    even the young guerrilla has chosen
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    yells as she fires into the thicket
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    Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    I have written your names on my cheekbone
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    dreamed your eyes
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    flesh my epiphany
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    most ancient goddesses
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    hear me enter
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    I have not forgotten your worship
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    nor my sisters
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    nor the sons of my daughters
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    my children watch for your print
    in their labors
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    and they say Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    I am a Black woman turning
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    mouthing your name as a password
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    through seductions self-slaughter
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    and I believe in the holy ghost mother
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    in your flames beyond our vision
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    blown light through the fingers of women
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    enduring warring
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    sometimes outside your name
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    we do not choose all our rituals
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    Thandi Modise winged girl of Soweto
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    brought fire back home in the snout of a mortar
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    and passes the word from her prison cell
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    whispering Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    Rainbow Serpent who must not go unspoken
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    I have ottered up the safety of separations
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    sung the spirals of power
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    and what fills the spaces
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    before power unfolds or flounders
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    in desirable non-essentials
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    I am a Black woman
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    stripped down and praying
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    my whole life has been an altar
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    worth its ending
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    and I say Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    I may be a weed in the garden
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    of women I have loved
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    who are still trapped in their season
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    but even they shriek
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    as they rip burning gold from their skins
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    Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    We are learning by heart
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    what has never been taught
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    you are my given fire-tongued
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    Oya Seboulisa Mawu Afrekete
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    and now we are mourning our sisters
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    lost to the false hush of sorrow
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    to hardness and hatchets and childbirth
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    and we are shouting
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    Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer
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    Assata Shakur and Yaa Asantewa
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    my mother and Winnie Mandela
    are singing in my throat
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    the holy ghosts linguist
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    one iron silence broken
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    Aido Hwedo is calling
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    calling
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    your daughters are named
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    and conceiving
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    Mother loosen my tongue
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    or adorn me
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    with a lighter burden
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    Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    Aido Hwedo is coming.
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    Aido Hwedo is coming."
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    So of course, I love this poem.
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    I love that this poem is about collective survival,
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    about the survival of that black, feminine,
    transformative, warrior spirit,
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    divinely flowing through Audre Lorde of course,
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    flowing through anyone who reembodies
    and narrates this poem,
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    flowing through, as she names, the sisters,
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    the daughters, the sons of the daughters,
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    even the closeted women who she loves and
    who treat her like a weed in their garden,
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    still, that energy moves through.
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    And I am so grateful for the way that energy
    can be with us,
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    and the way this poem makes space
    for that energy to move through
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    as faith, as wisdom, as each of us.
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    And speaking of South Africa, and clearing space,
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    and black feminine transformative warrior divinity,
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    and calling names,
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    Gloria Joseph sent out a very timely and pointed email recently,
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    asking from a black feminist perspective
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    why is it, that as we honour
    and uplift Nelson Mandela,
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    and his recent transition to join the ancestors,
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    the name Winnie Mandela
    has been conspicuously absent,
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    and has not been lifted up
    in the way that it might be.
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    And so in the spirit of honouring that inquiry,
    which I think we could all think about,
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    and lifting up the name of Winnie Mandela
    as Audre Lorde does in this poem,
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    I want to offer the Poem For The Letter W
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    that I distilled when I was reading through,
    working with this poem, 26 times.
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    So this is the Poem For The Letter W.
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    Woman whose worn
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    we weapons without written worship
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    watch woman women warring
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    we winged word whispering
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    who? what woman?
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    whole worth weed women
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    who? we
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    what? we.
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    we, Winnie Mandela."
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    And your assignment this week
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    is to call the names of those ancestrally present,
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    those living, those who you intend to live one day,
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    who will carry this warrior, transformative energy
    that we so need in the times that we live in.
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    So call the names of your own ancestors,
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    call the names of the warriors you admire,
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    call your own name in the mirror,
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    this week, making space for that transformative energy that you may need,
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    as a warrior in your own life,
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    and that we certainly, collectively, need
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    as those who have the stewardship
    for carrying this energy forward
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    among our species and on our planet.
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    As always, I am so grateful to Audre Lorde
    for giving us the space, giving us this poem
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    as a ritual to bring that energy through.
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    And I'm so happy to be able to share it with you.
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    Please do check out the School of Our Lorde website
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    and hit me up if you are interested
    in having your own custom poem,
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    or in working more with the energy of the Lorde,
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    and... yes! I will see you next week,
    from Anguilla again,
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    on Resurrection Sunday.
Title:
Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday #5: Call (Aido Hwedo is Coming)
Description:

Launched on Nov. 17th 2013 on the 21st anniversary of Audre Lorde’s transition from an embodied warrior healer to an ancestral force, this is a weekly series of videos documenting and sharing my process of clarifying survival through a re-immersion in the words of Audre Lorde. To see all the videos so far check out: http://summerofourlorde.wordpress.com/resurrection-sundays/

This week's poem "Call" is one of my recent favorites. I read it as a ritual calling on the multiple names for the spirit of Black feminine transformative warrior energy. Early this year Black Women's Blueprint did a powerful performance based on this poem during their annual event and I was reminded of how energizing and clarifying these words are. This week's video also answers a call made by Dr. Gloria Joseph to think about Winnie Mandela and to lift up her name as we lift Nelson Mandela's legacy up during this time of transition. This is one of several poems where Audre Lorde lifts the warrior name of Winnie Mandela and I also offer a distilled version of the poem with all of the powerful W words leading up to her name in this poem.

Our assignment for this week with gratitude as always to Doc Joseph is to call the names of those ancestors, those living warriors, those family members, ourselves who carry that Black Transformative Warrior Energy with us! Look in the mirror, look at the ocean, look at the wind and remember!

Every week as part of my practice of resurrecting Audre Lorde in my life and in our communities I will be making an alphabetical oracle from the weekly survival poem which will consist of up to 26 new poems based on the sacred source text. If you would like to receive a custom poem as a blessing for your journey you can with a donation of your choice to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind’s School of Our Lorde! Details at summerofourlorde.wordpress.com

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Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
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  • Revision 3 Edited (legacy editor)
    Radical Access Mapping Project
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