Prologue: Resurrection Sunday Video #2
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0:04 - 0:07Hello loved ones!
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0:07 - 0:14Welcome to Resurrection Sunday,
#2 of our 21 week series -
0:14 - 0:23in honour of black lesbian warrior poet icon exemplar, chosen ancestor, Audre Lorde.
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0:23 - 0:35So, today we're gonna be working with a much less known poem by Audre Lorde about survival.
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0:35 - 0:38The poem is called "Prologue",
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0:38 - 0:40and in "Prologue", Audre Lorde is addressing
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0:40 - 0:43some narrow definitions of blackness
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0:43 - 0:47in her chosen community of black arts poets
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0:47 - 0:50that is so hard and so deep
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0:50 - 0:55that she actually embodies
and takes on subjectivity of a vampire -
0:55 - 0:58in order to say what she needs to say.
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0:58 - 1:02So I think this poem is amazing
and strange and weird, -
1:02 - 1:05which is probably why people don't read it so much;
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1:05 - 1:09and, you can see how I think about this poem
and how I see it as a precedent -
1:09 - 1:15and as sort of a foundation for black queer futurism
and black feminist vampire fiction -
1:15 - 1:19in this book, "The Black Imagination".
Check it out. -
1:19 - 1:27OK. So, here is "Prologue", from Audre Lorde's 1973
book "From A Land Where Other People Live". -
1:32 - 1:37"Haunted by poems beginning with I
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1:37 - 1:41seek out those I love who are deaf
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1:41 - 1:44to whatever does not destroy
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1:44 - 1:48or curse the old ways that did not serve us
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1:48 - 1:53while history falters and our poets are dying
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1:53 - 1:57choked into silence by icy distinction
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1:57 - 2:00their death rattles blind curses
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2:00 - 2:04and I hear even my own voice becoming
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2:04 - 2:08a pale strident whisper
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2:08 - 2:13At night sleep locks me into an echoless coffin
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2:13 - 2:16sometimes at noon I dream
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2:16 - 2:19there is nothing to fear
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2:19 - 2:23now standing up in the light of my father sun
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2:23 - 2:25without shadow
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2:25 - 2:29I speak without concern for the accusations
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2:29 - 2:33that I am too much or too little woman
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2:33 - 2:36that I am too black or too white
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2:36 - 2:39or too much myself
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2:39 - 2:43and through my lips come the voices
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2:43 - 2:45of the ghosts of our ancestors
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2:45 - 2:47living and moving among us
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2:48 - 2:52Hear my heart's voice as it darkens
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2:52 - 2:55pulling old rhythms out of the earth
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2:55 - 2:58that will receive this piece of me
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2:58 - 3:00and a piece of each one of you
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3:00 - 3:03when our part in history quickens again
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3:03 - 3:05and is over:
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3:06 - 3:07Hear
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3:07 - 3:09the old ways are going away
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3:09 - 3:13and coming back pretending change
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3:13 - 3:15masked as denunciation and lament
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3:15 - 3:17masked as a choice
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3:17 - 3:20between eager mirrors that blur and distort us
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3:20 - 3:22in easy definitions
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3:22 - 3:24until our image
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3:24 - 3:27shatters along its fault
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3:27 - 3:29while the other half of that choice
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3:29 - 3:32speaks to our hidden fears with a promise
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3:32 - 3:37that our eyes need not seek any truer shape--
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3:37 - 3:42a face at high noon particular and unadorned--
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3:42 - 3:45for we have learned to fear
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3:45 - 3:48the light from clear water might destroy us
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3:48 - 3:52with reflected emptiness or a face without tongue
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3:52 - 3:56with no love or with terrible penalties
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3:56 - 3:58for any difference
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3:58 - 4:01and even as I speak remembered pain is moving
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4:01 - 4:06shadows over my face, my own voice fades and
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4:06 - 4:09my brothers and sisters are leaving;
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4:11 - 4:13Yet when I was a child
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4:13 - 4:17whatever my mother thought would mean survival
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4:17 - 4:21made her try to beat me whiter every day
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4:21 - 4:25and even now the colour of her bleached ambition
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4:25 - 4:28still forks throughout my words
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4:28 - 4:30but I survived
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4:30 - 4:32and didn't I survive confirmed
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4:32 - 4:35to teach my children where her errors lay
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4:35 - 4:38etched across their faces between the kisses
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4:38 - 4:41that she pinned me with asleep
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4:41 - 4:43and my mother beating me
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4:43 - 4:46as white as snow melts in the sunlight
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4:46 - 4:51loving me into her bloods black bone--
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4:51 - 4:55the home of all her secret hopes and fears
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4:55 - 4:58and my dead father whose great hands
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4:58 - 5:00weakened in my judgement
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5:00 - 5:03whose image broke inside of me
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5:03 - 5:05beneath the weight of failure
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5:05 - 5:10helps me to know who I am not
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5:10 - 5:12weak or mistaken
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5:12 - 5:14my father loved me alive
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5:14 - 5:16to grow and hate him
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5:16 - 5:20and now his grave voice joins hers
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5:20 - 5:24within my words rising and falling
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5:24 - 5:27are my sisters and brothers listening?
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5:29 - 5:31The children remain
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5:31 - 5:34like blades of grass over the earth and
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5:34 - 5:36all the children are singing
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5:36 - 5:38louder than mourning
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5:38 - 5:42all their different voices
sound like a raucous question -
5:42 - 5:46but they do not fear the blank and empty mirrors
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5:46 - 5:50they have seen their faces
defined in a hydrants' puddle -
5:50 - 5:54before the rainbows of oil obscured them.
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5:54 - 6:00The time of lamentation and curses is passing.
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6:00 - 6:03My mother survives now
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6:03 - 6:05through more than chance or token.
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6:05 - 6:08Although she will read what I write
with embarrassment -
6:08 - 6:10or anger
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6:10 - 6:12and a small understanding
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6:12 - 6:16my children do not need to relive my past
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6:16 - 6:19in strength nor in confusion
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6:19 - 6:22nor care that their holy fires
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6:22 - 6:23may destroy
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6:23 - 6:26more than my failures
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6:26 - 6:29Somewhere in the landscape past noon
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6:29 - 6:32I shall leave a dark print
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6:32 - 6:34of the me that I am
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6:34 - 6:37and who I am not
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6:37 - 6:41etched in the shadow of
angry and remembered loving -
6:41 - 6:43and their ghosts will move
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6:43 - 6:45whispering through them
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6:45 - 6:47with me none the wiser
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6:47 - 6:49for they will have buried me
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6:49 - 6:51either in shame
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6:51 - 6:52or in peace.
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6:52 - 6:55And the grasses will still be
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6:55 - 6:57Singing."
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6:59 - 7:02So, there is so much in that poem,
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7:02 - 7:05and it is amazing to work with that poem,
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7:05 - 7:08and its vampire queerness, this weekend,
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7:08 - 7:14after an amazing Octavia Butler
Parable of The Sower potluck this weekend, -
7:14 - 7:18and after our all day poetry retreat here in Durham,
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7:18 - 7:22working with some of Lucille Clifton's
most mystical poems. -
7:22 - 7:26But for me, what is so brave
and incredible about this poem, -
7:26 - 7:32is that there is this challenge of:
what does it mean to be alive? -
7:32 - 7:35What does it mean for our words to survive,
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7:35 - 7:42when we launch our words into a community
that may or may not be ready to hear them? -
7:42 - 7:46And we feel that we may be excluded
from the communities we love. -
7:46 - 7:52We feel like we may die
if we speak the truth that we need to speak. -
7:52 - 7:58And so Audre Lorde becomes un-dead,
becomes vampire, -
7:58 - 8:01speaking about this fear of reflection,
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8:01 - 8:05the fear of the abundance of our
reflection of each other. -
8:05 - 8:07And I think it's incredible
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8:07 - 8:11that she makes that space through
the use of the vampire and the un-dead, -
8:11 - 8:14and the multiple generations,
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8:14 - 8:20to do the work of healing the
internalized racism within her own family. -
8:20 - 8:22Her mother survives in her poem.
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8:22 - 8:26She projects that she will survive,
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8:26 - 8:31into this moment past whatever
we are projecting onto her. -
8:31 - 8:35She leaves a dark print of who she is,
and who she is not. -
8:35 - 8:37Whooo!
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8:37 - 8:38I love it!
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8:38 - 8:40It's Sunday, I could talk about this all day.
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8:40 - 8:42But what I want to assign us to do
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8:42 - 8:47is to speak that truth
that we are afraid to speak. -
8:47 - 8:55Like, that we really feel that we will be rejected
unto death if we share in the communities we love, -
8:55 - 8:59and to share it, to make the space to share it,
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8:59 - 9:04because we know that the future deserves a present
where our truths were spoken. -
9:04 - 9:09Where our reflection was brave.
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9:09 - 9:14Ah! Hmm! Mmm! Praise the lord!
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9:14 - 9:16And, because it's Resurrection Sunday,
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9:16 - 9:19I read this poem 26 times today,
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9:19 - 9:21really reflecting and meditating
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9:21 - 9:25on what were the words that Audre Lorde used
that started with the letter "A", -
9:25 - 9:27or started with the letter "B",
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9:27 - 9:31and I pulled out a new poem from the words
that she used starting with the letter "R", -
9:31 - 9:35especially as a blessing for us
on Resurrection Sunday. -
9:35 - 9:37And... here it is:
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9:39 - 9:44So these are the words in the order that they appear
in the poem that start with the letter "R". -
9:46 - 9:52"rattles, rhythms, receive, reflected, remembered,
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9:52 - 9:58rising, remain, remain, raucous,
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9:58 - 10:03rainbows, read, relive, remember."
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10:05 - 10:10Even the mini-poems inside her poems
are like the best poems ever. -
10:10 - 10:17So, if you want a special poem from Prologue
dedicated to you or someone that you love, -
10:17 - 10:21as a School of Our Lorde blessing to you
and the truth that you need to speak, -
10:21 - 10:24check us out on the School of Our Lorde website:
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10:28 - 10:30And that can happen! That can happen.
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10:30 - 10:35And until next time,
happy Resurrection Sunday. -
10:35 - 10:39May Audre Lorde live on, through our actions,
through our boldness, through our braveness, -
10:39 - 10:41through our love.
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10:41 - 10:42Mwah!
- Title:
- Prologue: Resurrection Sunday Video #2
- Description:
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This week's poem is Prologue, the last poem in Audre Lorde's 1973 collection From a Land Where Other People Live. I love the vampire imagery in this poem, and I see it as a poem that makes space for all of the amazing black feminist vampire fiction that comes after it. For example Jewelle Gomez found the epigraph for her classic vampire novel The Gilda Stories in this poem.
Our assignment this week is to speak the truth that we are afraid to speak in our chosen communities. Sometimes we feel that we would rather die than speak a difficult truth. Audre Lorde invokes the vampire undead to speak the truth she needs to speak about internalized racism in the Black Arts Movement, what creativity, what characters will we invent to speak the truth that our presence demands?
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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/
================ - Video Language:
- English
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Prologue: Resurrection Sunday Video #2 | ||
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Prologue: Resurrection Sunday Video #2 |