"Write it down. Write it. With
ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they weren't
given food,
they all died of hunger. All. How
many?
It's a large meadow. How much
grass
per head? Write down: I don't
know.
History rounds off skeletons to
zero.
A thousand and one is still only a
thousand.
That one never seems to have
existed
a fictitious fetus, an empty cradle,
a primer opened for no one,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
stairs for avoid bounding out to
the garden,
no one's spot in the ranks.
It became flesh right here, on this
meadow.
But the meadow's silent, like a
witness who has been bought..."
Wislawa Szymborska from "Starvation Camp Near Jaslo"
1. What is your personal/aesthetic relationship to the poetic line? That is, how do you understand it, use it, etc.
The themes of my poems are intense and often overwhelming, so I compose my poetic lines to give pause not only for reflection, but to catch one’s breath before diving into the next part of the poetic narrative. My poems are focused and dense, so my lines-the breaks-provide a needed relief. Here are the last three stanzas of my poem, The Water God. A mother, during Liberia’s civil war, is compelled to flee her home with her child and run for her life. The child is now dead and the mother must bury her daughter in the forest, but she will give her daughter, despite circumstances, a semblance of a dignified burial.
…I waited for nightfall,
for those plants who invite you,
with the ferocity of their opening bouquets,
to bow down and believe through the dark.
Using the petals of these nocturnal flowers,
I perfumed Fatima’s shroud,
dug her grave with two handless limbs
and pointed her in Mecca’s direction.
I gave our child
to the season of rain,
the sounds its watery toll awakened
was her requiem
and her ushers into the entry
of a gutted forest floor,
away from a war not at all civil,
were sleepy monarchs
inflamed with life
and so splendid in their silence.
2. Do you find a relationship between words and writing and the human body? Or between your writing and your body?
The themes of my poems are intense and often overwhelming, so I compose my poetic lines to give pause not only for reflection, but to catch one’s breath before diving into the next part of the poetic narrative. My poems are focused and dense, so my lines-the breaks-provide a needed relief. Here are the last three stanzas of my poem, The Water God. A mother, during Liberia’s civil war, is compelled to flee her home with her child and run for her life. The child is now dead and the mother must bury her daughter in the forest, but she will give her daughter, despite circumstances, a semblance of a dignified burial.
…I waited for nightfall,
for those plants who invite you,
with the ferocity of their opening bouquets,
to bow down and believe through the dark.
Using the petals of these nocturnal flowers,
I perfumed Fatima’s shroud,
dug her grave with two handless limbs
and pointed her in Mecca’s direction.
I gave our child
to the season of rain,
the sounds its watery toll awakened
was her requiem
and her ushers into the entry
of a gutted forest floor,
away from a war not at all civil,
were sleepy monarchs
inflamed with life
and so splendid in their silence.
2. Do you find a relationship between words and writing and the human body? Or between your writing and your body?
For me, writing is as much a cerebral endeavor as it is a physical encounter. My emotions, when composing poetry, when reading poetry, when orally delivering poetry and when listening to poetry, have physical manifestations in the form of a laugh or a cry or tears or the tightening of my belly or my hands shaking in relief because I am thankful to have reached the end of a poem. Oh, yes, my body and I are very much cohorts when we meet words.
Despite being a very short poem What Remains is so packed with emotion and memories and gratitude that when I recite it, and I love reciting it, I am so physically exhausted by this exercise. My mother, a lover of poetry, now has Alzheimer’s and though she has lost significant memories, she still can recall, with an almost physical fervor, her dearest poets.
What Remains
For Mom
her memory
a soup of evaporating dissonance
had survivors
gentlemen with brogues, mouthing all kinds of blues
Yeats & lots of Langston
3. Is there anything you dislike about being a poet?
Identifying myself as a poet has been and is a source of joy for me. I am an elementary teacher as well. I taught at the International Community School of Abidjan, in Cote d’Ivoire, where more than 70 nationalities were represented in the student body before CI’s civil war began in 2002. I wrote a poem for one particular class of my fourth graders called Oasis. And the refrain that runs through this poem is my mantra:
1.
(continued)
… I come each day
to the whole of the world,
sometimes five minutes late,
but always with hope.
Despite being a very short poem What Remains is so packed with emotion and memories and gratitude that when I recite it, and I love reciting it, I am so physically exhausted by this exercise. My mother, a lover of poetry, now has Alzheimer’s and though she has lost significant memories, she still can recall, with an almost physical fervor, her dearest poets.
What Remains
For Mom
her memory
a soup of evaporating dissonance
had survivors
gentlemen with brogues, mouthing all kinds of blues
Yeats & lots of Langston
3. Is there anything you dislike about being a poet?
Identifying myself as a poet has been and is a source of joy for me. I am an elementary teacher as well. I taught at the International Community School of Abidjan, in Cote d’Ivoire, where more than 70 nationalities were represented in the student body before CI’s civil war began in 2002. I wrote a poem for one particular class of my fourth graders called Oasis. And the refrain that runs through this poem is my mantra:
1.
(continued)
… I come each day
to the whole of the world,
sometimes five minutes late,
but always with hope.
Octavia McBride-Ahebee is a poet whose work has appeared in Damazine; A Literary Journal of the Muslim World, Fingernails Across The Chalkboard: Poetry And Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora, Under Our Skin: Literature of Breast Cancer, Sea Breeze- A Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writing , The Journal of the National Medical Association, Art in Medicine Section and the Beloit Poetry Journal. Her poetry collections include Assuming Voices and Where My Birthmark Dances which was published in July 2011 by Finishing Line Press.
Octavia’s blog is Eyes on the World: http://omcbride-ahebee.blogspot.com/
Octavia’s blog is Eyes on the World: http://omcbride-ahebee.blogspot.com/
