take action at home

My county is still under lockdown and will be until the end of next week. But that doesn’t mean I can’t join others in expressing my outrage at yet another police execution. George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis has led to uprisings around the country. If you’re not ready to put your body in the street, there are other ways you can support the protestors. The Minnesota Freedom Fund has a list of organizations working on the ground that are accepting donations. Wee the People, Raising Luminaries, and MassArts are coordinating an at-home Family Day of Action tomorrow—Chalk the Walk offers people of all ages a chance to support the Movement for Black Lives in a variety of ways. I made a sign to place in my window and accepted the 8-word protest poem challenge: “As multi-generational as it gets: Invite young and old to create poems as long or short as feels right, incorporating the following EIGHT WORDS that resonate with this moment: POWER * JUSTICE * UNITY * CIRCLE * LISTEN * STAND * HEAL * RESPECT.” It takes a different kind of creativity to write a poem with such constraints; I prefer the easy flow of free verse but not much has been flowing from my pen lately. Like so many members of my community, I’m tired. My teen poetry class with the BPL starts up again on Monday and I might have my students give this challenge a try. We will definitely be talking about the protests just as we discussed the pandemic in April. I’m looking forward to teaching again; I find that having a duty to serve my students keeps me honest, and I push myself for them in a way I wouldn’t for my own benefit. I reflected on the way teaching impacted my pandemic poetry practice for the NCTE blog; they pulled the title, “The Process of Rebuilding Begins in Our Imagination,” from the final paragraph:

Audre Lorde famously wrote that “poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.” I agree, yet there are times when I feel guilty about my writer’s life. I support my local food bank and have donated books to kids in Lancaster and teens in detention in Kentucky. But I do not face the same risks as the essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic. I will honor their sacrifices by continuing to stay home and taking every precaution when it’s time to venture out into the world again. When the pandemic ends, we must be ready to rebuild and that process begins now in our imagination. As Lorde asserts, “Poetry is not only dream and vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.” I hope that my poems—alongside all the others produced during the pandemic—create a frame upon which we can build a more just world.