Poem/Reading Feminist Spaces
On August 1st I was a featured author for the release party of Feminist Spaces Issue 10. I read my poem “Ella Everlasting” which was inspired by the journal’s theme in their call for submission “What is She?” I immediately thought of my family and experiences and in a flurry of images and memories, wrote the piece. I normally am a writer that slowly works on pieces, hemming and hawing for weeks, adding lines, editing words, resting, drafting, editing, etc. It’s nice when the mother muse strikes you and you just act as vessel for what comes.
I loved being able to capture the maternal love, resilience, and femininity of my lived experience in this piece along with being able to showcase a bilingual and mixed cultural poem in general.
In the Editor’s Letter, the editors wrote the following about my piece:
“For instance, M.A. Dubbs’ poem, “Ella Everlasting” beautifully
Feminist Spaces Issue 10
manipulates language to express the varying functions of She both
grammatically and socially. Dubbs uses the Spanish pronoun “ella,”
meaning “she,” to represent lineage. “Ella” acts as a collective identity
of those who identify with the pronoun, and those who reject it,
depicting experiences unique to Spanish-speaking individuals.”
Check my poem along with some other great essays, research, poems, art, and fiction of Feminist Spaces: https://www.feministspacesjournal.org/_files/ugd/bdf731_a14968b724a745bfaa7957f98a7e5756.pdf
