I Shimmer Sometimes, Too

by Porsha Olayiwola

Porsha O's debut poetry collection soars with the power and presence of live performance. These poems dip their hands deep into the fabric of black womanhood, pulling out all of its threads. This book establishes Porsha O firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, pulling equally from Audre Lorde and Danez Smith. This is a book of gentle breaking and inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self-care, and community-care--the pursuit of building a world that will keep you alive.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Race, Queer Lit, Womens

76 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 2019

Reviews

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a beautiful thing, when a collection of poetry swings you from early life to present day and you can feel the reverberations of every life stage and critical development resonating throughout. This reads with a rhythm that runs the full gambit of emotional notes. The structure of the poems alone remind you to slow down and digest the collection with intention – Notice the space between words, how they're juxtaposed, and where a word is missing – none of it is by mistake. Olayiwola uses prose and position to build a world, a life, and a social commentary around her readers, and you can't make it through without feeling the weight settle along your shoulders. This absolutely glitters.

[Sam Rush · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made a whole world and I would like to live there. We are so lucky to live in the time of Porsha Olayiwola.

[cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two words: Flipping fantastic.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t read much poetry, but this book rewards readers with creative structure and incredible narratives painted in fewer words than one could imagine being enough. Sparse and rich and shimmering.

I’ve gotten to hear Porsha Olayiwola read special poems, one new one at a time, at events around Boston. Those are powerful but civic and specific. This collection is personal and sweeping.

[Mary Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite poems: Ghazal for the Chicago Two-Step, Ode to My Ex-Girlfriend, I’m The Type of Fanciful Warlock Who Cooks Up Irrational Fears In My Isle Mind With a Crack Plastered Between My Cheeks, Ursula :: Hotel Poolside.

[Magali S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars || here’s a list of my 11 tabbed poems:
- Southside Apocalypse
- Footnotes (this is probably my number 1)
- The bus stop is a crowned motif (pure pain)
- Dyke prepares to see her family
- The joke
- Black Spell (probably my shared number 1 with before mentioned)
- Un-named (powerfull)
- Water
- Look at what I’ve done (fuck man)
- Aladdin’s genie on emancipation (really good as well)
- I am neither the poem, nor the words, nor the letters, nor the images they elicit

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love reading a poet that has such a dexterous grip of language, who then proceeds to tell some of the most compelling stories ever

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

God damn

[g]

dnf @ 38%. this is literally so bad i can’t even force myself to read the rest despite being under 100 pages.

[Dana Neily · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up from the library and am blown away! I will purchase a copy because these poems are meant to be savored. Be sure to read each more than twice...you’ll uncover new gems tucked behind a line break.

[Stephanie M. Wytovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Button Poetry. In fact, they are one of my favorite poetry presses, and I buy from them as much as possible and usually read whatever the library gets in as soon as they get it in. I’ve always found their authors to be emotionally charged, powerful, their words raw, honest, often hauntingly and violently beautifully. And that’s what I want when I read poetry. I want it to hurt me, to change me, to make me uncomfortable as it helps me grow and develop and learn.

Because poetry is transformation. It’s a protest, a riot. Poems are meant to be screamed and whispered and sometimes they have teeth and sometimes they are velvet, that soft water rain that drips down our cheeks as we stand out in the rain laughing, crying, begging, praying.

Because poetry is an act of survival, it’s a proclamation that says “I’m here and I’m not leaving.” It is a mirror, a shot gun, a crib, an open casket left out for the world to see.

And that beauty, that strength, that fierce powerful authenticity is what Porsha Olayiwola brought to the page in her 2019 collection I Shimmer Sometimes, Too, and moments after finishing it, I found myself quietly sitting in my office, my heart heavy, my heart full, my heart crying because reading this collection—which I did over a couple of days—was like being invited into someone’s diary, being witness to a walking memoir.

Olayiwola’s energy here is infectious, inspiring, and her meditations on the body, on being female, on being queer, on being black, are these exquisite portrayals that not only educate readers on what it’s like to be stereotyped, or shamed, or violated, or hated for who/what we are, but they give insight into the daily magic and celebration of what it means to live out and proud and embrace the bodies we live in.

Truly, her poems don't glitter here, they shine.

They illuminate a life and story that looks to history and applies it to modern-day, and in a time when we’re looking to change, fighting for equality and liberation and acceptance, this collection did more than shimmer for me; it set a fire beneath and within me and reminded me to do more, to keep fighting, to listen, and to continue to educate myself and others because that fire, that glimmer, that spark isn’t something we want to see go out.

Now go buy this beautiful, beautiful book.

You won't regret it.

I give his book 5 out of 5 stars.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I love this book. I looooooooooove this book.
Gods I love this book.

Memory/Loss is me. It is my new favorite poem! I've never felt this connected to a single poem before. Thank you Porsha! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Ursula :: Hotel Poolside, Black Spells, Un-Named, Water and My Mother are all magnificent poems as well!! These poems are gonna stay with me for a while.

[Meneghin Livia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely stunning and visceral. This collection makes you think about the past and the future, the close and the vast. A must-read for all contemporary and emerging writers. I particularly love the experimentation with form and the boldness of voice. Would highly recommend!

[Britt Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just. Wow.

[Sara Hollingsworth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this collection. There was some poems that I really thought were powerful and very deep. But, I think for me, the style just didn't work for me. I think there's a fine line between a poem being poetical and a poem being nonsensical. And some of these poems tipped over into nonsensical.

Like, here is an excerpt from one of the poems I did like:
armed and watching for the chariot home,
the shelter is shattered cemetery
of looking glass beneath my feet and i
wonder who was it that came undone here.

i think of sakia, a black girl more
her daddy than her mother. she and the
lord, sky, got the same complexion when she
leave the pier to wait for a bus on a

corner. a man drives by, stops, catcalls, and
don't take lesbian as an answer. does
what any man would do in such a threatening
situation. he grips his knife and it

is her, i know, pooling at my feet, as
i wade in wait for what may never show.

That was really clever, and I really enjoyed the imagery and the content. I'm a big fan of poems that tell a story of some sort, or paint a picture, or address an issue. Basically, I like there to be a meaning, or at least that I can interpret a meaning.

Here's another poem though, one that didn't click with me:
and all the time
god good
god all good
god all the good
god all the good

all the time
the good is god
and the god is the good
the time god ain't
good is the time
god ain't
god ain't on time
all the time

And it basically continues on like that. I vaguely felt like I grasped the concept, but the repetition/transition style isn't really something I like in poetry, and she does that a lot. Also, part of her style is in how it's printed. I'm sure some of the effect of the above poem was lost because it's near impossible to copy on here the jagged, staggered way the words are spread out on the page. It's another thing about poetry that I can occasionally appreciate, but it's not really my thing.

So overall, there were things I liked and appreciated, but in general it wasn't really what I enjoy in poetry.

[Klau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first saw Un-named performance on YouTube at the beginning of this year and it made me feel so wide range of emotions that I had to get the whole poetry book it came from. So I did. After few months of searching, because getting this to Poland was not easy (mostly because Amazon did not want my money for ebook, and I did want to not starve after buying the physical copy and paying for shipping).
So getting the copy was an adventure on it's own, and I can proudly say - a successful one, with no one starving.
And I will be going back to this book over and over again. Coz it is making me feel and I need to feel more. If I thought that Un-named left me shattered and in awe at the same time and this is the peak of the emotions this book can make me feel - I was wrong. It was beginning of the whole emotional journey I did not recovered yet from. Each poem is unique and extraordinary. Most of them made me look at the world a little bit differently, each showed me variety of emotions, some made me feel those emotions in a way I usually avoid feeling.
I am sure, that coming back to these poems in a while will be a different experience and other poems will speak to me, and some, that moved me this time, will no longer be as important, as they are now. Or maybe I will just start loving more and more of them.
I wish I could appreciate the language more, but English is not my first language. I am still getting better and I still have so much to learn.

[Ally]

i imagine he might step into one of my mother's bright silk dresses. the purple one. he'd squeeze his feet into her pumps and prance around the house he bought her as a gift years before.
---
me, curious and peering, seeing a god summon a man,

[I love this queer kid wonderment at seeing straightness in action!]
---
"Ghazal for the Chicago Two-Step"

...aging spirit ancestoring the
home you came from insoles, rich with it -- make-do step

like love in its name, like swag in vain; scented round
a candied collar, new vest, orange suede shoes step

in my kitchen, i cook, coast, coax the woman i
adore to shimmy, to split wide with me, two-step.
---
"I'm the Type of Fanciful Warlock Who Cooks Up Irrational Fears in my Idle Mind with a Crack Plastered Between My Cheeks"

i joke of our baby-making music and how it might sing us a chorus nine-months' earshot away from this song. and she laughs at my absurdity | our inability to conceive. sits on my lap. stares into my smile. as though she is expecting something.
---
"I Milly Rock on Any Block"

a step from right
to left then side
to side then right
into the fullness
of me. make me
praise me, an orbit
round my chest.
---
"Un-named"

countries who declare independence get to name themselves.
---
"Aladdin's Genie on Emancipation"

[glad someone else has expressed this take on "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free"]

[Glassworks Magazine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by Amanda Spadel on www.rowanglassworks.org.

In her debut poetry collection, i shimmer sometimes too, Porsha Olayiwola shares powerful odes to the world that has shaped her identity through the use of honest and suspenseful imagery, creative form, and relatable motifs in today’s society.

Olayiwola’s book is an important depiction of surviving in a world full of harsh realities. Her writing is honest and personal. Take the book's opening for instance:

"Had my parents not been separated after my father's traffic stop, arrest, and deportation from the United States of America / we might all be sitting about the pink kitchen table with the white legs."

She uses concrete language to create concise images that depict her life at home as a child, while also making it clear that it’s no longer this way without her father. The poem is written in six verses, so it also visually acts as an aesthetically pleasing opening piece on the page.

Olayiwola experiments with form by using tactful spacing, line breaks, and indentations. One favorable poem called “God is Good All the Time” uses specific line breaks and indents to pace the reader into a rhythm that enhances the poem’s impact. In this poem, she uses and repeats specific words, such as “god,” “good,” “time,” and “ain’t”—changing their placing in the sentence to create a new meaning each time.

Another highly recommended poem titled “Footnotes” uses a unique form to convey a message that is much more powerful having used that form. Olayiwola incorporates five footnotes in the poem, drawing your eyes all over the page when you're reading. It’s an extremely effective form for the piece because parts of the poem talk about protecting yourself from stray bullets, and how important it is to not run in a straight line. So the indents, footnotes, and line spaces force your eyes to make the zig zag running movement that’s described in the piece "home taught me to run."

Olayiwola explains how she uses Afrofuturism and surrealism in her work during a recent interview with Glassworks, to be published soon:

“Afrofuturism has granted me the space to insert my magic, more joy, more imagination into the stories I tell. I’ve also used it to latch on to painting the horror/sci-fi realities of living life in a marginalized body. There is freedom in that. If I could classify, I’d say that’s where this poetry collection exists, it's a dystopic Afrofuturistic poetry collection. Who would have thought?”

One piece titled “Brunch with Twelve Black Phantoms” is a play and poetic verse with characters such as Malcolm X, Biggie Smalls, Aaliyah, Aunt Jemima, and even Mufasa, “king of pride lands, simba’s father” all seated at a table “at malcolm’s house on summer sunday noon in the after afterlife.” There is even a labeled “seating chart” that shows readers where each character is sitting.

Olayiwola also uses the vertical bar symbol ( | ) in some of her pieces in various meaningful ways. One poem titled “My Brother Ghost Writes This Poem” talks about her brother being in jail, so the bars almost seem to symbolize the prison: “the phone clanks its chains | my younger brother is on its other end | the court ruled that he bed at a residence.”

The vertical bar symbols give the poem a different feel than a typical end stop. The piece is in five verses with significant space in between each verse. So looking at the poem visually, the large spaces also seem symbolic to the space in between her and her brother. ​

Another poem titled “Notorious” opens with how someone compared her to Biggie Smalls when she finished a performance: “After I read, the boy with the long, blonde, shaggy ponytail says, ‘your set was great, like, don’t be offended when I say this but, you remind me of biggie smalls’.” In the poem, she quotes some of the rapper’s songs while reflecting on the comment, giving an intertextual element. She quotes the songs “One More Chance,” “Big Poppa,” and “Juicy,” by Biggie, very briefly, while also adding her own unique spin in the mix: ​

“it’s a wonder | how we heave | and heave | and weave | and stand | behind a mic at all | we all | black and ugly as ever | however we spell well | B | I | G | all rhyme and good time | we both love it when you drive by | and call us | big | poppa | ain’t you ever been popped off | been shot at | been blown up like the world trade | don’t you like your meat center medium | brown skin rift | red nectar running off the curb of the plate”

​The use of intertextuality along with the vertical bar symbol adds a different sort of feel to the piece, unlike the vertical bar symbols used in “My Brother Ghost Writes This Poem” which feels more confined. Instead, “Notorious” feels empowering, seemingly indicating that the poet has lyrical bars too. Additionally, the imagery in the lines: “don’t you like your meat center medium | brown skin rift | red nectar running off the curb of the plate” is very interesting, and the vertical bar symbols almost seem to sharpen those lines even more.

​Olayiwola’s poems are raw and real. The unique form and strong imagery makes them even more powerful and memorable. Another poem “Ursula :: Hotel Poolside” uses two colons to break lines. The poem depicts a poolside vacation scene. The two colons ( :: ) together are definitely a unique choice. Four dots and a lot of open space is the visual readers get. I think the two colons together represent a feeling of exposure—and not necessarily in a bad way, but in the sense that one typically feels either comfortable or uncomfortable with themselves while wearing pool attire, and that open space represents the openness involved with being at a public pool.

​The last two poems circle back to the beginning, giving the feeling of a really effective full circle ending. Overall the collection is an ode to loving and accepting yourself as you are. Through all the labels, judgments, and confinements, we all shimmer sometimes; that’s what keeps us going.

[Leslie (updates on SG) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this work by Boston's poet laureate for a reading challenge (read a local author). I'm glad I did: Olayiwola vivid language courageously tackles current challenges in our society.

Here is a list of poems that struck me most (links go to Olayiwola's performances on youtube):
Had My Parents Not Been Separated After My Father's Traffic Stop, Arrest, and Deportation from the United States of America
God is Good All the Time
Ella: @ The Skating Rink
I Wish to Eat What My Partner Does Not and This Is How We Love
Notorious
Look at What I've Done!
My Mother

[Caitlin Waddick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! These poems are original, well-written, and authentic. You might say they are too niche, as if they are only for a person like the authors’ characters: black, lesbian, poor, ghetto, Chicago Southside, immigrant. That characterization may capture the setting, sometimes. The writing is what wins on every page.

I finished, yet didn’t finish, this book over a week ago. The poems continue to call to me, demanding to be read again: “You aren’t done with me yet.” Rereading made me deepen my appreciation and pleasure in Olayiwola’s true expressions.

I usually read prose. Thank you for making me want to read poetry!

[Jessica M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so glad this book found me. I was intrigued to read this book by the title and a flip through of the book showing the differing lengths and formatting of the poems. The poems are beautiful, challenging, illuminating, and frank. I felt my mind and emotions expanding and exploring. There will be a big chance for growth here for a lot of readers, especially from different backgrounds from the writer. The collection has a nice build-up to the last few poems, which blew my hair back. Dive into this one with your heart and mind open.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love! It was actually a student who recommended this poet to me 5-6 years ago and I finally bought the collection. The ssentences use VERY little punctuation so they become intense and breathless. The poems particularly about police encounters and Black history spoke to me the most. For instance, the pen on water as a form of generational trauma and the “Anecdote on Why White People Stopped Saying Nigg-“ were POWERFUL! I also loved the praise of Black dance in poems about twerking and the Electric Slide. An unapologetic Black and queer celebration and mourning.

[Karen Quigley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing experience. This small book contained worlds. Porsha, while proudly claiming her black, lesbian, South Chicago life, also captured my white, Philadelphia, Irish Catholic one. So much universal experience here - especially of children in a world not made for them.

Beyond that, the wordplay and use of blank space/spacing to emphasis an emotion, a doubt, a thought, was exceptional. Read them slowly, read them out loud, and read one or two at a time. It will color your whole day.

[ShadowBearer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know what is so wrong with me that I can't seem to get into any of these modern-day poems, words scrambled on the pages, trying to give an impression of something more than random thoughts scribbled in two or three sentences. But I just can't concentrate enough to actually dive in deep into a poem. Everything feels so messy and random, and I can't even get a hold of a poem with all those interpunctual signs. Its like a freaking hurricane of words. I don't mean to bash, but dear god....

[Sara (onourshelves) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

I really enjoyed this collection. Some of the poems hit hard, some were gentler, but all were good. I loved the variety of the form throughout the collection. My favorites were:
-Footnotes
-Ella @ the skating rink
-Dyke prepares to see her family
-I'm the type of fanciful warlock who cooks up irrational fears in my idle mind with a crack plastered between my cheeks
-Black spells
-un-named
-water

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished this book and have been saying this after each poem: PORSHA OLAYIWOLA got no business writing this well. I needed this book 20 years ago when I was a young queer woman. This should be on everyone's shelf. This book is a holy one. A song of Solomon's for our Black lives. I can't wait to read more of her work.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Olayiwola's work is awe-inspiring. I Shimmer Sometimes, Too is a collection of poetry that will change people's perceptions of what poetry is and what it can be; Olayiwola combines her personal experience with experimental poetic style and her years as a spoken-word poet to deliver this incredible work I've read over and over again. I use her work as a standard now.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Powerful book. When I say everyone needs to read this, I mean it deeply. Read this, and really spend time with the poems. Some of my favorites are "The Joke", "My Mother", and "(Again)". "I Wish to Eat What My Partner Does Not and This Is How We Love" has to be one of the best concrete poems and best two-column poems ever written.

[Ki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it’s safe to say that Porsha set a new standard with this collection. I walked away— and keep walking away— from this book expecting more from her contemporaries and successors. It’s a MUST READ.

I’m so happy I found her reading mfs for filth on YouTube that day because she’ll forever be one of my favourite poets.