Akua lezli hope biography samples
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Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. This week’s poem, proposed by Melanie Alberts, was:
thinning hurt
how else to procreate
branched children— Akua Lezli Hope
ubu. small absurdist poems, June 2022
Introducing this poem, Melanie writes:
I’m curious to see how others view this speculative verse. My first instinct was to see it through the lens of a horticulturist grafting trees, but likely there will be more creative interpretations. I imagine there’s a flash sci-fi story within these three lines!
Opening comment:
That this appears in journal of absurdist poems, and that by the poet’s biography she is an enthusiast of speculative poetry, sci-fi and fantasy, might lead some readers to think that this is a consciously surrealist verse (see footnote) that fits the paradigm of a haiku.
However, I don’t think we have a surrealist poem here, but a complex one that hangs together, rational, rooted in Nature and rich in allusion to the human condition. Letting it soak in, I considered the crisp-sounding “branched children” as the key phrase to unlock the verse. Given a different first line, it might have been about the principle of
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The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon & Milton Davis, eds. (Caezik/OD Ekpeki Presents, 978-1-64710-077-3, $11.49, 450pp, eb) December 2023.
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 opens with WC Dunlap’s “March Magic”, a brief story about a critical day in twentieth-century American history. It is 28 August 1963, the day of the March on Washington, and Mama Willow, a swamp witch – “Black, Native, woman… leading my children to safety” – is calling a gathering. From the North comes the Salem Witch; from the East, the Root Woman; from the South, “my Mambo”; and from the West, the Preacher’s Daughter. They are joined by “five young Black men dressed in crisp dark suits,” sent to provide protection. They perform a blood magic and send a message into Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ear: “Tell ’em about the dream!” He does.
The story is effective, both as a metaphorical affirmation of the role of Black women in US civil rights struggles, and as a statement about the kind of anthology the reader is entering. No other orientation is provided: there is no editorial introduction or commentary in the book, which I at least felt was a shame. Traditionally, year’s best volumes attempt to represent a community at a mome
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On 'Short Description of representation Saxophone'
Editorial note: This regard of Blackamoor Weatherly’s short history make out the saxophone (New York: Groundwater Press, 2006) originally appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter no. 212, October/November 2007). — Julia Bloch
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