Last week Brilliance Remastered convened the second session of Maroon Studies. This session called “Necessary as Water” after Audre Lorde’s poem “On My Way Out I Passed Over You and the Verrazano Bridge,” explored our contemporary challenges with relating across difference informed by transnational feminist critiques of knowledge production and black geographical frames. We engaged work by Audre Lorde, Jacqui Alexander, Chandra Mohanty, Katherine McKittrick and Michelle Wright and shared generously and bravely from our own experiences.
On of the poems we created together is called “Prepositions.” We started by describing what we were relating “across” in our community accountable intellectual and activist work and then we started to imagine additional relationships through alternate prepositions. We found that holding one preposition “across” was difficult. It felt stiff in our bodies. We noticed that different prepositions rang differently with different nouns. We created space for more clarity and questions about the nuances of our politics in relation, of relation, as relation. We ultimately created an archive that we hope you will participate in. Check it out!
Prepositions (On Our Relationships to Difference) by the participants in Maroon Studies Session #2: Necessary as Water
1. across what?
across time zones
across the digisphere
across partitions
across galaxies
across borders
across harm
across generations
across dispensations
across sounds
across town
across trades and talents
across life and death
across nations
across experiences
across what’s been forgotten
across what can’t be separated
across salt
across species
across the table
across her face
across the way
across the lake
across our adornments
across our bodies
across home
across poems
across circles
across domesticity
across children’s bodies
across our ancestors
across spirit
across forgiveness
2. or… (other prepositional possibilities)
between
around
underneath
beside
with
against
about
in
inside of
of
under
behind
from
for
past
by
through
3. (relate)
this is your opportunity to use the archive above to make your own poems
how does it feel if you replace “across” in poem one with another preposition from poem two? Everytime? One time? What prepositions and nouns resonate with your experiences of working across/through difference?
Eg.
through our ancestors
around our children
beside harm
of forgiveness…
Feel free to share your poems in the comment section!
Also if you would like to participate in the August Intensive of Maroon Studies you can sign up right here:
Intensive #3: Blood, Water and Land August 10-12, 2015 (12pm to 2pm Eastern)
This webinar is for ride or die radicals who live to love the people. Drawing on the legacy of Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa, the solidarity journalism of Alexis DeVeaux, the blood ecologies of Jewelle Gomez and Audre Lorde and the salience of spit, saltwater and sangre, we will explore connections, contradictions and discursive possibilities across imperial divisions towards tangible outcomes.
8 spots are available. $175-225 sliding scale (payment plans available).
You can reserve your spot by offering a $50 non-refundable deposit here (please include the name of the webinar in the notes):
