I have two questions for you.
One: whose shoulders do you stand on,
and two: what do you stand for?
These are two questions that I always begin my
poetry workshops with students because
at times, poetry can seem like this dead
art form for old white men who just seem like they were born to be old,
like, you know, Benjamin Button or something.
And I ask my students these two questions,
and then I share how I answer them, which is
in these three sentences that go:
I am the daughter of Black writers,
who are descended from Freedom Fighters
who broke their chains and changed the world.
They call me.
And these are words I repeat in a mantra before
every single poetry performance, in fact, I was doing it in the corner
over there. I was making faces.
And so I repeat them to myself, as a way to gather myself,
because I'm not sure if you know, but public speaking is pretty terrifying.
I know I'm on stage, and I have my heels, and I look all glam,
but I'm horrified.
And the way in which I kind of strengthen myself,
is by having this mantra.
Most of my life I was particularly terrified of speaking up,
because I had a speech impediment, which made it
difficult to pronounce certain letters, sounds, and I felt like I was fine
writing on the page, but once I got on stage,
I was worried my words might jumble and stumble.
What was the point in trying not to mumble these thoughts in my head,
if everything's already been said before?
But finally I had a moment of realization, where I thought,
if I choose not to speak out of fear, then there's no one
that my silence is standing for.
And so I came to realize that I cannot stand standing to the side,
standing silent.
I must find the strength to speak up,
and one of the ways I do that is through this mantra where I call back
to what I call honorary ancestors.
These are people who might not be related to you by blood,
or by birth,
but who are more than worth saying their names,
because you stand on their shoulders all the same.
And it's only from the height of these shoulders
that we might have the sight to see the mighty power of poetry,
the power of language made accessible, expressible.
Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become
a great poet,
but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry,
and it's this openness,
this accessibility of poetry that makes it
the language of the people.
Poetry has never been the language of barriers,
it's always been the language of bridges.
And it's this connection- making that makes poetry,
yes, powerful, but also makes it political.
One of the things that irritates me to no end,
is when I get that phone call, and it's usually from a white man,
and he's like, "Man, Amanda, we love your poetry,
we'd love to get you to write a poem about this subject,
but don't make it political."
Which to me sounds like,
I have to draw a square, but not make it a rectangle,
or build a car and not make it a vehicle,
it doesn't make much sense,
because all art is political.
The decision to create, the artistic choice to have a voice,
the choice to be heard is the most political act of all.
And by "political" I mean poetry is political in at least three ways:
One: what stories we tell, when we're telling them,
how we're telling them, if we're telling them,
why we're telling them, says so much about
the political beliefs we have,
about what types of stories matter.
Secondly, who gets to have their stories told,
I'm talking, who is legally allowed to read,
who has the resources to be able to write,
who are we reading in our classrooms,
says a lot about the political and educational systems,
that all these stories and storytellers exist in.
Lastly, poetry is political because it's preoccupied
with people.
If you look at history, notice that tyrants often go
after the poets and the creatives first.
They burn books, they try to get rid of poetry and the language arts,
because they're terrified of them.
Poets have this phenomenal potential to connect the
beliefs of the private individual with the cause of change
of the public, the population, the polity, the political movement.
And when you leave here, I really want you to try to hear
the ways in which poetry is actually at the center
of our most political questions about what it means
to be a democracy.
Maybe later you're going to be at a protest,
and someone's going to have a poster that says,
"They buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds."
That's poetry.
You might be in your U.S. History class, and your teacher may play a video
of Martin Luther King Jr. saying, "We will be able to hew out of this
mountain of despair a stone of hope."
That's poetry.
Or maybe even here, in New York City,
you're going to go visit the Statue of Liberty
where there's a sonnet that declares, as Americans,
"Give us your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to be free."
So you see, when someone asks me to write a poem
that's not political,
what they're really asking me is to not ask charged
and challenging questions in my poetic work,
and that does not work, because poetry is always at the pulse
of the most dangerous and most daring questions
that a nation or a world might face.
What path do we stand on as a people,
and what future as a people do we stand for?
And the thing about poetry is that it's not really about
having the right answers,
it's about asking these right questions about what it means to be
a writer doing right by your words and your actions,
and my reaction is to pay honor to those shoulders of people
who used their pens to roll over boulders
so I might have a mountain of hope on which to stand,
so that I might understand the power of telling stories
that matter no matter what.
So that I might realize that if I choose, not out of fear,
but out of courage, to speak,
then there's something unique that my words can become.
And all of a sudden that fear that my words might jumble and stumble
go away as I'm humbled by the thoughts
of thousands of stories a long time coming
that I know are strumming inside me as I celebrate
those people in their time who stood up so this little
Black girl could rhyme
as I celebrate and call their names all the same, these people
who seem like they were just born to be bold:
Maya Angelou, Ntozake Shange,
Phillis Wheatley, Lucille Clifton,
Gwendolyn Brooks, Joan Wicks,
Audre Lorde, and so many more.
It might feel like every story has been told before,
but the truth is, no one's ever told my story
in the way I would tell it
as the daughter of black writers, who are descended from freedom fighters
who broke their chains and changed the world.
They call me.
I call them.
And one day I'll write a story right,
by writing it into a tomorrow on this earth more than worth
standing for.
Thank you.