Poetry and Updates | BLM, Heal Thy Self & Theatre-Making

hello loves.

i’m back. with some sharing of self and poems. firstly, much has been happening in my life since my last post. i haven’t been very consistent and there’s no hiding from that and i’m going to do this walk of shame in full. so. i’ve been creating and writing and starting new chapters and figuring out new things for the last few months. content creation had been shifted to the back of the queue, but this marks the first week that i am following a dedicated plan so it felt right to rededicate myself to my blog. there has been a mix of celebration, stress and pure joy with some of the projects and events i have been working on, as in:

one | Heal Thy Self with Remani Love.

i’ve always been in awe of the dedicated work that Remani Love produces around Self-Love, Self-preservation and positive Self-talk. i first invited her to share her Love Doc documentary at an event i organised during uni days. so you can imagine how exciting it was for me to be invited by her to share some poems on healing and self-work. the event was amazing, we set the intention, meditated on it, and went forward with openess about the several ways that we could/should heal ourselves in this season. here is the promo video for my poetry in the event:

look out for more events hosted by Remani later in the year.

two | Underwata- playwriting at The Rep

creating worlds on stages and asking for them to be taken seriously is vulnerable work. two week ago i put my Underwata world on the stage through the Write Away 2018 programme. i told the story of two women Underwata (name influenced by Mami Wata) who have to settle and be diasporic in their new home at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. it was as much a story about settling as it was about motherhood- one woman is forever pregnant underwata and the other has children above wata.

it is a work in progress. and the shared reading of my play really helped me to understand what worked and didn’t work about the piece, so i can take it to it’s highest form. i also think it helped me realise (remember) how much i love the process of the theatre-making. i had the opportunity to be a writer in the room with the actors as they and the director- Daniel Bailey – brought it to life. it reminded me how the piece is brought to life by movement and voice and by playing, ultimately- irrelevant of the actual script.  i will dedicate an entire post to my Write Away 18 experience, so i’ll stop here. but i’m grateful for the 10 weeks of creating with the WriteAway18 cohort.

three| Black Lives Matter UK Lunch with Patrisse Khan-Cullors.

as if it’s me, introverted activist rebel woman who got to share her poems for a Black Lives Matter event. amazing. i shared a poem that i wrote specifically for the event about protest and preservation, reclaiming our names and reclaiming our stories. i was actually only able to stay briefly during my lunch break so i missed Patrisse Khan-Cullors speak her gold, but the Who Got The Juice? Podcast had my back and your back too – you can listen to the conversation here. Also, my love Yasmina Nuny shared some fire poetry at the end of the podcast which you need to listen to.

here is the poem which i shared, protest and preservation.

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Somewhere between protest And preservation We stopped To talk And realised that We have no language for ourselves

Have no names for what we are What we will be What we will let ourselves be We agreed, We want to refer to ourselves

But have no letters No sounds, no syntax That will fit We, who take what we are given And clean it and fix it inn secret And act like we are okay, We, are to name ourselves. We are to behave like we are not strange to ourselves with this new language We, who are in constant, permanent states of development Must make time, Must take time

When it is not offered Pause, for a moment and make friends enough with ourselves To hear how uncomfortable, how shuffling we are in our own silence. We have answered to

Coloured To people of colour To black To brown To non-white To confusion Confiscated illusions of what we first meant We first meant to name ourselves For ourselves And now

We sit here,

quietly. Me, a mouth full of expletives To use my own name is to profane, is to internally combust for the sake of a revolution i do not see. Us, a loaded gun. triggered and played with by the heavy handed, excited by our anger. We will have access to ourselves again.

This is how we started to pray, in imperatives. And the fruit we will bare. We will have access to ourselves Again

we will have access to ourselves That we do not share We will name ourselves Without saying what we have done It will remain unannounced They will not know how to pronounce Who we are We will learn Disallow them into ourselves

Our language Will be encrypted, Scripted nowhere It will not be studied This time we will learn Not to make record of ourselves- Our language Will be encrypted, Scripted nowhere, it will not be studied This time we will learn Not to make record of ourselves in langage That can be corrupted,

In the purest parts of ourselves We will sing an old song With no tongue Copy and teach and be taught By a muted mouth And we will run faster into a place Where our language can be felt in the ground We will pass on knowledge from person to person From me to you From daughter to mother We will pass on knowledge of who and what we will be This time.

four| Heaux Noire. Sunday 6th May 2018, mac Birmingham (shsbjdhdvhdj!!)

in two weeks time i will be sharing some stories in poetry form for the Beyond Windrush: Heaux Noire Takeover event. Heaux Noire do some serious work to elevate black womxn artists and to facilitate the general living of our best lives. This takeover at mac Birmingham features some amazing performers – Transits, Lumi HD, Zena Edwards and Nyanda Foday. Get tickets here.

PC: Honey Williams

Thanks for reading what i write.

Amara Amaryah.

#sunday #play #poetry #storytelling #events #selfcare