Hi everyone,
Welcome back to 365 Days of Poetry & Honesty. I had this ready to send on Tuesday but time suddenly feels elusive. & maybe that's a good thing, but I’ve also just really missed this! January felt like I was carrying a weight in my chest but February , it's feeling soft.
1 ! I have a little pamphlet to share with you;
It's the first in a series of the 26 letters of the alphabet with Reference Point and I’m ‘A’. It’s brought me a lot of joy and it feels like a beautiful way to begin the year. + it folds out in an accordion style, so you could hang it on your wall! Click here to purchase it <3 it's £3.50.
2 ! I’ve been thinking a lot about the poets who came before me, the poets who I lean on when I can't find the words, & how to share them with you in a way that honours their undeniable presence in how I write and what I write. And I don't want to forget that my poems exist in an ocean of poems and we're all trying our best at translating what it feels to be human, alive. Like Richard Siken, the urgency in his poetry lends itself to the urgency in mine, its like he opened the door when I first read his poetry collection ‘Crush’. Or this intent to will my desire on the world, that energy it's Anne Sexton, Natalie Diaz, recently Chen Chen. How to embody love, how to approach tenderness in a poem, that's Nikki giovanni & June Jordan. & how nature has a heartbeat that's Mary Oliver and it's important I never forget.
3! nothing else to say, only that I hope the rest of this week is gentle with your heart & don't forget to breathe ❤️
Monday
it feels a chore to stay alive. must flood the shadows with sunlight with starlight with light
Tuesday
mouths can be things of tenderness
Wednesday
still falling
Thursday
& slowly, i am coming back to myself to my butterfly sanctuary of hope
Friday
memory of theft. will not take no for answer
Saturday
wreckage of desire. it aches
Sunday
Today’s poetry is a gift from Franny Choi, June Jordan & Danté Émile.
& somewhere there is a version of me that isn't neck- deep in her invented filth & i am not feeling for wounds for stories of my hurt. I am Icarus, self-aware. & Spring will come!
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter !
With love,
Phoenix
x
p.s. i want to leave you with this song that does indeed feel like i’m standing under a blue sky (bright) holding a yellow sunflower. & there's this bit where suddenly there's a disjunction and it feels like chaos. it shakes you, but it feels human, like a footstep, to crush the earth with the weight of your body, but it holds you up it does it always does and the blue sky (bright) goes on above you around you. i feel bright.