Listen: At Southern Word’s annual BlackLift Poetry House, youth share words about Black history and resiliency

Youth nonprofit Southern Word held its annual BlackLift Poetry House show on Saturday. WPLN’s Damon Mitchell attended the event where youth including, Qiana Ruth, Sarah Anderson, Alan Brooks aka Wherewolf, and Khadidja Garba shared poems about Black history, life and culture.

Listen to the radio story above.

Qiana Ruth

“Can I sway my hips and pray a little harder? Hand him back to a mother crafted of angel dust. I know Black history is more than the bad we’re reminded of.”

It’s just weird having the shortest month of the year dedicated to Black history, when we have so much more to talk about than just Martin Luther King and all the bad and slavery.

Sarah Anderson

“Blacker the berry, deeper the juice. Your roots, you note, to Africa’s use of her riches. Lord impart riches, bound in ditches, stood without stitches. We aren’t bound, we deep. We are walking legacies.”

We aren’t bound, we deep, was kind of embracing the community of black culture. A lot of people like to talk about, ‘We’re still in shackles, we’re still in chains,’ but we have so much strength in our numbers. We have so much strength when we’re intentional about showing up for each other. 

Alan Brooks aka Wherewolf

“I ain’t no Crip, but I’ll be damned if I have any blood on me.”

That was just a play on words. I’m not in the streets, I’m not, you know, out here. I don’t have a gun pressing folks, doing all that crazy stuff, I guess what the stereotypical rapper is doing. But, it’s like, I feel I still have a responsibility to speak on these things that are going on in our community.

Khadidja Garba

“The way it was supposed to grow, the way it was supposed to be. But why did we have to alter it to where we could be accepted by society? Putting chemicals in our hair that you wouldn’t feed your own child. Heat damage, straightening, relaxing, we all went through the whole mile.”

I was trying to, I guess, talk to the people that don’t have to go through that stuff with straightening their hair. Like, Oh, would you feed your own child the type of pain that we went through?