Poetry Saved My Life

Poetry saved my life. Literally. I wrote so that I would not kill myself. I know poets all over the world who tell this same story. But I also wrote to tell myself the truth. Even when I couldn't say it out loud, I could write it. Sharon Bridgforth was a mentor and muse for me. She still is, even though I don't get to see her or talk with her. I follow her work. She taught me to honor the ritual that arose in my writing. This poem, written in 2005, was for a Womanist Consultation gathering at the American Academy of Religion. And the ritual follows...

Voice

Senegal: sanibaat: “throwing voice,” disruptive means of entering discourse

Sanibaat—throw your voice into this talkin’ plain

We are responsible for the words we say

Wrestling angels/chasing demons

Holding the sound of the future

In our throats

We know what wisdom sounds like

Have heard its tones screamed

In hollows/sung low and loud

We know sanibaat

Throw our voices wide

We have eaten sorrow bread

It stuck tight in teeth

Years of dry and conjured sweetbread

We know how to throw our voice

Of hopes

Fears

Encounter the dust and guts we are

Dig in the dirt of our own hearts

Tell ourselves the truth

Sometimes lie out loud

Where are voices

Stilled by the thin fingers of death

That are never silences

Sanibaat-thrown voices

Into eternal winds

Whispering voices

Into our ears

We are responsible for what

We hear

Of mercies

Of wounds ripped wide

Of fire-talking grandmothers

Healing voices

Thrown into sanitized spaces

Bear witness

We know how

To create our own space

Disrupt what harms us

Participate in our own well-being

Claim the sound that rumbles

From our belly to our lips

We know how to welcome

The ancestral drums

The rhythmic cadence

Of laughter

How to let it take over our skin

To make us whole

Unfragmented pieces of wisdom

In voices long-since stilled

But not silenced

We know how to throw

Our voices into the mix

Beat witness

Make sweetbread

Change the world

Sanibaat

Throw it

Sanibaat

Throw your voice

Sanibaat

We know how

© Valerie Bridgeman

Ritual for Womanist Consultation (2005)

*This ritual was done to the rhythm of hands tapping and feet stomping like drum beats... the leader said the words and they were repeated by the participants... it's a ritual for women that bears repeating...

Senegal: sanibaat: “throwing voice,” disruptive means of entering discourse

my soul, intellect, energy, one good nerve

the unified whole

[we passed bread] and said:

this is the bread of our tears

of our years

of our hopes

of our fears

This is the bread of our plans

of our desires

of our yearnings

of our mercies

of our wounds

This is the bread of our healings

our many, many healings

it is the nature of the dependency that counts

it is the nature of the dependency that counts

what I thought counted, doesn’t

I have to own my self

my soul

my intellect

my energy

my one good nerve

i am creating my own healing atmosphere

i deserve it; i deserve it

i reject the evil that violates my own sacred space

i refuse the shame I’ve internalized

bear witness, my sisters, bear witness

bear witness, my mothers, bear witness

i am creating my own healing atmosphere

sani baat / sani baat / sani baat

I am throwing my own voice

I am disrupting every process that harms me, that harms you

My authentic self, my real self

welcoming my own self

into my own skin

unified whole

no longer fragmented; no longer embracing the wounds

bear witness, my sisters, bear witness

bear witness, my mothers, bear witness

writing myself into being

singing myself into being

dancing myself into being

teaching, preaching, thinking

myself into being

bear witness

bear witness

i bear witness

and welcome myself into my own skin

© Valerie Bridgeman

November 2005