lnglan. The job isn't the work. It's slaying fabulous, honing your craft, trimming the fat. lnglan is. The button down keeps a weasel up, the "backside!" snap of your fingers, the cock of your snoot. lnglan is a. The kweens tower their syrups, make sure to take up as much space as they can. I tug my smalls from a different drawer, shave my barnet, have no forelock to tug. lnglan is a bitch.
"This poem was written with a Linton Kwesi Johnson album playing 'pon the Dansette. There're a couple of cockney words in it: 'weasel' being rhyming slang for coat, 'syrup' for wig, and 'barnet' meaning hair. The poem was a commission to write about work, and is that and also about class."
"She is a poet who has spent her career reminding us that our experiences of meaning and sound are synchronous. Howe’s poems argue this in form as well as content. Delighting in new paths around words, exploring their visual, acoustic, sonic possibilities, she revels in 'affinities and relations,' in 'signals and transmissions.'"
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights: "Through advocacy and outreach to targeted constituencies, The Leadership Conference works toward the goal of a more open and just society – an America as good as its ideals. It was founded in 1950 and has coordinated national lobbying efforts on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957.
Black Emotional and Mental Health: "We are a collective of advocates, yoga teachers, artists, therapists, lawyers, religious leaders, teachers, psychologists and activists committed to the emotional/mental health and healing of Black communities."
Sister Song: "SisterSong’s mission is to strengthen and amplify the collective voices of indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice by eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"I would often dart into the library and sit sopping on that bench waiting for the rain to let up. That’s where I’d linger as my doused clothes would start to make me shiver in the aggressive air conditioning. Which is why I was literally trembling, I can remember, when I first came across Galway Kinnell’s When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone, which turned out not only to be a book, but also a poem within the book, and eleven little poems within that poem."
