On Sudan National TV, a Woman Appears in Darfur
Dalia Elhassan

and the journalist bends to ask if the world were listening, what would you say to it? she wants nothing but newspaper to line her bag, a new teapot, & blood to stop spilling / the guardian calls it ethnic cleansing / says these sudanese arabs are bloodletting, rising up against sudanese africans / it confuses me / at night sometimes i imagine a sudan that isn't disappearing / doesn't look splintered by the two niles / the country where they both meet, hold the longest kiss in history / when i ask my family about darfur, about revolution, it's: we can't know for sure / i mean do you believe american media / i mean they're doing this to themselves / i mean he's a fine president / i mean it's not his fault, it's the people under him / i mean we are not being complacent / i mean forgive us for our ignorance / all we want is to live peacefully / our water clean & electricity to stay on through the night / sudan isn't like anywhere else / here we know patience / a country where everyone & no one is dying / i mean the world is opening up to us / i mean we've never seen proof / i mean it's been 30 years of waiting / maybe this is what we've been waiting for / millions marching down shari' al matar / the morning of eid a massacre / i mean many sudans will be mourning / our children scattered like fallen bird feathers around the world / the color blue never being the same / i mean hope tastes bitter / like soot / i mean who do we believe? / i mean Allah knows everything / i mean to say i don't know for sure

from the journal MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
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I wrote this piece many years ago under the regime of Omar Al-Bashir in Sudan and revisited it during the 2018/2019 revolution. The poem speaks for itself in many ways, and is emblematic to me about how our past informs both our present and future.

Dalia Elhassan on "On Sudan National TV, a Woman Appears in Darfur"
Image of one of Brian Teare's poems influences by the work of Agnes Martin
Heidi Seaborn on Poets Painting with Agnes Martin's Brush

"The gallery holds seven Martin works, all acrylic paint on linen canvas, all painted in the early 1990s and gifted by the artist to the museum. The gallery was constructed according to Martin’s wishes. The paintings seem to crowd the spectator. Or perhaps it is the presence of poets I feel around me. Within the past year, three new Agnes Martin-inspired poetry collections by the acclaimed poets Lauren Camp, Victoria Chang and Brian Teare have arrived in the world."

via THE ADROIT JOURNAL
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What Sparks Poetry:
Brian Teare on Taylor Johnson’s Inheritance


"Maybe you already know inheritance is vexed by paradox. Boon or burden, boon and burden? Each of us enters Johnson’s book through that singular, seemingly never settled and always unsettling noun, holding a small flat object labeled Inheritance. A thing made and possessed by another, and now—is it really yours? A thing given, but was it freely chosen? 'Extraordinary limitation,' Johnson writes, 'playing freedom.'"
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