Wellspring

Working for global gender justice is complex, even when working in one's home country - and it only becomes more so when living and working in a culture different than one's own. In addition to the challenges always present when dealing with issues of gender, race, class, and all other power dynamics, there is an added element of cultural difference thrown into the mix, making every issue that much more complex - and, above all, making it that much more important to be aware of our biases, attitudes, and ways in which we might be privileged. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about privilege, agency, and discursive spaces - by that I mean the areas, both physical and conceptual, in which ideas are communicated. A discursive space could be a place, such as a classroom, street, internet forum, etc.; an event/activity, such as a meeting, daily conversation, news conference, etc.; or anything in-between. If people are communicating and ideas are being exchanged, its some type of discursive space. I've specifically been concerned with questions like: Who is allowed into which discursive spaces? Who is left out? Who controls which spaces, and how? How are discursive spaces regulated by social norms?

I wrote following poem while reflecting about these types of questions. Like all poems, it is meant to be spoken aloud - and I think this might actually be my first experience writing what some might term "slam poetry." I'm still sort of working on it a bit, but I thought I'd share! If you'd like some more background about what I'm addressing in the piece, I'd love to talk more about it - just shoot me an email!

Wellspring

Clinking of glasses

Long sips of tea

Students meet, old friends greet

It’s more than leisure

Deeper than a cup of coffee

The discursive space is alive

New voices are heard

Fresh ideas spring forth

A wellspring of songs

Of knowledge and change

But smoke clouds the air

Shields things yet unspoken

A closer look: a sinister shadow

Persistent as death and visible as the wind

It remains at each table

Lurks behind each group of students

It brews at the bottom of each cup of coffee

Stirs within each glass of tea

It screeches from tires of taxis long gone

Screams with the children beyond

A wellspring of songs

Of absence and silence

Access to space, restricted

The entrance is guarded

By assumptions, half-truths

All agency stripped

From those most urgent

Identity reformed

For any who dare cross

A closer look: a sinister truth

Even when the wheels of change turn

In the minds of those thoughtful

One voice, systematically left out

Purposefully unheard, and once again

In a reprise of a song sung for so long,

It seems older that time

Change moves forward while some are forgotten

Some are left behind

One truth, blaring louder than a thousand voices

Yet buried behind a thousand more justifications

A truth denied by too many and sung by too few

So bold it shocks yet so simple it can soothe

A truth both static and fluid

Both reactive and reflexive

A truth both overdue and perfectly present

Only when this scream is heard

When walls fall to the power

Of a thousand voices as one and many

Only then can we call this a discursive space

Only when absence turns to presence

When each and every last coffee cup rings

With a song sung by too few

Only then can we call ourselves progressives

Only when agency is realized

When smoke yields to a space free

For a truth older than time

Only then can we call this change