A Brief But Spectacular take on legacy and poetry

Transcript

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John Yang: Anastacia-Renee is a writer, educator and interdisciplinary artist. In collaboration with New York City’s Lincoln Center, she performs pieces from her new book Side Notes from the Archivist. The book explores five decades of American history through her perspective as a black queer feminist.

Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on legacy and poetry.

Anastacia-Renee, Writer: I want audience members to listen to my work and feel something.

Tonight, I’m going to be reading pieces that honor and acknowledge the glory and the legacy and the spirituality and also the pain of the black femme, the black woman, the black woman’s body, and thinking of the black woman’s body as an altar.

Lay your white flowers on her altar. Let them be thorny and thick and full of insects to honor her life.

This is my new book that I’m reading pieces from Side Notes from The Archivists and the process has been thinking about everything that I’ve gone through as a person, thinking about legacy, thinking about ancestors and thinking about future, what does future building look like? Even while acknowledging pain or suffering sorrow, guilt and joy?

Place or puts or pour a glass of room temperature water because the black woman is always seeking balance. Pinchy a woman always told she’s too hot or too cold and has to be excellent. And never in between.

I started writing, yes, a very, very long time ago. I used to write a lot when I was supposed to be doing math in school, but I was taking copious notes about the world around me. And I’ve been a constant journaler and observer since I was a young child.

Your body has poured a shirtless, soulful, your nerves runneth over, and your eyes vibrate bronze and crapped pewter, say to each molecule rocking back and forth and back and forth. Rest.

I am not the kind of person that’s probably going to be outside with the picket sign. Writing is my act of resilience. Writing is my way to make change writing is my way to see the ripples go in the sunflower and centers of every fibroid or jellied cyst, and the Alice Coltrane of every tumors melody. Rest. Here.

My name is Anastacia-Renee, and this is my Brief, But Spectacular take on legacy and poetry.