Reimaging the Human

new poetry performances and podcast appearance

Usually, I am on here talking about the Lord of Glory, but for National Poetry Month, I wanted to share a few happenings I’m super excited about!

The Shift Podcast

I had the honor of appearing as this month’s guest on Mark Travis Rivera’s The Shift: Stories of Resistance and Resilience.

In this episode, we explore resistance as a creative and evolving dialogue, the importance of rest and discernment, and how storytelling helps us better understand ourselves and one another.

Listen here: [Amazon Music] [Apple Podcast] [Spotify] [YouTube]

As a poet and as a believer in the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ, I believe that each human life has immeasurable value, and our stories are worth taking seriously.

I am so excited to share this conversation with you, because it marks one of the first times I take myself seriously, not simply as a poet, but as a poetic intercessor. In my identity as a poetic intercessor, I channel my faith conviction, poetic and scholarly practice, and community-building into a single, cohesive whole.

My life has always been about more than poetry, even when I didn’t know it. The poems are prayers, the prayers are a practice, the practice is a poem lived out loud. Through truthful observation and visceral testimony, poetry helps us faithfully image the realities all around us. Prayer then helps us reimagine those systems in alignment with God’s beautiful vision for God’s creation. Social practice then helps us re-image God within our neighbors and God’s character within our neighborhoods.

I am so grateful for the ways my poems compel faith to take shape in the world.

The Burden of Being Resilient

Interesting, while The Shift is all about resistance and resilience, my recent collaboration with singer, worship pastor, and lawyer Tina Colòn Williams speaks to when it is inappropriate to demand resilience from those who are suffering.

Commissioned by Love146 for their Annual Red Gala and their vision to create a world without child-trafficking, this poem recognizes that those who survive exploitation should not be celebrated for the ways they have successfully endured (and often continue to endure) harm. Rather, each of us should embrace accountability and action that creates a world aligned with love rather than abuse.

Systems should never expect children—or any vulnerable person—to be resilient to dehumanization. If you like the piece, I encourage you to make a donation to Love146 and its essential work.

C7M7N (COMMUNION)

If you are in Texas next week, I would be delighted to see you at Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX.

Artist and inspirational singer K7N invited me to participate in this second performance of his work COMMUNION: a ritual of nourishment and commemoration. About COMMUNION:

“In what ways does a meal distinctly allow commemoration and also provide nourishment? And where are the joy-working and life-sustaining spaces of the future? COMMUNION seeks to construct new spaces and traditions of testimony and witness.

COMMUNION (C7M7N) is a participatory “blues Eucharist” inspired by the artists’ early experiences in the Black Protestant churches of his childhood in the Southeast region of the United States. In collaboration with chef and artist Omar Tate (featured in the Netflix series High on the Hog), food and culture writer Osayi Endolyn (The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food: A Cookbook), and visual artist Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, COMMUNION began as an offering to the audience, with poems, prayers, movement, music, and food. The ritual applies the distinct paradox which imbues a Eucharistic meal: the partaking of which is simultaneously a commemoration of death as well as a claim of unity with that which cannot die or be diminished. COMMUNION seeks to construct new spaces and traditions of testimony and witness.”

It takes place April 16-18 at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural, & Genealogy Center in Austin, TX. Get your tickets here.

Intercession is always a collaboration with God and with others. Poetry is an honoring of the truth. Journey alongside me, as I live out my commitment to both!

Verily,

Alysia