To Whyt/Anthology/Editors by Andrea Thompson

September 6, 2022
Poet name: Andrea Thompson Poem title: To Whyt/Anthology/Editors Poem: For Sonia Sanchez1 Bloom n’ Norton don’t collect me no scribblin’ by blk women they ain’t rt bout nothin’ ! Don’t tell me ‘bout y’r crab bucket philosophy /her 40 yrs of sound ‘n fury Signifying (can’t see the forest) Monkey jibberish. Blues/jazz/soul po’tree /grows thick ‘n dark down here in the jungle /bark like words you can chew through tastes like a noose /unbound /not forgotten. Put down that axe, you ain’t got no bizness messin’ with these roots ‘n branches with the apple of our I /her seeds all our new beginning you dig? 1The style and formatting of this poem was inspired by Sonica Sanchez’ iconic, “to blk/record/buyers” – a poetic call to Black society to support our own artists. Sanchez was a key figure in the Black Arts Movement of the American 60s, who used vernacular as a tool for both education and empowerment. Sanchez is also credited as starting the first Black Studies program in an American University – advocacy work that also led to the creation of other course streams like Asian, Women’s and Gender studies. The content of this poem is a response to Joyce Ann Joyce’s essay, “Sonia Sanchez and the African/African-American Literary Tradition: An Anxiety of Confluence”, where Joyce writes: “African-American writers and poets, such as Sonia Sanchez, remain on the margins of American intellectual history. Nothing testifies to this fact more than Harold Bloom’s 1998 edition The Best of the Best American Poetry: 1988-1997. This volume contains thirty-three White men eighteen White women, three Black men, and one Black woman. [...] And even more disturbing is the fact that Sanchez is glaringly omitted from the important Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1984). End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Andrea Thompson Previously published in A Selected History of Soul Speak (Frontenac House: Quartet 2021), Best Canadian Poetry (Biblioasis, 2020), ARC (Fall, 2019) Andrea Thompson is a poet, novelist, editor and educator. In 2005 her spoken word album, One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award and in 2019 her album, Soulorations helped earn her a Sheri-D Wilson Golden-Beret Award for Excellence. Thompson is the co-editor of Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, author of the novel, Over Our Heads, and is the 2021 recipient of the Pavlick Poetry Prize. She is an editor at Brick Books and the Artistic Director of Brickyard online spoken word showcase. Thompson’s collection, A Selected History of Soul Speak, was published by Frontenac House as a part of their 2021 Quartet series. www.andreathompson.ca