Unleashing Our Voices

Hablar no se reduce al acto de emitir palabras, sino al hecho de poder existir.”

Djamila Ribeiro

The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives. As they become known and accepted to ourselves, our feelings, and the honest exploration of them, become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas, the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.

Audre Lorde

Freedom is itself a poetics, in that it seeks to reschematize time, space, and feeling in the direction of a future driven by an ethics of care, a relational practice of joy-making that is all of ours to enact.

Billy-Ray Belcourt

How can we start unleashing our voices? How do we find her in the first place? How do we do that when we have been taught that the words in our tongues, our fingers, our hearts, don’t deserve to be spoken, don’t deserve to be written, don’t deserve to be loved? I am reflecting on this while thinking about my own process, and 5 things come to mind: time for healing, witnessing the courageous unleashing of other voices, finding a community that feels safe enough, trying different words/ways/paces until one feels right, unlearning the internalized mandates and telling yourself time and time again until is no longer needed: “my voice deserves to be heard too, I deserve to exist in this space too." Before I found words, my hands found images. My heart managed to find paint, glue, pens, and fabrics, to cast away what ailed her. Art: a conduit, a vessel to unleash and contain my anger, my fear, my helplessness, my worry, and make something, if not pretty, at least something else outside me. While books were always there; doors to escape reality or to face similar horrors through the life experiences of others, my voice was still unknown to me. Interestingly enough she did come out without reservation in protests and demonstrations. I couldn't understand why it wasn't hard to speak up in these spaces at the time. Then adulthood, and art school, and time for healing, and distance. And something began to be reconnected, rebuilt, relearned. The image of self expanded, possibility began to come alive in my fingers, color expansion within me, my body aching to dance freely. Fear, sadness, and anger were still very much there, but softer, not a brick wall to my voice but matter that could be molded, energy becoming fuel. My hands learned how to make things that felt expansive, to portray all the black and white happenings into the life complexities they were in a way that not only made me feel proud, but I could label beautiful, pleasant, and warming. I started to explore speaking up. Speaking up guarded. Speaking up a battle. Speaking up and voice breaking. Yelling and a low cry only. Speaking up. Therapy. Speaking up. Healing, held with love, alongside others. Around that time drawing was the tool I used -besides going to protests- to speak up against social injustice. Voices speaking up together. Power. Then, speaking up and poetry for children.Speaking up. Play. Speaking up to honor the fun. Make a song about my cute pug friend/family walking. Speaking up enjoyment. Speaking up aliveness.

 I found at that time spoken word and slam poetry and gravitated instantly to the voices that use it as a way to create counternarratives, to fight oppression. It had a profound impact. Each reading a courageous act of resistance. I remember the one that opened that world to me back in 2018: Rafeef Ziadah's "We Teach Life Sir." Still a seismic event in my body/heart/mind every time I listen to her, maybe even more now, after the horror to which Gaza has been subjected has reached the levels it has. Spoken word and slam poetry allowed me to rediscover poetry as a powerful act of rebelling against imposed systemic silence. Before, the only poetry I had known was la poesía de la vieja guardia, poetry that spoke about women and la patria, in all the ways problematic. I remember, after my discovery, I had one poetry slam performance every day for breakfast but still did not write anything.

Ana Karen San Emeterio (2021)

Then, art therapy school and being surrounded by another language with different rules and ways of understanding. My brain mezclando ambos trying to catch up cuando duermo. In this fortuitous, unconscious play, I found her, as Bob Ross said, a happy accident. She showed me the way to unleash her, then metaphors flowing, with the power of the rrrrrrrrs that the English tongue can not tame while having fun getting tangled within the colorful thread of those discombobulating words que en español we don't have. My voice needed metaphors, rhymes, and short verses. I could explore the most painful and dark oceans within my body. I could accompany the snake of anger constricting the a room with its red, black, and golden body. And words kept coming. I could speak up against anything. Words became -for me also- power. I got to hear IRL other people’s powerful voices, using her to heal and take action. My type of people, I discovered. Someone, some white friend, once told me she was tired of hearing poetry that was “heavy and too political.” Good vibes only. I wonder how she could not see that the heaviness is not a choice but an imposition. I wonder how she could not understand that each word spoken carries hope, love, and appreciation for all things joyful and the desire to have them be an attainable, effortless reality. I wonder how she could not grasp the self-reaffirmation behind them. I celebrate those who speak despite being told to shut up in all ways imaginable.I find courage, hope, and strength in y'all and the heaviness my heart is trying to transmute, finds herself less alone.

Let’s create more spaces, multiple diverse spaces, where we can gather -no matter our poetry knowledge or experience- to try and find our voices, to be nurtured with each other, to create a community that doesn’t shy away from the “heavy” or from “taking a stance”; one that builds bridges, a mycelium where hope can thrive while creating spaces that are respectful, creative, moved by empathy, and caring.

Here is a space me, Amapola Arteterapia, and Gentle Fire Art Therapy created. Two art therapists who find in poetry a way of unleashing our power. A space for folks who, like us, seek a creative community that shares your concerns and wants to speak up against injustice while cocreating a space for collective care in times where we see a rapid and concerning increase of hate speech and interventionist rhetoric worldwide.  Come as you are to this online, bilingual group (facilitated in English & Spanish)of poetic exploration & collective care.

Voices Unleashed: Poetry as Resistance

An ONLINE Poetic exploration and collective care space.

6 Sunday mornings (March 9, 16, 23, 30 & APRIL 6, 13) 10:00- 11:30 am PST

This group is for:

• People who want to explore using poetry as an act of resistance and cocreate a supportive community.

• People who speak one or both; English and Spanish.

• People who experience misogyny. (mujeres y disidencias bienvenidaoes)

Cost:$110 CAD total or $20 CAD per session (come to one or all sessions).

Contact us if you are interested, but the fee is a barrier. We have limited pro-bono spaces.

To inquiry and register, you can email us at: leah.earthenvessel@gmail.com or ana@amapolaarteterapia.com or send a Whatsapp message to Ana: +52 5512357043