Black Madonna: Guest Editor’s Discussion, Fall 2024

Dear Readers,

My first encounter with the Black Madonna was when I was 19 years old while visiting Detroit. Michigan. There I came across the Shrine of the Black Madonna, a center of Black theology and political power. I began to reflect on the power of the Black Madonna, her strength, her visibility, her ability to both capture and shape culture, the ritual and sacred space she commands, and the reproduction of her image. To me, the everyday women in my life, from my mother and my eight sisters to the Black women represented in Ebony and Jet magazines, all wielded the Black Madonna’s power. I was born in a house of love, surrounded by earthly Madonnas.

I’ve long considered my stewardship and recontextualization of the Johnson Publishing Company archives, including Jet and Ebony magazines, as sculpture, poetry, and performance. In my “spine poems,” I leatherbound thousands of volumes of Jet magazine, taking associative phrases from the contents of the magazines and forming new combinations, lines, and stanzas embossed on the spines to create a processional poem that could be read aloud by viewers. This intoned cacophony of sound echoes the street poetry of the late 90s with cantillated mantras of Black political, social, and cultural thought.

In the spirit of Johnson Publishing Company’s photographers, Moneta Sleet, Jr. and Isaac Sutton, I chose to focus my Poem of the Day selections on Black women poets whose contributions to the field have offered us a dynamic, rich, and multivalent encounter with Black female interiority and power. The ways that I make sense of grief, love, power, pride, and value are not possible without the contributions of bell hooks, Elizabeth Alexander, Christina Sharpe, Robin Coste Lewis, and Dionne Brand, to name a few. There is no higher honor than to pay tribute to their offerings and gifts. My practice is not possible without their intelligence.

My artistic and spiritual investment in poetry is also deeply guided by the Japanese tradition. Haiku, Japanese death poems, and the spiritual influences of Shintoism and Buddhism have all shaped the way I experience and imagine the life within objects, collections, and space. My personal and public archival practices often deal with exhuming language, reifying cultures that the canon has sought to erase, and giving our collective belief in the power of objects and collections new form and credence.

There's no better Madonna than my mother, and as I personally reflect on the upcoming anniversary of her passing, it feels like a great moment to publicly reflect on the power that Black women have offered in my life. As we embark on this journey together throughout October, I’d like to offer an excerpt from “Walking Prayer,” a spine poem that was first shown as part of my exhibition Black Madonna at the Kunstmuseum Basel in 2018, in honor of my mother, my sisters, and all the Black Madonnas in my life.

Surely the nation can
Rugged cross
Jagged edge
Heavy burden
Paid and laid by she
Shemotherblack
Madonna laid down the law
She got the traction
Parish to Parish
From Poland to Detroit
Detroit to Atlanta
To Houston
Not only God of the Blacks
But mother of us all

Many thanks to Poetry Foundation president and CEO Michelle T. Boone and digital archivist Robert Eric Shoemaker for their invitation to participate in this project. Thanks also to Linda Johnson Rice, CEO of Johnson Publishing Company, for her ongoing belief in my practice.

The guest editors of Poem of the Day represent the readers of the newsletter and of poetry: a broad and diverse group with many talents, interests, passions, and reasons for bringing the arts and humanities into their lives. Guest editors select a number of poems for the month and write editor’s notes for each selection in addition to a blog post summarizing their experience and themes. Subscribe to Poem of the Day to read the guest editor’s selections and to experience future unique perspectives in poetry!

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