Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo - How Love Leads to Revolutions
Can you write love poems during a time of war? What about sex poems or erotic poems about your current “situationship?” In this interview, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo discusses her latest book, Incantation, Love Poems for Battle Sites. It started with a grant which allowed her to visit Gettysburg to write about national monuments when many were fighting over the meaning of those monuments and whether they should be kept or torn down. Around those central poems she wrote about children growing up during this time, her own love life, daily life with its anxiety, hope and acts of love. As she points out, the French Revolution kicked off because parents couldn’t get enough bread to feed their children. They fought not because of ideals, but because they wanted to protect those they loved. She continues this tradition by providing not only poems of witness, but poems of pleasure and comfort for all those who read her work.
Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown
Octavia Butler
Chen Chen, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities”
Khadija Queen’s “I’m so Fine”
Take-Away Quotes
“I thought about (the book) like a jewel setting. The Gettysburg poems were the center ring. The first and last sections would be the side settings. There are memoriam poems, and then there are love poems and happier poems about children.
“You don’t have to try so hard to just be yourself. . . There’s plenty to write about each day. Just look at the news.”
“We’re all being trained to be fierce in our writing, but are we doing it safely? Are we taking care of ourselves as we write?”
“As much as I want to be a witness to the difficulty of the world, I also want to be a place of comfort. I think about that when (organizing a book or doing a reading).”
“It’s about the battles, but it’s also about the love. We can’t keep going without the love. . . From what I remember about learning of the French Revolution, it started with mothers who couldn’t get bread for their children. I realized that revolutions are fought for love, not for ideals, but for love.”