nyxelestia

Written today between activities when I attended the Fullbright Leadership Workshop for the Student Task Force, the student-run subset of the Human Rights Watch organization.

( Strange Species (or: Humans) )

Some Background On The Poem:

A bit of a ramble on the poem’s origins that English teachers always like to hear and lecture about when it comes to poetry!

So, first off, how it happened: The tents from Camp Darfur had little writings and messages all over them, and I wanted to add something to it. But then the poem became too long so that was a lost cause, and I continued writing anyway, because I’m weird like that.

This had some inspiration, actually, from the poem “Strange Fruit”, written by Abel Meeropol in 1936 to describe the horror from the photographs of the lynching of two black men in the south. It was picked up in musical form by Billie Holiday in 1939, and despite her fear of retaliation for singing it, the song became a regular part of her live performances. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978. I had thought of that poem when writing this, and the descriptive theme carried across.

If any of the imagery is unclear, I’d be happy to clarify.

More specifically, freedom from slavery - I was vaguely thinking of the U.S. Civil War and slavery in America, and when I started the poem, it grew to be about slavery in general - and getting your freedom from it.

( Freedom )