artist statement

(something i had to do that i felt like sharing because it actually took a lot of work to come up with...)

DeLana Dameron
Artist Statement


Lyric narratives. while in the midst of several larger projects, I find my aesthetic leans towards a hybrid of lyrical and narrative poetry. I gather these two terms to describe my service to poetry and its musicality – lyric for the ways in which it can work as a song with lines one can dance to, and narrative for the varied stories I am compelled to tell. I explore these concepts through words placed for their rhythmic cadences and how they unfold accordion-like line-by-line, unfolding a story. Most often in these lyric narratives I situate myself or an imagined persona in medias res. I seek immediacy. I want past events present and visceral, tangible. I want the language to be music on my reader’s tongue. To that degree, my influences are multi-genre, multi-cultural, multi-generational, multi-aesthetical.

I engage poetry as an artistic archival tool. As a historian, I know the importance of art as an artifact when monuments are gone and bodies have decayed. I think of the classical poets, of the pre-classical poets, of Virgil and Homer and the anonymous composer of Beowulf, and how these poems work to serve several purposes. From these works we are able to gather cultural, historical, personal and political information about the author and the culture being written about or – if it is not his/her own – her perspective on it. I write with the past present and future in mind. I write cognizant that each word is at once a statement, a testament, a music chord, a relic.

It would be a difficult thing to identify one single poet (or even a limited few) as representative of the aesthetic(s) with which I’m currently working. I turn to poets like Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, Taha Mahmoud Ali, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dunya Mikhail or even Brian Turner when I am considering poetic portrayals of war/political struggle in first-person narrative poetry. They are especially relevant when thinking of my treatment of poetry on Palestine which manifests itself in persona poems – imagined first-person narratives of people living in the occupied territories. Because my experience is limited and I am unable to cull my material from embodied memories, I turn to poets like Elizabeth Alexander, Evie Shockley, Kwame Dawes or Tyehimba Jess and their ability to interpret historical and archived information from cultures with which they are unfamiliar or are removed from by the passing of time. I consider their successful translation of this information into imaginative, immediate and believable works of art while still staying true to the underlying historical narrative.

Additionally, resisting the urge to say my writing belongs to one specific aesthetic, I’d say it is still a work in progress, working against this idea of writing for a specific audience, or for a specific school of thought. Though I am a part of larger movements and institutions of specific groups that are oftentimes mis- or unrepresented in the literary realm, I do not seek to write merely to the audiences with which I most closely identify. However, my writing has been nurtured in these writing communities from the moment I brought my work into the public sphere. Most times I am the youngest in a circle of elders faced with the constant attempt to pick up the baton they place down. While my writing communities in the educational setting have been majority white-led, my communities outside have been collectives created for the shared identities of writers of the African diaspora. I find this tension evident in the production of my work, leading to important and interesting changes within my work, in the subject matter I pursue and choosing an angle, in my presentation and form and in the conversations I create as an artist.

Too, my educational background has markedly shaped my leanings as an artist. My interests in history, specifically Third World and Non-Western are apparent and ever-present is what I feel my responsibility to bear witness to the historical narratives I discover by working it through, translating it into poetry. This is not to say I do not engage in the personal – though I find at times less confessional. I include those aspects only when I am exploring other people – so I speak of myself in relation to my influences be they cultural, historical, and familial and insert myself as a character going through the actions of the poem, through the discovery that is the poem itself.

Ultimately, I write with the knowledge that these words will outlive my breath. However, I write wishing these words will exist as breath, as music in ears. My poems, I believe, are meant to be read to the self, aloud, to be heard and sung. In my heart they are personal and universal artifacts, documenting a moment in this timeline of existing, and if they serve their several purposes, they will have a story to tell tomorrow and tomorrow after.

definition of space

thanks to a fellow friend's post, i've been thinking about definitions of space, and how i deal in different spaces at different times, and how i expect each space to function separately in my life. these past couple of weeks have been weeks of revelations about many things dealing with relationships, with careers (as writers), with dealing with difficult people, as well as myself.

on spaces: i find that i compartmentalize almost everything, with little or no cross-over. letting people into these sequestered kingdoms is where it gets hard and difficult, sometimes painful. it's like this: here is my apartment. here is my room, only i can inhabit it. here is my heart, it is mine. maybe this, too, is a commentary on sharing? my work is compartmentalized, also. my work life and my living life are separate. my room is for sleeping. my apartment is for living. i must find other spaces to write, to engage the creative space, the working space. rarely will i bring papers home to grade. rarely will i write a poem (or intend to write a poem, though sometimes a poem demands to be written where ever i am) in my house, in my room, on my bed. my computer never enters my room. that is in my living space.

my friends, too, i find are compartmentalized: here are my writer friends. here are my crazy i-want-to-go-out-and-act-ridiculous friends. here are my now-its-time-to-think-deeply friends. rarely is there cross over. birthdays and special event gatherings are always difficult this way, and i generally find myself celebrating in different spaces with different people, wearing different hats.

and if i'm to be brutally honest with myself, that goes into relationships, too. even if there is an extreme interest in someone, i shy away from them if i know we know a lot of the same people, if i know that i will be unable to keep those lives separate and compartmentalized, or if there is a grey line between friendship and lover. perhaps i'm speaking too much, now. but this is part of the dealing, right? admitting the problems, putting them out into the open. "hi my name is delana, and i'm a compartmentalizer."

outside of relationships, and thinking of myself academically, i worked hard to keep things separate. i majored in history, and saved my poetic writings for outside the academy. my writing life and my life as a student were different. currently, they're the same as i'm enrolled in an mfa program, and my job as a student, too, is to be a writer, and i find myself in extreme discomfort, trying to negotiate this grey area. so i run. did i mention i'm a runner? not only literally (although i dont feel safe running in big urban areas, so i instead wander aimlessly around nyc, getting in miles, watching each section change as i walk through them) but figuratively as well. i run away from things, sometimes, instead of dealing with them upfront. either i run or i kill/end. so. i'm leaving my mfa program for a number of reasons, but sometimes i wonder if it's because of this imbalance, this failure to find a balance? how so long i kept things separate (and equal?), and when they converge it brings up all new problems and issues that i sometimes rather not deal with...and i find that when i do deal with them, they become bigger problems, and things grow at an exponential rate that all i can do is watch them blow up in my face, and hope to salvage something when the dust settles.

i dont know what will be left of me after december, to be honest. i'm tired. i'm exhausted. i'm hurt and aching, and i find myself compartmentalizing/sectioning off myself from people, and running away, and ending things. burning bridges. but, what's done is done, right? what is said is out in the open and can not be taken back. what's been tried has failed.

i dont know where all of this is going or where it meant to go when i started. just thinking through my past few days/weeks, and thinking about the friendships i might have ended, the opportunities i might have killed, the chances for spaces and people to blend together i kept from happening, and sometimes i wonder if it would be different if i didnt try so hard to keep things apart. if i did listen to my heart that says "i'm lonely". or my hand that says "it's cold" and doesnt reach out to another for warmth. i dont know. i'm still working through it...trying to see where my different spaces can start to intersect.

ladies wear red?

so. i've avoided buying and wearing the color red most of my adult life when i could choose what i've wanted to wear. most times, i go for the pastel colors (my favorite to wear in the winter, actually) or like blues and browns and blacks. but never red. i decided this weekend to give it another try. being that it is freezing here, and most times a coat and long-sleeves just won't do, i bought a red sweater with toggle buttons. it's sort of like a pull over, really. anyways. i must say, despite how looking at the color red makes me mad or angry or gives me a headache (really, it does....) sometimes, i think it's a mix between really liking this sweater and thinking: hey, red doesnt look so bad on me. it gives me a different sort of look, i guess. more sophisticated, if you will. ha. i dont know. just my thoughts this morning as i'm getting dressed, and getting ready for my day.

thinking about the body

i've been immersed in several conversations with a new poet friend, about the body. well, i should say i've been having several conversations that lead me to think about the body as a vessel, and then that forces me to think about the body as a holder for the spirit. and if the spirit is only one created for that body, or if the spirit is one that goes from body to body. or if there are several spirits going around at once, claiming the new lives as they are born and exiting the old ones as they die...if there is some line of spirits waiting for each new pair of eyes. or if there is a spirit at all, although for me, that is not part of the conversation. it's how they operate, going with the pretense that they do, in fact, exist. this leads me to having this conversation in a series of poems. poems about the body. poems in the voices of spirits. i know it sounds crazy and aloof...i dont know where it will take me. but it's a hat i'm trying on for the moment. it's a new reason to get up and go off into the world and write, or walk 2 miles in the city to sit for hours in a coffee shop drinking chai tea and thinking about this body and its vessel-like qualities, and thinking about the things that pass through.

looking back, looking forward

i spent the whole of yesterday going through old writings i kept a couple of years ago. i am thankful for my inclination to save everything, to archive things, because it gives me a clear view of where i've come from, the places i've been mentally and emotionally. it gives me an idea to see why my present is like it is, and make some predictions on my future based on patterns of repetition. it reminds me of the saying, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

it's cold here, in the city. i've got on many layers. i'm about to step out and see what the holidays look like in nyc. maybe i'll write some poems.

thinking

this world is an interesting place. i'm both in awe and terrified at the same time. it's true. yesterday morning i opened my eyes, and looked out my window at a brilliant gray sky, and then i noticed these large snowflakes falling and i was at once excited and annoyed or saddened. excited because it's my first witness to snow in the mid-atlantic. and saddened or annoyed because instead of being able to cuddle up with my covers, and a nice cup of lady grey tea or chai, i have to step out into it, the grey sky, the large falling quarters of snow. im not jaded yet. but i'm sure i'll soon change and hate the days i wake up and see such softness falling from the sky.

i'm closer to knowing

© delana dameron

I am closer to knowing

after Phillip Levine

I kneel in my porcelain tub, thigh-

deep in water, to wash the weeks worth

of clothes that piled up in the center

of my floor. I can’t say I know anymore

now what work is, but I’m closer

to knowing sacrifices my grandmother made,

a domestic in those grandiose white houses

on the Battery, those million-dollar

families that paid others to do their work.

I can’t say how she did it – scrubbing

the filth from the clothes by hand,

how she spent hours rubbing her knuckles

together – as I am now – to get the friction

needed, the friction and simplicity I took

for granted in those large metal contraptions

of detergents and softeners to rinse clean

our daily sweat and dirt. growing up

will do this, I suppose, when you run

prematurely away from safekeeping

and you find yourself on a Saturday night

forced to forfeit amenities I never once,

before now, had to pay for and cannot now

afford. working up a sweat, my hands

softened and rubbed raw at once, smelling

of downy, wringing the privilege from too many

pairs of jeans, I am thankful for this

meditation in the bathtub, this homage

to the woman who, decades back,

did the same – and I suppose, work is not

doing things out of affordability, but

doing the back-bending labor for a dime,

for three children and an absent husband.

work is not holding your own intimates

between your fingers, but a stranger’s,

plunging them down below the suds,

and picking them up to the light to see

how much more is required of you

before you are done.

change is my one constant

i can't say why i moved to blogspot. again. i can only say that perhaps something about xanga keeps turning me off. and the prospect of having a brand new name for a blog was enticing, and a new spot to visit was intriguing. kind of like getting a new journal. anyways. if you're interested, i'll link to my old blog, for now. i hope to update this one much more often. i have so much more to say. however, right now i'm up to my ears in student papers to grade, and my own poems to write, and this novel that i'm reading for sanity (you have to read one thing that has nothing to do with anything else to really stay mentally stable...at least in my world)...

i'll leave you with a reading list of some poetry books i'm dipping into here and there

ross gay, against which
aracelis girmay, teeth
patricia smith, teahouse of the almighty
philip levine, what work is
cyrus cassells, the mud actor
sherry fairchok, the palace of ashes
lydia melvin, south of here
dunya mikhail, the war works hard

and my novel by elias khoury, gate of the sun (about palestine, of course. yes, i'm back on writing about palestine, and with a most-keen eye that i never had before)

more more tomorrow.
best, lana.

(i'll also explain the blog title.)