After a semester-long conversation with Black scholars at James Madison University, I uncovered a need for a safe space for young Black poets. While in these conversations, students mentioned they could not share their art for a multitude of reasons, such as their work being too radical, needing someone to critique it, and needing the right audience. Throughout my academic career at this university, I found it hard to share my work for the same reasons. The lack of community and self-censorship led to myself and many others feeling unheard, which can result in burnout if not taken care of.

When I took on a position as one of Furious Flower’s Carmen Gillespie Fellows, I was suddenly surrounded by legacies of Black women writers such as Dr. Joanne Gabbin. As the founder of Furious Flower, the nation’s first academic center dedicated to Black poetry, and the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective, an organization meant to uplift Black women, she inspired me. After one conversation with Dr. Gabbin, I asked her how she found community. She responded with, “There is community everywhere.” I began to look for communities and other ways to help myself and my Black peers in our creative efforts so that we could learn to share our works unapologetically; however, I could not find any that were exactly what we needed.

Some of the resources that were offered to me were the Center for Multicultural Student Services, Student Minority Outreach, and Word is Born--an organization for writers on campus.

These organizations do a great job at encouraging inclusivity, but they do not intersect with each other in the way that I would prefer. While one might be an excellent option for being around other students who look like us, and another is a space for nourishing creativity, there was not one that could offer us both. Yet, there was still a fear of self-censorship since we attend a Predominantly White Institution. Even poetry events like open mic nights and slam functions produced by Black organizations like Furious Flower or spaces like the Diversity Education Empowerment Program that pride themselves on inclusivity often have predominantly white audiences and speakers, which can lead to self-censorship. Due to these environments, we need a Black space and community to guarantee liberation and full freedom.

In “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought,” Patricia Hill Collins coined the phrase “Matrix of domination.” This determines how we subconsciously maintain ourselves in the public sphere. She uses intersectionality to emphasize how systems such as education are all interconnected and work closely together. Education is interconnected to systems such as race, class, and gender that ultimately shape the experiences of individuals. Often in the classroom, we, Black students, live on the margins. Our experiences are not deemed valuable in academia when they should be because they are beneficial to the material we are examining. We stay quiet in fear of being ridiculed. Hill suggests that Black women and people can and should challenge systems not only for justice but for self- and Black empowerment.

Patricia Hill Collins and other Black feminist scholars such as bell hooks and Audre Lorde argue that Black art is imperative for liberation and survival. The Black Arts movement was a Black-led movement founded by the writer and poet Amiri Baraka during the 1960s and 1970s. The movement's main goal was for Black people to create Black art. Written in the 1960s during the movement, Amiri Baraka’s “Black Art” still holds truth today; the poem “Black Art” emphasizes the need for self-identity. He rejects traditional poetry to shed light on how Black art is influenced or is only taken into account if written in a Eurocentric way. Art sixty years ago and art today is often centered on appealing to whiteness. This may be due to meeting white people in their space, individual concerns for social status, and how individuals conduct themselves in an oppressive situation. In Baraka’s last stanza, “Let the world be a Black Poem/And Let All Black People Speak This Poem/Silently/or LOUD,” he calls upon other artists to speak out against oppression with him. (Baraka 51-54)

Although Baraka founded the movement whose main goals were for Black liberation, it also was exclusive and not for all Black people. bell hooks’s “An Aesthetic of Blackness: Strange and Oppositional” discusses races and politics in the African American community. hooks reflect on a time when the Black arts movement was in full swing; the movement aimed to develop a tie between artistic production and revolutionary politics. Even so, it is critiqued by Black feminists for its essentialist nature and the obedience of art concerning politics and limiting the diversity of artistic expression. Aesthetics play a pivotal role within the community, as the focus is on beauty as a reimagined force rooted in the fight against racism. The artistic expression hooks fixates on is performance arts as accessible forms of creativity, especially for Black folk who are underclass and do not get the same opportunities as someone from a higher class status, in our case, Black students within an institution. The need for a radical aesthetic that discovers associations between art and politics, especially within the context of the Black liberation struggle, is present in this movement, much like it is today.

In addition to aesthetics, another issue that prohibits Black students from being themselves is space. bell hooks asks readers to consider a different alternative that goes against aesthetics. In “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” she suggests a critique that dismantles dominant power when privileged people fail or refuse to listen or advocate for oppressed people. She insists it is better to speak than be quiet, regardless of whether or not they refuse to meet you. Using the marginal as the space, hooks invites readers to consider three questions: Where do you begin? Who do we begin with? How do we do it? Instead of waiting for our oppressors to meet us in a space that encourages radical openness, we have to use the marginal space that we are in now, whether it be on stage or in the classroom, with or without a smile.

hooks’s argument on aesthetics and not appealing to dominant culture relates to Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of Anger.” This challenges the way these spaces critique Blackness in the face of adversity because her “response to racism is anger.” Often, students here at JMU are told to correct their fellow students during “difficult discussions” and to give them grace, among other self-conscious things to make our white or dominating peers feel more comfortable. This also restricts Black students from feeling comfortable sharing their work (Lorde 278). While Black students are advised to speak up to correct others, we are also silenced when our narratives do not fit within the discussion, even if the class closely relates to us. While we feel the need to self-censor, we understand that our art is essential, and we want to be liberated. I asked my peers to define liberation and what it looks like. Is it being unapologetic and having a platform to speak to oppressive forces? They responded that liberation is to experience full freedom to live and to be authentic.

Poetry is an art form used by many, including us. In Audre Lorde’s “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” the need for poetry and expression is indeed a fundamental demand “as keystone for survival, and we come closest to this combination in our poetry” (126). Lorde continues to express in “Litany for Survival,” emphasizing the importance of self-expression. “So it is better to speak/remembering /we were never meant to survive.” Similarly to hooks, Lorde urges people to speak their truths even when facing oppression. This poem directly connects to hooks’s argument about not appealing to aesthetics. (Lorde 42-44)

Furthermore, poets use art as a form of expression. Other times, poets use the art form for liberation through Lorde’s uses of anger. In June Jordan’s “Poem about My Rights,” the personal is political. June Jordan explores the injustices and struggles faced by the speaker and oppressed individuals on both personal and political levels. She examines racism, sexism, incarceration, sexual assault, and the many kinds of oppressive forces that shield disenfranchised individuals’ identities. The poem examines the limitations set on the speaker’s body, the bodies of oppressed people, and the societal anticipations that constrain their freedom. Black women use poetry as an expression to call out cruel and unjust systems directly.

Similarly, “Liberation/Poem” by Sonia Sanchez is a spoken word poem about how Black people long for liberation. Like Jordan, Sanchez uses personal elements to call out systematic issues. The speaker mentions Billie Holiday’s “am i blue,” a song about betrayal and heartbreak, and she uses her somber voice to convey the tone in this poem to explain why Black people are blue--because of historical and current oppression. Sanchez critiques the system that Black people are living in that often contests Black pain. This poem directly converses with “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks; younger generations are redefining what it means to live within society. Through community in a space where these young people are fully expressing themselves. Her poem uses poetry to paint an image of people living within the margins.

Many Black writers use poetry as a means of unfiltered expression, yet these poets go outside the traditional realms of poetry, such as form and meter, to speak their truth. This is the freedom that I imagine for the future of Black creatives at James Madison University. I imagine a space where Black people have control over decisions. Our first task was establishing the program and production of this collection of work off-campus, which would assure full freedom in the creative process. After collection is done, we have all agreed to share it with whoever and wherever. This project may reside on the Furious Flower website; however, the space during the process of creativity is not ideal to meet in because it is still on campus, and we will still have to confine and restrict ourselves accordingly.

While establishing group goals, the group discussed respect and acknowledging everyone’s differences, and we realized our lives intersected in many more ways than just being Black and being a student here at James Madison University. We meet every Friday, mainly in person but periodically on video calls--especially during breaks. During the first few weeks, we discussed our workshop, which, in this context, does not imply critique. Instead, it provides a safe space for members to share ideas and request support. We discussed what this final project should be: a collection of some of our work over this past year. Our primary goal is to understand and connect with each member's experiences, regardless of the space they are in. Using Black feminist and queer thought, we can fully understand the ways poetry can be used for liberation and our survival. Pushing back against aesthetics and allowing ourselves to feel will be imperative to telling our experiences.