D. M. Aderibigbe
        You males are heartless,
        Even to your mothers.
        —Grandma

To end this brother,
you climbed the moon to a far country
and never came back.
By that I mean, when the police
broke their way into a room,
billowing with suspicion, your body
was a continent of maggots.
By that I mean, when the telephone
brewed with some voice, Mama's
hand went down, fallen skyscraper,
and never came up again, be ni o.
By that I mean, your death
birthed another death.
By that I mean, the neighbors
pleaded with me to unpack
my two bags of grief.
By that I mean, they watched
me dissolve inside their teary eyes. 
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Headshot of Dionne Brand
GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE FINALISTS ON THE ROLE OF POETS IN POLITICALLY CHARGED TIMES
 
"I can’t speak for all poets, but the ones I tend to remember are those who don’t simply record and report, but find a lens to see through the narrative of their time and then speak as if the whole world were listening." 

via THE STAR 
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Vivek Narayanan's handwritten copy and translation of "The Three Birds"


"When, at the age of 15, I was touched again by Gray’s 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' it actually frightened me, as if I were being called by ghosts and ancestors down an unwise path. I gingerly started getting into some of the Americans and the moderns but it seemed almost obvious that people like me didn’t become poets."
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