Lorde

Audre Lorde

Coal

is the total black, being spoken

from the earth's inside.

There are many kinds of open

how a diamond comes into a knot of flame

how sound comes into a words, coloured

by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond

on glass windows

singing out within the crash of sun

Then there are words like stapled wagers

in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -

and come whatever will all chances

the stub remains

an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.

Some words live in my throat

breeding like adders. Other know sun

seeking like gypsies over my tongue

to explode through my lips

like young sparrows bursting from shell.

Some words

bedevil me

Love is word, another kind of open.

As the diamond comes into a knot of flame

I am Black because I come from the earth's inside

Now take my word for jewel in the open light.

Biography

"liberation is not the private province of any one particular group"
Audre Lorde was born in 1934 in New York to parents of West Indian heritage. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature and is described by Joan Martin as ringing with, "passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling."

Not only was Audre Lorde a writer and an activist but she was an educator. She held numerous teaching positions and toured the world as a lecturer. She formed coalitions between Afro-German and Afro-Dutch women, founded a sisterhood in South Africa, began Women of Color Press, and established the St. Croix Women's Coalition. She was living in St.Croix at the time of her death. Perhaps the most fitting summary of her life and work can be found in a Boston Globe tribute by Renee Graham: "She took her frailties and misfortunes, her strengths and passions, and forged them into something searing, sometimes startling, always stirring verse. Her words pranced with cadence, full of their own rhythms, all punctuated resolve and spirit. With words spun into light, she could weep like Billie Holiday, chuckle like Dizzy Gillespie or bark bad like John Coltrane."

Awards/Honors

National Endowment for the Arts grants, 1968 and 1981

Creative Artists Public Service grants, 1972 and 1976

National Book Award nominee for poetry, 1974 for From a Land Where Other People Live

Broadside Poets Award, Detroit, 1975

Woman of the Year, Staten Island Community College, 1975

Borough of Manhattan President's Award for literary excellence, 1987

Walt Whitman Citation of Merit, poet laureate of New York, 1991

Is Audre Lorde a Postcolonial Writer?

Does Audre Lorde belong on a page of postcolonial writers? She was, after all, born in New York City. To raise this question is to ask again, what does the term "postcolonial" mean? Debates have raged on the issue of terminology (see the special issue of Social Text and volume 26 1 & 2 of Ariel for articles on this subject). While birthplace or other factors can be the determinant, another indication of postcolonial status would be the purpose and mentality of the writing. If the postcolonial writer is one who poses a challenge to the dominant Eurocentric model, Audre Lorde fits in many times over. She grew up in a household of West Indian immigrants, probably her most conventional connection to the commonly thought of postcolonial model. She shares the experience of seeing her black culture endangered by the predominant white one, her homosexual lifestyle unrecognized as valid, and her status as a woman constantly relegated to that of a second class citizen.

Selected Works

Poetry:

The First Cities, introduction by Diane di Prima, Poets Press, 1968.

Cables to Rage, Broadside Press, 1970.

From a Land Where Other People Live, Broadside Press, 1973.

The New York Head Shop and Museum, Broadside Press, 1974.

Coal, Norton, 1976.

Between Our Selves, Eidolon, 1976.

The Black Unicorn, Norton, 1978. Chosen Poems Old and New, Norton, 1982.

Our Dead Behind Us, Norton, 1986.

Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New, Norton, 1992.

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, Norton, 1993.