_{^{written by: évah myles}}

When you choose to be a poet, there are a set of responsibilities which claw onto your back and never let go. They scratch, and they tear, and they rip at each muscle–each limb, each part of your being–and it will ache. It will ache like ice on a wound for a minute too long, like sun beaming on your body without barrier. 

You give in or you give out. 

A poet preaches, teaches, learns, and prescribes themselves more than one way to be. They are not only an activist, but a healer. 

This fall, I learned a poet was murdered for being a poet. He is a Black man, it was 2025, and it was not the first nor last time that will occur. There is power in me typing this message. There is power in owning a journal. There is power in having autonomy over your thoughts. There is power, and where there is power, there is privilege. 

Being a poet is more than writing words on a page or smiling on a stage in front of 50. It is more than fig trees and romanticising a life of misogyny and abuse. Poetry is raw, it is real, it is the bitter sap that drips from oak and the mushrooms that sprout atop playgrounds. Poetry is samsara; it is life and death; what is karma and what is pure. Poetry means sharing the light, sharing knowledge, educating community when your system was inherently constructed to keep you from light, from knowledge, from community. Poetry is creating resources, poetry is opportunity, poetry is archival, is connecting with ancestors, is passageways into other dimensions and worlds, is spirituality, is memorializing. 

Documenting who you are, your thoughts, your story, your world is something no one should be able to take away from you. It is a power our ancestors, as Soulaans, have wielded for generations. We have penned, and shared legacies, shared research, shared experiences, shared languages. Poetry is unapologetic, it mirrors life and therefore you.