{"id":2585,"date":"2018-02-28T00:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T05:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=2585"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:45:39","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:45:39","slug":"you-and-i-are-call-and-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2018\/02\/28\/you-and-i-are-call-and-response\/","title":{"rendered":"You and I are call and response"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our second Broadside Lotus Press poet this week, Aneb Kgositsile (Dr. Gloria House), is the author of the collection Medicine: New and Selected Poems<\/em> (2017). The book is the most recent co-publication by Broadside Lotus Press and the University of Detroit Mercy Press. Our previous collaborations include the anthology and CD\u00a0A Different Image: The Legacy of Broadside Press<\/em><\/a>, which\u00a0won the Library of Michigan Notable Book Award in 2005, and the poetry collection\u00a0Solitude of Five Black Moons<\/em><\/a>, by Aurora Harris, which received the PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Excellence in Multicultural Literature Award in 2012.<\/p>\n

We hope to bring Aneb to Detroit Mercy\u2019s campus for a reading during Poetry month in April. Until then, I offer you the poem \u201cFor You, This Circle,\u201d one of my favorites in the\u00a0collection that was\u00a0written on the occasion of her receipt of the Lifetime Activist Achievement Award of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights. I love how the poem opens the occasion into a celebration of those who are gathered. In doing so, it embodies a vision of the written word as a living art form intimately connected to community and to self-determination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For You, This Circle
\n(This circle of family, friends, comrades, co-workers, teachers, and students, gathered here) <\/em><\/p>\n

You, this circle, welcomed me,
\npermitted me to speak to you and for you;
\nurged me to propose, to imagine, to teach, to dream.
\nYou, this circle, envisioning a new world,
\npulled me into your embrace and carried me forward.<\/p>\n

You forgave my frequent failures.
\nYou nodded in understanding.
\nYou called on me for help \u2013
\nwhich made me strong.<\/p>\n

You then applauded my strength,
\nas if it had not been you
\nwho engendered it in me.
\nYou polished the gifts
\nI brought.<\/p>\n

You and I are call and response,
\nriver and sea,
\nflint and fire,
\ndaffodil and Spring;
\neach other\u2019s promise of what is good and beautiful,
\neach other\u2019s reason for being.<\/p>\n

Arm in arm, knit together in that vast invisible lace
\nthat is Love,
\nwe pursue the world of justice already awake
\nand waiting in our souls.<\/p>\n

You honor me now with praise.
\nI salute you now with gratitude and thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Marygrove College, Detroit, MI
\n<\/em>April 30, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Aneb Kgositsile <\/strong>(Gloria House, Ph.D.)<\/strong> is Professor Emerita in Humanities and African American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and Associate Professor Emerita in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department of Wayne State University. Aneb is the former Director of the African American Studies Program at the University of Michigan Dearborn. She has been an activist in human rights struggles in the U.S. and abroad since the 1960\u2019s, when she was an organizer in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She is the co-founder of the Justice for Cuba Coalition and the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality. Over several decades, she contributed to the development of three African-centered schools in Detroit: Aisha\/Dubois, Nsoroma Institute and Timbuktu Academy. From 1992 to 1996, she was a Visiting Professor in the English Department, and Director of the Partnership with Township High Schools at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is currently engaged in the freedom school movement in Detroit.<\/p>\n

Aneb has published three previous poetry collections, Blood River<\/em> (Broadside Press, 1983), Rainrituals<\/em> (Broadside Press, 1989), Shrines<\/em> (Third World Press, 2004), and a book of commentary on the political uses of environment in the United States, Tower and Dungeon: A Study of Place and Power in American Culture<\/em>; and served as lead editor of the anthology, A Different Image: The Legacy of Broadside Press<\/em>. Her most recent publications include an essay, \u201cThe Detroit \u201967 Rebellion: The Long Aftermath,\u201d 2017 Catalogue of the Detroit Public Library; a chapter in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in SNCC<\/em>; and a book, Home Sweet Sanctuary: Idlewild Families Celebrate a Century<\/em>, a cultural study of the African American resort community in Northern Michigan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the foreword to Medicine: New and Selected Poems<\/em><\/strong>, written by Dr. Michael Simanga:<\/p>\n

Aneb Kgositsile is one of our best poets. She is a healer who has organized a cupboard full of secrets gathered from gardens, recipes sewn into quilts, and methodology passed on in whispers. She has written them down in her new collection of poems, Medicine.<\/em> This book, her fourth collection of poetry, could only come from a poet who is so planted in the black soil and the red clay that the images she spills out over the page cause us to stop, not pause, but stop, close our eyes and let the memory drift up and into our senses where we can taste and smell and feel. Surrender to her spell is strange and wonderful because the individual memory is summoned, but seems incidental. The appeal is for wide, deep connection to spirit, collective consciousness, and remembrances from so far back the names of the original tellers are difficult to recall. Medicine<\/em> is a book to be carried in a pocket close to the heart. It is collective stories smuggled from person to person, family to family, community to community, south to north, north to west, across rivers and oceans.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rosemary Weatherston, Ph.D.
\nAssociate Professor of English
\nDirector, Women’s & Gender Studies Program
\nDirector, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture
\nUniversity of Detroit Mercy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our second Broadside Lotus Press poet this week, Aneb Kgositsile (Dr. Gloria House), is the author of the collection Medicine: New and Selected Poems (2017). The book is the most recent co-publication by Broadside Lotus Press and the University of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}