Poetry/Poesía/Poésie in AfroDiaspora

In this stunning collection, writer Audrey Shipp resuscitates the poems of her poetic voice, Adriana – a young poet who resists the alienation of her birth city Los Angeles. Using multilingual diction for an acercamiento (approaching) towards an African/Black diaspora she perceived as distant at the time, she offers "Poetry/Poesía/Poésie" that "cascades from las caderas / pushing from the thighs / como recién nacido (like a newborn)."

Contrasting her feelings of estrangement, she is equally fascinated by the articulation of nativeness and the concept of indigeneity. We see this in the poem "Una Carta/A Letter from the Colony" which opens the collection with the words "glancing out the window / I shall see the uneven pattern of my history / and the outline of a future already planned / a plan I must continually struggle to break." 

As a Black woman, the poet invites us into the steadfast and ever-changing world of Los Angeles as she compares herself to a river in "I Slip Away Sometime." Here the voice echoes "and down I go, I go, I go sometime / into secret, hidden places / dark alleys sometime / where rivers used to roll / like the hips of a Black gal, yes."

The young poet acknowledges her failed attempts at leaving the city. She is then left to construct a sense of home on the shifting sands of Los Angeles – a city spurred by capitalism to reinvent itself year to year, pushing entire communities and their sense of connectedness aside. Her poem "Buses" personifies a mode of public transportation that not only moves people across the scattered terrain of the city but also carries different languages, such as Chicano Caló. The poem evokes "buses / llenos de Caló / camiones que hablan / y gritan / camiones que sudan / que trabajan a oscuras."

This collection draws us in with other themes the mature writer develops in her forthcoming memoir including the quest for romantic love, the conflict of living in a country that is seemingly always at war, the power of music to create community, and the struggle to overcome life's inevitable feelings of loss.