Sherese Francis

sheresefrancis1@gmail.com

​

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47106/4rwj.12.10191931.11667433

 

​

​

 

______

​

​

Sherese Francis is a Queens, NYC-based, Afro-Caribbean-American (Barbados and Dominica) poet, editor, interdisciplinary artist, workshop facilitator, and literary curator of the mobile library project, J. Expressions. She has published work in various publications including Furious Flower, Obsidian Lit, Spoken Black Girl, The Operating System, Cosmonauts Avenue, No Dear, Apex Magazine, Bone Bouquet, African Voices, Newtown Literary, and Free Verse. Additionally, she has published two chapbooks, Lucy’s Bone Scrolls and Variations on Sett/ling Seed/ling, and has another one on the way from Double Cross Press called, Recycling a Why That Rules Over My Sacred Sight. Besides her publications, she has had work featured in exhibitions from The Lit Exhibit, NY Live Arts, Queens Public Library and Baxter St Camera Club. Through Root Work, she hopes to make connections with other Black visionaries to build and collaborate.  

 

Part of my current Blue(s)Print poetic practice, this piece was written after attending a friend's Nichiren Buddhism conference and then later attending Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative’s black/water: The Digital Ceremony. The shape of the poem's maps are inspired by the Angaria Delphinus shell I received recently, thinking about the connections to the Delphi Oracles, Sibyls, and Mami Wata priestesses. I want this piece to represent the Sux within language and history, and that language can be a meditative, spiritual guide and gate opener to the vast history and connections of the diaspora. Is what we think of as lost really lost or just transformed and in constant motion?

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​