I’m excited to announce that my latest poetry collection, ABiYA, was self-published on , Amazon KDP on 24th August 2023, and I especially wanted to announce it today, 9th September 2023.
i love numbers (as much as i love words) and love to observe, honour and celebrate the most significant key dates for the people in my life, even when physically passed on/over, spiritually still very much ‘in’ my life.
today, 09.09.2023, would have been my father’s 91st Birthday — Martin Clive Sorhaindo 09.09.1932—30.10.1999 (RIPE) — and though i would have preferred to have first seen a physical copy myself, i really wanted to publicly announce on the anniversary of the day that he was born, that ABiYA has been published — a special day to honour his memory, and how much i still miss him (i have a couple of poems dedicated to his memory in the collection).
Even though i have two other published poetry collections, ABiYA is really my first ‘child’, my first poetic birth-in, and she has been waiting patiently for many years to live outside of my computer-womb. Most of the poems, were my first poetic creations; some, the first poems to be accepted in journals…she is where my poetin began, part of my poetic origin story.
So, the collection brings me back full circle O to a fractal (w)holeness of ‘self/selves/selfing’ acceptance […mostly…sometimes…definitely not full ‘self’ understanding 😉…and i’m still debating with myself whether ‘self’ is a ‘thing’ that can be pinpointed/pointed at, at all…]; back to the X that marks the spot of hOMe (picking my 8 year old self up on the way) — love/compassion/forgiveness/family, and it seemed fitting to self-publish her…a symbolic fullcircle gesture in a way, for her themes of self-creation, alienated self, coming home to self, experiential intuitive learning etc.
The dedication reads :
“Dedicated to my eight-year-old (😎 self/selves and I to i (across all tenses) – u re-birth(ed) me. Love Always xox”
Naming her took a long time too — first she was called Giving Birth, then Creation, then Sefer Yetzirah and now ABiYA.
[ABiYA is the collective name of Four Worlds, the spiritual realms in Kabbalah (a discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism)…The concept of “Worlds” denotes the emanation of creative lifeforce from the Ein Sof Divine Infinite…Atziluth (Emanation/Close), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation), and Assiah (Action)… As well as the functional role each World has in the process of Creation, they also embody dimensions of consciousness within human experience. – Source wikipedia.org]
The collection is mainly themed around migration/alienation/separation/identity/individuation/belonging/concepts of home/self-acceptance…life/death…love:
“After ruptures caused by events like migration—including the brutal, forced, ‘Middle Passage’ mass migration of people—after trauma, after injustice, after grief…after (or in the midst of) life’s pangs and pains, can we ever make our way back, or forward, to an X that marks a spot of healing; find fractal moments of peace, joy and love in the home of our (r)evolving, entangled, individuated, naturally connected, complex light and shadow selves?”
ABiYA, is my starting point quest into exploring these themes, through the medium of poetry.
I specifically chose to publish ABiYA on 24th August, my 55th Birthday (24.08.1968) and have set an initial ***DISCOUNTED PRICE OF $10US/£7.86 (ebook $8US/£6.29) until the end of September***
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CGM2K7RM/ (US)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CGM2K7RM/ (UK)
i think.feel we are products of ALL our lineage (including the lineage of all those who created everything we read, watch and listen to) and ALL our life experience, so i truly have to thank all the ancestral shoulders i stand on and create from, and everyone and everything i have ever x-ed paths/inter-acted with, seen and unseen the known names are far, far, far too numerous to mention.
But a special big shout out to my family, who give me constant, unwavering love, support and encouragement—including a very special ‘someone’ who prefers to remain un-named, who designed the book layout for me 🙂.
And a very special THANK You to the amazing creative from Trinidad, Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, for the front cover, a B&W version of a most beautiful piece of art (called Sanctuary).
———————————————
Below are a ‘few’ 😉 words seen, that i feel resonate for ABiYA :
“…And it’s a dangerous thing to say to peoples of collective backgrounds and cultures that it’s ok to individuate. You are getting a lot of push back when you’re not following the herd. But I don’t even think we can define the herd. We don’t even know what the herd is, until we know who we are unto ourselves….” — Vievee Francis
**********
“I wish these poems to be a way for a reader to return to themselves and their beloveds, knowing how capable we are of love, how deserving of receiving and offering it. Not a lazy love, not a sweet love, but the rigorous love, the love that makes us dangerous.” — Natalie Diaz
**********
“…Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”
— from Howards End by EM Forster
**********
“To be free is to be capable of thinking one’s own thoughts, not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one’s deepest most original, most essential and spiritual self, one’s individuality.”
― Rudolf Steiner
**********
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.
Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”
— Alice Walker
**********
“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”
— Jean Rhys
**********
“…to anticipate the ironic
question: how did we find
ourselves here?”
— Kei Miller
**********
“You can’t really run away from home. Because you bring it with you everywhere you go. There can definitely be value in escaping to another geography—to protect yourself, to breathe, to get perspective—but you will still have to go back down the path and reclaim your childhood. Because it is still alive in you, still dictating your relational patterns, still controlling your choices. It must be owned. It must be confronted. It must be healed. And until it is, it’s still the place you live.”
— Jeff Brown
**********
“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am – and what I need – is something I have to find out myself.”
— Chinua Achebe
**********
“The transformative art of rupture and repair is one that is endlessly profound, revealing that relationships of vast depth and meaning are not those free of conflict, but ones where working through conflict is embraced as path, where the participants are transformed into an alive vessel of purification, love, and healing.
Here we are—there is gold buried in the dark. It is up to us to bring these fruits into the collective.”
— Matt Licata
**********
“But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.”
— Alan Watts
**********
“One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others’ minds”
— Alfred Kazin
**********
Hae Sung: You used to cry a lot back in those days.
Nora: Almost every day. You would stay with me whenever I was crying.
Hae Sung: Why don’t you cry now? You can’t cry in New York City?
Nora: When I first immigrated, I used to cry a lot, but then I realized that nobody cared.
— From Past Lives
**********
“…What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company….Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives….How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together.”
— Toni Morrison
**********
“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self.
It is a way of bitter suffering.
But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible.
And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
— Hermann Hesse
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Return To Your Soul by Asha
Return to your soul
Return to your heart of hearts
To your golden dream
To the child inside
And you’ll be coming home
Home to where you first came from
Where your roots are strong
Where you once belonged
Love is everywhere
It’s painted in eternity
It’s who you really are
And who you’ll always be
Return to your soul
Remember who you once were
Listen to your heart
Remember who you are
Return to your soul
Return to your soul
Return to your heart of hearts
To your golden dream
To the child inside
And you’ll be coming home
Home to where you first came from
Where your roots are strong
Where you once belonged
Waiting there for you
Waiting there with open arms
Let your spirit fly
Let your soul go home
Love is everywhere
It’s painted in eternity
It’s who you really are
And who you’ll always be
Set yourself free
There’s a story to be told
Just be who you are
Let your flower unfold
Return to your soul
Remember who you once were
Listen to your heart
Remember who you are
Return to your soul
**********
“Oh, Auntie Em – there’s no place like home!”
— Dorothy (Wizard of Oz)
**********
“I am making a home inside myself.
A shelter of kindness where everything is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop of rain, has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.”
— Julia Fehrenbacher
**********
THE EDGE YOU CARRY WITH YOU by David Whyte
You know
so very well
the edge
of darkness
you have
always
carried with you.
You know
so very well,
your childhood legacy:
that particular,
inherited
sense of hurt,
given to you
so freely
by the world
you entered.
And you know
too well
by now
the body’s
hesitation
at the invitation
to undo
everything
others seemed
to want to
make you learn.
But your edge
of darkness
has always
made
its own definition
secretly
as an edge of light
and the door
you closed
might,
by its very nature
be
one just waiting
to be leant against
and opened.
And happiness
might just
be a single step away,
on the other side
of that next
unhelpful
and undeserving
thought.
Your way home,
understood now,
not as an achievement,
but as a giving up,
a blessed undoing,
an arrival
in the body
and a full rest
in the give
and take
of the breath.
This living
breathing body
always waiting
to greet you
at the door,
always prepared
to give you
the rest you need,
always,
no matter
the long
years away,
still
wanting you,
to come home.
— David Whyte From ‘The Edge You Carry With You’ in ‘Still Possible’
**********
“‘Slow’ and ‘down’ are modes of the soul; they are connective modes, ways of keeping connected to oneself and to one’s environment. ‘Slowing downwards’ refers to more than simply moving slowly, it means growing down towards the roots of one’s being. Instead of outward growth and upward climb, life at times must turn inward and downward in order to grow in other ways. There is a shift to the vertical down that re-turns us to root memories, root metaphors, and timeless things that shape our lives from within. Slowing downwards creates opportunities to dwell more deeply in one’s life, for the home we are looking for in this world is within us all along. The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul.”
— Michael Meade
“We either drown in the splits and confusions of our lives, or we surrender to something greater than ourselves. The water of our deepest troubles is also the water of our own solution. In surrender, we descend down to the bottom of it and back to the beginning of it; down into what is divided in order to get back to the wholeness before the split. Healing, health, wholeness: all hail from the same roots.”
— Michael Meade
“Find the thread of your being and follow it as far as you can follow it. You will be led into places you would not choose to go that wind up being revelations that you didn’t know were possible.” — Michael Meade
**********
The Way It Is by William Stafford
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
**********
“Time does not heal all wounds; it just gives them space to sink into the subconscious, where they will continue to impact your emotions and behavior. What heals is going inward, loving yourself, accepting yourself, listening to your needs, addressing your attachments and emotional history, learning how to let go, and following your intuition.”
— Yung Pueblo
**********
“Coming back to a state of love is not an idea; it is a real transformative moment, in which we reach back for a state of love and security that stems from divine energy within.”
— James Redfield
**********
and
How to Not Swallow Your Voice by Mistake by Arielle John
1) Remember your tongue is made of muscle:
able to lift a whole people with the strength of its hopeful,
but that the idle of words would only wake weakness
behind the prison it makes of your jaw.
2) Remind yourself that you were born like this:
That the Creator of the universe whispered breath into your being
carved a source for your speech and gave sound to your speaking;
Nothing unused remains available for long.
3) Remember the legacy giving faith to your lungs:
That those who come before you and plant their songs in your sleep,
whose footsteps you mimic who had you summoned from the mustard seed
of your mother, they with hands clasped together in their
desperate, waiting for some savior of their children,
some prophet, worthy enough to be the outcast
in his/ her homeland.
4) Your voice is more resource than reservoir:
that your throat will not be turned into a gas chamber of words
fermenting like last month in your mouth, that there will be no hindrance
in your fluency to talk, truth has a way of keeping its secrets public
5) Remember the music of your insides and not
how it comes out: That your native tongue
should feel like home and hood settled between your teeth
should bury their bags into your gums and vow to never leave,
something about the way you speak accentuates the steep of your soul
6) Remember the traffic
of air in your chest, when fear froze you. remember the not being able to move or swallow
or say anything. Blank staring statue in your most off-guard
moment, how we confront ourselves in silence like
hermits, praying in a language only fit for the ears
of God.
7) Sometimes when you shout
it only gets people to hear how loud you are
😎 That energy is neither created nor destroyed
but transferred from word into work and there are some voids in life that cannot always be filled up
by words, so if you’re not doing anything,
then you’re not doing anything
and that nothingness will quiet you.
9) Never bite off more than you can chew at once,
is the easiest way to stifle yourself and that out of breath behavior
will force silence down your mouth
10) Do not pretend you’ve found
something precious enough to lose yourself in pursuing it.
11) That whatever you commit to with words
will bind itself to you, like the hinges of your bones
and hold you accountable despite the best disclaimer you can ever come up with.
and after 12months of being in transit to the woman my spirit was waiting on me to
become, there’s just something about pressure
that forces you to breathe through your mouth, and I feel like
I’ve just learnt how
to speak again.
etc etc etc
🙂
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