Nina in Liberia
for Nina Simone
By Octavia McBride-Ahebee
she arrived at the end of the rainy season
with abundance still in bloom
with the Nimba flycatchers and fishing owls
crooning a welcome dance for her
-America’s champion singer-
but to me, a girl of 10, who still amused herself
in the creases of cotton trees and looked
for Mamy Wata in the gloom of the Atlantic,
she was simply Nina,
who taught me Bach and Beethoven and Chopin,
on my grandfather’s cherished baby grand
weather-beaten by the lovers harmattan and rain
polished daily by a near emptied-belly
she taught me how to position my fingers in protest
to the hissing accompaniment of giant fans
meant to tame the heat of Liberia’s fortune
but to avail
-the end_
Many of your poems share a theme of giving voice to the voiceless. How did you find your poetic voice?
I certainly don’t claim to speak on behalf of others nor am I interested in doing so. What I do share in my creative work is how the world impacts me through my interactions with people and how those connections inform my understanding of what is happening around me and on a larger world stage. It is from these personal experiences that I create my narrative poetry.
When I move throughout the world and through my city of Philadelphia, I am inevitably impacted and transformed by the relationships I actively nurture with community members who have left their birth countries for a myriad of reasons. I am always intrigued by the parallels between my own history as an American descendant of enslaved people and the experiences of my brothers and sisters who have fled similar terrors throughout the world.
The impetus for a decent life is a natural human aspiration; Voltaire said to give ourselves the gift of living well- a quality life. I am mesmerized by people who dare to give themselves the gift of living well. These are the kinds of people you will find in my poetry like the women who braid my hair in West Philly.
An excerpt from “Aminata Holds Us All”
…Aminata whispered as she greased the sorrows of my scalp
how she fled with her escorts, ambition and purpose,
-they- dressed to the nines in voluminous clarity
trimmed with Venetian trading beads
she fled the old order of her world
that just kept breathing
while all the time barren
she fled in grace, in henna-stained feet,
in a pair of flip-flops open to the world…
You served as a fourth-grade teacher at the International Community School of Abidjan for almost a decade. How does teaching, especially internationally, influence your writing?
I wrote a poem, “Oasis,” many years ago for one of my 4th grade classes at the International Community School of Abidjan, which is located in Cote d’Ivoire, in West Africa. It begins with the lines, “I come each day to the whole of the world …”.
During my tenure at I.C.S.A, it had a student body of more than 500 students, who represented more than 70 nationalities. Our school courtyard flew the flags of students’ countries, making it look like a United Nations hotspot of sorts. In my classroom of 15 students, I could have 30 nationalities represented. One student’s mother might be Swedish and their father Ethiopian, or their mother Congolese and Rwandan and their father American. The school served mainly the children of parents who were part of the diplomatic community and international aid and corporate organizations. My students were multilingual, well-traveled, and had a burgeoning sense of the complexity of the world. Also, Ivoirians, like most Africans, are polyglots and well-traveled and certainly knew the dynamics of global politics. I was surrounded by this whirlwind of culture, and history, and politics. Both I.C.S.A. and Cote d’Ivoire itself were concentrated oases of inspiration that allowed me to open my writing to the world.
I’m a fan of the folksinger Arlo Guthrie and he has a song about the Chilean musician and political activist, Victor Jara, that goes, “He grew up to be a fighter against the people’s wrongs. He listened to their grief and joy and turned them into song.” In Praise Songs for the Gravediggers, what was the process of turning the grief and joy of your muses into poetic song?
I am primarily guided by one muse; that’s Clio, the muse of history, and her mom, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. So, this combination of my own outrage meshed with history and memory drive a lot of my work. There is a poem, for example, I wrote a while ago entitled, “Raise Your Head and Try, Again.” This poem is especially pertinent given we are now living through this COVID pandemic and in search of the vaccines that will crush it. Well, this particular poem challenges the singular narrative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (my beloved Zaire), of just being this culture of rape. Is rape used as a weapon of war in most armed conflicts? …most definitely. Should such tactics be revealed and condemned? Most definitely.
This poem is about how certain places, like the DRC, are destabilized and dehumanized for centuries by various interests in the so-called West and then presented to the world as barbaric, through corporate media, as if these systematic assaults against them never happened. What is now the vast DRC used to be the private colony of Belgium’s King Leopold and most are familiar with the gross atrocities that occurred under his reign of terror.
The largest human vaccine trials for polio happened in the Congo, organized by the University of Penn’s Wistar Institute under the leadership of Hilary Koprowski.
This poem references how the uranium used in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan came from the DRC and how the extraction of this uranium devastated surrounding communities. Western interests, namely the U.S., were complicit in the assassination of the democratically elected leader Patrice Lumumba. The metallic ores like Coltan, needed for cellphones, are primarily mined in the DRC.
The world is growingly ahistorical and when we meet a people or country, through the dominant, corporate media representing a financial agenda, it is without the context and usually gross in nature.
An excerpt From “Raise Your Head and Try Again”
the way you enter me from the cellar of your imagination
presenting me to the world as a singular vision of ripped vulvas
standing on two feet with womb wide open
and It hauling its own memories
I will raise another narrative and its antagonist is you
here are my handless limbs hacksawed by your henchman
the pope, leopold, mobutu, ike, even the brown messiah
here is my plowed vagina held hostage for rubber quotas and ivory tusks
raise from the dead with your memory and mouth
my grandmothers’ heads pitched on crosses of blood bars
hair coiffed and stunned – prepared to receive a returning lover…
While we are on the subject, how do you cultivate rhythm and sound into your poems. Do your international experiences influence the cadence of your work?
The rhythm and cadence of my work are influenced by a sense of urgency and need for the reader, listener and orator to give pause and consider the magnitude of the ideas or information being presented. I find that powerful images, short lines and lots of alliteration are effective in keeping my poems moving at my desired pace.
An excerpt from “Ode to an Ordained Stutterer; For Sonia Sanchez”
…these sage-femmes saw the feet of your ideas first
toe-tied, luminous, promising a packed kick
Holy
and in the wisdom of their birthing protocol
informed by the cravings of warrior girls
on the move without shields and charms
crisscrossing landscapes choked in bereavement
your words were pulled with delicate intent
clinging to afterbirth and relief and pummeled alliteration
-Holy bloomed-
your words were ready to take aim.
Your work focuses a lot on resilience. I believe most periods of history are tumultuous, but how are you navigating this one? Have you been writing?
I am a 3rd grade teacher, so I am so blessed to meet with young energy and youthful ideas each school day. My students have kept me buoyed during these difficult times. I continue to write and I write a lot about my students and I share my writing with them. I value their feedback.
Where can readers find more of your work? Buy your books?
Do check out my website for this information. https://omcbrideahebee.squarespace.com/
Octavia McBride-Ahebee’s work is informed by the convergence of cultures and the many ways people move throughout the world. Her poems present human relationships within the context of global inequality.
“Catfish” John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured in the Philadelphia based Moonstone Poetry series, West-Chester based Livin’ on Luck, Mad Poets Society, and Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM. Find out more at: www.catfishjohnpoetry.com.