chunks of flommus
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the art of writing, accountability and editing

Notes on the art of meditation and the writing process:

I’m not going to share the poem I wrote this week with you because it was problematic. But here’s an even better story about one poem’s therapeutic journey to the cutting room floor. And why white poets and writers need editors from marginalized communities.

I love black people. And this week I hurt deeply for my black family members. So I did what I do and I wrote. I was washed with a wave of empathy that poured out as some generational shame and read like white guilt. I sent it to the previous Youth Poet Laureate Khaya Osborne who gave me some really genuine, loving feedback that was dead on and that I needed to hear. They offered me some insights that my European-American experience has not given me as well as a youth perspective that refreshed the whole vibe of what I was working to create with this poem.

My work and life revolves around social justice. I have intentionally curated my friend groups, workspaces, and heart space to help elevate marginalized communities how/where I can.

And

None of that stopped me from writing some shit in my own processing that would have done more harm than good to the very community I intended on loving and supporting.

And

That is not to say that these complex feelings we have in our DNA as the descendants of oppressors and children of the most high don’t need to be written/talked out and processed through. That is what journals are for.

The way that we feel about the story should never take so much focus that it detracts from the actual story.

That’s just writing rules. My broken heart was not the story. What broke my heart was.

The moral of the story: Get you some young, black, LGBTQA+ editors. It’s lit.

—andru defeye