A digital poem from HBW Alum Dr. DaMaris Hill:

Shut Up In My Bones: a digital poem – a remix from D Hill on Vimeo.

“I recently completed a poetry manuscript entitled A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing. Many of the poems detail the violent consequences black women endure while engaged in individual and collective acts of protest and resistance.

“I recently completed a poetry manuscript entitled A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing. Many of the poems detail the violent consequences black women endure while engaged in individual and collective acts of protest and resistance.

My grandmother’s picture and a poem honoring her, “Shut Up In My Bones” opens my manuscript. During her lifetime the Jane Crow styles of oppression were careful to include violence for accessing civil liberties. These forced social constraints effect one’s mental health. They incite mania, mental illness and tend to fracture a wise woman’s mind. My grandmother was an avid reader and is rumored to be the smartest of her siblings. She married at age 18 and was the only one of her siblings that didn’t attend college. This haunted her. She talked about it all the time. This digital poem, “Shut Up In My Bones”, is a remix of the original poem I wrote. This “Shut Up In My Bones” Remix is a conceptual work about my grandmother and the life we share.

1. The first three minutes of the remixed poem are sparse. Please be patient.
2. The second portion of the poem conceptualizes the high mental acumen my grandmother had. It is a space that relies on public discourse, memory, intergenerational collectivity, self reflection and joy.
3. The last few minutes of the poem is a space for reflection for the “reader”. Feel free to take as little or as much time as you want with the last portion.”