Member-only story
We Need Poetic Language
Sometimes words in a book feel like a spell or a missing puzzle piece. We live in a time and inside a dominant culture that takes the world and people apart. Colonization did that to cultures, schools to people and even the English language has been emptied. The blood and guts, the soul and passion stripped out, to give way to a modern English as the language of business.
— Martin Shaw in “Bardskull”
*
“…to add up you speak English
To speak of love you speak in Welsh”
Languages and cultures contain world views. The transformational ideas will not come from English and its stripped down and transactional ways. Indigenous languages, ancient forms of modern languages hold so much more and more promise, bolder futures…my heart longs for ancient words….
— Donna Morton
*
Mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, tell many stories to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren: I was a child to whom no one told fairy tales and I suffered. I was a terrible student, causing the unhappiness of my parents who would not bet a dime on my future, and my teachers who could not teach me anything. I was slow but at twenty I woke up: I was born from the shame of failure.
