72. Truth by Jean Binta Breeze - A Friend to Sue Brown | The Poetry Exchange

In this episode, poet Sue Brown talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her - 'Truth' by Jean 'Binta' Breeze.
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Sue joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute and is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.
Sue Brown writes from the heart and the soul. Her words pull from the dialect of her local community, from the long toned melodic speech of preachers and Maya Angelou, from mantras and incantations, from jazz. In her poetry, a lifetime in the making, she is a fighter and a lover, by turns rising up against the oppression that has dominated her peoples’ history, and rising skywards on the warm air of her compassion and her capacity for love. These poems move with a beat that speaks to hearts everywhere. They pulse with life, feeling like they could either be spoken or sung. Feel their rhythm. Feel their profound sensibility. And as Roy McFarlane says in his exuberant introduction to this book - ‘Let Rhythm Chant take a hold of you.’
'Truth' is taken from Jean Binta Breeze's 'Third World Girl - Selected Poems' (www.bloodaxebo..., published by Bloodaxe Books.
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Truth
by Jean 'Binta' Breeze
some years after
when the laughter came again
she grew her hair in locks around her head
and lived
simply
without even a bed but she
she had stories that woman
she had stories to tell
and children who listened well
and she
she hid nothing
made no excuses for self
just let
truth give her voice to the wind
and she would sing sometimes sing and
ask a little more time
for memory to swell their heads
the children gathered around her
the more they asked
the more words she was sent
words that crossed all ages
served no laws
words that questioned all they had been taught
so they put her away
one day
she must be mad
the adults say
corrupting young minds
it's obvious depraved
she grew silent then
her laughter grew thin
then left with the wind
but the children grew up and remembered
one woman who didn't lie
one woman who didn't hide
now they count the hypocrites among them
From 'Third World Girl, Selected Poems', 2011, Bloodaxe Books. Reproduced with kind permission of the publisher.
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