“Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet” Audre Lorde asserts that, “it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are... about to be birthed, but already felt.” This inherent feeling inspired my investigation of the legacy of ancestral memory conveyed through poetry. Poetry has become the channel through which I explore the concept of ancestral memory within the context of the African Diaspora. The poems in this presentation reflect and reflect upon my personal confrontation with ancestral past through the lens of generational memory. My summer 2018 trip to Ghana inspired a series of works exploring how localized memories, descended from my ancestors’ experiences, shape my consciousness and story as a Black woman. I would like to discover how art and memory can function to address the future.Evolutionary psychologist Brian Boyd contends that through storytelling, humans unearth shared cultural pasts to simulate the impending future. For descendants of the African Diaspora, storytelling is an act of commemorative vigilance—an awareness of our need for narratives and language that confront the realities of bygone, contemporary, and "destined" existence in light of our collective memory. The gravity of our stories lies not in their existence, but in our power to tell them.
