Hannah Murry: Empowerment through "Putting Pen to Paper"
Through the blind editorial process, Murry's poem "A Flower is Meat" was accepted for publication in Volume 22: Revolution, due to be released this October, 2024. Scroll down to get a sneak peak at this poem.
Since Murry was in middle school, writing has been her way of thinking through both highs and lows. She enjoyed journaling, poetry, and prose at a young age. This is likely because writing has a special capacity to inhabit strange emotions, therebye building a space for an intellectual journey even through turmoil.
Writing can be, in a way, a forever ally and a tool for personal exploration and empowerment. As Murry mentioned to WR editors, she hopes to show others that there really is power in putting pen to paper.
Reviewing "A Flower is Meat": What can readers expect?
Murry's poem, "A Flower is Meat", certainly demonstrates self-exploration, though clearly readers are invited or challenged to take an intellectual journey too. The poem itself uses fierce and fearless diction and juxtapositions in order to break into a reader's psyche. While using 'flowers' as a symbol, the stanzas implode the concept of Black femininity: lines take us through the strictures of oppression through a compliance to feminine norms. In this, strikes are made to the concept of 'normalcy' itself.
The real message of the poem takes shape through its movement between striking visual metaphors, carnal emphatics, and also personal narrative touches. For instance, one line, "I'll turn your womb into simply words", does the work of personifying female oppression, while also bringing attention to the ways that femininity is culturally constructed. Through this, readers are empowered to question their subjugation to feminine or Black feminine roles.
Through strong lines such as "the flower is an illusion of the mind", Murry deconstructs feminist, all while calling out egoism, "complacency", and other forces acting against Black female being. Though the poem operates mysteriously, the last stanzas seem to re-construct empowered femininity through a first-person voice. With a striking contrast to the ornate allegories of the first two stanzas, Murry writes: "In my ritual / I’ll repent to the mirror,...Unapologetically me, Woman".
Read an excerpt of "A Flower is Meat" here and also read the entire poem in Volume 22: Revolution, available in both digital and print on October 29, 2024.
A Flower is Meat
We were all born naked
Shame foreign to our minds,
Flowers swaying to gentle wind
Picked and left to waste away
“Compliance,
Worship the soil and the air
Danced by the will of you father
And under the nurturing of your mother.”
Those ancient words will fester
Peeling away at the lies
To betray our modest origins
Egos
Individuals who exist
who fed on the limbs of complacency
And bathe in tar
We’ll dance around a fire
As the tar hardens our skin
In the middle is ash-
It is your liver, spine, and heart
...
