Praise and Poems

Write Meet Read Ink on my Lips (2013)

Write Meet Read are a group of diverse writers who use writing to express experiences in their authentic voice. They meet regularly in each other’s houses to support, develop and provide critical feedback to new work.

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Editors

Sindi Gordon

Sindi Gordon is an award winning writer, filmmaker, programmer of film screenings, teacher of creative writing courses and, more recently, a doctoral student.

For more than 15 years she has lived and worked in the United States, South Africa,
Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Burking Faso, France and the United Kingdom.

She founded an organisation called Women of the Sun to offer support and training to women in the film industry. She
worked on a documentary series called Matters of Race in New York and she currently lives in Brighton with her son as she completes her PhD in Creative Writing and Personal Development.

Akila Richards

Akila Richards is a writer and spoken word artist of German and Liberian ancestry. Akila immigrated to the UK in 1984 and performed in theatre, collaboratively and solo in the UK.

Akila has been published in two antholo-gies with her short story ‘Eleven Years’ by Penguin in The Map Of Me in 2008 and her poem ‘Red Saviour’ in RED by Peepal Tree in 2010.

She works professionally in the creative and cultural sector.

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Mother Tree Continuity

by Irene Abena Adoma Mensah
(1963-2013)

I am in the arms of a mother tree
I am held in its circularity
I am being grown
I am its continuity.

Holding a mother tree’s tendrils
I am pained by their ageing deformity
She now shrunken has grown me tall
Will I be her continuity?

Scars are soothed through my
grandma tree
Comforting me with her solidarity
She grew my mother who then grew
me
We string of pearls swing in continuity.

Can I be a mothering tree?
Who will I take inside my circularity?
It takes so much to grow myself
Have I lost our continuity?