Maia Brown-Jackson's writing
Maia Brown-Jackson
poetry, fiction, and more
I gave in and made a Substack
If you want so much more poetry and the odd thought on Societal Formalities I Think We Should Not Do, you can find them here on my Substack.
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A delightful new review for And My Blood Sang
Maia Brown-Jackson has the ability to harness the rawness of spirit, the rage that ricochets through each and every available vessel of the body, and filters through a mind that not only sees but acknowledges the space between us. These cracks are not sites of separation but an opportunity to see the beauty contained within. The poetry practice of reframing kintsugi as a reverse blackout poetry style is the golden thread that binds together each of these poems into an alchemical force that bends and folds darkness into something that shimmers, forcing the fear of the unknown into something tangible we can touch, grab hold of, and use to lead us back out of the long-corrupted labyrinthine passages of an overgrown forest, desperate to be tended to, and split back against nature with gold. We begin to see the light.
Leonard Cohen wrote the inimitable line “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in” and who we are when the light shines on us from between the cracks is who we are destined to be. What songs do we sing back into the void? Especially when we cannot often expect a response.
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This entire collection reads as an open wound that affects your gait as you retrace your own heavy footsteps in the dark, dripping, smearing shreds of yourself along the path as you find your way back to light, needling with elbows to make space to sing a little louder from the back row, torn between picking away at the scab and letting time heal over your cracked lips, a guilty pleasure and a sordid pain that harmonises with the insatiable ritual of the letting of your blood, maybe one day the gods will forget about you, and you’ll allow yourself the sacred space to be free from the deep thick treads of your past lives, all at once lived as one Woman and all women, and then will you sing?
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This book contains very personal stories of grief and trauma that are at once intimate and exploratory. A true vivisection of the trauma-contorted mind broken down and annotated, recovering, and delivering a map that points to the source of our own light and power, so that we may be resurrected as a temple to ourselves, and sing our own songs anew.
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I think you will all agree that Maia Brown-Jackson is an incredible & vital voice in the contemporary poetry landscape with a particularly acute resilience in the face of the violent, & turbulent world we currently live in. Though I’m not entirely sure of her direct poetic inheritance, but I would certainly place the work alongside such visionary & luminary poets as Richard Siken, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, & Audre Lorde, for their confessional styles, willingness to confront uncomfortable truths, and alchemising power to transform the shitty into something ornate & intricate.
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I very much look forward to reading your next collection when the time comes. Keep shining your light, and where you go I may always follow.
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Matter is not created nor destroyed. My body is the same age as the universe. The atoms that make me up are only mine for a brief instant, I realize. Where else have they been? What have they done, seen? I wonder who I’m carrying tiny pieces of. I wonder what.
ABOUT MAIA
aia is a symphony of papercuts, banged-up knees, and stubborn determination. She believes in the altruism of strangers, the power of direct action, and the use of the Oxford comma. She strives to offer what she can; here, that offering is her words.
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One of the organizations closest to Maia’s heart is the Yuva Organization for Children's Rights. The initial spark of this organization was born the day after the Islamic State first attacked Duhola Village in their ruthless massacre in Sinjar in August 2014. One brave man, who she is honored to call a dear friend, found a way to take action despite the hopelessness of the moment. He took it upon himself to distract the children of Duhola from the violence and fear through education. Ten years later, his efforts have graduated from huddling on mountainsides hoping for rescue to building entire schools in areas previously devastated by the Islamic State. If you want to learn more or donate to help their cause, you can go here.
