What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our fourth series, Object Lessons, poets meditate on the magical journey from object to poem via one of their own poems. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay. 
Sandra Lim
We were in a small, grim café.

She sipped pure black droplets
from a tiny cup.

Make him come back, she said,
her voice like something brought up intact
from the cold center of a lake.

It was the kind of story I like, and I wanted
to get it right, for later:

The hot morning in the café,
feeling encroached on by a cloud
of dusty ferns and creepers

and the low earth of duty.

I can’t read a book
all the way through, she said,
and most days I’m only unhappy.

My heart is always with the lovers.
from the journal SMARTISH PACE
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What Sparks Poetry:
Sandra Lim on “Black Box”

"Mysteriously, the speaker and the friend, and you and I, might become one mind in the poem; we could intuit something illegible but true, together. The energy of our consciousness is trying to make itself known by and against the energy of everything incomprehensible outside it."
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Black-and-white photograph of the exterior of the Greenwich Hotel, 1959
"Walcott in New York"

"Derek Walcott had many New Yorks, and all of them played a part in his life and in his evolution as a writer. But perhaps the most important of all his New York sojourns was the one from the Fifties, a nine-month period between 1958 and 1959 when Walcott lived in the city as a young man."
 
via NYR DAILY
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Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community

D.R.E.A.M.: "D.R.E.A.M. (Developing Responsible Economically Advanced Model-Citizens) is a cutting edge, financial education and advocacy 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to empowering underrepresented, urban youth by equipping them with the essential knowledge for life’s challenging financial decisions. "

Black Girls Code: "Our vision is to increase the number of women of color in the digital space by empowering girls of color ages 7 to 17 to become innovators in STEM fields, leaders in their communities, and builders of their own futures through exposure to computer science and technology."

EmbraceRace: "EmbraceRace was founded in early 2016 by two parents (one Black, the other multiracial Black/White) who set out to create the community and gather the resources they needed (need!) to meet the challenges they face raising children in a world where race matters." 
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We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world.
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