It's Fierce Friday, y'all! I'm happy to introduce you to the inaugural Heart of the Pamlico Poet Laureate Malaika King Albrecht, a most fierce woman I am happy to know. I can't wait to see what she brings to Eastern North Carolina's poetry scene this year!

"I’m most passionate about women’s rights and have worked in the field of sexual assault awareness and domestic violence prevention most of my adult life. It’s frustrating to hear the same myths being said and disputed decade after decade. If someone hit me on the head with a frying pan, no one would confuse that with cooking." Malaika King Albrecht

Out of all of your accomplishments, what are you most proud of and why?

Can children be called accomplishments? Certainly, raising them well is a feat, and as a single mom. Yet though I‘ve been a big part of the ever-unfolding path of their selves, so much of who my daughters are is who they were from the beginning. My daughters have grown into strong-willed, young women, unafraid to be their quirky selves, and I’m immensely proud of them.

Song for Baby-O, Unborn
By Diane di Prima

Sweetheart
when you break thru
you’ll find
a poet here
not quite what one would choose.

I won’t promise
you’ll never go hungry
or that you won’t be sad
on this gutted
breaking
globe

but I can show you
baby
enough to love
to break your heart
forever

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it? How did you become interested in it/ where did you get the idea for it?

I’ve been working on my 4th book since moving to Ayden nearly 6 years ago, and it’s been at a slower pace because I like to move between creative projects, such as working on paintings or my magazine Redheaded Stepchild or gardening. The book has several themes, and the recurring image of ghosts, or the after images left by events, people, experiences in our lives. I can’t recall the impetus for the first poem that came but certainly the small graveyard in the back of my woods sparked ideas and then being startled by the barred owl that lives back there.

Ars Poetica?
By Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I’ve devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read,
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

Berkeley, 1968

What issue are you currently most passionate about? What is the one thing you would like people to know or understand about this issue?

I’m most passionate about women’s rights and have worked in the field of sexual assault awareness and domestic violence prevention most of my adult life. It’s frustrating to hear the same myths being said and disputed decade after decade. If someone hit me on the head with a frying pan, no one would confuse that with cooking. And damn sure no one would ask me if I enjoyed the meal, or what was I wearing, or had I ever eaten a meal before, or was I hungry or did I give any suggestions that I might be hungry. The poem below was published in 1982.

Rape Poem
by Marge Piercy

There is no difference between being raped
and being pushed down a flight of cement steps
except that the wounds also bleed inside.

There is no difference between being raped
and being run over by a truck
except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it.

There is no difference between being raped
and being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake
except that people ask if your skirt was short
and why you were out alone anyhow.

There is no difference between being raped
and going head first through a windshield
except that afterward you are afraid
not of cars
but half the human race.

The rapist is your boyfriend’s brother.
He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn.
Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male
like a maggot in garbage.

Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing
all of the time on a woman’s hunched back.
Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pine woods,
never to climb a trail across a bald
without that aluminum in the mouth
when I see a man climbing toward me.

Never to open the door to a knock
without that razor just grazing the throat.
The fear of the dark side of hedges
the back seat of the car, the empty house
rattling keys like a snake’s warning.
The fear of the smiling man
in whose pocket is a knife.
The fear of the serious man
in whose fist is locked hatred.

All it takes to cast a rapist to be able to see your body
as jackhammer, as blowtorch, as adding-machine-gun.
All it takes is hating that body
your own, your self, your muscle that softens to flab.

All it takes is to push what you hate,
what you fear onto the soft alien flesh.
To bucket out invincible as a tank
armored with treads without senses
to possess and punish in one act,
to rip up pleasure, to murder those who dare
live in the leafy flesh open to love.

What female author’s work would you recommend and why?

Lucille Clifton! Lucille Clifton! Lucille Clifton! I had the good fortune of being on the advisory board for Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University when Joanne Gabbin and Nikki Giovanni hosted a memorial celebration for Lucille Clifton on September 21, 2010. The tribute program, “73 Poems for 73 Years: Celebrating the Life of Lucille Clifton,” brought together poets from all around the country who read her poems and reflected on her life. I could’ve listened to poets read her poems all night, and I don’t know many poets that I would want to hear 73 of their poems in a row. I don’t think you can find this poem online, but here’s the one I read after Rita Dove (OMG fan girling so hard that night that I don’t remember walking on or off stage).

water sign woman
Lucille Clifton

the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word.

they say to the feel things woman
that little she dreams is possible,
that there is only so much
joy to go around, only so much
water. there are no questions
for this, no arguments. she has
to forget to remember the edge

of the sea, they say, to forget
how to swim to the edge, she has
to forget how to feel. the woman
who feels everything sits in her
new house retaining the secret
the desert knew when it walked
up from the ocean, the desert,

so beautiful in her eyes;
water will come again
if you can wait for it.
she feels what the desert feels.
she waits.

Name one woman who has influenced you/ had an impact on you, perhaps as a mentor. Why and how did she impact your life?

There are so many women I’ve been fortunate to learn from and who’ve had deep impact on me. I’ll name Peggy Shumaker because she was my first poetry teacher and had a special gift of drawing out each student’s best work. She has much to do with why I kept writing no matter what because she encouraged me in my first few steps of sharing work, learning how to critique and edit, and in finding my voice. Not only is she a gifted poet, she’s a kind and generous soul! Her work can be found here: http://www.peggyshumaker.com/index.shtml

The Story of Light
By Peggy Shumaker

Think of the woman who first touched fire
to a hollow stone filled with seal oil,
how she fiddled with fuel and flame
until blue shadows before and after her
filled her house, crowded
the underground, then
fled like sky-captains
chasing the aurora’s whale tale
green beyond the earth’s curve.
Her tenth summer, the elders let her
raise her issum, seal pup orphaned
when hunters brought in her mother,
their grins of plenty
broad, red. The women
slit the hard belly.
Plopped among the ruby innards
steaming on rough-cut planks
blinked a new sea-child
whose first sound
came out a question
in the old language, a question
that in one throaty bark
asked who, meaning What family
is this? What comfort
do you provide for guests?
Do you let strangers remain
strangers? The women rinsed the slick pup
in cool water, crafted a pouch
for her to suck. Then the young girl
whose hands held light
even when the room did not
brought this new being
beside her bed, let it scatter
babiche and split birch
gathered for snowshoes, let it
nose the caribou neck hairs
bearding her dance fans. They
held up the fans to their foreheads,
playing white hair, playing old.
In the time when women do not sew
the seal danced at her first potlatch.
And when the lamps burned down,
no one could see
any difference between waves
in rock, waves in sea.
The pup lifted her nose, licked
salt from seven stars, and slipped
light back among silvers and chum
light among the ghostly belugas
swimming far north to offer themselves.

Malaika King Albrecht is the inaugural Heart of the Pamlico Poet Laureate and the author of three poetry books. Her most recent book What the Trapeze Artist Trusts (Press 53) won honorable mention in the Oscar Arnold Young Award and was a finalist in 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her chapbook Lessons in Forgetting was published by Main Street Rag and was a finalist in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received honorable mention in the Brockman Campbell Award. Main Street Rag also published her second book Spill in 2011. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and nominated for Pushcarts. Her poems have won awards in several contests, including at Poetry Southeast, the North Carolina Poetry Council, Salem College and Press 53. She’s the founding editor of Redheaded Stepchild, an online magazine that only accepts poems that have been rejected elsewhere. She lives in Ayden, N.C. with her family and is a therapeutic riding instructor.