as purple shades
usher in the night
i lock myself
in our room
darkly hemmed in by
memories
we almost shared
in the pressing darkness
i reach out
to pull the purple nightshade
as a comforter to surround me
no longer taunted
i submit.
Amelia Blossomhouse is a South African in exile and an internationally published author. She currently does dramatic readings of her poetry to live percussion. Our Sun Will Also Rise, a collection of poetry, is just out on Three Continents Press.
The Zambian novelist on using tropes to upend them, the power of mistakes, writing female desire, and more.
The Freshwater author on the ogbanje, Igbo, rejecting gender binaries, and using private journals as creative archives.
“My imagination was shaped in a period of extreme rigidity in the social and political system. The apartheid system was about putting physical space between people. So an encounter with the other, with the neighbor or the stranger, has always seemed central to me.”
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with Patrick McGrath, Craig Lucas, Mary Ellen Mark, Isabel Toledo, Guy Gallo, Gary Indiana, David Kapp, Bobbie Ann Mason, Roland Legiardi-Laura, John Ford Noonan, Roni Horn, and Richard Edson.
Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it.
Kara Walker
