Black Lives Matter Mural Trail Scotland

2020 was the strangest year. So tough in many ways but some wonderful things also happened. I became an auntie again, found support in disabled and writing communities, leaned deep into writing poetry and had some poems published. One of the most exciting commissions I had was to create work for the Black Lives Matter Mural Trail Scotland.

The trail was developed by producer Wezi Mhura in response to the rise in awareness in Scotland (and across the world) of the Black Lives Matter movement. Read more about the trail, the locations and the artists involved on Wezi’s website.

The poem is called ‘Beloved Black’ and it is a poem filled with love for my Black Scottish and African-Caribbean family and the diaspora. Scroll down for an Instagram post with images and descriptions of the poem in situ outside the Museum of Edinburgh and a video of me reading the poem by the CAHSS (College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences) Webteam, University of Edinburgh.

 

Beloved Black

Black is the absorption of all visible light

You are the sea at night

You are the hands that hold the stars in those early, wakeful hours

of parenthood

You are hope

 

Black was the first pigment used in art

You are charcoal soft

You are ancient stories handed down, whispers woven

through spacetime

You are the first

 

Black is the absorption of all visible light

Shadow-friend

You are the space that mourns the stars, trust and trusted,

shelter from storms

You are love

 

Black was the first pigment used in art

You are a poem

Boundless tones of ink dancing, across papyrus pages,

weaving word-magick

You are deep joy

 

Black is the absorption of all visible light

Eyes closed,

Let yourself be wrapped in an unexpected embrace

from an old friend

 

All pigments mixed together create Black

Elemental

You are the lively night,

in raining forests, gifting breath

Your revolution revolves around an axis: a raised fist

Quilted in memory,

you resist

 

Black is the absorption of all visible light

You are life

You are the scattered dust of stars, full-spectrum,

generating the cosmos throughout spacetime

You are a gift

 

 

 

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A post shared by Jeda Pearl Lewis (@jedapearl)

 

Jeda Pearl Lewis’ poem at Museum of Edinburgh from CAHSS Webteam on Vimeo.