Writing poetry for me is an act of collecting. It requires me to be in a state of total surrender, to be able to listen where I haven’t before, to take notice of the silences around me. It also requires patience; some poems show up immediately and may need a lot of tending, while others may take years to be fully fleshed out. This act of collecting is often arduous, though somewhat rewarding. While I gather the poems, I keep going back to the speakers, I keep returning to those who sent me such received narratives. When I was writing my third collection, Nomenclatures of Invisibility, the speakers were my ancestors; they continued to show up, one way or another. I noticed them everywhere I went, whether I attended art shows, read books, or was simply in conversation with others. They continued to show up—nameless. And so, I took it upon myself to gather them, to gather ancestors and descendants, to bring visibility to these stories, to our stories. Writing poetry is an anomalous thing. Each poem requires a part of you that you didn’t know was there before. Be willing to be moved by it, be willing to go to the dark places, to be transformed by it, to let it transcend you, and others. If you get stuck, it’s okay to let things simmer. Once the poems are done sorting themselves out they will show up, and summon you into writing them.
—Mahtem Shiferraw, author of Nomenclatures of Invisibility (BOA Editions, 2023)