11 Eb
Yellow Spectral
Human
Of all the crimes
which humankind commits
Of all injustices
and harms likewise
Slavery no valid
defense permits
Yet it prevails in
all lands in disguise
Like Osiris we are
bound in coffins
Made of flesh and
blood in third dimension
The soul as
butterfly beneath the pins
Caught in matter
without comprehension
The theft of freedom
maims adult and child
Akin to savage
severing of limb
The spirit born to
thrive within the wild
Can never soar,
explore, express or climb
Imprisoned by Birth
and Bondage are we
Thus One cannot fly
unless All are free.
©Kleomichele Leeds
Bianca Lynn Spriggs
Bianca Lynne Spriggs is a Black American poet and multidisciplinary artist born in Milwaukee, WI in 1981. She currently resides in Athens, OH where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University. An Affrilachian Poet, she is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications, 2010), How Swallowtails Become Dragons (Accents Publishing, 2011), The Galaxy is a Dance Floor (Argos Books, 2016), and Call Her By Her Name (Northwestern University Press, 2016). She is the editor of The Swallowtale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women (2012), and co-editor of the anthologies, Circe's Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women (Accent's Publishing, 2015), Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More (Apex Publications, 2017), and Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets(University of Kentucky Press, 2018).
Spriggs's work is considered primarily speculative in nature drawing upon mythology, folklore, surrealism, and science fiction for inspiration. She often focuses on the connections between art and community and the identity of Black women in the American South. From 2006 to 2012, she was the creator and artistic director of the annual Wild Women of Poetry Slam at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. In 2013, her poem "The ________ of the Universe: A Love Story" was tattooed onto 248 residents of Lexington as part of the Lexington Tattoo Project. Also in 2013, at Transylvania University's Morlan Gallery, she collaborated with videographer Angel Clark to curate the multimedia exhibit "The Thirteen," which memorialized 13 black women who were lynched or killed in Kentucky. She was featured on the track "Hypnopomp (Epilogue)" in CunninLynguists' 2011 album Oneirology.
Her passion for poetry sprouted from the visual arts, once she found solace in writing poems and stories. Her writing evolved into a career once she applied to be a writer for the Kentucky Foundation for Women and decided to pursue this practice as a full-time job. Her inspiration comes from her love for storytelling: "Sometimes writing is telling my own story through (other people), and sometimes, it’s telling their stories through my own."
Education
Spriggs graduated from Transylvania University in 2003 with a degree in history and a minor in studio art. She received her M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2005 and in 2017, she received her PhD in English at the University of Kentucky.
Awards
Spriggs is a 2013 recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a recipient of five Artist Enrichment Grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, including an Arts Meets Activism grant. She was also named one of the Top 30 Black Performance Poets in the U.S. by TheRoot.com. She was the recipient of the 2016 Sallie Bingham Award for feminist expression in the arts. She was also a Cave Canem Fellow in 2006, 2007, and 2010.*
KAN
Kin 232: Yellow Spectral Human
I dissolve in order to influence
Releasing wisdom
I seal the process of free will
With the spectral tone of liberation
I am guided by my own power doubled.
Our identity is a vehicle or a "signature" we use to transmit or receive higher energetic collective communication.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2018-2019.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Sahasrara Chakra (Dali Plasma)
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