The Poetical Influence of Audre Lorde

My name is Kaylie Gingras, and the title of my work is ‘The Poetical Influence of Audre Lorde’. The license I have chosen to utilize is the CC BY-NC-ND.

The poetical works of Audre Lorde have influenced women’s rights activists and racial rights activists, as well has environmental activists and/or those fighting for the overall betterment of our world, both physically (through the environment) and societally (through fighting for justice for women and African Americans). She continuously was a major proponent for speaking out against any perceived injustice whenever fully capable.

In much of her works the theme of anger being a tool is often present. Such is the case with her poem ‘Who Said It Was Simple’ where she states “There are so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes the branches shatter before they bear”. In this excerpt, it is showing how the many causes for anger can affect someone’s work and/or state of mind. In her poem ‘Coal’ Lorde explains “Some words are open/ Like a diamond on glass windows/ Singing out within the crash of passing sun”. Words- angry words- can crash and shatter and change what once was. They can impact the world in a way that false promises cannot. Another theme often utilized in Audre Lorde’s poetry is that the environment and humanity are continuously connected. In the poem ‘Afterimages’ Lorde compares African Americans (specifically African American women) to dragonfish because they are constantly adapting to new dangers and threats and ways of life. The poem also contains lines such as “my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock” where she uses the metaphor to describe the toll that the horrors she’s seen and lived through have taken. Lorde also uses the idea of reclaiming nature to also talk about the reclamation of identity, and of finding justice for those who have been irreparably wronged.

Audre Lorde wrote poetry to express the feelings and opinions she could find no other way to express. Her anger towards a society filled with blatant, and sometimes violent, racism, as well as prejudice against women. As shown in the first image, she was thoughtful and did not publish or say anything without weighting whether the benefits were worth the risk of consequences. She realized that with her ability to speak out against injustice there was no way she couldn’t act. Thus, (like stated in the above image) fear became irrelevant. Especially faced with some of the horrendous actions being committed at the time. For instance, the event spoken of in her poem ‘Afterimages’- the lynching of Emmit Till. Then with all of this, she ties in the environmental side of everything. Our treatment of each other in society is related to our treatment of the environment. If we can change one, we can change the other.

Audre Lorde’s work inspired people to start speaking out against injustice themselves. Many people included her work and her quotes in their own novels and pieces of writing, for example the one shown above: ‘Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth’. Lorde’s words have been put on signs made for protests and, to this day, continue to be used as fuel for all kinds of activists. Society needed to change, and she decided she was going to be a part of it. She fought against any and all perceived injustice; her poetry helped fuel movements.