About this item
Highlights
- Florida Water is a collection of poems that, like the cleansing waters of spiritual baths, rinse, reflect, and reveal the raw truths that lie within.
- About the Author: aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY.
- 140 Pages
- Poetry, American
Description
Book Synopsis
Florida Water is a collection of poems that, like the cleansing waters of spiritual baths, rinse, reflect, and reveal the raw truths that lie within.
In this vulnerable meditation, aja monet reflects on her migration to South Florida in search of love, connection, and belonging, unearthing the delicate balance between the poet, lover, and community organizer. These poems lay bare the tender dance of relationships, entwining the personal with the political, as they confront the state's fractured history of racial prejudice, marooned peoples, and the unruly forces of nature.
In Florida Water, each poem is an artifact--an offering from her time spent wading through the rising tides of climate change, heartbreak, and systemic violence. With each line, monet immerses us deeper into the water, where the currents of memory, struggle, and survival pull us toward both despair and hope.
Review Quotes
"This is aja monet at her most lucid and vulnerable, offering an intimate portrait in love, drowning in it, and kissing us each time she comes up for air. The politics of love and memory betrothed to a poet's passion to touch and be touched by perspective--and in real ways--she holds herself in her own arms, yet somehow we, all our loved ones and blessed ancestors, fit in her embrace. Here is where maturity and grace never forgets to remind us of its edge, its pain, and unanswered questions--where a moment in time finds its timelessness. Here is a poet ripening beyond her bruises, clear-eyed and lovingly, sprinkling holy water on angels and demons alike."
--Saul Williams
"aja monet always opens the portal. Her open-hearted, wisdom-thick voice takes us backwards into a soul movement where everything felt possible and forward into the loving future we deserve at the same time. Read her work and prepare to time travel into the possibilities of your own heart and our beloved community."
--Alexis Pauline Gumbs
"The stewards of this land and the Africans dragged here tell us water is life. Channeling ancestral wisdom, aja monet shows us water is also love, power, reflection, blue(s), bodies. Water heals, cleanses, blesses; it gives life and can take it away. Water is older than history and yet never forgets. aja monet's poems are water, and these poems were born at the crossroads of the world, where Turtle Island meets the Caribbean Sea. In this death-dealing world, Florida Water will quench our collective thirst for living."
--Robin D. G. Kelley
"aja monet is a poet's poet. She uses the language like a painter. Her pen is a brush creating pastel colors of remembrance and how the world is now. There is pain, hope, and love in her work. You can almost taste and truly feel it. She is true to the very idea of what poetry does. She speaks to the mind and soul of the reader. She breaks down the simple truths of the flaws of America and the bitter taste it leaves in your mouth. She believes in community and the tenderness of being loved. Her poetry demands that you think and be honest with yourself. She is a revolutionary with an arsenal of things to do to bring about change. Her love and grief for humanity is paramount. Her hopes and dreams are for a better world. Her childhood innocence makes her guilty of fighting for justice."
--Abiodun Oyewole
About the Author
aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007 and aja monet follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her first full collection of poems is titled My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, from Haymarket Books. Her poems explore gender, race, migration, and spirituality. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. aja monet co-founded a political home for artists and organizers called Smoke Signals Studio. She facilitates "Voices: Poetry for the People," a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. aja Monet also serves as the new Artistic Creative Director for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls.