Sevens Up

Our Host

Dave Wooley is an English, Journalism and Creative Writing teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, where he has taught since 2001. He has served as a Co-Adviser for the school’s hybrid newspaper The Westword since 2003. He’s been an adjunct Professor at Fairfield University, teaching Philosophy of Hip Hop, and he is currently a teaching fellow at the Connecticut Writing Project. Dave has been involved with the Furious Flower Center for Black Poetry as a participating scholar in its last three Legacy Seminars and he is one of the authors of Furious Flower’s newly created open access syllabus, Opening the World of Black Poetry: A Furious Flower Syllabus. He lives in Stratford, Connecticut with his wife and four children.

Inspiration 

Whew! Today is Day 16 of Verselove, the halfway point in our month-long journey. I thought today would be the perfect point for a praise poem to celebrate the community of writers that we have coming to write during this month–and also offer a shorter form so that we can catch our breath a bit. I was introduced to the Kwansaba form through my participation with the Furious Flower Poetry Center and, last #Verselove, I wrote one and a couple of folks asked about the form, so I’m excited to offer the chance to explore it here. 

Process

The Kwansaba is an African-American poetic form that was created by Eugene Redmond in 1995. It is inspired by the seven days of Kwanzaa and it is a praise poem. 

The rules of the form are:
-it is a seven line poem,
-each line is seven words in length,
-each word is seven letters or less,
-and the poem should be a praise poem,
often celebrating family or African-American traditions.

So, you can see how the poem lives in the foundation of sevens as a spiritual, astrological, and cultural reference point. 

You can check out some great examples of kwansaba poems here, and below is an example from poet Angel Dye:

Dave’s Poem

30 Days

This space fosters friends and found family
A place to bare hearts, bear witness
To sharpen skills, purge pain, perform joy
It’s a daily sprint, a manic month
An invite to conjure thought to think–
Time alone to create, calls to comment,
Gifted this short time, in shared purpose.

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe.