Hello and welcome back to The Earth Sea Love Podcast.
Thank you for being here for our next episode in our new series, Practicing Creative Fugitivity.
I’m your host Dr. Sheree Mack and I had the great pleasure of talking with Beverley Thomas in this episode.
*The Re-Education of Beverley Thomas, is the title taken in part from Beverley’s PhD from Sheffield University. A creative PhD around Black Expresssion, in this conversation, we talk about:
* Professor Jason Arday and the public lynching
* Rage, fear and intimidation
* Being in support of Arday in private and public
* Referring to the other podcasts in this series, episode 083 with Pauline Mayers and episode 084 with Rite Gayle
* Not accepting the term non-human other
* We are both human and divine
* White Feminism ‘v’ Black Feminism
* ‘Ungendered’ not recognised as female/ woman
*Fugitive Feminism in community
* Understanding ‘fugitivity’
* Experiencing every day racism
* Divesting from society and refusal of the social positions assigned to us
* Childhood and education, denying our intelligence
* Claude AI and his understanding of ‘decentring the human’
* The characteristics of white supremacy culture
* The Re-Education of Beverley Thomas, the creative PhD experience
* Being less stressed and more creative
* Beverley’s takeaways from the book Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu;
1. “For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we
call america, we have had to learn this first and most
vital lesson – that we were never meant to survive. Not
as human beings … And that visibility [as Black women]
which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is
the source of our greatest strength … We can learn
to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way
we have learned to work and speak when we are tired.”
Audre Lorde, qtd. in Emejulu, p.79
2. ‘The Dream Keeper’ (1932) – Langston Hughes
Bring me all of you dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
Langston Hughes, qtd. in Emejulu, p. 85
3. “that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.”
Gwendolyn Brooks, qtd, in Emejulu, p. 87
Bio:
Beverley (Bev) Thomas is a writer who completed her creative writing doctorate in the School of English at the University of Sheffield and is currently awaiting the outcome of her examination. Her research explores identity — particularly Black British, Caribbean, and African diasporic identity — through the prism of trauma, double consciousness, homosexuality, family secrets, slavery, the supernatural, the mystical, and Afrofuturism.
She has been published in several magazines, including Bad Form and Dream Catcher. Her poetry was exhibited in the ‘Being Human’ national festival in November 2021 (His House to Our Home, a 3D virtual exhibition). She has guest lectured on Octavia Butler, spoken to an international audience for the Daring to Dare developmental programme, appeared on Ella Mesma’s podcast Power Up (2022), and was a speaker at the University of Sheffield English Colloquium 2022.
She is now turning her attention to script writing, building on the storytelling grounded in her doctoral research.
– His House to Our Home (3D virtual exhibition)
The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk
This track is SOUL CHOIR BY KETSA
This series is funded by Arts Council England