Photo Credit: Latria Graham & ESPNw
Back in the early days when people first discovered I loved poetry they would often ask me to compose poems for special occasions. Easter poems, Holiday poems, poems for Mrs. Scott's 90th birthday. I was honored to do this when I was 13 or 14. The request made me feel like I was doing my part for my community. Just like the carpenter or the farmer or the midwife. The tradition of being asked to make a new poem has followed me in my life. I don't do it as often as I used to. But what those early years taught me was how my mind works when thinking about how to build a poem.
I have always looked for a window and not a front door to step through. I love the research involved in writing. I love rubbing two disparate stones together to see what sparks fly in the end. I was asked over the summer to craft two new poems for the ESPNW summit that happened just this past weekend. We launched the poems on Friday and Saturday and I got to meet my shero Paulette Leaphart. The poem that opened the summit focused on the power of athleticism and intelligence in girls and women which is rarely talked about. The stunning things that women had invented and given to this world that nobody seems to want to talk about. The title of that one, "Ode to the Girl On a Wheel" is here. But we begin with the photo of my shero, the woman who stopped me in my tracks and reminded me of what a woman is truly made of: Iron & Lavender. "Topless In America" can be found here. We need this story. We need this woman before us. We need this woman and what she did on the tip of our tongues.
— Nikky