One Breath Poem - Week 8

 

Wow where do I begin with this blog, such an amazing and peaceful experience. First off, this class we did a hybrid again where the first hour was online and the second half we met at the Serra Statue on campus near the Broad Art Center (T.E.U.C.L.A. 2006). We got to hear the lovely Xtine talk about her life and how she got involved in poetry. She is from Texas and came out to visit us for the class. She talked to us about a process called one breath poem. This seems self explanatory but it essentially is where you write a poem that can be recited in one breath. This is in collaboration with LabSynthE (Laboratory for Electronic and Synthetic Poetry) and you can also use this platform to submit a poem through a phone call (Letícia Ferreira 2020). 

After an hour, we met outside and all sat in a circle. Xtine gave us a more in depth introduction of what a one breath poem is like and why they are important. She talked to us about how this platform started. During the pandemic and with everyone being isolated, it was hard to feel needed because people felt so alone. Millions of us have felt lonely during the coronavirus pandemic. As we work together to stay safe and save lives, we may find ourselves spending less time with family, friends or familiar faces – especially if we’re shielding or self-isolating (Mental Health Foundation 2021). While people could use electronic devices to communicate with one another, it was such a difficult time to “breath.” There was so much going on in life where people were dealing with so many mental health issues, people were afraid to come back to normalcy, racism was skyrocketing, and so much more. On top of all of this, people were dying at such high numbers due to the fact that “they could not breathe.” How ironic. 

We briefly talked about Eric Garner who died Thursday, July 17, 2014. Eric Garner was killed in the New York City borough of Staten Island after Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, put him in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him. Video footage of the incident generated widespread national attention and raised questions about the use of force by law enforcement (Wikipedia 2014). This was brought to our attention when another man was killed named George Floyd. On May 25, Minneapolis police officers arrested George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, after a convenience store employee called 911 and told the police that Mr. Floyd had bought cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Seventeen minutes after the first squad car arrived at the scene, Mr. Floyd was unconscious and pinned beneath three police officers, showing no signs of life (New York Times 2020). This was such a hard time in so many people's lives and these poems were a place for people to have an outlet. 

We were given time in class to work in groups of four to write our own poems. We were supposed to find things in common and hopefully come to a conclusion to write our own one breath poem. The list that we created in terms of similarities: all roughly biology majors, life because biology, covid, mcat, medical school, graduation, two seniors, two juniors, disagreements, and protests. This led to our beautiful one breath poem that reads “life is really hard, biology is wacky, but it’s amazing.” Xtine recommended for all of us to read it individually to get a feel for what different words would be emphasized by what individual. I had such a fun time writing our poem and meeting this group! 

 

Citation:

 

Hill, Evan, et al. “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html. 

“Killing of Eric Garner.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 May 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner. 

Letícia Ferreira. “One Breath Poem.” Letícia Ferreira, 11 Sept. 2020, https://leticiaferreira.net/2020/09/10/one-breath-poem/. 

“Loneliness during Coronavirus.” Mental Health Foundation, 19 Jan. 2022, https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/coronavirus/loneliness-during-coronavirus#:~:text=Millions%20of%20us%20have%20felt,re%20shielding%20or%20self%2Disolating. 

“T.E.U.C.L.A.” Richard Serra, T.E.U.C.L.A., UCLA, Los Angeles, http://www.publicartinla.com/UCLAArt/serra.html.