Pregnant Poems

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993

Toni Morrison’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1993

“Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I entered this hall pleasantly haunted by those who have entered it before me. That company of Laureates is both daunting and welcoming, for among its lists are names of persons whose work has made whole worlds available to me. The sweep and specificity of their art have sometimes broken my heart with the courage and clarity of its vision. The astonishing brilliance with which they practiced their craft has challenged and nurtured my own. My debt to them rivals the profound one I owe to the Swedish Academy for having selected me to join that distinguished alumnae.

Early in October an artist friend left a message which I kept on the answering service for weeks and played back every once in a while just to hear the trembling pleasure in her voice and the faith in her words. “My dear sister,” she said, “the prize that is yours is also ours and could not have been placed in better hands.” The spirit of her message with its earned optimism and sublime trust marks this day for me.

I will leave this hall, however, with a new and much more delightful haunting than the one I felt upon entering: that is the company of Laureates yet to come. Those who, even as I speak, are mining, sifting and polishing languages for illuminations none of us has dreamed of. But whether or not any one of them secures a place in this pantheon, the gathering of these writers is unmistakable and mounting. Their voices bespeak civilizations gone and yet to be; the precipice from which their imaginations gaze will rivet us; they do not blink nor turn away.

It is, therefore, mindful of the gifts of my predecessors, the blessing of my sisters, in joyful anticipation of writers to come that I accept the honour the Swedish Academy has done me, and ask you to share what is for me a moment of grace.”

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1993, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1994
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1993

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/speech/

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 was awarded to Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality".

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Bye.

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Thrilled that my inaugural poem will now be printed as a special commemorative book by @penguinrandomhouse , with a foreword by the incomparable @oprah (thank you so much for jumping on board when I asked! I can’t imagine a better person to have written this introduction). I’ve gotten so many requests for the poem’s text, and I’m so grateful that I can gift it to the world in a new way. You can PRE-order this special Spring edition at the link in bio.
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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/689867/the-hill-we-climb-by-amanda-gorman-foreword-by-oprah-winfrey/

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“The poet in the Acholi tradition, is not just someone who says the flower is beautiful because it's beautiful, but gathers people to think and talk about whatever it is they're doing and what’s happening around them,” says Shadbolt Fellow Otoniya Okot Bitek.

“For me, as an Acholi poet, the poem is the container, the space and opportunity for people to gather in community.”

http://ow.ly/ILuj50DiLeU

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Nobel Prize

"You have to live your life if you’re going to do original work. Your work will come out of an authentic life, and if you suppress all of your most passionate impulses in the service of an art that has not yet declared itself, you’re making a terrible mistake.

When I was young I led the life I thought writers were supposed to lead, in which you repudiate the world, ostentatiously consecrating all of your energies to the task of making art. I just sat in Provincetown at a desk and it was ghastly - the more I sat there not writing the more I thought that I just hadn’t given up the world enough. After two years of that, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be a writer. So I took a teaching job in Vermont, though I had spent my life till that point thinking that real poets don’t teach. But I took this job, and the minute I started teaching - the minute I had obligations in the world - I started to write again."

- Louise Glück, awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.

Read more in this Q&A with the poet: https://www.pw.org/content/internal_tapestries

Download for free!

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- https://www.theafricantheatremagazine.com/namasagali-college-how-the-school-became-ugandas-arts-hub/

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Pregnant poems beget pregnant smiles.