About Angela Martinez Dy
Angela Martinez Dy, poet, spoken word artist and emcee with isangmahal arts kollective roots. Performance poet since fourteen, and founding member, mentor and educator for youth poetry organization Youth Speaks Seattle, Angela became its Program Director in 2005. She has been integral in bringing young people's voices to the forefront of the poetry community in Seattle and nationwide. She teaches poetry and performance to youth and organizes an annual youth slam series, culminating in a team representing Seattle at the National Youth Poetry Festival. This past June, she was responsible for the production of the sold-out Seattle Youth Poetry Grand Slam.
Nominated by Youth Speaks Seattle
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Youth Speaks is changing Seattle through the power of words. Building a community through poetic cultural exchanges that transcend boundaries of age, race, class, culture, and sexual orientation, Youth Speaks aids personal transformation and nurtures self-expression by mentoring young poets, facilitating collaborative workshops, and creating supportive public performance opportunities with the goal of amplifying the often-silenced youth voice. Youth Speaks encourages young people to think critically, to write honestly, and to reclaim their own educational process so that the next generation of leaders may emerge.
INTIMATIONS OF FRIDA
by Angela Martinez Dy
There, upon his shoulder: the single patch of shadow
where your selves intersect -- he, a mountain of pendulous virtuosity,
you, the stalwart savior-figure glancing furtively over
a sloping crag. Stogie in hand, what he pens in his open notebook
is of your peculiar interest, sketches in pencil, blueprints promising art
on a scale as massive as their architect. Don Diego did nothing
in miniature, except when it came to you, the most fragile
camellia, you, the most vibrant, though you grow on the side
of the plant favored less by the sun.
In your work, you have depicted yourself plucked from the bush and plaited
impossibly into your own hair, your body brushed and tangled with
the brightly colored ribbons adorning the braids of your women,
adorning the braids of you, woman, real and surreal; sibyl, one who is able to see
multiple versions of herself at the same time.
Like no one else, you illustrated connection, oil-on-canvas joinings
of souls, sus almas macho y feminina, between the bodies
of you, tortured mother, and your newly lost infant.
In paint, you bridged the forest
of brow with which you shielded from the world
eyes that saw much, maybe too much.
Too early. As if the world wasn't ready for you,
hands upon hips, all angles and furrows
and a glowing intensity visible in the waves
of your tresses, here tamed, but only for the time being,
something like you, tamed only for the time being,
while at night you wish yourself back into the wild,
dream of the body that betrayed you rising and flying far from this place
that was never prepared for the incalculable brightness
of your sharp, sharp eyes.