In fourth grade, I wrote my first poem. Born on Nisqually and Squaxin ancestral lands (Washington), my pen fluttered across papers graded by white teachers who asked me, “Where did you learn to write like this?” as if I weren’t just a child exploring my curiosities. I whispered, “God taught me how to write.” I grew up archiving– tracing the corners of popcorn ceilings, staying up late, studying the depth of my feelings to remember myself when the grief of isolation sang fear into my heart. As a Pisces child born to older Black parents, I was taught to eradicate my feelings in a white world. To stay silent out of protection.

Through my silence, I became a magician. I learned to swim with the currents of generational trauma etched inside of my body by engaging with emotional alchemy. I’m aware that my magick is taboo; Black magick, Black matter, Black ink, Black queer, Black liberation. Everything I write is a spell. An affirmation of belonging, reclaiming, and remembering who I am.

My poems are rituals for survival. Atop my bookshelf sits Alex Pauline-Gumbs’ ode to Audre Lorde, “Survival is a Promise.” As a Black queer multidisciplinary artist, committing to survival is a commitment to a life of resistance that aids in collective liberation for all Black people. My poetry asks Black folx, “Who do we become when we reclaim what was taken?” 

At its center, it engages with ancestral memory and retrieval. It reflects the reverence, responsibility, and devotion I have for my ancestors and calls upon the Asante Sankofa tradition, which recognizes our past to inform our future. From Southern Gothic imagery to ritual repetition and sonic play, my poems resist closure, becoming transmutation devices that humanize and reindigenize the Black body.

This devotion extends beyond the page. As a DrawBridge Community Artist, I’ve facilitated poetry and art workshops for children living in transitional housing. With Youth Spirit Artworks, I guided unhoused and system-impacted youth ages 14–25 in exploring healing through poetry. My poetic narrative film, Line of Reverence, debuted with the Queer Woman of Color Media and Arts Project (QWOCMAP), archiving ancestral grief and joy through a cinematic ritual of return. My writing has been featured in Epiphany Spring/Summer Anthology (2024), SKEW Magazine (2023), and the 1619 Speaks Anthology (2023). Each of these offerings is another spell cast—toward remembrance, toward future, toward freedom.

– Ashanté J. Ford, 2025

Photo by Jesús Ochoa, Joaquín Miller Redwoods, Oakland CA 2024