Alyvia Norris is a senior at UMass Boston, majoring in Anthropology and Social Psychology. Lyv has a passion for service, and has worked and volunteered on campus and in her communities for the past five years. She has recently accepted a position with AIDS Action Committee.
In addition to attending UMB full time, working, and being involved in student leadership, she is also a big sister with Big Sisters Boston. Outside of these things, Lyv enjoys writing, watching Netflix, going on adventures with friends, and hanging out at home with family.
"Once I can write about it, especially when I’m hurting, I can put the pain someplace else and into that poem and it stays there, instead of inside of me."
untitled
by: Alyvia Norris
I am a healer of those who break me.
Leaving every love shattered.
Giving them their missing piece as mine scatter,
you knew I could heal you,
and for that I am flattered.
That you would use me as your own,
the one that makes fractured men whole.
Fierce enough to light fire in their hearts,
and send them on their way again.
Ships to the sea, I won't keep you at shore.
Never enough to bring your light to my house,
but I still will be here for you.
In case you meet waves like circumstances that aren't meant for you,
and women like winds that push against you and never in your favor.
They will break you down,
and you will let them.
You know where to find me when you're ready for more.
You'll come looking, then.
I will be what you spy on your treasure map.
Always at the pit of your stomach,
while waiting in the dark and praying for the sun,
before you find out if God grants man's wishes,
or if man has been lying in God's name.
Every time you set out to sea it will always be the same.
You will meet circumstances that are not meant for you,
and women like winds that will push against you.
They will break you down and cut through your heart,
and you will let them.
All to run back to me and cry how they tore you apart.
I, am your beacon on a stormy night
and, the north star that will always guide you home.
I am the love you begged God for.
When he sends you back to me you will curse his name,
and ache about why he doesn’t love you.
And I will wonder why you couldn't love me.
When I get motion sick on land, learn how to recover me.
Tell me you'll stop coming back,
and you'll just never leave again.
Don't let me sail into the eye of storm.
Return my pieces and tell me not to go to sea.
Tell me there is nothing as magical in any ocean as my lips against your neck on a cold summer night,
and nothing as warm as the breath of my laugh on your ear when we play fight.
Tell me you found nothing at sea and you thought about flight,
but realized you left your light on land.
And in all that she is- she was God herself,
the name you cursed when your heart wasn't full enough,
and the being you begged to love.
Until then, know I will always heal you.
Giving you all of me, still.
Will you understand that I am full of you?
Tell me you realized I am heaven, walking on earth.
TS: Tell me about your first exposure to poetry.
AN: My first exposure to poetry was probably watching YouTube videos or doing poetry assignments for class in high school.
TS: Tell me about your journey through poetry, what content did you deal with, what forms have you explored?
AN: I don’t really know much about form. I just kind of write as it feels appropriate for me. When I was younger there was a very big emphasis on making sure it rhymed but then I realized poetry doesn’t always have to rhyme, and that went away. At that time a lot of my poetry was focused on processing my different family dynamics, and things like that. I wrote poems to help me navigate how I was feeling at that time. Now, there’s a lot more about love and the ocean. I love the ocean and think that it’s healing for me.
TS: What have been your influences?
AN: I really love Alysia Harris. Her poem “The Happy Couple” is my favorite poem ever. That was probably the first poem I fell in love with when I was in high school. It also encouraged me to keep on writing because I loved the way it made me feel. I watched a lot of spoken word on YouTube, lots of poems by young black women specifically who had experiences similar to mine or were having feelings that I can relate to.
TS: How has your poetry changed from before to after coming out?
AN: I talk about women more in my poetry than I did before. Not just women in romantic relationships but women as god, women in spaces where people don’t look for women or believe there are women. In the poem I gave you, I talk about God as being a woman. I think just because I’m older now, my poetry has gotten better. It’s more fluid and powerful, but that is also may be because I’m coming to terms with who I am as a person.
TS: What challenges have you faced as a queer POC writer?
AN: I really only write for myself and my friends so I don’t face backlash these days. When I was younger, I would write about things related to my home life and the experiences I had growing up. I had a lot of socioeconomic, racial and ethnic differences from my classmates at the time. I went to a very rich, very white school so my teachers would be standoffish, or not really sure how to critique my work because they didn’t understand what I was talking about, since those weren’t experiences they’ve had or have had to navigate before. But never any, “you can’t write about this”, they didn’t really know what to say, they said very little. They had to watch their mouth, they weren’t sure what to say.
TS: Can you talk about the power of reclaiming space, and how you do that with your writing?
AN: Like you said, there’s a lot of power in reclaiming space and I think that I’ve found that a lot of me was made up of other people and societal ideas and expectations, so I had to reclaim a lot of space in myself. I think most of my growing came from reclaiming space in myself and giving myself the opportunity to grow and be different, and come to terms with who I am as a person. Also unlearning a lot of the problematic things I’d learned in the past. I think I got more power reclaiming myself than the spaces around me but both are very powerful. In my writing, it’s mine and I write a lot more for myself to help me process what I’m going through, what I’m feeling and where I’m at in life. I’m not writing to please anyone else, or to satisfy anyone else’s needs. I don’t write unless I have something to write about. So when I get the urge, I’ll take out my phone and write until it goes away, until it stops. I’m able to reclaim space in myself by making sure I’m doing things for me.
TS: Do you consider yourself an activist, how does this shine through in your writing?
AN: I don’t really call myself an activist. I think that I do a lot of community work and I’m involved in a lot of different causes, so I guess that would be what an activist does. I don’t know, I feel like that’s a really powerful title and I don’t think I yield that yet. I talk about things that are important to me and what’s important to me are things that are happening in my community. So in my writing, I talk about women’s empowerment and healing and make connections to what’s going on in the world.
TS: How have you healed through writing?
AN: You know how they say a picture freezes a moment? I feel like poems do that for me. I think that once I can write about it, especially when I’m hurting, I can put the pain someplace else and into that poem and it stays there, instead of inside of me. It’s a weight off of me.
TS: Name the poet that impacts you the most. Why?
AN: So The Strivers Row has some really amazing poets. One of them being Alysia Harris. I love “The Death Poem” and “Doing It Wrong” with Miles Hodges. Jasmine Mans, everything she writes, but specifically “Dear Ex Lover” and “Waiting”. I feel like those poems are all very raw and emotional. They’re all spoken word so you can watch them as they’re saying it. I feel like they’re all very transparent poets, you can feel what they’re feeling. For a lot of Alysia Harris’ poems, she’s in full tears after she reads them so you know it came from a really vulnerable place. It’s something I strive for, to be more vulnerable and transparent.
TS: Tell me a little about the poem you sent me.
AN: I talk about oceans and when you turn it to the side it kind of looks like waves, since it goes up and down that way and flows like the ocean. The moments where it’s bold, are the most important parts of the poem for me. I also don’t normally name poems. Oceans, water and rain are very healing, grounding and cleansing for me which is why I did that.
Review + Analysis of "untitled"
by: Tanairi Sorrentini
During our interview, Lyv spoke highly of a few poets of color that inspired her and whose spoken word performances truly moved her. Reading this poem made me feel the same way watching a Youtube video Yujane Chen perform at Brave New Voices in 2017* made me feel. While the subject matter is different, Chen was talking about queerness and the diaspora and Lyv presents a conflict in love set in the ocean, the chills you feel when you read/hear a truly remarkable poem were the same for both. The poem ebbs and flows visually, but also in regard to content, where she presents a conflict between someone who leaves and an unwavering constant, the narrator in the poem, who gives and gives no matter how many times they experience abandonment. Lyv’s use of italics and bolded lines work seamlessly throughout the poem as they highlight the moments in the poem where narrator exhibits pain, like “Will you understand that I am full of you?” toward the end of the poem. This piece feels exactly like the perspective of a mythological goddess of the sea regarding the countless travelers who will journey through her, without much regard to her. Books are filled with stories of travelers, but this is her story now, her pain to tell.
*Yujane Chen, Brave New Voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y039Jz4Zeh8