Poet's Corner: "Meditations in an Emergency" by Cameron Awkward-Rich

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

“Meditations in an Emergency” from Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). 

At night, blue & red lights blurred by water

Note: This poem is not in the public domain! Please use the link above to read it or consider purchasing or borrowing Cameron Awkward-Rich’s book. For an interesting juxtaposition, consider reading Frank O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency” from 1954, which comes from his book of the same name.

Cameron Awkward-Rich is a poet, essayist, and professor who explores an “artists’ ability to reimagine the politics of social worlds.” Awkward-Rich’s two poetry collections include: Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). Cameron is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and writes critical/scholarly essays such as his book, The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke University Press, 2022), which won the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies and the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in 2SLGBTQIA+ literature and cultural studies. Please read more about his life and work here!

I’ve long loved this poem, and couldn’t think of a better time to share it—or perhaps reshare it—with you. 

Let’s take a deeper look…

Firstly, the form is what we might call a prose poem—a block of text, which in this case, serves the content of the poem perfectly. It reads like a journal entry or a meditation that a reader can return to. One of my favourite craft choices in the poem is the juxtaposition of heartbreak with several things that, on the surface, might feel conflicting, such as waking and heartbreak or rain as thrilling and then heartbreaking. What a world we live in, where waking up in the morning breaks a heart. But there’s much more to heartbreak in “Meditations in an Emergency” than its ostensible meaning…

Gradually, what’s heartbreaking gathers like bunching cloth, growing more overwhelming. In suit, we’re asked to consider the necessity of heartbreak—to create cracks in space for all who break our hearts. The shift away from heartbreak’s frequent association with romantic relationships is powerful here. The people who break Awkward-Rich’s heart in the poem—and subsequently, ours—are not romantic partners. They’re people with whom we’re in a relationship in ways we don’t readily recognize, whether due to privilege, ignorance, or a blend of the two. And perhaps this is one role of the poet: to not only point out the emergencies people are experiencing, but bring forth the other, maybe more sinister emergency: that many don’t or choose not to witness their role in others’ emergencies.    

There are also striking images in the poem, such as “men in Monday suits” and running like fingers through the world’s hair. Hair, as an image, makes me think of care: detangling, combing, brushing, conditioning, tending, styling, braiding, tying up in elastics away from harm—all words applied to the unfolding of our lives. Hair is a beautiful metaphor for a world without borders, where wind blows it freely. In your world of hair—personally, communally, and globally—how do you care for it? How do you field both rage and softness?

“Children all of them” pauses me, every time: the vulnerability of being born is one we share, but it’s not one we all carry with us into adulthood. This is a breathtaking way of writing about the emergency of privilege and systemic violence. Again, rage and tenderness coexist. 

This poem also invokes curiosity about the word ‘dream’: the dream in which Cameron loves the world shares space with “the institution of dreaming.” How do these, together, help us see them as different? What is the institution of dreaming? What we dream about and hope to dream into being, I might argue, must be deinstitutionalized. Maybe the emergency is dreaming inside an institution where the manufactured dreams that come true maintain the status quo. 

Finally, the last two lines of  “Meditations in an Emergency” read something like, “I promise what I’m saying is true.” But what of the last line? Placing a hand on your heart to reassure yourself of its beating, perhaps to shield it, despite everything threatening to break it? Do we have heart attacks or is the heart attacked? How do we protect such a necessarily naive and resilient muscle, ungoverned by the thinking mind?

REMEMBER: That We Are Survivors

by Asante Haughton, ​for The 44 North

Guest Writer & Editor

Twitter: @asantetalks IG: @asantetalks Web: asantetalks.net

Asante Haughton is a TEDx Speaker, Human Rights Activist, Change-Maker, Dream Chaser, Visionary. Link to his TEDx talk here. 

A silhouette of a person looking up at a colourful galaxy

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“Humans have this phenomenal capacity to find meaning and purpose as a response to great difficulty. When we are confronted with a mountain that stands between the challenge of today and the providence of tomorrow, we find a way to climb it.”

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Humans have this phenomenal tendency to get stuck in the moment. We get stuck in our own memories – sometimes lamentations of a past we can’t let go, or saccharine memories we don’t want to forget. Moments are the defining lines of the fullness of our lives, they are the destinations on the road trip of human experience. 

The moments that we encounter, gravitate toward, and pay attention to are the events that when pieced together become a woven map of who we are, what we think, how we think, and the choices we make. Birthdays are moments, as are weddings and funerals. Standing up to the bully or finding the courage to ask out your crush are moments. Triumphs are moments. Tragedies, unfortunately, are also moments. Right now, in this stage of history, we are knee deep in a moment. Things are not okay.

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the war in Gaza, which might be better defined as a cull, a necessary purge of Hamas from power and operation, one that has come at the expense of too many civilian lives. The war, of course, is top of mind for many. But zooming out, there are many layers to this moment in history.

We have two back to back generations that are figuring out how to ‘life’ properly (using ‘life’ as a verb here, bear with me). Millennials are the latchkey kids of the generations before them, left at home with the ingredients to make a meal but no instruction. And Gen Z are the progeny of said latchkey kids, tasked with figuring things out in a rapidly changing world that millennials have been too self-absorbed with their side hustles and wistful dreams of wealth and property to support.

It all feels so overwhelming! And hard. And impossible.

But it’s not.

Since we’ve already zoomed out a bit, let’s zoom out a little farther. What are humans good at? Adapting. Surviving. Cooperation (yes, actually). And fixing our screw ups (again, yes, actually).

This moment of war, inflation, uncertainty, moral dilemma and confusion, impending societal decay, and post pandemia – we’ve been here before as a species. Many times in fact. We’ve had worse wars. We’ve had worse famines. We’ve had worse pandemics. We’ve had ice ages and droughts. Human history has been very hard and we’ve had to figure a lot things out. And we have. That is what we do as humans. 

But sometimes it’s hard to see all of this when we’re mired in a difficult moment, as we are now. Let’s look deeper at who we are.

Humans have this phenomenal capacity to find meaning and purpose as a response to great difficulty. When we are confronted with a mountain that stands between the challenge of today and the providence of tomorrow, we find a way to climb it. When it becomes apparent that individual problems are collective problems that are experienced by and threaten us all, we come together, across generations and identities, to solve them. This has been our pattern for innumerable Millenia. Difficulties arise, we ignore them until they can’t be ignored anymore, we fight against each other, until we realize that we need to fight for each other, we come together, we cooperate, and we figure it out. This is when we are at our best.

So while this moment of history, however you’re experiencing it, can feel dire, whether because of inflation, struggles with identity, climate anxiety, or the impact of war, remember that this moment of hardship will pass. We will be better than we have been. We will once again wake up to the fact that the collective should not be sacrificed for the individual. We will confront old ideas, throwing away the ones that don’t work, making space for new ones that will. And then we will come together to build something new and different, something that works. That’s what we do as human beings. This is who we are.

We are survivors.

Butterfly: A Story of Overcoming Adversity & Personal Transformation

by Asante Haughton, ​for The 44 North

Guest Writer & Editor

X: @asantetalks IG: @asantetalks Web: asantetalks.net

Asante Haughton is a TEDx Speaker, Human Rights Activist, Change-Maker, Dream Chaser, Visionary. Link to his TEDx talk here. 

A butterfly flying over water.

I had a breakdown this summer.

I was on the floor, holding my knees, rocking back and forth, ugly crying. Two months later I’m evolving into the best version of myself that ever existed. Complete transformation. I can hardly believe it. You shouldn’t either. Until you read this story. Let’s explore.

First, the breakdown.

That moment, in the beginning of August 2024, in which I was sitting on the floor at 6am, rocking back and forth on the floor, holding my knees, sobbing my life out, it was a long time coming. Breakdowns don’t happen in a moment. They’re a culmination of miseries, inopportune circumstances, bad choices, lack of support, and ineffective coping methods that stack up over time. And stack up I did. I built a very high tower made up of the aforementioned things and as physics demonstrates, high towers are susceptible to falling at the slightest disruption to their structural integrity, especially when the foundation is lacking, as it was for me. One storm passes through and boom, everything crumbles. That, of course, is what happened to me.

I’ve lived a tough life. Immigrant kid. Parents split when I was 5. Lived in a shelter for a while. Moved out into public housing. Dealt with racist attacks. Mom worked a lot, barely saw her. Father broke promises to see me, barely saw him. Ate rotting food out of necessity. Wore all my layers at night that one winter the heat went out. More racism. Father stopped showing up at all. Except to harass my mom. Harassment became threats. Mom cried out of fear. We moved across the city silently, abruptly. Lost my friends. Adjusted and made new ones. Mom broke down from working too much. Worse poverty. More crime in the neighborhood. Bad school, friends dropped out. All of them. Mom broke down worse, almost died. Lots of hospitals, short stays and long stays. Depression and anxiety emerged. Like a tidal wave. I drowned. For eight years. Got a scholarship to the University of Toronto – ’Harvard North’ – somehow. Lost that scholarship. Had a kid. Grades dropped. PhD dreams crushed. Friends abandoned me. Was called a disgrace. Wanted to end it all. Didn’t. Got help. Sorta.

Then I graduated undergrad and got a job. Started public speaking. Doors opened. Made money. Bought a house. Sold that house. Paid all my debts. Got married. Did a TEDx talk. Then another. Won a big award. Changed my city. Became industry famous. Rode the wave.

All was going well, so it seemed. But all that childhood stuff, I had never really dealt with it. I just moved on, as those uninitiated to trauma often suggest. Moving on meant masking in the form of workaholism and success. Moving on was also overindulging in vices and unnecessary extravagance. You couldn’t have told me nothing at the time, though. My wife certainly couldn’t. To me, I was just having a good time, enjoying the fruits of my successes. I was living an Instagram lifestyle. Traveling on a whim because I could afford it. Courtside at the game because I could afford it. Floor seats at the Kendrick Lamar concert because I could afford it. 

Ughh it all seems so sick now. 

But while I was busy working hard and playing harder, my relationships were falling apart. I was also doing a number on my professional life as I began cruising by on reputation rather than putting in the hard work that won me the reputation to begin with. As the life I had built was crumbling, a part of me could see it, so I turned away. My vices grew louder, took up more space. My self-regulation abandoned me, or rather, I abandoned it. I became absorbed in my own self-delusion that everything was okay, that I was okay. My friends, those who stuck around anyway, shouted warnings at me, but I was stuck in my soundproof room of egotistical avoidance. I couldn’t hear them. I refused to hear them. I trudged forward, dragging myself out of bed everyday, barely fulfilling my responsibilities. I knew something was wrong. I was running away from something but didn’t know what.

Then came the breakdown.

On January 25, 2022 I had my second kid. Beautiful and amazing. What a blessing he is. However, with a newborn comes stress. I decided to reduce my work hours to part time. I became even more self-absorbed—but hey, this time I had a convenient excuse as to why I wasn’t showing up for anything or anyone. Kids take time. 

Fast forward a couple years.

The job I’d been at for seven years wasn’t working out anymore. Ties were severed unexpectedly. Bank account dwindled. Needed to pay the bills. Lucked into new employment that seemed like a perfect fit. Struggled out the gate. Messed up a few key relationships in my first two months, partly due to inexperience, partly due to my own hubris. Wasn’t doing great at the job. Cracks formed in the facade I’d been living behind for decades.  

That facade was molded out of the one quality I could always rely on, regardless of how terribly everything else in my life might have been going—I was good at stuff.

As a kid, when I was poor, it didn’t matter because I was good at stuff. When my mom was sick and I wasn’t sure she’d survive, I coped by being good at stuff. Father wasn’t around? Friends abandoning me? Police harassing me daily? No worries, I’d prove my worth by being good at stuff. That was the facade, my shield. But in the first half of 2024 I didn’t even have that. Why? Because I just wasn’t good at my job. It was the first time in my life I wasn’t good at something I was trying hard to be good at. The first time I wasn’t immediately well-liked. The first time I didn’t get the hang of something fast. I was sure half of my coworkers hated me and the other half just didn’t trust me to be competent. The external validation I’d always relied on just wasn’t there. My shield disintegrated. Faced with myself—my mistakes, my miseries, my histories, and my trauma—I crumbled. 

I cried everyday for two months. 

I had experienced depression before and worse, wanting to shut off the lights on my own life, but The Great Cry of 2024 was worse than that. This was ongoing and would erupt out of nowhere. I sat in front of my computer and cried. I took the subway train and cried. I had work lunches and cried. I was nonfunctional. 

Completely unable to do my job, I left my boss a long voice note informing her that I was subbing myself out of the game—I quit. She wouldn’t let me. Her reply was something like, “I know things have been difficult but we hired you for a reason, we understand you’re in the middle of a hurricane, but we’re going to ride this one out with you.” I was skeptical, cringed at the straight from a leadership book BS I interpreted her statement as, but I decided to stay in the game. She believed in me at a time I’d lost all belief in myself. Maybe I felt like trash, that I couldn’t manage the current effects of my past trauma, and that I’d floundered most of my important relationships but I was gonna give this thing a shot. 

I woke up a few days later and decided to change everything.

I committed to a completely sober lifestyle and dropped all of my vices cold turkey. I had already been working out a bit and eating better, but I decided to go all in on those new habits. I also looked in the mirror and said, “hey, if you’re going to be a storyteller you better start friggin’ writing.” So I’ve been doing at least 30 minutes of writing everyday for the last two months. I also decided that I would try my best to show up for the people I cared about the most. No more forgetting birthdays or leaving messages unanswered for days. No more saying I’ll call back and then “forgetting.” No more needing to be reminded three or four times to follow through on something I said I’d do. Now if I say I’m going to do it, then it happens. How did I settle on making these specific changes? Essentially, I drew up a mental framework of who I wanted to be – someone reliable, that showed up for others and himself – and just decided to do the things that person would do.

This of course meant letting go of the person I’d grown to dislike. To do that, I first needed to acknowledge some very difficult things.

I had to face the shame I internalized from being poor. I had to come to terms with the anger racism scarred me with. I had to grieve all of the possible life paths growing up in poverty never let me explore. I had to forgive myself for letting my trauma manifest in behaviours that hurt myself and others, especially others, as I pushed loved ones away as a means to remain safe – or worse, drank from their well of intimacy without offering anything from myself to refill it. I had to acknowledge that much of the success that I craved eluded me because of my own poor habits. I had to admit that I was responsible for fracturing several of my close relationships because of a tendency to be self-absorbed. 

In short, I had to face everything. 

Dropping my vices, my means of escaping helped me do that. Going to therapy and doing some EMDR work helped me do that. Making amends with people I’d hurt helped me do that. Grieving and accepting everything I’d lost as a result of poverty and trauma helped me do that. Forgiving myself for the damage I’d done to others and to my own life helped me do that. With each thing I faced came a well of tears. My body shook and I banged the floor with my fist. I wondered if I’d ever stop crying.

Then one day I did.

As that happened, I found myself more grounded than ever before.

Life hasn’t stopped being challenging. But what I’ve learned in the past few months is that I don’t need to run, escape, or mask. I’ve learned that it’s okay for something to hurt, that maybe I need to let it hurt. I can fall down and still get up. 

And the commitment to exercise, I’ve learned so much from it—that I can push through pain and still get to the finish line, that I can achieve a personal best on a day my body is tired and my spirit is unwilling, that I feel my best after completing my objectives on the days I don’t want to do anything. I’ve learned how to be proud of myself not for succeeding, but for trying. This has been huge for me.

For years I had been trying to run away from a past that I hated. I did this by becoming successful. But when I achieved that and still didn’t feel good about myself, I sunk lower. Then I lost myself in my vices. Kept sinking. Until I hit rock bottom. And the only way up was to face everything and rebuild.

So rebuild I did, and rebuild I am. 

Today, I can proudly say I’m the best me that I’ve ever been. I’m more than my masks, more than my achievements. I’ve accepted my past, and consequently, the man in the mirror. Now, when I look at myself I smile proudly, not for what I’ve done but for who I am. I’m becoming something real, built on the strongest of foundations. Growing. Rising. Transforming. As I butterfly out of my cocoon, I’m ready to float into my next chapter as a changed man.

See you there.