Praise Song for My Mother
Grace Nichols * Track #6 On Songs of Ourselves
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Album Songs of Ourselves
- #1Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
- #2One Art
Elizabeth Bishop
- #3Song: Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
- #4My Parents
Stephen Spender
- #5For Heidi With Blue Hair
Fleur Adcock
- #6Praise Song for My Mother
Grace Nichols
- #7Elegy for My Father’s Father
James K. Baxter
- #8The Trees Are Down
Charlotte Mew
- #9Attack
Siegfried Sassoon
- #10Reservist
Boey Kim Cheng
- #11Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
- #12Friend
Hone Tuwhare
- #13Horses
Edwin Muir
- #14The Planners
Boey Kim Cheng
- #15A Mind Content
Robert Greene (1560-92)
Praise Song for My Mother by Grace Nichols
Performed by
Grace NicholsAbout
This poem by Nichols is a ‘praise song’; a traditional African style poem in which the daughter/son celebrates their mother’s work and specific qualities.
While this is a traditional tribute and therefore exaggeration may be a characteristic of these poems, it attests to the power and strength of a...
Praise Song for My Mother Annotated
You were
water to me
deep and bold and fathoming
You were
moon’s eye to me
pull and grained and mantling
You were
sunrise to me
rise and warm and streaming
You were
the fishes red gill to me
the flame tree’s spread to me
the crab’s leg/the fried plantain smell
replenishing replenishing
Go to your wide futures, you said