SAFIA ELHILLO: My name is Safia Elhillo. I'm a poet. And I wrote Ars Poetica in response to Spell to Acquire a Beautiful Voice.

Ars Poetica:

Blood of the bird, sweet flag
Flower whose scent was taken by time

I belong to long and cursive lines of women

Even I who am their daughter
Even I have not been told their names

I call to them in this way: ritual assemblage
Exalted water in the cup

Peace be upon my every mother

Peace be upon translucent maiden aunts
Crowding the corners of this room now and dressed in shadow

Peace be upon my nowhere children
And the gone lands in which they dwell

And to my neighbors on the other side
You who rattle my windowpanes in late autumn

Greetings with white honey
With what language between us remains

And to You who unknots my tongue
Whose name I murmur into my palms

I am calling now and every day
In the presence of these my dead and these my living gone

To ask that when I speak I may do it clearly
And without hesitation, that when I speak

I may do it fluently despite my broken tools

By the tallow in the hair of my living grandmother
Applied now to partings in my own

By my long name and its repetitions, its every aperture
By my lines of blood and by the rivers, the two joining into one

By my word:

I call now, and again, and ask please
May I say it well, and with beauty.