Wildflower

Wildflower is a meditation on nostalgia, grief, growth, and Black womanhood. In her short collection of poems, Ibura Ayele writes about grappling with her faith and the inevitable changes one faces after a devastating loss. Wildflower is written in an accessible and graceful style meant for readers of all backgrounds to relate to in some way. Through her poetry, Ayele shows us how to see beauty and find meaning in life’s most difficult trials. This is Ibura’s first collection of poetry.

Wildflower

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Praise for Wildflower

  •  This collection reads like a much needed cry in a warm rain in the South. I am honored to have gotten to read and review it, and everyone else who comes to read it should feel honored as well.

    Victoria Taylor, Poet, iamsimonne.com

  • The aptly-named Wildflower is a reminder that we will grow, in spite and in light of it all.

    Joi McClain, Poet

  • Wildflower is a beautiful and moving examination of what it is to feel and grow and all of those innately human experiences we tend to move past. Wildflower is a gift.

    Sabrina Spence, Poet and MFA Student

  • It is heart wrenching from start to finish, raw, and starkly honest...It is a book that can be read time after time to allow space to consider loss, separation, and the finality of death.

    Marla Ferguson, former Medical Social Worker, Unity Point Hospice

Read Detailed Reviews of Wildflower

Sabrina Spence, Poet and MFA Student

“Wildflower is a beautiful and moving examination of what it is to feel and grow and all of those innately human experiences we tend to move past. Ibura writes in a way that feels familiar and warm. She centers Blackness, womanhood, and their relationship to each other and to the larger natural experience and how we encounter those life-changing moments. Speaking of those moments, she navigates them with powerful language and transparent emotion. There’s a feeling of trust in this work that makes the reader personally invested in the speaker’s journey as she navigates new landscapes and personal changes. Wildflower is a gift.”

Marla Ferguson, former Medical Social Worker, Unity Point Hospice

“As a former hospice social worker, I often was tasked with identifying reading materials for family members attending their loved ones' imminent passing. There was a dearth of books for people of color. Wildflower is a beautiful book of poetry which enters that space. It is lovingly written by a daughter in memory/honor of her mother.

It is heart wrenching from start to finish, raw, and starkly honest. It is a book that can be read time after time to allow space to consider loss, separation, and the finality of death. These are the universal themes that we all must deal with as we move through bereavement. However, the beautifully penned poems do not leave you there; it ends with hope and movement forward for this daughter to build a life without her mother physically but still a formidable presence in her life.”

Joi McClain, Slam Poet

"The preface is a spirited introduction to the identity, growth, and love that are reinforced throughout the work. I feel I got to know the author the way she got to know herself - in small, intense transformations that formed the bigger picture.

In the first section we see a tearful continuum between the woman who raised her and the woman she was raised to be; in each and all of their glory. The warm language and immersive scenes invite you to her childhood with the same warmth she was taught to invite everyone. We see the author's mother as a personal hero, and more, as a symbol of the unconditional love and undying strength within us all.

The second section is unforgiving. It stages the deep and unknowable moments of despair then rebukes them with undeniable hope, compounded through generations of black women and their joy. Through the sharpness and softness of each piece we see the author give unto herself as she relearns love, now without her mother, but with her presence nonetheless.

The third and final section of Wildflower compels the reader - after knowing the alloy formed by the souls of these women and seeing it stand the test of time - to take inventory of the things in life we will always be grateful for. The things we should be grateful for. The beauty in the writing is its impermanence, its commitment to change, and its purity of purpose as an unstoppable force.

Wildflower immortalizes love between and love within. It uses the living language of the author’s past to carry the legacy of the women who came before her. The aptly-named Wildflower is a reminder that we will grow, in spite and in light of it all."

Victoria Taylor, Top 10 CUPSI Finalist, Poet, iamsimonne.com

“The dedication and preface brought me to tears. I can feel the love she has for her mother in every word. It really fills the page, regardless of poem length.

This collection of poems connects to the way that nature fills in when grief and mourning feel similar to a natural disaster. In order to heal such an enormous emotional wound, I feel that nature offers a particularly deep and essential sense of comfort, and Ayele’s poems contain a lot of comforting landscape imagery as she processes different degrees of grief, depression, and hopefulness.

Ayele speaks throughout the collection about her mother’s transition into a new way of being, and it echoes my own beliefs of how the body and soul move on after the body has had its time. Ayele’s poems about seeing her mother in the sky, and in smiles, and sunsets were so comforting and touching to read. Other main themes in the collection include self-love, depression, and the effort it takes to simply continue participating in a day’s activities.

 The preface primes the reader to be vulnerable with themself about the true depths of their current grief. Ayele invites you to share your pain with her, as she has shared hers with you, and it brings a feeling of mutual understanding and trust into the reading experience. We all have known grief that persists, and the concept of finding meaning in that grief, and transforming and healing ourselves while moving through it is something that Ayele invites us to try along with her.

 I truly appreciate the time she took to list the mental health resources for the whole of the Black community. Poetry can bring trauma to the forefront of the mind and to be cognizant of that fact is so caring. It helps to continue the healing process.

Throughout the collection, it feels as though poet Ibura Ayele, and her mother Sherry “Sherri Rich” Haynes-DeHaan, are in conversation with each other, and Ayele then brings that conversation to us, the readers. “Wildflower” begins proudly, in homage to Rich and the love that she surrounds her daughter with even from a lifetime away. This is an intimate collection, as poetry tends to be, but Ayele has made a point not to shy away from the grit of this process. In between the prose there is the gorgeous brevity of lines like,

“I will name it enough.” (Return to Self) 

“you will not kill me, too” (Weathering (you will not kill me, too)

 The lessons Ayele shares in her own words, and through her mothers’, are poetry themselves. It is impossible to smile at some of these poems without tears chasing the smile’s heels, but that is the grief Ayele describes so well. That signature mix of grief and love. Ayele’s depth of love for her mother, her family, and herself fill every inch of every page.

 I have known Ibura since she arrived at her undergraduate university and tried out for WU-Slam, of which I was a current member and former CUPSI (College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational) coach and participant. Her voice and style have only grown, and it’s a true pleasure witness. Ibura has a quiet way of stealing into your most vulnerable of emotions during a poetry slam or page poem reading. Ibura always moved me more than I was originally planning to be moved by a poem, because she simply spoke her feelings on stage, and gave them room to breathe. She selects only the words she needs and leaves the rest.

 This collection reads like a much needed cry in a warm rain in the South. I am honored to have gotten to read and review it, and everyone else who comes to read it should feel honored as well.”