“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
~ Mark Twain
courage
that human quality we all want. it is sometimes, at the wrong times, illusive.
courageous men and women are the reason that we witness greatness all over the world. imagine where we would be if people like Nina Simone or Maya Angelou or Steve Biko or Wangai Maathai didn’t have courage.
think about your own acts of courage. i know for a fact that i often don’t recognise my own courage. i see the fear everywhere all the time. and because too often i let it consume me i don’t realise that i too have courage.
think about what it takes to step out into this scary beautiful world. what it takes for you to put pen to paper. then when you are done, even when you aren’t so sure about the quality, you submit your work for publication. think about what it takes for performers everywhere to get up on stage and perform their work. rejection always seems more likely to happen than acceptance. so some times, some people never share their work. they never speak up in a group and voice their opinions. some never even step out of their rooms, they become prisoners of their fears.
so instead of going on about fears, i want to celebrate courage. i want to use this year to recognise that every time i focus on my goals on the the things i love, i am practicing courage. this way the things that i fear become smaller and fewer. i am about courage.
you can practice courage too. we are mastering our fears everyday. when we face our fears we gain confidence in our own abilities. every time we practice courage we learn that we more capable than we give ourselves credit for.
in this issue, i’m excited about the poets appearing here for the first time. i was really impressed with all the poems that came through but felt particularly moved by the poems that appear here.
for the first time i decided to find something awesome to share with the featured poet. the featured poet, Keletso Thobega, is going to receive a copy of Amabutho Mixtape , a courageous project that i was part of a few years back and a copy of Lebo Mashile’s Flying Above the Sky.
i hope that you enjoy this issue. poetrypotion.om is a labour of love, from my hear to yours…
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
~ Mary Anne Radmacher
– peace –
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