Chantel Massey

During my time with RSA, we discussed water as public memory, and as sustenance, healing, and renewal inspired by the story of Moses striking the rock and out came water by looking at the key text Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20. Through this seminar we explored how seemingly water and rocks might also be alive to help us rethink our relationship to the earth. Through different forms of poetry such as experimental, erasure, persona, ghazal, and a hint of gossip and afrofuturism, my poems explore the complicated relationship between Blackness, water, and land in Indiana. This short collection is called Wade In The Water. 

My approach to these ecopoetic poems also includes RSA’s theme and asks the reader – How does the oppression and heart of the story of Moses show up in the story of Indianapolis’ civil rights issue with the sewage system of the White River? What happens to the people when there is no Moses, or anyone to be a savior? Did they even need a Moses? Would it have made a difference? Do the people collectively become their own savior? Who will listen to them? Who will rally for those who do not have clean water or access to food? This short collection of poems are in conversations with ecocriticism and ecopoetics, one that acknowledges other voices and a broader range of cultural and ethnic concerns such as the intersections of racism, capitalism, and environmental injustice - are they not one in the same? How are Black/Brown bodies jeopardized by water? What is the relationship between Black/Brown folks to water; to Indianapolis? This is just a portion of a much bigger story.

Although there has been recent conversation on how to start to correct this issue, I ask you, when the water is cleaned up - how will the city confront it’s dark past with Black and brown communities? Will they plan to gentrify the area and aim to push the people out through increase in property taxes? What will happen to the people who have always been here? What is the real hope for cleaning up the river? These poems apt to mourn and make political comments on the White Rivers’s defilement while also asking others to consider how do we preserve and celebrate the ecosystem of this city and the different communities, connected to the river, that make Indianapolis vibrant ? What is our responsibility as artists and humans to water here in Indianapolis? To environmental justice? To social justice and equity? Environmental justice is a Black issue and a human issue.

Overall these poems are the beginning of reclaiming the land and narrative often not told. 

(for a text-only version, click here)

A Ghazal: Water

(for a text-only version, click here)

(for a text-only version, click here)

An Erasure Written Presentation

About Chantel

Chantel Massey (she/her) is a poet, author, teaching artist, educator, practicing Afrofuturist, and anime lover based in Indiana. Massey is a fellow of The Watering Hole and has received invitations from Hurston/Wright Foundation and Tin House. She is a 2019 Best of Net Award nominee and author of Bursting At The Seams (VK Press, 2018) which was a 2020 Indiana Eugene and Marilyn Glick Author Awards Emerging Author finalist. Massey founded the literary arts organization, UnLearn Arts, cultivating and amplifying the craft and wellness of BIPOC writers. Her work can be found in Solstice Literary Magazine, Indianapolis Review, Turnpike Magazine, and other forthcoming online and print publications. To learn more about her work visit www.chantelmassey.com