It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
Born on the border of Iran and Kashmir as buteh jegneh, the symbol of life everlasting shaped into the scales of a cypress pinecone, it flowed south on the sapphire rivers that vein the Subcontinent: cast into a kidney’s form, cast into a teardrop. In Hindi it fluttered petal by petal. In Tamil called mankolam, the mango, sign of prosperity, it adorned the shoulders of priests. In Persian the buteh was woven with threads of gold and silver into the florid tapestry of court regalia. It boarded great ships. Packed in British East India Company trunks, it sailed to Scotland where, translated from wool to silk on the newest jacquard looms, it blossomed in the town that gave it a famous name, from the Gaelic passeleg, or basilica. Queen Victoria loved those shawls. Each loom followed the chain of cards, punched with holes that dictated the pattern, the forefather of modern computers. The first creative patents were for patterns of paisley. The Scottish looms seeded a riot of new color. And still it wandered, mutable, dazzling each new audience. Adapted for cotton, it could be printed on top of fiber rather than woven in, no longer a luxury item. American hippies made it psychedelic, and Fender made it rock, clad in a pink paisley Telecaster. Prince danced Around the World in a Day in its wild exuberance, wrote lyrics in its curling typeface. The mighty tadpole embraced hedonism, rebellion, and counterculture. Printed on bandanas, it signified LA gangs, red for Bloods, blue for Crips. Gay men in San Francisco turned it into code tucked in back pockets, on the left for tops, on the right for bottoms, each color the flag of a different fetish, an invitation for initiates. Like a street preacher spreading its gospel: the symbol of life everlasting, pinecone, kidney, flower, teardrop, born on the border of Iran and Kashmir.
Kim Roberts is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023). Roberts edited By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book to represent Washington, DC in the Route 1 Reads program. She is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). Roberts was a 2023 Pride Writer-in-Residence at the Arts Club of Washington, and was awarded a 2023 Independent Humanities Practitioner Fellowship from Humanities DC. She co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June with filmmaker Jon Gann. See kimroberts.org.
SWWIM + University of Miami: We’re thrilled to announce a partnership between SWWIM and University of Miami’s Department of English and Creative Writing!
3/5 / Ibis Reading Series with Keetje Kuipers + Melissa Rivero / University of Miami / Newman Alumni Center / Live / 6:00 pm EST / Free
3/6 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Keetje Kuipers / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
3/6 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Keetje Kuipers + local writer Julie Marie Wade / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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