Opal Palmer Adisa's Writings
View Opal’s Books | Read Opal’s other writings below.
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Column
May.17.2013
The best parenting advice anyone has every given me is to enjoy your children as they grow up quickly.
And indeed they do. In ten days time, my youngest, who is 22 years old, will be graduating from college and I can still feel her inside my stomach.
How is that possible I think that I still see her father driving across the Bay Bridge to take me to...
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May.11.2013
A Letter of Gratitude to Catherine, My Mother
Dear Mummy:
Assuredly, I would not be the person I am today if you had not invested your love and time in me, and equally as important, if you had not shown me how to be a woman and how to make a place in the world for myself.
Saying thanks is a small gesture to acknowledge you who paved the...
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Feb.19.2013
Love’s Promise is the title of my forthcoming short story collection that is just one story away from being complete.
I have been writing this book for a long time, and in fact a few of the stories have been published in journals, one as long as seven years ago. However, it was only last year that it came together, when the title landed in my head like the...
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Article
Feb.06.2013
I have been thinking about the housing crisis, how Banks Have been Terrorizing Home owners, and since I am directly affected by it, I decided to write President Obama.
Please circulate this letter to all those who are impacted and join me in ending Domestic Terrorism by Banks and other Cooperations in the USA.
Dear President Obama:
Congratulations...
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Poem
Nov.30.2012
By Opal Palmer Adisa & Teju Adisa-Farrar
It’s easy to give thanks in the midst of abundance
Easy to be grateful when others applaud and surround us
Effortless to laugh when we have shelter and food
Simple to forgive those we love and who love us in return
But what the world needs is our unconditional gratitude
Blessing and uplifting those who trespass...
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Poem
Nov.21.2012
Gratitude for the Problems & The Joys
By Opal Palmer Adisa & Teju Adisa-Farrar
It’s easy to give thanks in the midst of abundance
Easy to be grateful when others applaud and surround us
Effortless to laugh when you have shelter and food
Simple to forgive those you love and who return your love
But what the world needs is your...
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Poem
Nov.21.2012
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Poem
Jun.26.2012
A boulder always at your back
A touch of encouragement
A wind the fans the flame of your determination
A smile that lights your dark path
A comforting shoulder when all doors appear locked
Family is shared history
Keeping each other’s secrets
Supporting one another even when we choose different paths
Encouraging each other to pursue our respective dreams...
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Article
Jun.05.2012
“Now a days everyone is a self proclaimed poet and writer, but many who readily embrace this title have spent little time either studying or practicing this craft.” This I said from the stage of a conference in New York on which I was a panel member. My statement bristled the room, and immediately two people got up, and one said before storming out, that my...
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Apr.16.2012
BookEnds, Sunday Observer, Jamaica
“Listen to Things
More often than Beings,
Hear the voice of fire,
Hear the voice of water.
Listen in the wind,
To the sighs of the bush;
This is the ancestors’ breathing…”
Many of us have forgotten how to listen, or we only listen to those we value as authority figures. But the Senegalese poet and griot, Birago Diop, advises us in his poem “Spirits” (...
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I have known love, smelled it first dripping from his eyes, tasted it on his lips, and when our fingers clasped, I knew it was a living thing that would never let go of me...Opal Palmer Adisa”
About Opal
Diverse, innovative and multi-genre, Opal Palmer Adisa is an exceptional talent, nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica. Charismatic and informed, Adisa’s concerns span the gamut from children to the environment, and as such there is hardly...
Connections
Causes Opal Adisa Supports
California Poets in the Schools
Homeless Shelter for Pregnant Women