Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

When we started this three years ago, we imagined we would do as Audre Lorde’s once noted and bring a burst of light to public health. The world was in a pandemic, health was in a disarray, everything with the public was complex and messy and at that moment we knew that light was needed. The question wasn’t how but what are we going to do.

So we imagined we could use stories. Leslie Marmon Silko describes “stories as an expression of fears and dreams, of faith and belief.” Chinua Achebe noted that are like “an escort, a guide that conveys all our gains, all our failures, all we hold dear and all we condemn.”

We imagined we would use poetry. June Jordan once described poetry as the “language of life, a foundation for true community, a fearless democratic society.” Rita dove once described poetry “as an ability to describe disturbing elements in tranquility, one where you can pause to take a breathe, then plunge in and look at it again.”

We imagined we could also use art. The author bell hooks’s described art as work that had transformational impact, like a life-giving force that needs to come out of the shadows of the basement where it is always hidden, to stand in light and looked at anew. That’s what we have been doing the last three years with this festival and our magazine being as Ben Okri would described like a dream, the highest point of our lives.

Building on Achebe’s description of stories, we see art, poetry, and stories, as all the ways the public joins in public health, as an escort, an opportunity to convey to ourselves what keeps us going and alive as a people with interest in health. All the art, stories, poetry we tell for health are far more important than anything else, crucial to our survival as a people interested in the public’s health.

So we begin again, year after year, with an issue we hope will resonate with the public and judging from the registration and attendance, from the celebration and journey into witnessing what it means to do public health for the public by the public, we hope you will continue to support this complex, messy ride we call light. One were we hope that through the struggles, through the joy, we live a little light that shines brighter with each passing year on what it means to bring the public into public health. So join us here.