April 18th 2025
Jade Lomas
Jadelomas@berkeley.eduJade is a transfer student majoring in anthropology, with interests in archaeology, archives, and cultural resource management.
a student describes her process of writing and submitting her poem to the digital anthropology magazine, SAPIENS. the poem can be read here on the SAPIENS website.
i had just turned 19 when i learned from extended relatives that my estranged father had passed away in late 2023. but besides being a daughter, i was also a community college student in the middle of finals. it was my last fall semester. i was due to graduate in spring; i was to turn in my University of California application in a few weeks. i could not afford to mess anything up. so on that night when i received the news, i cried into my mother’s arms, said nothing more, and went on ever since. i coped with the fact that we were already estranged– he had been dead to me for about a decade. so, nothing really changed, minus the fact that he was really dead this time.
one of the classes in said fall semester was “lab methods in archaeology,” and one of the lessons was the mandatory and seemingly-universal flint knapping day. i saw how my professor gently but somehow still firmly chipped away at the obsidian. how he reduced all the lithic cores to what he wanted. in deep grief, i thought of how badly i wanted to do that to what my father and i had. i wanted to chip away our stubbornness, our ego, a bit of our pride. but to ask for any sort or such control of our lives is asking to play god: impossible. i stared at my professor’s obsidian discards on the tarp. stubbornness, ego, a bit of pride, gone and on the floor– just like that. after class i opened my laptop and went straight to writing. the last time i had written poetry was for a class the semester before, but i felt compelled that evening. i wouldn’t look at it again for a good while.
the summer after my father’s death and a few dreams of him, SAPIENS magazine posted a calling for poems of “Resistance, Refusal, and Wayfinding.” i looked at my work for any prospective pieces– i didn’t really write after that one evening. but i thought perhaps that single poem fit their requisites best. in the application, i argued my case and explained the poem’s background–similarly as to how i’m doing to you right now. in an almost full-circle, SAPIENS emailed me saying they accepted my work about a month before my father’s one-year death anniversary.
the process after was great– truly. the team was kind; very patient to my late replies and silly questions. it was agreeing to a simple form regarding copyright, coming up with a short bio, choosing a headshot, and then an image to go with your poem. in what many may consider my poem as an “angsty” piece, i am just relieved that one of my favorite magazines believed in me. frankly, if i had to go through this again, i’d still choose this poem.
i am opening up about this publishing process (and the processes before it) in hopes to not only show that anyone can write/create– but that it is never too late.
my poem, “debitage,” which concerns a tumultuous father-daughter relationship through the process of lithic reduction, can be read here on the SAPIENS website
