I Am the Color of—A Collaborative Poem

Abstract

In this collaborative poem, faculty and staff from a West Texas university responded to an in-house call for a line or two in response to the phrase “I am the color of.” According to the call, contributors were not meant to write about an actual “color”: brown, off-white, pink, etc. Nor should they address race and/or ethnicity. Instead, they were asked to consider detailed lived experiences that colored or shaped their professional identities today. Working their way back from lockdowns and virtual teaching, the goal for the project was to co-produce a poetic project that would foster a better understanding of one another, a means of getting to know one another more personally in a professional setting, thus humanizing one’s colleagues.