Candice Iloh | spin. | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Candice Iloh is a first-generation Nigerian-American creative writer and teaching artist residing in Brooklyn, NY whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Fjords Review, The Grio, For Harriet, Blavity, No Dear Magazine and elsewhere. She is a VONA fellowship recipient as well as a Home School Lambda Literary Fellow. A MFA candidate in Writing for Young People and Poetry at Lesley University, Candice is currently working on her first young adult novel in verse.

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Also by Candice Iloh: Break Fast From Her Skin

July 13, 2016

Candice Iloh

"Spin," for me, was a meditation on mental illness and the often-times insensitive response to it in pop culture. Just like everyone else, I have been witness to several public figures who appear to be spiraling in some form or fashion and what I observe on the part of the public is complete amnsesia to the fact that these people are human. I feel that it's rare in American pop culture for empathy to be shown toward public figures before scorn and ridicule when empathy is something we would all want to be shown to us should we find ourselves in the same positions. This poem was an attempt to first illustrate the sensation of spiraling and embarrassment in the public eye and then to humanize the experience of having to navigate instability and sadness when the world is still looking to you with an open hand for entertainment.