A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter C

Countermemory

Black American
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Countermemory refers to acts of remembering that challenge official histories by preserving marginalised, suppressed, or contested experiences.

Detailed Definition
In African American poetry, countermemory restores voices erased from dominant historical accounts, especially regarding slavery, racial violence, labour exploitation, migration, and resistance. Poems may recover family histories, communal trauma, forgotten figures, or alternative interpretations of public events. Countermemory is important because poetry often serves as an archive of emotional truth where official records are silent, distorted, or hostile, allowing literary remembrance to function as cultural correction and resistance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Natasha Trethewey’s recovery of neglected histories demonstrates countermemory; A poem preserving oral family memory against official silence reflects countermemory; Verse revisiting erased racial violence illustrates countermemory; A poem challenging textbook versions of history demonstrates countermemory; Poetry restoring forgotten Black voices exemplifies countermemory
Additional Notes
Countermemory as a concept in African American poetry draws on Michel Foucault's theoretical framework but gives it specifically racial content: against official histories that erase, distort, or minimise Black experience, countermemory preserves what survived through oral tradition, family story, community archive, and poetic imagination. Poets like Natasha Trethewey (whose work engages Mississippi history and her own family's past), Robert Hayden, and Lucille Clifton practise countermemory with rigorous attention to historical evidence and imaginative reconstruction. Students should consider what sources poets draw on when official archives are incomplete or inaccessible. Related terms include historical memory, folkloric memory, enslavement memory, revisionist history, and master narrative.
Also Known As
Counter-memory Oppositional memory Resistant remembrance
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