Nikki Ummel

Ode To My Belly Button

—after Leila Chatti

_____

Statement of Homage 

This poem is after Leila Chatti’s “Tumor” from Deluge, her first collection of poetry. My poem, like Leila’s, references life-threatening medical issues directly tied to the very organ that provides new life. I had laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis, and my surgeon went in through my belly button, the central “character” of my poem. In Leila’s poem, she is describing the tumor in her uterus. Both poems are visual; in my case, my poem visually represents a belly button, and in Leila’s case, her poem visually represents a tumor. When I read Leila’s poem, I knew I wanted to write my own version, based on my experiences, which are similar and different from Leila’s. It was important to me to specify that my poem is after “Tumor,” as I think my poem engages in a similar conversation with readers as her poem does.

Leila Chatti

Leila Chatti was born in 1990 in Oakland, California. A Tunisian-American dual citizen, she has lived in the United States, Tunisia, and Southern France. She is the author of the debut full-length collection Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and the chapbooks Figment (Bull City Press), The Mothers (Slapering Hol Press), Ebb (New-Generation African Poets), and Tunsiya/Amrikiya, the 2017 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. She holds a B.A. from the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University and an M.F.A. from North Carolina State University, where she was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. She currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University and is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.

____