Fanning the Ancestral Flame with Poet Ericka Streeter
By Dakota Parks for Inweekly
Ericka Streeter doesn’t just write, she worships. Every stanza is an ancestral thread, every poem an act of devotion. For years, she has nurtured Northwest Florida’s literary community, mentoring fellow writers through journaling and writing workshops and serving as the host of Pensacola Poetry for two and a half years.
She released her debut collection, “Soul Fire: Prose of Passion and Peace,” in 2020. This fall, Streeter returns with her second collection, “Soul Fire: The Warmth of the Ancestral Flame,” a deeply personal exploration of ancestry, womanhood, grief and the sacred act of reclaiming oneself.
“What drew me to poetry was that it felt natural to create with words,” Streeter said. “What keeps me coming back is the realization that it keeps saving my life. Most of my writing comes in floods, rushing out of me.”
Written in the quiet intimacy of her bedroom, Streeter’s poems arrive like flash floods, spilling onto the page as if carried by her ancestors. Her work often grapples with heavy themes of slavery, sexual violence and the ongoing work of reclaiming the body and voice. Yet at its heart, the collection is a celebration of Blackness, of community, resilience, history and joy.
“I love being Black,” she said. “This is the language and the visions that come to me that I get to write down. I love getting to show my people themselves—and everyone who is not a part of my culture gets a glimpse of that too.”
In the poem, “Cheetah Coat and Boas,” her words move with the rhythm of jazz, immersing readers in a celebration of Black joy: “Cheetah coat and gator shoes pizazz / Loud like big brass / Bold like bourbon / Think feather boas around long necks / Shiny shimmies on big hips.”
For Streeter, word choice is never incidental. Throughout the collection, she intentionally leans into Black vernacular, reclaiming the language she once felt pressured to leave behind.
“When we were younger, some of us were bussed to white schools,” she explained. “When we came back around others who didn’t go, the other Black children would tell us that we talk white. I didn’t really understand that, but we learned proper grammar and what’s now called code switching. Now that I’m older, I see so much value in our vernacular. As much as it changes, it’s always something worth celebrating because it’s so colorful and fun.”
In poems like “1972” and “Remember,” Streeter moves through history with urgency, tracing a lineage that stretches from segregation and billy clubs to all the unique joys and contributions of Black culture.
“It is my right and responsibility as a poet to document history,” Streeter said. “We like to act like all that was just in the past. Like, we don’t do that anymore. That it’s not so important, when it is. Pay attention to this. Pay attention to us, so we can be okay. So we can be better.”
Her poems often refuse to look away from misogyny and patriarchy, challenging everything from “catcalls and elevator eyes” to sexual violence and generational harm.
“A comment I often enjoy hearing is, ‘I’m glad you said that sis, because I wanted to say something about that, but I’ve been too afraid,’” she explained.
For Streeter, that conversation is part of a larger journey toward reclaiming her own sense of beauty.
“It’s been a journey learning that I’m beautiful because I’m Black, not in spite of being Black,” Streeter said. “It’s still an act of rebellion to practice that joy. There were times I was taught to be ashamed of my body, of my hair and hips, and it didn’t just come from white culture. It bled into our communities too. Women have to do so much work to reclaim our bodies, reclaim our beauty.”
That complexity runs through one of Streeter’s favorite and most powerful poems in the collection, “Sexual ‘Cause.” The poem explores not only desire, but also the experience of being eroticized, losing ownership of one’s body and the lingering intersections of slavery and sexual abuse, while ultimately embracing sensuality and bisexuality.
The poem began, Streeter said, with a question she was tired of being asked: “Why are you so sexual?”
“I want to be bold in it. I want it to be as fit for public as it is for private, because my sensuality and sexuality are a part of me, just as they are for anybody else,” she said. “And I’m not ashamed of that. So many women go through life not actually experiencing sensual and sexual pleasure. They’ve been taught it’s dirty, it’s shameful, that it’s not God’s way. They’ve essentially been shunned, and it’s not right.”
Across the collection, Streeter reaches backward and forward through generations, honoring ancestors through eulogy poems and interweaving poems written by her daughter, Elondrice Hodge, as a reminder that the ancestral flame continues.
“I have sat and laid in front of my altar and felt that very flame,” Streeter said. “I felt that warmth and safety of what my ancestors bring and have left behind for me. It’s safer in this world for me because of them, and I know they didn’t leave me here just to figure everything out on my own.”
She said that connection shapes the way she moves through everyday life.
“I’m someone who walks in the house, even though it looks empty, and says ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ every time, because there might just be somebody sitting at the table. I just can’t see them,” she said.
Ultimately, Streeter sees this ancestral thread as something larger than herself. By bringing together poems written across decades, she hopes to give her family a record of their ancestors, their stories and the legacy they carry forward.
“The collection is curated. It’s an intentional offering of me to the world. If there’s anything I want readers to know about me, it’s that I love who I’m becoming,” she said.
And in the final words of the collection, Streeter extends that same love outward, offering readers a final piece of wisdom inspired by a story of Iyanla Vanzant licking the doorknobs of her new home as way to claim it as her own: “Be good to yourself and when you find something sweet and safe, lick it and make it yours.”
Ericka Streeter
@soulfireprose
“Soul Fire: The Warmth of the Ancestral Flame” is available locally at Perfect Day Books, Open Books and Black Café & Bookstore.
