NSE #1203 | Danez Smith and Mandana Chaffa

Summary

Join The Brooklyn Rail for their 123rd conversation with poets Danez Smith and Mandana Chaffa. Hosted by Maggie, the event delves into Smith's award-winning career, the nuances of poetry, and the essence of love and place. With readings from Smith and discussions about the power of poetry, love, familial relationships, and community, this dialogue offers a rich exploration of the roles and responsibilities of poets today.

Highlights

• Danez Smith reads powerful poems about personal and communal experiences, captivating the audience. 🎙️
• A thoughtful discussion on the intersection of race, identity, and place in Smith's poetry. 🏞️
• Insightful reflections on the role of poetry in activism and its ability to inspire change. ✊
• Mandana Chaffa and Danez Smith engage in a lively conversation about the challenges and joys of writing. ✍️
• The poets share personal anecdotes, offering a glimpse into their writing processes and motivations. 📖
• An engaging Q&A session where Smith offers advice to budding poets on overcoming fear and embracing creativity. 🎓

Key Takeaways

• Danez Smith shares their journey of self-discovery through poetry, emphasizing its role in truth-telling and personal growth. 📚
• The conversation highlights the importance of love in poetry, with Smith focusing on love for oneself, community, and place. ❤️
• Smith explores the concept of place in poetry, with a particular focus on Minneapolis and significant events like the George Floyd murder. 🌆
• The dialogue underscores the therapeutic role of poetry in confronting and digesting personal and communal trauma. 🧠
• Smith and Chaffa celebrate the power of poetry to challenge norms and offer new perspectives. 🔄
• Poetry as a communal and collaborative experience, drawing connections between past and present. 🌐

Overview

The Brooklyn Rail hosted its 123rd new social environment conversation featuring celebrated poets Danez Smith and Mandana Chaffa. This engaging session, moderated by Maggie, offered profound insights into the life and works of Smith, celebrated for their unique voice in poetry.

A central theme of the discussion was the multifaceted nature of love in poetry, highlighting how Smith approaches themes of self-love, communal love, and love for place within their works. Smith's poetry frequently revisits the notion of place, with Minneapolis serving as a prominent backdrop, especially in light of the George Floyd incident.

The session also touched upon the therapeutic power of poetry. Smith and Chaffa explored how poetry becomes a vessel for processing personal and collective trauma, ultimately serving as a tool for activism and change. Through readings and dialogue, they illustrated poetry's capacity to challenge societal norms and foster community.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The introduction starts with a welcome message to the Brooklyn Rail's 1,23rd new social environment. The host, Maggie, a programs associate, announces herself as the MC for the day. She mentions the upcoming conversation featuring Denz Smith and Mandana Shafa, though the transcript is cut off before more details are given.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Guest Introductions The chapter titled 'Guest Introductions' introduces Denz Smith, a notable author of four collections including 'Don't Call Us Dead' and 'Homie.' Recently, they published 'Bluff,' which was a finalist for both the Minnesota Book Award and the Anisfeld Wolf Book Award, and serves as the topic of discussion. They are also credited as the curator of 'Blues and Stereo,' focusing on the early works of Langston Hughes. Denz Smith's contributions to literature have been recognized with several awards, including the Ford Prize for best collection, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.
• 01:00 - 10:00: Danez Smith Reads Poems Danez Smith is recognized with multiple awards and nominations including the Kate Tus Discovery Award and as a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, National Book Critic Circle Award, and National Book Award. Danez lives in the Twin Cities, teaches at the Randolph College MFA program, and is part of the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. The host, Mandana Shafa, is the founder and editor-in-chief of Norway's journal, a periodical focusing on Persian Arts and Letters.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Discussion on Poetry and Love The chapter highlights the contributions of an influential literary figure associated with several prestigious literary organizations. This person is involved with the Community of Literary Magazines, Chicago Review of Books, National Books Critic Circle, and the Flowchart Foundation. Despite being born in Toron, Iran, she now resides in New York. The passage concludes by transitioning the conversation to someone named Daz.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Discussion on Place and Identity The chapter titled 'Discussion on Place and Identity' begins with Maggie expressing gratitude to her listeners and participants, particularly highlighting Fed Mandana as a delightful conversation partner. Maggie mentions their previous conversation was virtual, held via a Google platform, and she's pleased to have an in-person discussion this time. The chapter opens with Maggie planning to start the session with a few poems before transitioning into a deeper conversation. There's a hint of personal style with Maggie coming fresh from the barber, suggesting a readiness for the face-to-face engagement.
• 30:00 - 40:00: Discussion on Black Joy and Love The chapter begins with a poem reading centered around the theme of coming out in a traditionally masculine space, the barber shop. The narrator shares a personal story of realizing that the barber shop was the last place he hadn't officially 'come out'. Faced with a situation where he needed to reveal his true identity, the experience transitioned from being daunting to wonderful, highlighting the joy and liberation found in being authentic. The narrative emphasizes themes of black joy and love, interwoven with personal acceptance and coming out in familiar yet challenging environments.
• 40:00 - 50:00: Hope and Temporality in Poetry The chapter titled 'Hope and Temporality in Poetry' delves into personal interactions and reflections on the world, touching upon both its challenges and beauty. It highlights a significant moment influenced by Angel Nef's poem 'King of Creations,' focusing on themes of identity and introspection. The narrative transitions into a personal anecdote about the speaker's last coming out experience and the complexities of their identity journey, framed within the broader discourse on temporality and hope.
• 50:00 - 60:00: Writing Process and Future Projects The chapter titled 'Writing Process and Future Projects' seems to focus on a reflective and poetic viewpoint about personal, creative processes. The narrator attempts to capture the essence of romance intertwined with ambitions symbolized by money, beauty, and peace. These elements are depicted as transactions in a metaphoric 'shedding place,' which seems to represent a personal space where ideas flourish. The 'blade' and 'horizon' imagery suggest a transformative and sometimes challenging journey in writing.
• 60:00 - 70:00: The Importance of Physicality in Poetry The chapter titled 'The Importance of Physicality in Poetry' explores the transformation and struggles of identity in relation to societal expectations and traditions. It uses metaphors and vivid imagery to delve into themes of rejection, desire, and the human condition. The text reflects on the feeling of being molded by external forces, conveying a deep sense of self-doubt and fear of isolation.
• 70:00 - 80:00: Audience Questions The chapter titled "Audience Questions" delves into a metaphorical exploration of identity and the perception of self. The narrator reflects on a desire to remain in a misunderstood but familiar comfort zone ('uncleled oasis'). There is a contemplation on gender identity and relationships as the narrator speaks of transforming men into women in memory. The narrative expresses a sense of vulnerability and fragility ('stretched my life so thin you could cut it with a whisper') and acknowledges the harsh realities and expectations of the outside world. The language is poetic, emphasizing feelings of isolation and the challenges of existing both within personal identity and societal expectations.
• 80:00 - 93:40: Closing Readings and Thanks This chapter, 'Closing Readings and Thanks,' reflects a sentiment of finding solace and uniqueness in a specific place through the power of poetry. The narrative hints at a transformative connection and expression through poems that offer a distinct escape or realization from the broader world.

NSE #1203 | Danez Smith and Mandana Chaffa Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone i'll give you a second to get connected to sound hello and welcome to the Brooklyn Rails 1,23rd new social environment i'm Maggie a programs associate here at the rail and I have the pleasure and privilege of being your MC today for a conversation featuring Denz Smith and Mandana Shafa and now I'll introduce today's guest and
• 00:30 - 01:00 host denz Smith is the author of four collections including Don't Call Us Dead sorry Don't Call Us Dead Homie and most recently Bluff a fin a f finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Anisfeld Wolf Book Award and the topic of today's conversation they're also the curator of Blues and Stereo the early works of Langston Hughes for their work denz has won the Ford Prize for best collection the Minnesota Book Award the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry the
• 01:00 - 01:30 Gate the Kate Tus Discovery Award and has been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award the National Book Critic Circle Award and National Book Award dz lives in the Twin Cities with their people and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program in the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St paul Minnesota and our host today Mandana Shafa is the founder and editor and chief of Norway's journal a periodical of Persian Arts and Letters
• 01:30 - 02:00 and a finalist for the community of literary magazines and press's best magazine debut and an editor at large at Chicago Review of Books she serves on the board of the National Books Critic Circle where she is vice president of the Bario's Book and Translation Prize and is president of the board of the Flowchart Foundation born in Toron Iran she lives in New York and with that I will pass it over to Daz to get us started thank you so much uh thank you so much
• 02:00 - 02:30 Maggie and thank you all y'all for joining us uh thank you Fed Mandana for uh being um a ever welcome and pleasurable conversation partner i'm so excited to get to talk to you again last time we were talking I think over the the Googles um so I'm excited we get to do this face to face this time um okay i'm going to start us off with a couple of poems uh and then we'll dive into the conversation um let's see i'm fresh out of the barber
• 02:30 - 03:00 shop um and I was just there with the guy who's in this poem so I think I would just read this poem first um yeah so this poem is about uh coming out at the barber shop um who now I was used to be I thought I was like out everywhere then I realized the barber shop was the only place um that I still wasn't out um and then my hand was kind of forced a little bit um and it's wonderful now like you know like now he
• 03:00 - 03:30 makes like little gay jokes and it like hits me on my shoulder um and as we talk about the world um and all of its ills and all the wonderful things in it too all right anyways uh this is after my favorite New Yorker uh Angel Nef and her poem King of Creations uh this is Day was the last person I came out to why did I long to leave the man I
• 03:30 - 04:00 wasn't uncomplicated beneath your blade in that brief weekly Mecca I wanted nothing to mark me but the edge of your sheer cutting horizon above my brow our romance of money and mirrors we trade coins for beauty and peace in the time rich forever of this shedding place the million doors to this heaven we attend to be tapered and grown i didn't want my
• 04:00 - 04:30 facts to become the news nor the closeness it takes a man to square a man into grace to be soured by desire or gods or traditions that leave my kind unloved unhoused unknown by clippers raggedy and unbrothered day i wasn't a man i was your clay afraid of being banished
• 04:30 - 05:00 from your hands loose me not from this uncleled oasis where I rather be misnamed than uncounted i curved the men I kissed into vague women in that chair stretched my life so thin you could cut it with a whisper i knew the world had sharpened and acrudeed its jagged disciplines i
• 05:00 - 05:30 knew the world and needed this one place in it not to be it but then you found my poems and
• 05:30 - 06:00 then you cut my hair that's cool uh what um I'll switch books real quick uh I'll read a poem that I feel like is in conversation a little bit with that one from Homie which I think we might talk a little bit about today as well um so Homie is like all about like love I think at the end of the day i think all my poems are love poems at the end
• 06:00 - 06:30 of the day um and yeah so this one is also about like complicated relationships and you know queerness and transness and all kinds of things um I think for this is maybe the poem that it took me the longest to write it took me like six or seven years to get this one right um yeah and I think continues to be a northstar for me when I think about how to get to something in the poems uh I
• 06:30 - 07:00 think I can do this one from memory uh waiting on you to die so I can be myself a thousand years of daughters then me what else could I have learned to be girl after girl after giving herself to
• 07:00 - 07:30 herself one long ringshout name a monarchy of copper and cold shoulders the body too is a garment i learned this best from the snake undulating out of hers undulating out of her pork rind dress i crawl out of myself into myself take refuge where I
• 07:30 - 08:00 flee once I snatched out my heart like a track and found not a heart but two girls forever playing slide on a porch in my chest who knows how they keep time they could be a single girl doubled and joined at the hands of I'm stalling i want to say something without saying
• 08:00 - 08:30 it but there's no time i'm waiting for a few folks I love dearly to die so I can be myself
• 08:30 - 09:00 please don't make me say who [ __ ] the garments I'd buy if my baby wasn't alive if they woke up at their wake they might not recognize that
• 09:00 - 09:30 woman in the front making all that noise all right uh um that poem hits a little bit too close to homes um all right family stuff you know um
• 09:30 - 10:00 that created some interesting Thanksgivings for a while um and one thing I told my grandma who part that poem is partly thinking about she was like "Do you want me to die?" And I said "Absolutely not." Um that is my girl if you know me personally you know my grandma is my lady um but I told her there are some parts of her that had to die if our relationship would actually be uh was to actually be unconditional you
• 10:00 - 10:30 know um they always say they love you unconditionally until the conditions show up and there's still some stuff there right i think parts of that poem are still true even in just like a metaphorical sense uh but you know love complicated all right um then one poem more let's do uh something from the more like poetry side of things
• 10:30 - 11:00 um cool uh this is uh Ars Poetica from Love so what you need to know about this poem is that like this is on page 119 and so before this u there's been a lot of anti- poeticas and just stuff of me like kind of beating up on poetry and stuff like that and then you get to this line [ __ ] all that other [ __ ] even when the fog cleared the wrong sky on my mind the horizon at the end of
• 11:00 - 11:30 pity is a useless sun hotheaded and bitterborn light let the daughter rise when my earth meets the clouds what her say what next she believe in and nurse my big bad for how long I spent making apologies for what I ate do caught myself sorry for bodies the nation caught in its borderless mall caught myself washing blood off someone else's
• 11:30 - 12:00 hands i'm off that that being the mode that made a cage of guilt out my depression that being what fault I fell into and dressed into a lovely but ineffective grave what I'm sorry for making poetry into a house of rebuttals a temple for the false gods of stagnant argument and deadend fields here in these lines in these rooms I add my
• 12:00 - 12:30 blues and my gospels to the record of now i offer my scratched golds to the blueprint of possible dear reader whenever you are reading this is the future to me which means tomorrow is still coming which means today still lives which means there is still time
• 12:30 - 13:00 for beautiful urgent change which means there is still time to make more a lie which means there is still poetry are you kidding like you want me to follow that i mean I thought you and I were very good friends um I had a different story here but since you read those poems but I'd like to stay in the minute between that one and anti-
• 13:00 - 13:30 poeticum um I was thinking a lot about I don't know if you ever read Bernardet Meyer's uh the tragic condition of the Statue of Liberty no I want to now oh my god yeah yeah i think you'd like it i think you'd like it and she wrote it in 1987 when uh New York City was asking for donations to to make the Statue of Liberty look better um and there's this entire litany of the
• 13:30 - 14:00 things that she can't do she can't do she can't do and what poetry can't do and can't do and can't do and that she doesn't have and she literally didn't doesn't have the money to to make it any better but I can offer you this poem so between anti-poetica and this uh this Ars poetica it's really thrilling to me that you are talking about all the things that poetry kind of can't do but in the same time you're proving what poetry can do and can be it it may not
• 14:00 - 14:30 change the world but it changes people and those are the people that can potentially change the world so even in your kind of early negation of it I I see very clearly how poetry indeed has even changed you i can tell you 100 million reasons why your poetry has changed me or other people in this audience but I I think through those I got I had the sense of how poetry has changed who you are how you express yourself and who you
• 14:30 - 15:00 hope to be through it yeah um How has poetry changed me oh my god um I think poetry since I first fell in love with it in like ninth grade um has been a space to rehearse and try out telling the truth um there were so many things that I
• 15:00 - 15:30 think I got to admit aloud for the first time in poetry right um you know I think the first time you know a word like I am gay you know was like came out of my body was pinned a page right trying to write a poem um you know the first time I got to talk about um the violence that was evident and prevalent in the home I grew up in um
• 15:30 - 16:00 outside of the home I grew up in was in a poem um you know I think there have been so many revelations in my life that have manifested themselves for the first time within the lines of a poem um you know and so so I think poetry has long been a container for for for my dreams for the truth for my anxieties um for you know for for the truth
• 16:00 - 16:30 whether it whether the truth was one that allowed my spirit to bloom um or whether it was a truth that gave my spirit the permission to grieve um and to wither a little bit um poetry has been that container um it has also changed my life by just like I do think truthtelling and witnessing truthtelling more than witnessing witnessing I mean you can't witness if you don't tell the truth can't be a false witness right um has brought just like such wonderful people into my life you know um just
• 16:30 - 17:00 really really [ __ ] good friends um that I met because we all love poems and even if you know some of us have stopped writing or um even if we all stop writing tomorrow the the the wealth of those relationships um it is no small part that they are so rich because those people are poets um and because yeah
• 17:00 - 17:30 uh and yeah how has poetry changed my life it's just so many things I think it's it makes me braver you know um it yeah it gives me permission like I think that practice and truth telling Right if I can say it first in a poem if I can think it first in a poem um I think the poem then becomes an invitation to live closer to what uh what language has manifested right um so it happens first in the written word um and then it gives
• 17:30 - 18:00 my physical being permission to like sort of live up to where language has pointed um so yeah so I'm very thankful in in that way i think it's like spiritual practice right i think like you know I was raised in uh a very Christian household i still go to church after many years away I started going again um I I call myself a little bit of a Christian plus like I just think a little bit broader than I think um than my church requires but um
• 18:00 - 18:30 it feels good to be able to practice my relationship to the divine through uh these Baptist traditions um and you know we always come back to the word right um and trying to live up to the word of God um and I'll take that a step further and say I'm trying to live up to the word of Louis Clifton i'm trying to live up to the word of June Jordan i'm trying to live up uh to the word of Human Win i'm
• 18:30 - 19:00 trying to live up to the word of myself as well right um all these texts um that are you know so instructive where would I be in the world without Galabbr telling me how to be a better poet or a better person through the prophet that is my religious text um so yeah so poetry yeah it's that endless possible and you're you're also living up to the word of your future self and I know that because I've read your different texts from first book to
• 19:00 - 19:30 to current one and it seems that you planted the seeds of who you are now through them and that's terribly thrilling that goes back to poetry almost as a way of divination you know in my culture we uh when we need some sort of help to think about things you it will typically it's the poems of Hoff you will open it up in any page put your finger on it and that poem is supposed to guide you as to what you want to do next and in a way that's what you're
• 19:30 - 20:00 talking about poetry you you also lead me to the to a topic that I think both you and I really wanted to talk a little bit about which is about the fact that you write a lot of love poems mhm there's the small P politics the capital P politics but love poems have been in every one of your books you know today is the anniversary of Charles Bodilair's birth and and I'm a terrible person who runs a prize for books in translation because I cannot tell you who the translator is but this is so about your
• 20:00 - 20:30 books which is a multitude of small delights constitutes happiness m and I think that's something that you address in a lot of small and large ways i the largest way actually in this book in homie I really felt your passion for your people your tribe who whether named or unnamed are there with you they're with you in the poems but I was rereading Rondo last night and really
• 20:30 - 21:00 interesting long pros poem which was a great exciting departure I thought for you but uh through it I see the love of place and space and you how that also is one of your passions and drives who you are and what you love uh in your life so I'd love to talk about love poems yeah uh I Yeah i think
• 21:00 - 21:30 love informs my politics um right i think like the perfect political frame for me is like how do my actions and the things I champion and engineer make love more possible in the lives of others how do we love people how do we love the land how do we love the future um I think yeah I think like my first two books were maybe a practice in like loving myself uh homie definitely is
• 21:30 - 22:00 like loving the tribe like you said um and then uh yeah Bluff is I think both sort of leaning into the love of place of Minneapolis of this particular tribe here in the Twin Cities and family and friends and also I think I've been calling it uh the book where like me and poetry went to couples therapy uh you know because I really I really did uh after a while like just need to like kind of figure out like why am I still
• 22:00 - 22:30 writing poems and I think that that's a sort of a question at the center of bluff is why poems and I think by the end of the book you know it's a big ass book so I I definitely love poems um by the end of it [ __ ] I've written two books of poems since then um and so it was a really good practice in saying like I want to love this art form right um so I had to sort of wrestle with it um through it in that way it's a love it's all love poems uh but I think yeah
• 22:30 - 23:00 in terms of that like sort of thing about place with bluff a friend of mine Tish Jones uh once put it into really good language for me u cuz I kept on like living here for a little bit then moving away and then living here to move a bit and I was coming to her I was living in Philadelphia at the time and I was just I had to call her it was a very tough call we were working together at the time and I had to come accountable for some work I didn't do and just sort of you know in the We had been like in this like weird like she's one of my best friends but she was
• 23:00 - 23:30 also my boss for a little bit and I kind of had to like break down for a moment i just was like I'm just not happy um there was a lot of other stuff going on too um but I just had to be I needed her to be my friend for a moment she was like I was concerned about you when you moved away from Minneapolis because this is where your electricity lives and I never that's just that word I was like oh [ __ ] my electricity lives there just that word you know the amount of energy uh that surges through my spirit when
• 23:30 - 24:00 I'm here she was so right um and so I think bluff is also me trying to like manifest that love of place for the first what I feel like is really the first time um so expressed in poems there's like individual poems in other collections that I think you know there's like the poem I'm going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense um and homey but um I kind of felt very insecure about not being a
• 24:00 - 24:30 poet of place before um there were friends of mine Human Win who I mentioned earlier just like other folks who I felt like were so um so obviously from where they're from and I felt very insecure that I think my poems didn't necessarily have that same local stamp uh and so one of my like tasks for myself with bluff and I think coming out of the murder of George Floyd
• 24:30 - 25:00 here in 2020 it sort of almost man demanded something that I was almost feel that was already feeling that I write poems that were of this dirt here um can I push back a little on that can I push back a little on that because I think um you've always written about place whether or not you've directly named it so maybe this is the the first collection where you're really naming it you're literally naming streets you're showing streets and I I love the little architecture of the book
• 25:00 - 25:30 which is another reason why people should buy poetry books in hard copy because I have a PDF of this i have three hard copies of it as well and you can't it's there's no comparison but uh but buy the PDFs if you can't get the books of course um but you've always been you've always been talking about place and space even if you haven't directly named it i think you are directly naming it and certainly the George Floyd uh murder uh was a big part
• 25:30 - 26:00 of that but place is part of who you are what did you say i wrote this down somewhere um my Eden is waiting on me to make it m and I think you've been making that Eden for a long time whether or not you've you've necessarily shown the map you know the street names and all of that i hear you okay I'm I'm with you yeah there is right because I think like if you think about like Summer Somewhere from Don't Call Us Dead that is
• 26:00 - 26:30 definitely like a place poem right um or even like a declaration right like I've left Earth you know in search of a new planet from Dear White America i think America has been the place you know for so much of my work uh but I think America sometimes can start to feel too abstract even for me it is abstract no that's fine and and I also understand the power of what you're saying because you're saying sure it may
• 26:30 - 27:00 have been part of my work that was evident to people but this the first it's the same thing as the first poem you read to actually name and claim something totally changes the power of it and the power that it gives you like it's a power that it gives you so I do see naming things as a very powerful act and poets more than anyone have that alchemist power because once you name it it exists it's a line about eating yeah and I think I had
• 27:00 - 27:30 named a great many things i think what I'm Okay so let me re let me revise what I'm saying it wasn't that I w maybe I wasn't a poet of place is that I needed to have my relationship to place um I need to pick up a new tool right and a new strategy to to manifest that for me in a way that I think was satisfying to the questions that I was asking myself at the time right so not to just sort of say like I had never done it um I'll be kinder to my younger self in that regard
• 27:30 - 28:00 u but that I needed to and I think this is what what stumbling upon a new question does for you as an artist you have to say like oh what are the strategies and tools and you know uh the ways I need to interrogate this question right now that can't be satisfied um that I that can't be satisfied by the same tools and tricks that I've done before or that the work I've done before which I'm still very proud of um has not
• 28:00 - 28:30 you know there's something there's there's a there's something incomplete that I'm now striving for again right that can't be satisfied by like pointing in the past at what I've done uh but rather says let me find this new way um into the question uh towards something fuller um in a way that I have not done before yeah yeah that I I do feel that quite a bit uh in your work um
• 28:30 - 29:00 and this seems like something that is so written into the work that you do that I shouldn't uh name it but also this your love and joy black love and joy and that is throughout this book and I find that an again a very incred incredibly powerful thing because it's very easy even for us right now to fall into the conversations about all the
• 29:00 - 29:30 losses and all the abuse and all of the negative things but to stay in the middle of that i see that that's out there this is what's happening no but there's joy and happiness and there's black joy and happiness and I'm not going to only be about the harm that is being done yeah yeah I think that lesson for me honestly started at home um so I grew up uh at in
• 29:30 - 30:00 a home with my mother and we lived with my grandparents in their home and my mom's childhood home wow and my grandfather was a very abusive man towards his wife towards my grandmother um and that abuse was both known and not talked about but yet hyperexperienced right it felt like we could critique it and damn it and shame it within when it was happening to stop it but then once it
• 30:00 - 30:30 was over you dare not speak of it you know um so it was almost these two realities there was the reality of him when he was drunk on the weekends and when the violence was more uh either at hand or just like you know was like the height and potential of it was felt because now alcohol was in the picture and then there was like the weekday him which was the family man who went to work and duh and like all these things you dare didn't speak about who he was when he was drunk
• 30:30 - 31:00 and I refused these I I I received these very confusing lessons on love right which was like uh which is like you know like I'm allowed to like stop the fight you know this is a man that like I've like punched in the face before to get him off his wife but then like you better love him you better never ever talk bad about him like and I was like what what the hell am I supposed to do um and there's a there's poems through
• 31:00 - 31:30 all the collections but I think the the one that I think sort of manifests the real balance of that for me is the poem I missed that Negro in Bluff um where I think like the end of the poem I think is like the long every poem I think I've ever written about him has led to like the last two lines uh or the last two sentences of this poem i plotted his death in the dark of Saturdays i'd kill the world to kiss him
• 31:30 - 32:00 right um which is that on like a hyper personal level and I think if I explode that um to the communal level of like loving that's me loving my black grandfather if I explode that to loving black people then maybe I get something closer to Eevee Shockley's Ode to My Blackness um where she says you know you are my um
• 32:00 - 32:30 you are my shelter from the storm and the storm right u there's a little nod to that line in that poem as well um I have that line tattooed on the on my side right here thank you Eevee um thank you Eevee indeed yeah thank you Dr shocki man one of the best ones i agree with you one of the best ones in every possible way so you you know you're talking about and it's interesting because I also can't help but see it on the page you're talking about ghosts and silence as well
• 32:30 - 33:00 and literally on the page for me that is often the white space uh or the blank space and I can only imagine what that home felt like sometimes you know the the heaviness of that and somehow on the page though you're able to take that heaviness which is very personal and one reach out to other people who can understand the feeling if not the exact situation but make it a connective thing whereas in your life at least growing
• 33:00 - 33:30 up since you couldn't talk about it it wasn't connective it was a distancing but your poems choose to look upon it as a connection and I find that uh Incredible you're reframing it you're reframing yeah i think you have to take ownership of it right i think you have to um you have to digest it and make it part of yourself and so um I think I'm thinking about like one
• 33:30 - 34:00 of Toy Derkott's instructions for folks at Kab Conum for the years she taught there was always to go and write your heart poem right um and you know what is the hardest poem that you can write right now you know what is the wound that sort of needs to be interrogated um and then there was also you know her lessons about like you know you could this the hard poem is something you might be writing for the rest of your life and I think you look at her relationship with her father and how she's written about that and you know all these collections and I think
• 34:00 - 34:30 kind of reaching a peak when she writes the undertaker's daughter um but you know there's a way in which toy in all of her loveliness has showed us to to own your darkness right um to to grab hold of it and to grab hold of what has happened to you um also allows it you know it makes you stop damaging you over and over again right if I can hold if I can grab hold of the blade
• 34:30 - 35:00 that is coming to end me now it is my weapon as well right so I get to I get to now redirect where this blade is going and I think that is part of the writing of like the black love epic that that is black American poetry right is like we're going to tell the story so that the story is not just happening to us and so we can find the moments of loveliness even amongst all the terror that we went through and in that we can also start to build that Eden we can
• 35:00 - 35:30 start to build that future and where we are now beloved and not endangered right um yeah I think there's some that form of sense of control you know well it's agency All the poems have a lot of agency but but it's also a secret superpower right if I can if I can and I find that even hard for myself i'm slowly getting into doing that sort of thing where if you really write about the the details of your own existence
• 35:30 - 36:00 uh it becomes your superpower because also no one can write about you that way only you can write about you yeah i I I find that but you know though it's all incredibly hopeful as well what was it principled and I wrote this down it hits me so hard especially Yeah especially right now is um hope is hard but I have you know I need to like put that on on my uh dresser when I get up every But
• 36:00 - 36:30 it's true hope is hard but I have it and how much how hard is it sometimes to have hope i don't mean just in your work in your you know like that's a statement that's very powerful doesn't mean you always have it when you say it right like when you say it enough times then yes hope you do have it I do have hope when I read your work uh I do have hope I have a lot of hope yeah I think it's incredibly hard to hold on to hope right I think you know there's other places in
• 36:30 - 37:00 the poem my brain is now going to the poem love poem where it's like in the doomed interludes between hope I try to remember children exist and you know So and that poem goes on to say some other thing but um so the there are these times where like I think that's sort of the curse and the beauty of being a poet is that um is that we're tasked to see the world with both um great imagination and great
• 37:00 - 37:30 clarity and sometimes that clarity um will allow me to see the great possibility within us as humans as people and sometimes that clarity is it's so heavy and it leads me away from hope right it's also temporality um you you operate with different levels of temporality all the great poets do yeah and if you use temporality then you can have hope
• 37:30 - 38:00 if in the moment it can be it can be very and I find certainly in your poetry that it is perhaps the most assertive act of resistance to say I am going to love the people I love i'm going to have hope about tomorrow that there's nothing that could be more assertive than that and more difficult at times yeah yeah yeah and I think that is that that you know oh god I'm about to get Christian you know I'm thinking about trouble don't last always you know um which I
• 38:00 - 38:30 think everybody's black grandma has said to them at some point in time right but if you think about that right like hope even if in the darkest moment if I can hold on to the fact that like the yesterday that was so bright um but maybe in that moment feels so far away that yesterday was once a tomorrow at some point in time right absolutely and and so I trust that tomorrow even if the tomorrow is dark that there's
• 38:30 - 39:00 another tomorrow beyond that that is full of that hope and that that has that place that hope is trying to point me right um to me hope is necessary right hope is hard but I have it it's not say I don't like I'm not even trusting when I say I have hope that it's gonna get better soon but I'm trusting um I'm trusting my willingness to wait and to be patient
• 39:00 - 39:30 for it um and maybe my patience is that there is no resolution but I'm willing to wait it out and see um my Persian parents my Persian parents who are probably the age of your grandparents uh would totally agree with that whenever I've been down they say "Well there's always hope it's not if you're here there's always hope." And you know they're they're not wrong but sometimes it's hard to have that that ability to keep breathing through the through the
• 39:30 - 40:00 hard things and through what's going on and what's going on to other people is just as painful it's not like you sit there and think "Oh you have your own pain it's the other pain." But yeah the So you know I said this to you probably the other time i'm telling you preacher is your next Yeah i'm telling you because then I started thinking about other things right because then I'm just like you know preacher I I mean I I will come to the the church of Deness Smith right cold Train had a church in San Francisco why Why can't Smith have one in in the
• 40:00 - 40:30 community you know I don't know if it's preacher i think somebody the other day I think Freddy Troy was saying like maybe I could be a chaplain and I think I would maybe just like to help people with moments of pray like I don't know if I need to like give a sermon every Sunday but I would like to be like somebody that comes over to your house when you're having a rough time you know i could do that i like I like that i like that a lot i And I do want to interject and I know that uh Michael has been putting this in in our chat but really if you all have
• 40:30 - 41:00 any questions I'm sure they're better than mine please put them in the appropriate place because we will have some time for Nobody's nobody's questions are better than yours uh but we'll take them we'll take them um well you'll be reading a little later but what is on your mind now you know why I'm asking because so you started working on Bluff and Rush 20 as I dropped something on um maybe 2020 or so is that when some of these poems were starting to come out like you started to
• 41:00 - 41:30 write them no the oldest poem in here is probably from like my like grad school days so like 2016 but I think Bluff as itself the bulk of these poems probably started coming out in 2022 actually okay so it's always interesting to me because I you know you've heard me say this poets are the divin divinators english is the second language of our time um so I can't wait to hear what you're going to read next
• 41:30 - 42:00 later because I think those are going to be the poems that maybe have something to do with the times that we have two three years from now which is kind of deeply exciting uh to think about um have you having read Rondo are you doing more pros poems you should be or are you doing pros in general you should be uh yeah look at me look at me well look at me telling you you should be no I'm doing I'm doing a lot of things right now so I think I'm currently have my foot in three different projects um
• 42:00 - 42:30 so in the poetry sense um there's a book that I'm calling like my like bluff hangover um because at the end of Bluff I really started to turn the last couple poems that went into Bluff all were really obsessed with time um and I think once I and I needed to like put a in I put a bow on the book and so I like I sense it in because I had all these time poems flowing out of
• 42:30 - 43:00 me um that I knew if I tried to smash them into the book that it'd be something completely different and so uh so yeah so I have this book about time besides Jeff wants more books from you so you can't smash it all um no so this next book it'll come out um I don't know if it's been announced yet but I can announce it it'll come out in 20 27 um in the early part of that year and it's called My My Sweet Time Right Now um and so that's all like my
• 43:00 - 43:30 time poems are going in there um that's like almost done i need to do a little bit of collage work still to finish up a visual essay um but yeah so that poem that book is almost done um and then I have a poem that I'm like writing right now that's like a long poem there's a there's a song by the MC Drunken Master that is from like the early 2000s it was on the FUBU FU released an album uh back then
• 43:30 - 44:00 and there's a song on there called 50 [ __ ] Deep um that I love and I view as a love poem or love song um and so I'm taking and like it's like this like song where like he like literally is like counting through you know [ __ ] he's like you know I wrote what nothing but them real [ __ ] one the drill [ __ ] two and so it's just like very mathematical and so I'm just taking each one of those 50 and taking it and starting a poem with that thing and just
• 44:00 - 44:30 like writing a little poem underneath and so it's just like going to be this book of 50 poems um yeah they're like I'm like bury I just got to 25 uh so I'm halfway through um so I'm excited to keep on writing that and then in pros uh I am writing a novel um thank you h you know I have my biases anyone who knows me knows what my biases are so I love when my favorite poets write novels
• 44:30 - 45:00 yeah and I'm having a lot of fun writing this novel um yes I need to pick it back up um it's been sitting on the desk for a little while uh but I'm having fun with it like one of my it's been my task i was like trying to get to a good stopping place um with the energy of like this the last poetry book I was talking about right um and so now I feel like I think like maybe this week it's time to like dive back into the novel a little bit more um I'm having a lot of fun i don't know what the hell I'm doing
• 45:00 - 45:30 i know where I'm go i kind of know where I'm going uh and I feel like it's very powerful i love pros now i used to hate writing pros um and I I kept taking commissions from different magazines just to kind of force myself to rehab my relationship to writing pros um and do you like reading pros do you like reading pros i love reading pros for sure u but writing it just always felt like a very different beast i think I had maybe some like grad school and
• 45:30 - 46:00 undergrad like PTSD from writing essays and not really having a fun time with it um but you know but then I I kept on taking these commissions and you know it would take me an embarrassing long time to make it to a thousand words but now I now I'm on now I can I I love writing pros now um I think I it's definitely a different hat that I have to put on and a different relationship to the sentence um but I feel really good when I'm
• 46:00 - 46:30 writing pros you know I write my essays for little magazines here and there i do think someday I want to write like an essay collection as well um after the novel I think there is there's a pros work or like a non-fiction work somewhere in the future um about love um about love and sex and desire and marriage um but also about all the other things that I'm always obsessed with um so yeah
• 46:30 - 47:00 desire desire that's a word let me tell you what do you want i mean no no you know we talk about it we use that word a lot but thinking of it from through the lens of the way you write and think about things that's a that's a heck of a word i'm gonna Can I be really really nerdy for a second when um for a second he says "You're nerdy all the time Andy what do you mean for a second?" So you do this a lot so does Dr eevee speaking of the person we love so much when
• 47:00 - 47:30 you're doing some of your very architectural works on the page how is I mean how is that happening you're writing and drawing on the page i mean and all hail to the type sitters uh at Greywolf and elsewhere right who who do that sort of thing but how is that it's so playful i love that it's it's saying "Let me totally deconstruct what we consider the order of language."
• 47:30 - 48:00 And once you de deconstruct the order of language then you're deconstructing whatever the powers that be say that language should be that connection should be that expression should be and I I love that i'm a I'm a total nerd for things like that but how are you literally doing it on the page when do you when do you decide that this idea is going to be a great pros poem this idea is going to be a great you know architectural poem i love in Rondo you know how much I love Rondo but how does
• 48:00 - 48:30 that process happen for you if I can get really in the weeds of it no for sure i think it happens a couple different ways so I think there's poems like Rondo um where I think my vision for that poem very early on was that I wanted the poem to interact with the freeway in some type of way right and I saw something moving through the page and maybe like you know rearranging the language and you know or displacing the language um which is what ended up happening in the
• 48:30 - 49:00 poem um but so that is like a one of the rare occasions that the architectural um or the visual effect is sort of predates the language for the poem i I sort I knew that I wanted the poem to look I wanted to write a poem about Rondo wanted it to have this sort of engagement with a physical freeway moving through it um and that idea came to me probably 5 years before I actually wrote the poem um and I think for cuz I cuz I do what I
• 49:00 - 49:30 think what has maybe changed from my younger years is that I would sort of have an idea for what the poem was about and I would just try to write it where I think now I have to be a little bit more patient for the language to show up um and that takes precedence to idea so even if I have an idea it's then I'm then I'm maybe trying to attune my listening and say "Okay where does this want to start?" Uh but otherwise I think
• 49:30 - 50:00 most of my poems are like sort of arriving language first and I'm like "Oh this is what you're about." Um and so I think some of the other architectural poems you know I maybe taking the lyric as far as I can take it and then I reach a point where just just attending to the language is no longer helping me edit and so I start to then say okay well what are the visual opportunities um in this work to sort of can I bring in some other element can I look at it less as a
• 50:00 - 50:30 can I look at the blank page less as just a receptacle for lines of poetry and more like a canvas um and does that allow me to like bend around a corner and get to the next point where the poem wants to go and so that I think that is probably a little bit more common is just like I'm just writing a poem um I typically write in either just like pros poems or couplets just because of where I tend to write i think uh most of my drafts nowadays are either happening by hand or they're happening in my notes app on my phone right um or my notes app
• 50:30 - 51:00 on the computer which feels like a very low stakes place for me to write poems and so yeah it's like either couplets or just like one sort of block of text um or a pros poem um I think yeah when I'm writing by hand it tends I tend not to be worried about line breaks i tend just to be thinking about language and so then just like some like you know just some like play comes into play and then I was like oh you know maybe I want to try this in different stans fragments then I'm sort of maybe looking for the opportunities for line breaks in the
• 51:00 - 51:30 work and that helps bend the editing in a certain direction uh it's it's immensely open for the reader I think because that kind of poem I'm I get to start where I want to start right and I get to go in different directions that I want to go and it's like a choose your own adventure type of thing in a way so I think from a reader's perspective it's endlessly interesting and you know my philosophies about poetry is that great poetry like yours is a relationship
• 51:30 - 52:00 every time like so I had put this book down for a while obviously and when I went back into it last night I was like oh my goodness why did I not see this this and this and this and poetry gives that relationship to us a poem changes every time we read it because we change every time we read it yeah yeah and and it's a very discreet thing you know it's it's immensely discreet that way it's very it's kind of interesting do you So I guess I'm going to ask you do you ever
• 52:00 - 52:30 go look at these poems again and say "Oh I didn't see this when I wrote it." Where where the divination comes for you personally yeah I think so i mean that's the nice part about walking away from work for a little bit is that like it's just kind of too much to hold in your head right um so sometimes I'll pick up I think I have this relationship with Homie a lot more um definitely with Bluff i think Bluff maybe because it's newer I think it's still a little bit closer to my memory um but I do read Bluff and I'm like "Oh yeah you did the
• 52:30 - 53:00 thing." Um you did do the thing you did your thing you did the thing um but I think Homie for me I had a I think Homie there was it was a it was a rather difficult writing process um it was like the least for for the most like love and joyous book that I have i think it was the hardest book to write and to get across the finish line um and I think I I learned a lot about my process from writing Homie um I think I maybe would
• 53:00 - 53:30 have asked you know retrospectively I was like "Oh I think I maybe just even needed like another year to sit around and have some thoughts with that work." Um but I and I think when I think about the book often especially in the years following I just sort of had this antagonistic relationship to it or I just I didn't remember having fun while doing it and so I was like "Oh I hate homie d you know it's it's a horrible book." But then every time I pick it up I'm just like like you did your thing you really like that line or here's this thing that
• 53:30 - 54:00 I didn't see I was doing or like oh wow Danz that was a risk and a choice and you really did some fun things and I can see myself having fun even in the midst of the frustration that I felt trying to make a cohesive like you know sort of good work um well you refer to homie in this book like the thing about uh my president yeah which is a poem I love actually in homie but kind of it's I love it but when you the way you refer to it was like wow you're you're talking
• 54:00 - 54:30 to yourself in that book and you also talking to where we all were at that time where we were just joyous about this that and the other and reframing saying you know looking at the world now maybe maybe I can look at it this way um very uh odd question that had occurred to me um have you ever thought about doing other chatbooks because I think poor chatbooks get short tripped don't they like they're always
• 54:30 - 55:00 considered a stepping stone to the collection and I think there are things that a chatbook then can do that nothing else can and and they they deserve to have more love than they do have you and you can say for sure i love I love a chatbook i read chatbooks um I think my problem is that every time I try to make a chatbook it explodes and becomes a full length collection um that's not a problem that's wonderful that's wonderful i think they But I do think I
• 55:00 - 55:30 think you're right you know there's something about just like those like you know sort of 20 30 pages of just like I'm just going to follow this thread just like enough and it just a good chatbook feels like reading a full length collection right absolutely um they're so full of thought um It's like an EP are you old enough to remember EPs of course i mean we still do EPs the people still do EPs you know some of my favorite not in vinyl form you don't i mean no not in vinyl but like you know
• 55:30 - 56:00 there are some music artists that are like you know they'll put together like six or seven songs and call that a Yeah a a really good chap is not that easy to do no and when it's really good and there's no space for for for lack you know there's no space for anything lazy you know for Bluff i thought there was a po there was a point when I was putting together Bluff that I thought about borrowing well I thought it was fresh when I first thought of it and then I realized every time you think you're doing something new and Carson has
• 56:00 - 56:30 already done it um I thought I thought I was like "Oh maybe I'll break this up into like five or I had like broken it up into like five or six like chatbooks and I was like "Oh maybe we'll just like release like you know like a collection of smaller chatbooks as the book." Um and then I was like "Oh yeah and Carson's already done it." Um it would be you doing it i would love like a I I have box sets of of cassettes that's I mean where am I going to play
• 56:30 - 57:00 them but I have box sets and cassettes i would love the box set yeah maybe one day it'll still happen maybe that'll be maybe for the 10th anniversary of Bluff uh do something oh that would be cool yeah yeah yeah I see that i see that there's something very And it's funny we're both talking about music because there is something deeply musical about your work and I think that's one of the reasons I'm I'm going toward these kind of musical metaphors because I see that very very much in your work and also how
• 57:00 - 57:30 you I I love hearing poetry aloud because I grew up hearing poetry aloud and um by people who were not necessarily educated but they knew their poetry and so I love the way you read poetry aloud um because it's performative but it's not only you performing it you know I feel like call in other other entities for you to say the poetry aloud is how important is that to you when you're testing poems out how important is that
• 57:30 - 58:00 speaking it aloud and hearing the musicality of it and how much does that sometimes change what you end up doing with the poem if at all no yeah i think um I think writing poems is a collaboration between my eyes ears and hands um in mind right and so there are certain things that the ear can catch when I'm trying to go for sound um that the eyes cannot see right so I do you
• 58:00 - 58:30 know sort of have to do the muttering to myself um I think most poets do right you kind of got to talk to yourself a little bit just to get the work in the air right um but you know I think the I I'm not trying to get every poem to that space there are poems that I don't I choose not to read out loud because I don't think they offer themselves up over to the air quite as receptively to the moment of performance right and so I might choose to just let them be a book thing that's not to say that they couldn't there are some poems that I'm like "Oh I think this would be great as
• 58:30 - 59:00 a performance work or like there's that poem the poem sonnet that happens in like four quadrants i want to do some video work to bring that poem to life is how I see that poem best being performed." Um but yeah so I think there there is a performative element that I that I love you know when I first started writing or performing poetry one of my favorite spaces to read poems was a was a spot here called the Blue Nile um and at the Blue Nile you could uh you play when you
• 59:00 - 59:30 read your poems um you could play with the band right and the band would back you up they'd listen to you and so I do kind of feel like there is um you know and maybe this is also just like you know some some of afro retention right but like there is sort of the um unspoken drum that I'm hearing in my head right that uh that sometimes when I'm what what what maybe manifests is like sort of getting silence um into the
• 59:30 - 60:00 work is like sort of me waiting for the right drum beat um so there is that relationship but I love playing with musicians i love playing with drummers especially um because there is my language is but one percussion in one language yes it is right so then there's that relationship back to the drum um often so yeah so there is a musicality that I'm intentionally reaching for um because I want to illuminate the rhythms in the word that
• 60:00 - 60:30 the eye is just reading on the page might not be able to catch and because now I have a body right and like yeah the poem you know my my books I like try my best to write them um but I want my work to be a different experience when I of flesh and blood am in the presence to be able to lift them up beyond that script yeah i um there's a great great choreographer um Ron Brown who runs uh evidence dance troop and some of his
• 60:30 - 61:00 earlier work he would have spoken word poetry and the poet themselves doing spoken word poetry as the dancers dance the choreography and it was mesmerizing and I think um sometimes poetry doesn't get enough opportunity to be physical right yeah yeah I I I like that a So you know I have pretty much uh I think we've decided what you're going to be doing for the next five years of your creative life
• 61:00 - 61:30 i got words because all these people are listening you know you're basically committed i I don't think you can get out of I do i have to write the novel my husband also says I have to write the novel too because we we want a house so I got to write the novel so you definitely have to yeah novels by houses right novels by houses for sure you know I do think how much in love you are personally really does also come through the work i'm not saying that you have to be in love to write good work but I I see the added dimension oh thank
• 61:30 - 62:00 you in terms of in terms of how you feel about life it does feel it changed something yeah thank God for my baby changes something it feels exactly the same way about you this I know um so we're we're getting close to the point where we might be asking questions but um I want to see what question haven't I asked that you were thinking boy I'd like to talk oh no i feel like every time we get to talk it's so rich and full um so I don't know
• 62:00 - 62:30 what okay I'll ask you a question before we have you uh we have questions and then we have you read again what's the one poem in this book that you read the most out loud and why like when people say would you read for us when they say people would you read for us DZ what poem do you always go for and why do you always go for it i think I think it's the first poem I read today i think it's uh uh you know day was the last person I came out to which I think is so not the center of the book
• 62:30 - 63:00 um but it's one of you I love it's the first poem I've ever written and read out loud where I often get like active like a at the end of it i think I'm in love with that feeling like I like you know and like there are some poems from every book that are like the criers and so um you know you see me in your audience haven't you like Yeah yeah and you know um and I think you know any
• 63:00 - 63:30 poem there's always one poem that like I can get some laughs I can get somes and if I can get some tears out of it too that to me I'm like okay if I can only read one poem from this book I want people to feel I want them to land someplace lush um and felt and maybe want to go back into the world and love a little stronger and so I think that's one of the poems that helps uh that does that in the book and so that's one of my favorite ones to read for sure did you
• 63:30 - 64:00 ever did you ever share that poem with I did I did I gave him his copy and uh there's like a I have like a beautiful picture of like him reading the poem i think it brought our relationship a lot closer than it already was um so yeah and I think he was just like oh like we always talk about my work and my travels and stuff like that and I think it did something that did an awe for me that's really a that's beautiful that's beautiful i mean um in all your work do you tell everybody
• 64:00 - 64:30 in your life when you have work coming out especially I I'm not I'm not sh you know I also I don't like uh I think maybe my humility sometimes airs on the side of like I think I've had some people tell me like you need to like brag about yourself a little bit more um but you know my work is my work you know and I think like uh I'm not shamed of it in any type of way right so I like let folks know they're like "Yeah book's coming out da d like I'm a bad self-promoter." Um yeah so
• 64:30 - 65:00 my my my business brain from 20 years ago says "Yes most of the poets most of the really good poets are terrible self-promoters." Yeah yeah i'm not gonna say anything else beyond that but most of them most of them Yeah yeah yeah um I know you have a a hard stop coming up and I want to be really respectful of that so Maggie are there any great questions you want to share this has been so lovely um we do have quite a few questions from the
• 65:00 - 65:30 audience um the first question is from Sophia and Sophia says "I'm having such a hard time seating control during my writing how do I ignore my ego and let my writing go in the directions it needs to go and is there a protocol for the days in which fear feels so much stronger than love and hope do you still try to write please and thank you wow oh that's a great place to write for i don't know if fear is something you should ignore um I think you know embrace it Sophia um you know and maybe
• 65:30 - 66:00 yeah maybe sometimes maybe that's part of your poetics um I think I often write um from a place of fear um and then maybe I can edit it when I feel in a more hopeful place um and let those two times meet each other in the body of the poem um any protocol like for like letting go of control i think form is a great tool for that um I will forever champion um A wreath
• 66:00 - 66:30 for Imitill by Marilyn Nelson particularly because of the introduction to that work um it's just a very brief onepage introduction where she talks about reaching for the heroic crown of sonnetss because she needed um this like strict formal element to sort of buoy her from this emotive topic that she felt herself like kind of constantly sort of being not dragged down by in the
• 66:30 - 67:00 sense of like it was a slog but like she couldn't write about the death of IT without sort of losing herself within the emotion and the form sort of acted as kind of a buoy right and so if you're having trouble letting go then I think let the rules of form sort of wrestle control away from you right um one thing I like one thing I love assigning to students who like I feel like a lot of writers
• 67:00 - 67:30 sometimes uh will cut themselves off at the knees by sort of airing towards brevity and I feel like one of the things I'm always asking for from my students I know they get sick of me is like I just want more i just want um I just you know I feel like the poem was just revving up and then you ended it or like oh my god this part at the end um is really where I feel like something starts to open up what happens if we go beyond that um and so if you if if it's
• 67:30 - 68:00 like sort of a thing of like you're cutting off the poems by trying to protect yourself I say write a crown of sonics um because it sort of mandates that you write for a real real long time right um there's a lot of poems of mine I I started writing a lot of longer poems i think especially when I started writing homie it was because I sort of like needed to know where the poem would take me if I if I gave into the possibilities of length um and often times there was a lot of feelings waiting underneath what was like you
• 68:00 - 68:30 know would have maybe been a nice you know 10line or maybe sonic length poem once I submitted to length then you know just that it started to just well trudge up a lot of things that needed to come up uh so try form uh try forms that scare you try forms that feel very foreign to your own process um or to the own shapes that your poems tend to take um and
• 68:30 - 69:00 uh I don't know write uh write about things that maybe your um Okay I'm gonna give you a very specific prompt so I don't know what to tell you how to write about um I want you to first write a poem at least 10 lines long that is only made of questions and then
• 69:00 - 69:30 um you're going to write take each one of those questions and write at least um a fiveline poem that attempts to either further investigate it or answer it uh but first a poem only made of questions and then a poem for every question within that poem try that out especially the question i'm gonna try that out too are you kidding me i want everybody on this call to try that out what are they crazy now to
• 69:30 - 70:00 Yeah yeah i won't share it with you though because that would be embarrassing but yeah I might try that myself thank you for that question Sophia and for that answer DZ um the next question is from Zion zion says "How do you connect or reconnect with your ancestry as a black queer person what do you think about inventing our own ancestries and our need to connect ourselves to our history?" Word um so I practice ancestor veneration um like to my little right
• 70:00 - 70:30 over here is a uh is a altar that I maintain with some pictures of my family and some uh you know some candles and some flowers and some aloe and some cards in case they've been like playing and a whole bunch of other lovely little items that I keep over there um for them i actually haven't fed them in a long time so I need to put some food over there um and yeah so I do that to stay connected with my ancestors i read um
• 70:30 - 71:00 and I invite their language and their practices into my work um you know I think I am never far from the work of Essex Hempill of Baldwin of Jordan uh of uh of Hughes who I just did a project um with or for um however you want to view that um you know so I think we connect with our ancestors by by by communing with them via the
• 71:00 - 71:30 evidence or you know the treasures that they've left for us um by naming them um in our lives and in our work and like you know like reaching to them in their language to sort of you know sample and play alongside um and through just like living our lives a little bit bolder right i think like the I while it is a turbulent time to be alive it is also a wonderful time
• 71:30 - 72:00 to be alive um and I think about all the privileges I have to be able to live my life so loudly um that the people who readied this world for me to be here maybe did not um and so one way we can connect and please our ancestors um especially as queer folks um is by
• 72:00 - 72:30 allotting ourselves um abundant access to our joy and to our pleasure um and to our anger and to our fight um so yeah so I I think you know every time I'm like you know rallying for some [ __ ] and every time I'm like really having a good time I think my ancestors are pleased and they're with me um yeah and then like build him a little altar as a way to say thank
• 72:30 - 73:00 you thank you for that answer we have two more questions um the next is from Ian ian says "Can you talk about the similarities between going to the gym and writing slashsubmitting poems thinking maintenance on self?" Oh uh going to the gym and writing poems um so I do I think like in a couple like lectures I've given um I like talk about how like you know LeBron James is like the best basketball player in the world but he just doesn't
• 73:00 - 73:30 show up to the games right he goes to practice and he goes and does like strength training and all this other kind of stuff right um you know there's like in NFL players who like go take like ballet classes to learn how to move more skillfully on the field um so I think about that in relationship to form i think uh be developing a formal practice will help you become a better free burst writer because it's almost like resistance training right if I can
• 73:30 - 74:00 learn how to move within the bounds of a gazal or of a sonnet or of a um or of a cina or whatever form you might try to write um those skills um that are found within the restraints of those forms come back with me when I'm sort of writing in the open field that is freeverse um so yeah so I think though that's one relationship um you know I I think like the
• 74:00 - 74:30 gym why I go to the gym and like you know I'm going to go to the gym after we get off this call um I go to the gym so that way I can like live my life longer and easier um you know when I go to the gym like on the days I really don't want to go I tell myself like "D you need to go to the gym because you want to be an old person who can move." Or "D you really want to go to the gym because like uh like when I first started dating my husband I would call it sex
• 74:30 - 75:00 training." Um and I would you know I was like I can have better sex if I can like you know move my body and be stronger with little crush um but uh but that's what I think about as like the real benefits of of being of going to the gym right it's not just so I can like look better sure um if that's the type of look you're going for um but it allows me to be more flexible and stronger in these other areas of my life um also gives me
• 75:00 - 75:30 some time to live in my body and not my brain a little bit i also uh write a lot in the gym um you know there's several poems in this time book I'm writing i think a great many of those poems started in between sets and me like pounding away on my phone um you know in between sets at at the gym um so it's an opportunity to turn your mind off i do think there is a harmonious and sometimes a a a uh what's the opposite of harmony a a coffin relationship uh
• 75:30 - 76:00 between body and brain right but I do think that my writing is better when my body is better uh when I'm attending to my body in terms of moving it in terms of feeding it good things and treating it well and talking about it well um that this thing gets better too right um and my my head is clear um you know and sometimes I you know I I skate too and so sometimes like you know of especially
• 76:00 - 76:30 with the skating I often say like oh it was a like it's been a heavy brain time i need to go someplace and think with my body and not my brain just turn the brain off and unfortunately for me turning the brain off also gives it the space to turn back on and so like by the end of a skating session I'm usually sitting in the corner typing away at something um but yeah so I think that is the relationship that I see of like you know give yourself practice and what does the gym
• 76:30 - 77:00 look like for writers maybe that's form but I think also think that's like writing uh or I'm sorry that's also reading that's also um going to the museum that's also listening to music that's also going to concert that's surrounding yourself with the creativity of others um because it's not just the gym right it's like what are you the gym is only part of it right u sorry I'm still I'm stuck in this analogy or this metaphor now um we're
• 77:00 - 77:30 like I can go to the gym every day and if I'm feeding myself like crap I'm not going to see the results and I can also write every day but if I'm not feeding my spirit and feeding my creativity I'm not the writing is going to stay stuck and so you know the gym need in order to see results in the gym you need a good diet and in order to see the results in your work I think you also need a good diet of what you're taking in artistically are you feeding yourself
• 77:30 - 78:00 with the inspiration um of of the creativity of others so that way you are able to actually output when you're tasked to be the creative yourself maggie forgive me i have to ask a question what kind of skating do you Oh roller skating on the four wheels i can I go backwards I go down I go up I go around I do all the things very cool amazing um we're going to wrap up the Q&A now DZ to give you enough time to
• 78:00 - 78:30 close out with a reading and honor your heart out word thank y'all um also I think my heart out is a little bit softer now so if there is one more question I think I got I got enough time uh but also uh don't want to hold up anybody else's time too um it's a brief question there were an anonymous audience member was wondering if you had gotten a dog yet not yet um no my husband told me I can't
• 78:30 - 79:00 ask about a dog for another two or three years um and I respect you better finish that novel you need to finish the novel i have to make him a stay-at-home husband and then I think I can have whatever I want because the thing is I travel a lot um for work and he does not and so he is very correct in that yes we can have a dog and like on days like today when I'm at home doing stuff like this I can take care of the dog but I'm getting ready to go to you know Washington for 4 days and so that's
• 79:00 - 79:30 going to be his dog um duh um so no dog yet um although I did also like I'm gonna say it publicly so maybe I can pressure him um that I think I did reintroduce the idea that like I want a baby and um maybe he should let me have one and I don't really want one but like maybe and I would just like the maybe to exist all right uh
• 79:30 - 80:00 I love how you put that at the very end of this hour and a half conversation i did but because you know it's like honestly if I'm being real about the dog the dog is like the dog is like my like bargaining i'm like okay if I can't have a baby you're going to give me a dog um and I just think I would be a wonderful parent he thinks he would be a wonderful parent and I think but also then I can't be a child that's homosexual and I love being a child that's homosexual um so you know we're
• 80:00 - 80:30 going back and forth with it i like to say that I'm I'm a spinster witch i think there's some relationship between the spinster witches and the traveler summer exactly we have a great relationship um can I just say one thing before we we have DZ i really want to thank uh the Brooklyn Rail especially Chloe Maggie Elizabeth and Min and all the love in the world to DZ um so much love for you thank you thank you and thank you
• 80:30 - 81:00 Brooklyn Rail thank you Brooklyn Rail brooklyn Rail y'all are fantastic thank you everybody over there uh thank you Miss Chaffle for being my conversation partner over time you we could talk anytime i would talk to you every day um um okay I'm going to read one of a new poem from me and then I'm going to read two poems by some other folks that have been or maybe just one poem um uh that have been bringing me a lot of peace um what should we read i'll read this
• 81:00 - 81:30 one um this poem owes a debt of gratitude to uh Joseph Earl Thomas for a lecture he did at Randolph last semester that introduced me to an essay by um Christina Rivera um who uh in an essay in oh god where's that book is it near um seven man or five manifesto five
• 81:30 - 82:00 manifestos for a better world edited by Christina Sharp for the alchemy series um and in that um in that collection Dr rivera uh has an essay about the subjunctive um in which she also and like has like a part that particularly me meditates on a poem by uh Alabama poet laurate uh Ashley M jones um and I was very inspired by the ess by the lecture and
• 82:00 - 82:30 the essay and then the poem and so this kind of came out of me in response to all of that um it's called in a subjunctive mood a prayer wish be so a block where we could forever dead end on which we if eternally inshallah oh halah almighty may be curving god's suggestion in our favor it
• 82:30 - 83:00 is essential that faith open A door into the declarative into command or not a door where our possible seeks no conclusion let me not get too bridges but bridge us over the doubt and into the good advice of living if paradise was to exist I'd meet you there
• 83:00 - 83:30 for tea a hope in hand to promise your feet silk as water if he walked on water if he came out the cave a poet if the sea was the first step in freedom's long road if he is born again and again and again the child knows his last life if God has that many doors I know there is somewhere I I know there is somewhere
• 83:30 - 84:00 where the end is not ridden where we live unceasing and the dead are still dead but they live close as neighbors close as lovers in the morning if there is mourning there I know the birds are there if there are birds there I trust the map in their song if there is a song I know it's for no funeral if there is no funeral then what does our bravery
• 84:00 - 84:30 have to fear and if there are funerals so what if they kill us we'll join the wind if we wind what could hold us what could touch all right uh that's a little peek at the new homes
• 84:30 - 85:00 um and then this one I've been reading and crying a lot to uh Sarah Kay's A Little Daylight Left um Sarah's first full length collection in a long time um I think I want to say something that I hope isn't too limiting to Sarah's work um because I think her work is for everyone um but I do think that Sarah writes some of my favorite poems to put into the faces of young people to put
• 85:00 - 85:30 into the hands of young people um and that is in no way to diminish their power and revelation in the very adult soul as well um yeah um so I picked this came the other day in the mail and this is the second poem in the book um or the first poem after the preface and it just made me made me cry uh so I want to share with y'all oh to the two girls in the
• 85:30 - 86:00 outfield of the tea ball game somewhere nearby a ball is hurling through the air or tumbling towards the pitcher's mound an orchestra of parents erupting into the spring breeze but we don't know anything about that we could we have forgotten the game entirely have forgotten that technically somebody is supposed to be left field and someone
• 86:00 - 86:30 right that we were given instructions about looking skyward and keeping our gloves poised and ready we have forgotten the gloves have abandoned them our fingers interlaced or braiding blades of grass there is no left or right here just field just butterflies and bees the soft hum one of us offers of a song we might or might not know one
• 86:30 - 87:00 of us has a tooth we can wiggle one of us puts our glove One of us puts on our glove as a hat we are making wishes on eyelashes and pinky promises somewhere there are girls who keep their eye on the ball somewhere boys who grab for a wrist when a girl rounds the base for home out here there are only dandelions i am wearing the same jersey as you but mine has a different number and yours is backwards and that is enough to make us
• 87:00 - 87:30 laugh we laugh and laugh and laugh and a planet blooms in our laughter our planet is open for business business is trading sunlight for sunshine for freckles and business is booming the sky is laughing the sky has forgotten the game entirely somewhere somebody is winning and somebody is losing and we are wearing the and they are wearing the same jersey as we are but we have forgot they have
• 87:30 - 88:00 forgotten the point entirely soon someone will call our names someone will summon us back to earth someone will grab our wrist and remind us the rules but not yet not before we have named every cloud compared every freckle serenated every bee teach me how to cartwheel like you press your body into the grass
• 88:00 - 88:30 beside me i want to be able to see where we once were oh my god okay um Okay maybe I'm feeling inspired now i'm gonna read one more poem that's have a very different energy um Okay um this is um from the book Strange Beach uh poems by uh Alu
• 88:30 - 89:00 Aluashan uh Aluashan Ole Ole Ole Alashan Ole Ia um who uh lives in he's based in London i think he's from Texas originally um we got a chance to meet when I was in London uh this last goround for book tour um and I I love
• 89:00 - 89:30 his poems so much they remind me of Carl Phillips um they remind me of Oh wait he has a couple poets listed on the back here okay um steeped in the poetic traditions of Claudia Rankin correct jory Graham correct luis Gluck correct um Carl Phillips very correct and Kevin Young correct and I also think there's a little bit of like a of just like a black queer mischief in there too that
• 89:30 - 90:00 is not named on that list which maybe is what makes him wholly original um so yeah I really really enjoy his poems and so I'm going to read the poem Similac there wasn't love but there was what love becomes sheet wrinkle skin dune arm ropes lassoing our neck flesh with push and pull equal amounts the hurt
• 90:00 - 90:30 convincing its shape is false uh the the relation the record moment he likes to record the recorded moment he likes to record not true then the film buffering the unfinished triangle your body scopes on top of his frustration yes rejection oh yes the colon's ring hammering waking up not again not tonight tight loose
• 90:30 - 91:00 bloodless for now dragging a palm across the brick wall now blood for now streaming from you like scripture spit of him landing a top your eyelid that puddled need and there is freedom there is intention to break your back in half and call it what you asked for what your separateness will not allow rattle of
• 91:00 - 91:30 wooden slats uh indentations in the linen this body you are finally inside of being molded into the cushions canvas by what desire has given him permittence to do tonight tonight only he is not a perfect fit and that is perfect he will not stay the night he will not stay
• 91:30 - 92:00 hard night leaking night no fine point needled stars the sky is a masculinity he starts the car likes to likes to be called daddy needs to be called something anything there is your obligation
• 92:00 - 92:30 you're obl uh you're you're obliging you're ob you're you're obligating yes call it gratitude be grateful give thanks give shut up oh my god oh I love that poet i love those poets the sky is a masculinity is the sky is a masculinity what shut up oh my
• 92:30 - 93:00 lord oh I hate poets yo get on my nerves just like Oh my god we love you DZ we do we love you thank you both so so much this has been so wonderful um we'd also like to thank the Terara Foundation for American Art for sponsoring our NSC program and making these daily conversations
• 93:00 - 93:30 possible and for their support of our growing archive which you can view on the Rails YouTube channel the RA has been free and independent for 24 years a donation directly supports our writers staff and operations support our work through the link in the chat and if you're free join us tomorrow at 1 p.m for a conversation with our friends at Montaz Press and as is real tradition you can now all unmute and say hello and goodbye as you leave thank you all so so much thank you so much
• 93:30 - 94:00 thank you for the poems thank you for the poems so good thank you sk