Hello.
Hi.
As-salamu alaykum.
How are you doing?
[SPEAKING ARABIC] Oh there's nothing
I can do before I say thank you already.
Thank you, Poetry Center.
Thank you, Diana.
Thank you, Leilani.
Thank you, Logan.
Thank you, Tyler.
Thank you, Kima.
Thank you, Patricia.
Thank you all of those yet-unmet homies
that I'm looking into your faces right now.
What a beautiful landing to such an intense and rich day
and experience and past couple of months.
I'm in a place where I feel like saying thank you before
and after I do anything is really the only thing I'm
capable of at this moment.
So yeah, you can snap for thank you.
Made you laugh with a thank you.
This won't be easy.
This project wasn't easy.
Writing poems is not easy.
Being American is not easy.
Being Black and American is not easy.
Being queer is not easy.
Being a part of a kidnapped lineage is not easy.
And it is quite a--
let me start my time because I'm already
out here [? perpetrating ?].
Y'all are like, what's good?
Truly need that timer going before I'm really out here.
I've been writing poems seriously--
whatever that means--
since I was 15 years old.
And I'm 30, and I don't take it lightly.
And I don't take you sitting here lightly,
and you sitting here quietly lightly,
and I can feel you're listening.
And I thank you, so I just want to say thank you
before I start.
I'm going to introduce the project a little,
read some poems from it, talk about those poems a bit,
talk about the effort that is happening here,
and hopefully this can be a space where we're
sort of discovering together.
I mean, show of hands, who be writing poems out here?
That's a truly-- thank you, [? Bismillah ?]..
I'm so glad that we're all in this effort together.
It's so knuck if you buck.
It's so unpredictable.
And I find that the more you want to come correct,
the harder it is to do.
The harder it is to even know what
it looks like to be responsible for something you're born into.
And I am discovering these poems as I'm reading them to you.
I said this to Diana.
I said this to Patricia, to Kima--
truly to anyone who spoke to me in the last two hours.
I'm like, hello, here's my journey.
But there is no part of this process that is just me.
I'm always thinking of others.
I'm always thinking of who came first.
I'm always thinking of who's listening.
I'm always thinking of my parents.
I'm always thinking of their parents.
And so the responsibility I feel as a poet and as a writer
is not even matched.
It's overwhelmed by who I feel responsible to,
and who I'm in conversation with.
And so this is the--
I mean, aside from one poem that I'm going to read tonight,
this is the first time I'm reading any of these shits--
exclusive.
And that's really strange for me because I'm
someone who builds within the tradition of speaking to people
and being spoken back to.
And so much of this project, delving into what--
what even is mass incarceration?
It's such a long ass name for something
that is so simply terrible.
And thinking about what it is, who it affects,
what my role is in speaking, because I truly
feel like my role is to listen.
And so how can I involve listening in these poems.
And it's been such an isolating process, listening, writing,
not sharing them.
And I guess I just want to say thank you to you listening
while I discover these too.
Some of these poems, this is the first time any of these words
will hit the air.
So thank you for being here.
I'm going to read a tiny bit of my little
like stabilizing proposal that helps me keep in mind,
and it also helps me call in a few names
that I feel like are important to call
in to what I'm trying to do.
So the header, what I had at the top
of my page of every single poem I wrote,
was the phrase "making a place in our singing."
And so I'm going to read a little bit.
"One poem I think about all the time is called "& When We Woke"
by Aracelis Girmay.
The whole poem really knocks me out.
But in particular, there is a sequence
of lines towards the middle that go, 'and we sing songs,
and we filled the songs with our mother's names.
We filled the songs with rest.
We made them a place in our singing.'
I moved by this escalation of generous effortful energy,
and I'm challenged by the charge that when we write
and when we speak, we're making a place for those
who came before us and who come after us.
We're making a place for them in our singing."
And I'm obviously about to be reading some poems,
but when I'm writing poems, I think about songs a lot.
I think you can deny a lot about a poem.
You can decide if it's good for you or not.
You're like, is this a poem, is this not?
If somebody's singing, whether you like that shit or not,
they're singing.
So I tried to keep my mind anchored
in the notion of singing good or bad, off-pitch, keys correct,
or whatever.
If I'm singing, it's undeniably so, and in that singing,
I'm trying to make a place for those people
that I'm talking about and in conversation with.
And I wanted to introduce that as a concept.
Most of the poems I'm about to read for you are in form.
And I'm not a formalist.
No surprise-- I'm no Gwendolyn Brooks.
I'm not out here with scansion, measured lines,
and syllabic intonation, but it was quite an exploration
for me to think about the canon, to think about the benefits
of the formulaic effort.
What the fuck is a sonnet?
What is useful about it?
I listen to a lot of R&B--
well, some rap-- sorry we're here right now.
I listen to a lot of R&B, and what strikes me about it over
and over again is that even if you're like, truly,
what are you talking about, you're also like, I feel you.
I think about that one song by that 90s group that maybe
had like a single hit, Shai.
The (SINGING) if I ever--
--fall--
--in love again, I will be sure that the lady is a friend.
And if ever-- and you're kind of like huh?
But you're also like, word.
And I think that is the spirit of singing.
So I'll hope you'll carry that while I read these poems.
I hope you're like huh?
Word.
I feel you, but, my dude, what are you saying?
And I think that there is an there
is an element of the sonnet, there
is an element of the ballad form,
there's an element of the ghazal form--
that I'll talk about each of those--
that carries in it a singing that is undeniable,
even while your brain tries to maneuver
and metabolize the information you're getting.
Your guts and your heart are receiving something almost
without your consent.
You're like, well, I moved, and I will let my brain figure it
out later.
And I and I wanted to dance with that,
dance with those traditions, even in breaking
some of those rules.
Cool, I love you.
I'm going to read poems.