Dwayne, you're a genius.
Completely--
Oh, thank you.
Seriously.
Really blown away.
I've done a little bit of theater.
I say a little bit because it's tricky,
but this performance, and the way
that you've kind of tapped into it in a way that just left
me just completely engaged from the moment you began speaking,
and that's no lie.
So I want to ask you a few questions about it,
but I also want to hear from Joe,
because I'm sure Joe has some thoughts about what he heard,
too.
Yeah, I mean, the way you just-- it's always real.
It-- part of me is like, I don't want to go back to that place,
but every time you take me there,
I see something about my 10 plus years that I didn't before.
And something else that I'm just appreciative for.
And, you know, it--
there were definitely some parts that spoke to me
more than others, but it just--
you have a way of shining a light on things
that folks who've done time didn't even
know that they were going through.
And so I'm just--
I'm so thankful for you.
Yeah, no, man, I appreciate that.
This joint is interesting because, y'all saw 20 minutes
of a 75 minute show.
And one of the challenges is always
when you reveal a little bit, you're like, yo, does it play?
And then also-- and some of the other pieces
that you didn't see, like, this is kind of like my virtual set.
You got the Redaction print.
But this is a handmade paper that I made for my homies,
they sent me their clothes.
And you know this, Joe.
You get the sweatpants, man, and at first, they
start out as like, what you wear to look fly.
Then you sleeping in them.
And then you working out in them, and they got holes
and the kind of wear and tear that nothing on the outside
ever sees.
And I had my boy send me this.
And a lot of the cats was like-- they were still in prison,
and I made paper out of it, handmade paper,
with the intention of wanting them to exist on the outside.
Yeah, and then, the rest of the show,
you'll see, I tell a story about representing a few guys
and dudes that did time, when they're getting them out
on parole.
But the thing is, I think I've returned to it in the same way.
And working on this piece has been
sort of my bid to say, how do you make the poetry matter?
But then also, how do you make it communicate with people
on both sides of the fence?
Because sometimes, you send a book of poems in,
and they like, I don't know what the poems mean.
Like, I don't know how to read poetry.
And so the idea is, this is my bid to say,
I bet I can make you dig some poetry,
and I bet I can make you think about how
it reflects experience.
So I appreciate you'll--
I appreciate all the folks watching this for a minute,
and I hope at some point, you'll be
able to see the whole show, because--
yeah, I like to think it's a journey.
I mean, 75 minutes on your feet is serious.
Does it have a title, and when--
when do we see it?
Like, when-- I don't know, I'm really excited about this
for a number of reasons.
But I think--
I want to know the title, when can we see it?
And I also want to know how you landed on that.
I think that that's something really interesting
where you said, it's necessary at this point.
How do you get more and more people engaged, right?
And you're doing more of a direct address.
But how did you even land there?
Because some people are like, oh, maybe if I make a crown of,
you know-- what if I do this on the page?
But you're breaking the wall.
And I just--
Yeah, tell me about it.
Yeah, no, so it's called "Felon--
An American Washi Tale."
And it's called washi tale because washi
is sort of the handmade Japanese paper,
and I got to collaboration with a number of people.
So Titus Kaphar, to Ruth Lignen, to Koyoko Ibe,
and Elise Thoron is my director.
And so yeah, that's the full title was "Felon--
An American Washi Tale."
This idea that in Japanese culture--
one element of Japanese culture is this notion
that handmade paper captures the essence of people.
And it's almost-- it seems hokey to say it,
but it's almost like a spiritual practice,
and what it means to recycle.
Turning their clothes into paper is a way
to allow the paper to embody some
of who they are in the world, and it has a physicality to it.
So it's in development now.
I'm going to do a prison tour, 20 states, 20 cities, 60
prisons.
And the idea really is to use that-- oh, yeah, definitely.
Definitely Arizona.
You know, and ideas to use that as a way to expose folks
to the work that I'm doing.
But I think also, as a way to just be like-- you know,
sometimes you just need a chance to say that this thing matters
in the world.
And so this is part of that.
This is part of saying, this thing really, really
matters in the world.
So as soon as COVID is over--
I mean, right now I've been doing it--
I've been doing it on Zoom, I've been doing it
for different audiences, different colleges.
Sweeps of it, not the whole thing.
And soon as we figure out COVID--
I mean, right now I'm getting it in my head and in my heart,
so that I could get on the stage in August,
and start working on it on the stage.
It's actually-- it's both the physicality of the paper,
but there's also the physicality of one memorizing things.
And then also, the physicality of how do you move in space?
And how do you become a conduit for--
everything is new, man.
Like, you don't even know how you're
going to feel when you start.
And then you get into it, and something that hooks you,
you know?
And it's that interplay with words, emotions, and ideas,
that I think comes from being responsive to the audience.
So yeah, man, I'm looking--
if COVID wouldn't have happened, I mean,
that's what I would be performing next week
or next month when I came to Arizona.
But, yeah.
I'm speechless.
I know that you had said that you
were going to be doing this, and I was like, OK, cool.
But I was like, yeah, whatever, let's do it.
But you started reading, and I just was quiet,
and I was there with you and--
I have family, lots of family that have been incarcerated
for a long time.
It brought me back to those relationships,
and the things that-- the stories
that they came out and sometimes told.
It just brought me back to that place,
and it also was just so visceral.
Because, like you said, a lot of performance and acting
is in the body, so there's a lot of somatic.
You just go in into a different plane of the creative process,
and I'm just in awe--
in awe, and thankful that you're able to kind of--
I'm in awe of just so many things.
Sorry, I can't even talk right now because I was so
blown away by that.
But I want to know a little bit more, if you could share,
about how the project even began.
I think we've been working on this--
I came in a little bit later at the Poetry Center,
and you had this vision that you brought to Tyler Meier who's
the executive director, and later, Kima Jones
became involved.
And I just want to know if you could share a little bit
about how that vision--
you're a visionary, you had this vision, this idea,
and you made it happen.
And I don't know if you could share a bit about that?
Yeah, well, I guess it's two things.
Really, I mean, Tyler was the one who
conceptualized the whole thing.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, this was all on Tyler.
And, I mean, if we're talking about the partnership
between me and Arizona Poetry Center--
Yeah, the Art For Justice, yeah.
Yeah, that was-- like, Tyler was already--
he was already tapped in, and he was already applying.
And my thing was just, like-- and so at first,
though, the one thing I did have was,
he had this list of writers.
And I was like, wait, no, you got to be funky with it.
And you want to get a mixture of some folks that
might have direct experience inside, and it's not many of us
anyway.
But you think of some of the folks involved,
like [? Tongo Eisen-Martin ?] who--
he's taught in prisons, and he's done a lot of work
in the community.
But then you think of Randall Horton who's been locked up.
And you think about-- but then, what
happens with like prison and incarceration,
it's even when if it's in our work,
we begin to characterize people in certain ways that sometimes
doesn't expose the full breadth of what we care about.
So you take somebody like Natalie Diaz
who's thought about this a lot, and who's
had family members that have been incarcerated.
And it's in the work, but people tend to stereotype folks.
Like, I'm publishing one of her pieces
in the New York Times Magazine, and it's a love poem.
And it's not to say that she doesn't write political verse,
too.
But it's say that we need love poems.
And that we need to try to recognize
the capaciousness of folks.
And so I was like, you know, what
we need to do is put the usual suspects--
people like me, right?
People like John Murillo, people like Randall.
But then, how do you pull other folks in, though?
Who you don't even know how this experience,
but I know because we're friends.
And I know that their work hasn't touched it.
Like Nicole Sealey.
Or Nikky Finney, who was like, I don't know
what she has to do with prison.
But she is a contemporary American poet who
should be talking about prison.
So then how do you bring her in?
And, you know, it's been a dope project,
but I think it's also like a struggle.
It's 2.4 or so million people in prison,
you still have people who can't get jobs because they've
been incarcerated.
You still have folks who get denied
all kinds of opportunities, from being a barber,
to being a nurse, to going to law school,
to going to medical school.
I mean, people still have many career options blocked.
People still get looked at askance in their communities.
And so asking contemporary writers about this--
I was serious about it in the sense
that, if we're literary citizens and this truly matters,
then our voices should be on this issue.
And this became a project and an opportunity
to put our voices on the issue.
And a lot of writers, they already do it.
You know, writers who were involved with this project,
and writers who couldn't be involved with this project.
But this project, I do think, got some work out of people
who just wouldn't have written the poems they wrote.
And to say, look, and we're going
to help facilitate you going inside of a prison.
I mean, I think that it was--
you know, Joe, no, prison is a lot of things, man.
It's sexist, hypermasculine, it's homophobic,
it's fucking frightening.
And if you want prison to not be some of those things,
you've got to show up.
And sometimes there's not enough hope in prison.
And so asking people to show up is asking for prisoners
to be more than what they are.
And once we demand that they be more than what they are,
then I think we're demanding that they
be conduits for freedom, as opposed
to conduits for more suffering.
And I mean both freedom in a literal sense,
but also freedom and a more efflorescence.
Yeah, I think-- thank you for sharing a bit about how
that kind of came to be.
And Tyler Meier, ED of the Poetry Center,
we all work very closely with, is
really great at sort of conceiving
these really big ideas.
So thank you for sharing that.
He had some of those things there.
I think that we are now moving into a space
where we're hoping to create an anthology of the work.
We're hoping to create something that
will be used by educators, abolitionists, poets, people
who are already on the ground.
We're hoping to kind of spread just a wide reach.
We're hoping, right?
And I just want to sort of touch base with you about,
what are your hopes for the anthology?
We've talked about it, but just a signal to people,
of what we're hoping--
I mean, the truth is that, the reason why anthologies
are precious is because--
like, I wasn't going to have Robert Hayden, Lucille Clifton,
Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka.
You know, I wasn't going to have all
of those folks in the cell with me at the same time.
I couldn't afford five, six, seven, ten poetry books.
And so the anthology becomes a vehicle and a mechanism
to get more voices in one space at one time.
It becomes a way to introduce folks to the names
they should know, and that's how I became a poet.
It wasn't just that I had a poetry book,
it was that I had a poetry book that
introduced me to a wide, wide range of writers.
I mean, some of the writers--
I could just flip through and literally--
I could flip through it and be like, oh, man, Arna Bontemps.
Yeah, that's Langston Hughes, homie.
He actually wrote an anthology--
I think he co-edited it with Hughes.
Oh, Countee Cullen.
OK, I remember this.
I remember "Yet Do I Marvel."
"Yet Do I Marvel," this is what he say--
this brilliant thing to make a--
wait, let me see.
He says, "Yet do I marvel at this curious thing--
To make a Black poet, and bid him sing."
And those lines have been in my head for a long time.
Sterling Brown, I could just flip through this and know.
Frank Marshall, nobody ever talks about Frank Marshall.
Black poet, born in 1905, writing at the turn
of the 20th century.
People don't talk about him.
So it's like I met all of these folks, Ray Durem,
voices that have in a way been forgotten.
Gwendolyn Brooks.
And those voices turned me into a poet.
And a lot of these folks, you wouldn't even--
they not going to be taught in classrooms,
you're not going to run into them.
You're not going to find their books in the bookstores.
But all of these people gave me a sense
of how I might become a poet and a writer.
And so that's the power of an anthology.
And that's what we're producing.
June Jordan, Larry Neal.
I mean, this is a veritable who's who
in the Black literary landscape that you should just
know about.
And that's what we're doing.
You should not be a contemporary writer in prison or out,
and not know who Nikky Finney is.
Not know who Patricia Smith is.
Not know who John Murillo is.
And I think the anthology is a powerful way to assert that.
And I'm really thankful for the folks that have been involved.
It's not a-- it's a slice of contemporary American poetry.
But it's a beautiful slice, you know?
It's a wonderful slice.
That's a great way of putting it.
I think what keeps the refrain in your work,
and just sort of talking is, like, how important a book--
how important books are to you.
All books, right?
And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit
about The Million Book Project, and, you know, what that is.
Because that's another amazing sort of thing
that you're leading and you're doing now.
Yeah, so The Million Book Project
is basically just arguing, right?
What does it mean if we put a freedom library in prisons
all across this country in every state.
And a freedom library is both a physical structure.
Like a shelving-- a set of shelving units that also have
places for you to sit down.
But to transform the space in prison, so that it's not just--
and it's in the housing unit, so that you could go,
and you could grab these books while you're
in the housing unit.
And it's based on the arc.
Based on thinking about Martin Luther
King's quote about the moral arc of the universe
bends towards justice.
And so yeah, we curated this 500-book set,
and we're working with MASS Design
to build these actual physical spaces
that we can put in dormitories, and we
can put in housing units.
And we also got a set up to partner
with the correctional officers, and make sure
that they had their own library, too.
Because it ain't just me who needs
to read 100 Years of Solitude.
It's the correctional officers as well who
want to, who should want to.
And so we encouraging it on both sides.
And we got a bunch of literary ambassadors who--
we're working to extend the project that we started here
at the Arizona Poetry Center.
In a sense that, we got these literary ambassadors
who are committing to go inside prisons,
and we trying to make it even more capacious.
You know, hundreds of folks.
Like, yeah, show up into the prison in your community.
Because the job, I think, and the role
is to see and to be seen.
I was just on a call earlier today
with some ladies at a prison in Houston.
And it was cool.
And I know-- I mean, you could imagine this, Joe.
Like, the warden calls you into their office
to get on a Zoom call to talk about books.
You're like, what?
[INAUDIBLE]
And so it's like building these opportunities that
have both the warden doing something
that they wouldn't have imagined doing before,
and the people inside doing this.
And we talk about The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner.
And it was a real conversation, a real discussion.
So The Million Book Project really
is starting with this very real notion
that freedom begins with a book.
And then saying, where do you go from there?
And we got podcast, and we got all of these other elements,
but the fundamental principle is that freedom
begins with a book.
And we will put freedom libraries
in prisons in every state in this country and Puerto Rico.
That's fantastic.
Can you say where we can find the podcast?
I listen to one of them, I think, maybe on YouTube.
Yeah, so you can find them on YouTube
at The Million Book Project's YouTube channel.
But you can also download them on Apple, we love followers.
Download them on Apple, subscribe.
I mean, we got podcasts with Miriam Toews, which is awesome.
Deesha Philyaw, great.
James McBride is just like super cool, right?
Like a real cool cat.
Rion Amilcar Scott.
Coming up soon is Natalie Diaz and Randall Horton.
One of the podcast features me.
We'll be interviewing Marlon James, which is going
to be really dope, next month.
We also got Jesmyn Ward on the come up soon.
And Erika Sánchez, whose book, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican
Daughter, it's just wonderful.
We'll have her on a podcast as well.
So it would be really dope.
Yeah, I think I'm excited, I'm excited about it.
But yeah, I think you can check it out wherever
you can get podcasts.
Go to Apple, download it, subscribe.
Write a comment, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah--
And it's also-- and I should just say,
the podcast is for people inside, too.
And the way we framed it is, the first part of the podcast
there's a 10 minute reading with a writer of reach
from that work.
Because in prison, you don't have poetry readings,
you don't have fiction readings, right?
And so we set it up with the first 10 minutes,
the writer reads from their work, to get you in the mood--
if you were at a reading.
And then we do a back and forth.
And that idea is to collapse some
of the distance between the work that we write,
and the words that we say about the work that we write,
and about the lives that we live.
So the folks inside can be like, oh.
Yeah, Deesha Philyaw just read to me for 10 minutes,
and I was digging that.
You know, and then you pick up the book,
and it's less of a feeling that, like, is this too much for me?
What is the literacy level in this?
You know, you hear Erika Sánchez read from the novel,
and you're like, oh, she sounded like my cousin, you know?
She even got using the words that my people use.
And so I think it would create a really rich experience
for folks.
That's awesome.
Well, Dwayne, it's been amazing hearing your new work,
hearing about your projects.
Also, continuing to work with you on the anthology.
And I just--
I really believe in your work, and I'm just
so glad that I'm in the orbit at the Poetry Center
to work with, not only you, but also with Joe,
who's also doing amazing work.
But grateful for your time and for your words.
And if there's any--
I don't think that there's anything else,
I just want to just be--
end the night, we're just like-- just gratefulness and just--
I'm appreciative of the work that you both do.
That was a honor, man.
Thank you, Diana.
Thanks, Joe.
It was dope.
Thank you.