Please tell us about the making of “‘And Also With You’” and “Silver Millennium.”
“And Also With You” comes out of an Ash Wednesday service I went to with my friend Lauren Clark. It was 2015. Ash Wednesday is their favorite holy day and, seeing as how I don’t go to church, I figured it be a beautiful morning to share between friends. I tried keeping up with Lauren, following the rhythms, out of courtesy but I eventually gave up and observed; not, however, before the moment when folks stand and greet one another. I was shaken, touched. The juxtaposition between how I usually understand religion — through art and history, usually alone — and this encounter with faith as a living tradition. It’s from this moment that poem arrived. I wrote a draft shortly after but didn’t finish the poem until this summer.
“Silver Millennium” started from an ages long desire to write a poem that somehow involved one of my femme foundational texts, Sailor Moon. This past summer I read an article, on The Guardian, I think, about humanity’s lasting environmental impact, which gave me my first line. I’m always thinking about ecological violence and environmental racism. The ongoing water crisis in Flint was on my mind at the time, but we see and have seen this violence before. Again and again this happens. How wonderful would it be to live on the moon like Princess Serenity? How wonderful to have clean water. How wonderful to steward the land.
If you were to trace your poetic lineage, which two poets are you directly descended from? Why?
Robert Hayden and James Merrill. They’re two poets I first found in undergrad but whose work I really lived in during grad school. They’re both artful writers. They’re stylish. What moves me most about both, perhaps, is the sense that their poems are written-through; reading their poems you see the art but you also see the work, you see the mind at play and the heart at work.
Though it also seems deeply disingenuous to my artistic life to list two men when I’ve been taught and inspired by the work of so many extraordinary women like Natasha Trethewey, Martha Serpas, Janet Sylvester, and Erica Dawson.
Do you consider yourself a fast or slow writer?
A steady writer. I know I’m not a slow writer. I don’t think of myself as particularly prolific either; it takes me months to polish a poem. Another complication: I think I’m just now figuring out my rhythms as a writer. When I was writing the poems that would be in Trouble the Water, I was in undergrad and grad school. My life was essentially studying and writing poems. I’d write at night because that’s when I didn’t have class or, if I was home for the summer during undergrad, it was the quietest time in my mom’s house. It’s only in the past few months I’ve felt like a writer again. I’ve been in a bad mental health spot for the past three years that I’m just now — fingers crossed — merging from, so I’m rediscovering my rhythms right now.
Do you workshop drafts with other poets?
I have my trusted readers: friends I’ll share work with when I’m lost or stuck. I’ve kept a lot of these new poems close to my chest largely out of anxiety. Though something that I’ve found helpful lately is emailing drafts to my friend Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. He’ll send me what he’s working on. We’re not workshopping really. We’re not looking for feedback unless we ask for it. The beautiful thing for me is the sense that there’s someone on the other end reading these drafts. I rarely share messy, unfinished drafts with anyone, but I’ll just throw things at Marcelo morning, noon, and night. I think it fills a need for community in post-MFA life. It helps keep the momentum going.
What are you working on now?
Poems about grief. Poems about mental health. Poems about trying to live and be black and queer. Poems about Drake. Poems about witches. Poems about America. Poems about 19th century and contemporary art. Poems about women. Poems about happiness.
“And Also With You” comes out of an Ash Wednesday service I went to with my friend Lauren Clark. It was 2015. Ash Wednesday is their favorite holy day and, seeing as how I don’t go to church, I figured it be a beautiful morning to share between friends. I tried keeping up with Lauren, following the rhythms, out of courtesy but I eventually gave up and observed; not, however, before the moment when folks stand and greet one another. I was shaken, touched. The juxtaposition between how I usually understand religion — through art and history, usually alone — and this encounter with faith as a living tradition. It’s from this moment that poem arrived. I wrote a draft shortly after but didn’t finish the poem until this summer.
“Silver Millennium” started from an ages long desire to write a poem that somehow involved one of my femme foundational texts, Sailor Moon. This past summer I read an article, on The Guardian, I think, about humanity’s lasting environmental impact, which gave me my first line. I’m always thinking about ecological violence and environmental racism. The ongoing water crisis in Flint was on my mind at the time, but we see and have seen this violence before. Again and again this happens. How wonderful would it be to live on the moon like Princess Serenity? How wonderful to have clean water. How wonderful to steward the land.
If you were to trace your poetic lineage, which two poets are you directly descended from? Why?
Robert Hayden and James Merrill. They’re two poets I first found in undergrad but whose work I really lived in during grad school. They’re both artful writers. They’re stylish. What moves me most about both, perhaps, is the sense that their poems are written-through; reading their poems you see the art but you also see the work, you see the mind at play and the heart at work.
Though it also seems deeply disingenuous to my artistic life to list two men when I’ve been taught and inspired by the work of so many extraordinary women like Natasha Trethewey, Martha Serpas, Janet Sylvester, and Erica Dawson.
Do you consider yourself a fast or slow writer?
A steady writer. I know I’m not a slow writer. I don’t think of myself as particularly prolific either; it takes me months to polish a poem. Another complication: I think I’m just now figuring out my rhythms as a writer. When I was writing the poems that would be in Trouble the Water, I was in undergrad and grad school. My life was essentially studying and writing poems. I’d write at night because that’s when I didn’t have class or, if I was home for the summer during undergrad, it was the quietest time in my mom’s house. It’s only in the past few months I’ve felt like a writer again. I’ve been in a bad mental health spot for the past three years that I’m just now — fingers crossed — merging from, so I’m rediscovering my rhythms right now.
Do you workshop drafts with other poets?
I have my trusted readers: friends I’ll share work with when I’m lost or stuck. I’ve kept a lot of these new poems close to my chest largely out of anxiety. Though something that I’ve found helpful lately is emailing drafts to my friend Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. He’ll send me what he’s working on. We’re not workshopping really. We’re not looking for feedback unless we ask for it. The beautiful thing for me is the sense that there’s someone on the other end reading these drafts. I rarely share messy, unfinished drafts with anyone, but I’ll just throw things at Marcelo morning, noon, and night. I think it fills a need for community in post-MFA life. It helps keep the momentum going.
What are you working on now?
Poems about grief. Poems about mental health. Poems about trying to live and be black and queer. Poems about Drake. Poems about witches. Poems about America. Poems about 19th century and contemporary art. Poems about women. Poems about happiness.