Something about O’Keefe, Your Mother’s Closet, and Evolving
By Eileen Rae Walsh
Hi, I am so glad you (I) have arrived here. Below is an incomplete video playlist made (mostly) of black, contemporary, queer identifying poets. I believe that poetry is the medium, and that these are the voices the medium belongs to. Many of us are listening. Please listen— bear witness to their unique and individual weildings of form & language. Take care to visit the links included below to support them.
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Listen to Rickey Laurentiis turn a Black Iris inside out and outside in, several times, ‘the lips of the flower shaping to the thing that invades it’. Watch Jae Nichelle ‘fly with wings that tremble’ while describing her intimate relationship with anxiety. Understand that the Blue Dress ‘is the Mississippi River is a hallway, is leaks like tears from window sills of a drowned house,’ that Saeed Jones is ‘when Nina Simone sings in the next room without her body.’
Spend five minutes listening to Sonya Renee Taylor, follow her voice: ‘the work of evolution is to plant the seed’. & Please remember that you (I) are not a deputy of language, that you do not get to command or critique how black individuals express themselves, that you (I) have been the ‘white woman’ in Kai Davis’ ‘This is Not a Poem About My Hair.’ Watch Jessi-Alex Brandon describe what happened the moment ‘olympic gold medalist swimmer Katie Ledecky stepped up to the box for the 400 meter freestyle in Rio.’
Listen to Donika Kelly read Natasha Trethewey’s, ‘Torna Atras’. Know that Danez Smith has ‘left Earth in search of darker planets.’ & Angel Nafis ‘rediscovered weed again, and it is good again.’
Jasmine Gibson is ‘the angel knocking on your door to let the disease in / the place that I fit in doesn’t exist until I destroy it.’ ‘Suppression is next to salvation’ and Raych Jackson is a good sinner. & Porsha Olayiwola is ‘mad as hell.’
t’ai freedom ford reads a poem ‘after Carrie Mae Weems.’ Xandria Phillips wrote an ‘Ode to a Vibrator Left On All Night’. & Rosamond S. King reminds us ‘Through today’s common despair, do not be comforted...we want to live...tilt yourself up, the same vast is possible before and behind our eyes.’
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I have recently started an are.na to organize the mass of information & resources I am using to educate myself, to interrogate my white library, and will continue to add to those incomplete and developing channels as I unlearn and learn alongside my peers and you. Now, get to know these phenomenal poets:
Rickey Laurentiis, ‘Black Iris, after the painting by Georgia O’Keefe’
Artists’ Bio: Rickey Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to love the dark. Their poetry has been supported by several foundations and fellowships, including the Whiting Foundation (2018), Lannan Literary Foundation (2017), Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy (2014), Poetry International Rotterdam (2014), the National Endowment for the Arts (2013), Cave Canem Foundation (2009-2011), and the Poetry Foundation, which awarded him a Ruth Lilly Fellowship in 2012.
Buy Boy with Thorn. & Follow them on Instagram.
Jae Nichelle ‘Friends with Bene-fits’
Artists’ Bio: Jae Nichelle is a writer and spoken word artist...In her spare time, Jae also writes articles about linguistic and mental health issues that plague the Black community, and has had her work shared by Blavity, AFROPUNK, and Black Youth Project.
Order a signed copy of The Porch (As Sanctuary). Join Jae’s Patron where she is creating poetry workshops for healing. And, please, take the time to read Black Girl Catholic. & Follow them on Instagram.
Saeed Jones, ‘The Blue Dress in Mother’s Closet,’ ‘Boy in a Whalebone Corset’
Artists’ Bio: Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. He often fantasizes about having sex with Paul Newman’s ghost.
Saeed Jones was recently awarded a 2020 Lammy for his Gay Memoir How We Fight for Our Lives. You can buy his book of poems ‘Prelude to Bruise’ here. I recently subscribed to his newsletter ‘The Intelligence of Honey’, and recommend reading ‘Whose Grief? Our Grief,’ an essay on black grief and state violence. & Follow them on Instagram.
Artists’ Bio: Sonya is a former National and International poetry slam champion, author of two books, including The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love (Berrett-Koehler Feb 2018), educator and thought leader who has enlightened and inspired organizations, audiences and individuals from boardrooms to prisons, universities to homeless shelters, elementary schools to some of the biggest stages in the world.
I know, I know that you (I) have watched, reposted, listened to or read something from Sonya in the past month. So please, hit up her venmo & patron (@sonyareneetaylor). & Follow them on Instagram.
Kai Davis ‘This is Not a Poem About My Hair’
Artists’ Bio: Kai Davis (she/her) is a queer poet from Philly. Her work explores Blackness, Queerness, womanhood, and the many ways these identities converge. Kai’s work examines how power operates globally, nationally, interpersonally, and internally. She speaks on structural racism, misogyny, Black womanhood, ancestral trauma, mental health, intersectionality, Queer love, Black love, and more.
Please consider redistributing some funds to Kai’s Covid Crisis Fund and buy her book of poetry ‘Ain’t I’ here. & Follow them on Instagram.
Jessi-Alex Brandon ‘Olympic Swimmer Katie Ledecky Made Me (Very) Bi’
I came across Jessi-Alex on Button Poetry (where I have spent a lot of time recently). I couldn’t find much more of their work but this is one of my favorite poems on this list. ‘what the hell even is a straight passing bi-sexual, that is like saying I am a smart passing college student.../as if the ‘b’ in LGBT only matters when we pass as gay.’
Follow them on instagram here.
Donika Kelly, reading Natasha Trethewey’s* ‘Torna Atras’
Artists’ Bio (Graywolf Press): Donika Kelly is the author of Bestiary and Aviarium. “Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters—half human and half something else. Donika Kelly’s Bestiary is a catalog of creatures—from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel from “Out West” to “Back East.” Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award Winner Nikki Finney, Bestiary questions what it is that makes us human, that makes us whole.”
Keep up with them on Instagram here.
*Natasha Trethewey (read by Donika Kelly)
Artists’ Bio (Poetry Foundation): Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, the daughter of poet, professor, and Canadian emigrant Eric Trethewey and social worker Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough. A former US poet laureate, Trethewey is the author of five collections of poetry: Monument (2018), Thrall (2012), Native Guard (2006), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and Domestic Work (2000). She is also the author of a book of creative non-fiction: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). Trethewey is currently the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University.
Follow Natasha on Instagram here.
Danez Smith ‘Dear White America’
Artists’ Bio: Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN.Danez is the author of “Homie” (Graywolf Press, 2020), "Don’t Call Us Dead" (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and "[insert] boy" (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.
Danez hosts one of my favorite podcasts with Franny Choi, VS, which you can find here. Buy Homie here. & Don’t Call Us Dead here. & Black Movie here. Follow them on Instagram.
Angel Nafis, ‘Solo’
Artists’ Bio: Nafis is a Cave Canem fellow, the recipient of a Millay Colony residency, an Urban Word NYC mentor, and the founder and curator of the Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon. She is half of the ODES FOR YOU TOUR with poet, musician and visual artist Shira Erlichman and with poet Morgan Parker, she runs The Other Black Girl Collective, an internationally touring Black Feminist poetry duo. Facilitating writing workshops and reading poems globally, she lives in Brooklyn.
She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion. Follow them on Instagram.
Jasmine Gibson, reading from ‘Don’t Let Them See Me Like This’
Artists’ Bio: Jasmine Gibson is a Philly jawn based in Brooklyn. She spends her time thinking about sexy things like psychosis, desire, and freedom. She is the author of the chapbook Drapetomania (Commune Editions 2015).
“Reading this collection is like listening to love poems on a dock while watching transnational cargo ships on fire and sinking. And in these poems, I find relief from my survivor’s guilt and surrender to artificial light; the midpoint of a blues. Here there are no gods of private causes. Just words dashing on our behalf, only a breath’s distance in front of the beast.” (Tongo Elsen-Martin) You need this book.
Chicago love for Raych! She works in CPS, runs BIGKIDSLAM, is an internationally debuted playwrite, was recently awarded Best New Poetry Collection by a Chicagoan for Even The Saints Audition (buy it!) and you should totally listen to her on the VS podcast (Hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi). & Follow her on Instagram.
Porsha Olayiwola ‘Angry Black Woman’
Artists’ Bio: Black, futurist, poet, dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas.
Order their book of poetry: i shimmer sometimes, too here. As you (hopefully) decolonize your syllabus, take a look at Porsha’s workshops and consider booking them. & Follow them on Instagram.
t’ai freedom ford ‘after Carrie Mae Weems: from here I saw what happened and I cried’
Artists’ Bio: “I am Black. Which is to say that I am African. And Colored. And Negro. And New Negro. And sometimes “nigger”. I am also queer. Which is to say that I am lesbian. Dyke. Butch. And sometimes “sir”. Always, I am woman. Which is to say that I am tomboi. Boi. Masculine of center. Androgynous. As a Black, queer, masculine presenting woman, my writing is informed by these identities and how someone like me negotiates the mainstream/dominant American culture that consistently seeks to marginalize my voice and the voices of those who look, act, and love like me.”
Buy & more black. Buy how to get over. Read how Black Women Poets Will Start The Revolution. Read more about #BlackPoetsSpeakOut. & Follow them on Instagram.
Xandria Phillips, ‘Ode to a Vibrator Left On All Night’
Xandria Phillips is the author of Hull, which was recently awarded the 2020 Lammy for Transgender Poetry. ““Let’s deflate something that we can all agree is / monstrous, and take its air inside us,’” writes Xandria Phillips in ‘Elegy for the Living and Breathing.’ A decolonization of space and self is made physical in this stunning, textured, and ambitious collection of poems. This work positions snapshots of contemporary black, queer selfhood against an embodied historical backdrop in order to trace the tolls and infringements of white dominant structures and embedded historical violence upon the body. When I read it, I am reminded of the ways in which language can be repurposed as an amplification device against narratives that seek to erase, bury, and diminish.” (Claudia Rankine)
Listen to Xandria on the VS podcast, hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi, & Follow them on Instagram.
Rosamond S. King ‘No Accident, Surviving’
Artists’ Bio: “I am creative and critical writer and artist whose work is deeply informed by my cultures and communities (including African, Caribbean, American, and queer), by history, and by a sense of play. My poetry often “moves” on the page, using different forms of English and different physical and poetic structures. With all of my work, my goal is to make people feel, wonder, and think, in that order.”
Rosamond was recently awarded a 2020 Lammy for Rock | Salt | Stone, which you can buy here. Keep up with their latest project, reflecting on our current moment. & Follow them on Instagram.
Additional Resources:
I am currently reading Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. And this article by Tourmaline on How to Freedom Dream. I can’t stop listening to Summer School Radio Ep. 011 by DJ, model, & vintage seller Lindsay. I came across this very special project, Love Letters to Spooks, and spent a lot of time on Button Poetry. I received my copy of Hull from Nightboat Books (who has published several of the authors above!) and after reading it once through, have been sitting with one poem each morning as I wake.