 Hi folks. Welcome to the future of democracy. My name is Sam Gill and in this show, what we try to do is take a look at some of the big ideas, big trends, big controversies that are really animating our democracy, our national conversation and take you a little deeper than you might be able to get just hearing a debate on cable news or reading one article. And this month, we are teaming up with the Miami Book Fair to host an amazing set of conversations with authors, with artists focused on different topics about what they think about the future of democracy. And this is all leading up to the 37th annual Miami Book Fair from November 15 to 22. The Book Fair is an incredible collection of authors, an incredible collection of books, a really vital conversation about ideas. If you're interested, please go to MiamiBookFairOnline.com or follow them at Miami Book Fair. If you're not interested, then you're not paying attention to the incredible authors they're going to have. This year, Natalie Portman, the actress is going to be a part of the Miami Book Fair. Bill Nye, the science guy is going to be part of the Miami Book Fair. And you can hear every single presentation, every single talk for free, but only if you tune in from November 15 to 22. One of the conversations that we had is with John Murillo. John is a celebrated poet. He's the author of the collection, Up Jump the Boogie, and released this year a new collection, Contemporary American Poetry. I had a chance to sit down with John to talk about his poetry and about what it can tell us with regard to the significant debate we're having in our country about the future of race and racial justice. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. All right, excellent. Welcome everyone. And John, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Well, I want to talk, of course, about the work that you've just produced your collection, Contemporary American Poetry. And I was incredibly struck actually, not by your words, but by the epigraph from Henry Dumas that you that you open with. And for our audience, it reads, your lying said memory, your sleep said forgetfulness. What does this mean to you? Why did you begin the book this way? Well, the book is, I'd say quasi autobiographical, right. And I say that because, you know, over the years, we tell ourselves certain stories about ourselves, right. And we kind of become these characters in our narrative. And if you do that long enough, you can actually get wrapped up in that and forget what's truth, what's fiction. Yeah. So the book is somewhat of a building's Roman, there are some memoirs qualities to it. But again, you know, this is me writing this, you know, very often 40 odd years after certain events have taken place 30 years, 20 years. So I know that I'm, you know, creating certain fictions but also wanted to give myself that license because it's not autobiographical autobiography right it's, it's poetry. So I'm in that epigraph I'm giving myself permission to stray and to fictionalize because what's most important for me is not necessarily that I'm being factual, but that I'm getting at certain emotional truths. Right. So, if I need to, let's say, change a fact around or put the poem in the second person instead of the first, because it makes for a more compelling poem. I do that because ultimately that's what I'm after. What you know it's, I was something that you just pointed to really struck me in reading some of the poems, which is, which is the power of past and memory that comes out constantly. There are really specific references to years. It's, it's really impressed on the reader that this isn't contemporaneous. In some cases it's impressed on the reader that there is a perception there's an interpretation of past. That's happening. And I'm thinking about where our countries today, particularly around issues like race. And what you just said really strikes me which is on the one hand, I feel like we're in a fight for our life to be grounded in facts. And we're also in a fight for our life to recover truths that we have avoided through the way that we talk about that, especially about race. How do you see your work in that moment. It's interesting, right. We talk about myth making, right, especially as a country where we're involved in it all the time. And we hear slogans like make America great again. I hear people of color black people often asked the question, when was it great right what is this again you're you're hearkening back to. So, I think, in my work in this book at least one thing that I'm trying to do is to name names to put a face a certain realities. The book has to do with police violence against black and brown communities. And it's funny, you know, I wrote the book it came out in March. And, you know, soon after a lot of these worldwide protests started taking place. And, you know, people were reaching out telling me how timely the book is. The fact of the matter is, the book would have been timely if it came out five years ago, right. Exactly. And years ago. So, you know, that's another, I don't know if I take that on as a responsibility as a poet, but it is something that I wanted to do this book as well was to document that part of our story, and to say, you know, this, this happens. Ten years from now, 20 years from now, somebody picks up this book, and that, you know, hopefully they'll look back and say, wow, things are really bad back then. Or, conversely, they'll say, wow, things are still as bad as they were in 2020 and in 1992, right and in dot dot dot. What do you so what is the, what is the role of the artist is there an obligation of the artist right now in this battle for the soul of our democracy would you point out, it's not a new battle. It's in a different pitch than it was. Do what should what should what is the role of the artist what should we be calling on artists to help us do. I resist. Should make sense for artists right I think artists should create art. If it's in them, if it's in an artist right to speak to a certain reality, then they should do so by all means. And then put that that on everyone right. And you know the fact of the matter is, sometimes you need respite right so you have your artists who are constantly constantly talking about the reality we live in. But then you also sometimes need a little bit of break from that so you need writers musicians filmmakers painters who can allow you to, if not escape at least get some rest right. So, to my mind, the responsibility the artist is to create the best art you can. Right. And, you know, and let people find it. I do though think that it's the responsibility of any and every engaged citizen, right to to be thinking about these things to be doing the fact checking to inform themselves right and to as best they do to each other, and everyone has a circle of influence, use that, you know, to to forward the nation. Do you hope that some people who are looking for their voice in their circle of influence will read these poems and see that there are other way that there are many ways to participate to have a voice. I hope so I hope so there's the historian john Henry Clark, something he would say often, and I take to he says, do your best work. Right so whatever your work is, you want to further whatever cause. If you're a shoemaker make the best shoes you can make for your community if you're a poet right the best phones you can write, if you're a warrior, right. Then that's how you contribute. So, if nothing else maybe people will be inspired to get in where they fit in. So I want to, I want to talk at some length about the centerpiece of the work which is this remarkable collection of 15 sonnets, a refusal to mourn the deaths by gunfire of three men in Brooklyn. And for those who haven't yet open the book. It's each sonnet is opened by the words of a black literary figure. So the first question I just want to ask is, how did this originate. Yeah, wow. So, I want to say, I think it was 2017. The year that Ishmael Brinsley, a Baltimore man took a bus from New York City to 2014. 2014. And this was after, I think, Mike Brown was after Eric, Eric Gardner is after a few of these murders right it's hard to keep up sometimes with this guy he jumped on a bus and had been tweeting and Instagramming all day about his plans to go to New York City and to kill some police officers. He said he wants to take out two of them for every one of us that he that they've killed right. So on this same day, there was a poets rally in Washington Square Park. I participated. A lot of your more well known poets participate their budget was probably 40 or 50. And we were reading poems and protest of police violence. And I remember it was the coldest day of that year to that point. So there were hardly anybody there except for Polish reading poems to each other. And it felt well meaning but also impotent. Yeah. I remember taking the train home on that day. And I remember that there was an increased police presence I didn't know why especially when we got to Brooklyn, some of the Brooklyn platform you just notice and this is felt weird. So I did home and I find out that while we were in the park, making reading poems. This man Israel Brinsley had taken a bus from Baltimore to Brooklyn, caught two police officers sitting in their car and pushed them shot them both dead right there in there. Then he was chased onto a nearby subway platform and then shot himself in the head murders double murder suicide. Sam I have to tell you when I first heard about this. My first feeling was one of almost relief, almost. I don't know. I wouldn't call it happy necessarily, but but I got them right. It's about time. Right. It lasted for half a second because then you know the more human humane part of me, you know kind of jumped in was like no no no these are these are human beings, they, as far as you know didn't do anything they were on the job sitting there, not all police officers. Right. So there was this conflict that was going on inside of me. So the poem is my attempt to do to kind of sort these feelings out right and also to give myself a place to to put the rage. Right. We're often taught and by we I mean black people in particular to always be forgiving if you look at where we portrayed in movies. The noble black character is the character who forgives. Right. I think the movie the butler with force Whitaker, you know he's treated like crap his whole life. Right. And at the end, you know part of his saving graces that he forgives everyone who's oppressed him and who's treated badly. Right. This is the thought to be the only way of processing pain, grief, torture, torment, all these things. So what I what I saw in Ishmael Brinsley I saw something of a of a hero. Right. In a weird way, we think of Nat Turner as someone, you know who we think of as a hero now you know he started a slave revolt and his plantation and in doing so he killed a lot of people John Brown we think of him as a hero. But nowadays there's not even rooms even consider that. So the poem wasn't meant necessarily to name Ishmael Brinsley as a hero but at least to raise the question. Right. And like you said, it goes back and forth in time. It starts off here in 2014. And I do end up going back to 1992 and during the Rodney King rebellions. Right. And coming forward part of what happened to while I was writing this poem was that I'm now in a position of being an elder and having students who are also in rage and also trying to figure this out and process this and being in a position to have to tell them to stand to not act on on their rage, while I'm also processing on rage. So a lot I had to get out and try to get into the poem. But this is our challenges as a society right like we're in this debate right now where, for example, it's really important, particularly for, for, let's just say people who see themselves as allied with movements for racial justice to be really who have a high profile to be really clear that they quote, you know, don't condone violence. It's really important to say it. And some of that is, is, is rational. It's, it's not saying it's rational, but some of that is our inability to somehow acknowledge the righteousness of rage, because we don't we don't want to embrace all of its expressions. And I hear you saying and I see it in your poems is, we have to find a place for the rage and like if we only have a place for the divinity of grace, then, then we can sign ourselves to injustice. So, help us through this like how do we is art the place is art the place that we find a place for rage like did you did you find something in writing this that helped you to figure out that conflict inside of you. Um, it helped me to, I don't know. I think I worked through it all the way because you know it's something it's ongoing right writing a poem isn't going to write a poem about murders that occurred in 2014 don't absolve anything from 2020 right. So, on the one hand, and I think I addressed this in one of the sections of the poem. There is also the sense of having done nothing of consequence, right. So what I feel is necessary is to at least acknowledge that right so if we're going to talk about the history. And what a reason of people, you have to talk about the rage, right. I think our best writers and best thinkers I'm thinking about Baldwin talked about the fire that was coming next time right, or you talked about, or you hear about Mike Malcolm X talking about how America was a powder cake ready to blow at any moment, right. You need people to tell you these things, right, because otherwise you see what's happening, you see what's happening all around. But this, you know this is what happens is what happens, you know you, they keep killing, they keep killing. And we march around, you know, I'll tell you what, I'm thinking back one Prince Jones junior was killed by Maryland police officer, and I think this was in the early 2000s. And I remember those threats about this in between the world and me. And I remember that protest I was at Howard University at the time. And I remember we marched to the Department of Justice. And we circled the building, Al Sharpton was there and he says we're going to circle the building seven times and like Jericho the walls are going to fall down and that. And I remember about the third or fourth time around the building I started thinking it's a stupid. You know, like, these walls are going to fall they had a very prescribed path that we could walk. Right. They had officers lined up in the right gear in case anything went down. We marched around the building for a few times then we went home. You know, and it didn't seem like a change anything. So, I think that the rage needs to be acknowledged as a reality, you know, and that, you know, something just happened in California very recently very similar to the Israel Brinsley shootings, right. I don't condone it at all. But I am naming it and saying, look, you know, people are people are fed up. I agree with I mean I again I would I found really powerful about the book was that I don't, we're not we're not going to get there by foisting the obligation of grace and I think we're not going to get there by also allowing those who are afraid of a changing world to have a monopoly on rage and and that and that does work that that I found hope in your in your poems, because I found something in between, somehow saying a caricatured idea of violence is okay, or not. That says rage we that there is real rage. And until we address the causes the reasonable the rage is righteous. The rage is as divine as the grace. And until we recognize that we're not recognizing anything behind the strength of our, the strength of our words or our sentiments of solidarity, I, that's where I found hope is it is it where do you find hope, do you find hope anywhere. Do I find hope, I don't know. I feel that I'm thinking about a James Baldwin interview when he's asked the very same question and I'm trying not to parrot his words exactly. As if I ever could, but he says something to the to the effect that we can't help but be hopeful. Right. I mean, what's the alternative. Right. And pessimism isn't isn't really an alternative, you know, in order to keep going you need something to hold on to you need to believe that things will get better. And I do, I think that if you take the long view, right this is just a moment. Right. Even when I'm talking about even we're talking about police brutality, for instance, is something that has a long history, but not as long as as we've been here as human beings. So, you know, it is something that I do think we can work forward to and I'll tell you this. I don't know that anything in the book, or in writing the poems has given me hope, but I do know that all the protests I've seen this year, international and the scope. I've never seen anything like this before. Right. That gives me hope. My students who are some of the brightest young minds I've come across ever. And the work that they're doing and the way that they're processing a lot of this. That gives me hope. I think they're going to be doing a lot better than we were able to do our generation, or even generations before us. Yeah, so, you know, the young people give me hope, the spirit that all over the world people are saying this isn't right, and we're fed up. That gives me hope. Another question I want to ask you about what inspires your art is I was I was also struck in in a refusal to death, to more refusal to mourn the deaths by gunfire three men in Brooklyn, the way this archaeology of these phenomenal black literary figures, some of whom are well known, some of whom are less well known that motivates the poem I called archaeology but I just there was this incredible recovery to me of these voices. What tell us about why that was important to the work. Yeah. Again, George Floyd's experience was his experience but it was also, in many ways, all of our experiences right. The rage of Israel Brinsley was a rage we all feel so it's a collective experience I wanted the poem to feel like a collective endeavor so I wanted to bring in other voices in addition to my own. I wanted to bring in the voices of black male writers, because at the time of writing the poem, you know, that was where you know I saw a lot of the. A lot of the bias being committed against us right so I wanted to give them a say, if you will. And it was a chorus and I like the way you say this archaeology, you know, as you know as I was digging up, because you know a lot of the poets were dead and in that sense I felt like I had not just my own voice and poems or my own strength but the strength of all those that came before me and stand beside me right ancestors and contemporaries, helping me to write this poem. Yeah. It's one of the reasons it really moved me is it goes back to this rage conversation you know part of part of meeting this righteous rage where it is is the work that we're doing to talk about to name grievous wrong in sin in our history so to speak. But I also what I loved about it is this is this is the affirmative rage right this is these are the people explaining to us where to go what to do how to feel how they feel. Yes, and and they're and the voices are vital to some extent they're vital. As you noted, because the world hasn't changed in ways that needs to but another ways they're vital, because they're speaking to these timeless, these timeless dilemmas that we have to confront as a society is there of the of the of the voices that you've made a part of this collective effort. Who is, is there someone that all of us should read, you know, in 2020 is there is there is there an overlooked we obviously we need to read Baldwin, you know, but is there someone else that you think is maybe underrated who every American who sees themselves as part of a more just future should go back to. I mean, wow. That's a huge question, but also it's a huge responsibility right I don't think that a single voice can really really do any of this justice, you know, I'm a media hack. I have to ask these questions. No, I hear you, I hear you. But but I don't I don't think so I think, you know a lot of the poets, you know there you know you're Robert Hayden, Gil Scott here and Tim Siebel Terrence Hayes Reginald Wayne Betz is in there. And there are also others that were not present you know I'm thinking about a Nicole Sealy, who was my wife, but also as a great poet and who writes about matters of race as well. I'm thinking about Tyler Johnson I'm thinking about Cameron awkward rich, you know, so they're out of sell his gear my Martina Spada, you know so they're there are a lot of poets out here doing the work Natalie Diaz, right. And it's, it's, I think a testament to the moment. We don't have a singular voice in the same way, you know, some might. I think 20 Morrison before she passed named Tana Hasse codes as possibly the James Baldwin of this generation. I don't know we have one I think there are you know the responsibility to spread out, which I don't know, I think it's a good thing. Yeah, well you brought that home right I mean there's in the past doesn't just have James Baldwin the past as all of these voices, all of these voices that we can be using today. Yes. So I have to ask one more hacky question. But I can't help given the silly season we're in. If you could ask the presidential candidates to read one of the poems in this book, which one would it be and why. Oh, wow. Wow. I probably asked Donald Trump to read one of the sonnets because it's shortest and the easiest on him. And that's a great question. I might have them both read the centerpiece the the the sonnet sequence. You know, trouble be very interested in this I feel at this point I really do feel that ignorance is willful. Yeah. I just, yeah, I don't really waste my time with him but I think you know for Biden that's a read the centerpiece, you know, I think it shows maybe a ground level view of everything that's happening out there and or that leads up to what's happening out there on the streets. Right, it's the it's the poem if you want your understanding to match your words. Yes, that's what to read. Well, the 70, the 37th annual Miami Book Fair will run from November 15 to 22. All the readings presentations and conversations will be online and free but only available from November 15 to 22. Voices include in addition to John Murio Walter Mosley Ilsa Calderon Bill Nye the science guy Abby Wambach Natalie Portman. You can visit Miami Book Fair online.com or at Miami Book Fair on Twitter. This show Future of Democracy from Night Foundation airs live Thursdays at one every episode is available at kf.org slash fd show or on Spotify, Apple or wherever you find your podcasts, and any one of these special episodes that we're recording now will also be available on the website or where you go for your podcasts. And you can follow me on Twitter at the Sam Gill. The author is John Murio. The book is contemporary American poetry. You can find him at john mario.com. john Thank you so much for joining us. Hey man, thank you. This is great.