 Hello, everyone, hey. You know, here in America we can actually respond when someone says hello. It's legal now. So I'll try that again. Hello, everybody. Okay. All right. So hello, my name is Toussaint Saint-Nagretude, I work with Vermont Humanities, and on behalf of Vermont Humanities and the Kellogg Hubbard Library, I welcome you to our snapshot event as a part of poem city for an evening with poet Portia Olai Wola. We extend our thanks to the generous underwriters who make it possible for us to offer such rich and robust programming and Orca Media for providing this live stream of the event. The sponsor of our entire snapshot series is the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Alma Gibbs Donchin Foundation. Tonight's event is sponsored by the Montpelier Community Fund. Tonight we come together from across the state to listen, to learn, and to be inspired in community. Before we begin, I have a few brief housekeeping items. If you need to use the restroom, there are restrooms through these doors downstairs. That's where the restrooms are. Please turn off all phones, turn them off. We will call the cops if we hear a phone. Our next snapshot event is hosted by the Bretman Free Library, and it's a title Every Problem is Now a Technology Problem with Jessamine West at 7 p.m. Please be sure to register online to receive a link to the live stream. And now it is my pleasure to introduce you to our next speaker tonight. Portia Olaiwola is a native of Chicago who writes, lives, and loves in Boston. Olaiwola is a writer, performer, educator, and curator who uses Afrofuturism and Surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, women's, and queer diasporas. She is an individual World Poetry Slam champion and the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival. Olaiwola is Brown University's 2019 Highmark Artist in Residence, as well as the 2021 Artist in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She is a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Olaiwola earned her MFA in poetry from Emerson College and is the author of I Shimmer Sometimes. I'm sorry, I Shimmer Sometimes 2. Olaiwola is the current Poet Laureate of the City of Boston. Okay, all right, you can clap on that. Her work can be found in or forthcoming from the Tri Quarterly magazine, Black Warrior Review, the Boston Globe, Essence Magazine, Redivider, the Academy of American Poets, Netflix, Wilderness Press, the Museum of Fine Arts, and elsewhere. And now I give you Portia Olaiwola. Good afternoon, evening everybody, how's it going? I'm super excited to be here, so grateful that one, all of you all showed up. And two, to also just be in a city that celebrates poetry in this way, it's really exciting, refreshing to see. I was just walking on Main Street and I could see poems everywhere and it's just really exciting and quite revolutionary. I've been dealing with some kind of cough situation, so I'm going to do my best. I'm going to do my best, but if you see me coughing, just stay away. This is an Ars Poetica. I want to write a poem and it could be about anything, but I'm sure no matter what I write, it will be about Gaza. It will be about an olive tree, sliced at the stump. I want to write about the merciless red of an apple, how it listens in the light like blood. But I'm sure it'll just be a poem about Congo. Did you know? There are children singing and dancing in poems, but none in this life. I try to write, but I'm sure it'd be about Saddam or Chicago. I want to write a poem about the time I raced the sidewalk or the double rainbow I saw with my lover one afternoon arched over Boston like a prayer, but I'm sure the poem would unravel and rewrite itself. I bet it'd be about politics, about taxes or the election, damn the election, or the mass unmarked graves with bodies like mine, re-remembered and forgotten to be unmarked. And then to be, to be marked, to be a marker, I want to write about the moon. And the night she left the ocean for a river down south, sweet, sweet waters, drowning up my page, but instead it's about the deluge. Instead it's about the crisis of housing and the crisis of the police and the health crisis. Oh my, I want to write something beautiful, something devastatingly breathtaking, like maybe about the time my mother met my lover's mother, my two mothers, and they smiled, held hands and gossiped in the corner of the room, like they were building a new world without worry, teasing like two pigtails schoolgirls on the playground up to the best kind of good. I love the giggles, it's like the schoolgirls, you know? So I've been working on a manuscript that is at the intersection of water and the black diaspora, by way of a historical lens as well as queer intimacy. So I think that's where we'll go today and I guess that is just a content warning for stories that deal with trauma and violence around black folks and then lots of history lessons, so we're on this ride. I am that nerdy, so a couple of years ago I went to see my father who goes in Lagos, Nigeria, speaking of being a history nerd, I asked him to drive me two hours to the coast so that I could see a slave port. It was in Badagri, Nigeria, and all of the folks who were captured there end up in Brazil, just for context, but on the tour there was a well and the tour guide was telling me that they fixed the well, right? They had African root workers put a spell, slave captives, right? Had African root workers put a spell on the well and so if folks drank the water, then they would forget their memory or they would have short term memory loss for three months so that they would forget the way home. And so this poem is about that but kind of a reimagination or a suggestion that maybe they fixed the well so that people would not have to survive that trauma of being on the middle passage. It's called We Drink at the Atonation Well. It begins with an epigraph from psychologist Amy N. Dalton and Lee Hong and it reads, forgetting is a psychological defense mechanism whereby people cope with threatening and unwanted memories by suppressing them from consciousness. In Badagri, there is a hungry well of water and memory loss. In Badagri, there was a well of people lost across a haven of water. In Badagri, there was a port overwhelmed and unreturned. To omit within the mind is to ebb heavenward. Memory is a wealth choking the brain and unresponsibility. Violence in the mind and the mind forgets in order to remember the self before the violence begot. In Badagri, trauma washes ungodly memory heavenward. In Badagri, there is an atonation well meant to wish away a passage, meant to unhaven a people. Violence is underwhelming in return what the body eats. The mind waters. Responsible is the memory for unremittal. Royal is the body for return. God is the mind for wafting. Forgetting is a port homework. In Badagri, hungry memory grows angry. In Badagri, the memories unchoke, unhunger. Trauma uneats. In Badagri, there is a heaven of people responsible for the wealth of unremembering, for the well of us across a haven of water, overwhelmed and unreturned. Like, I have a new, is this new? Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I was going to say I have a new poem, but this is not or rather a new favorite book. But it's not my new favorite book. It's been my favorite book for the last several years. I've read it probably four times in the last few years. But it's called In the Wake. Have people read that by Christina Sharpe? I don't see it as like a snap. It's my favorite book. It's so good. It's nonfiction. And kind of like Nemour meets a historical account. So, but I do recommend it. In any case, she theorizes Christina Sharpe that black folks are living in the wake of slavery, right? Or in the aftermath of slavery. And she considers the wake and three of its definitions, right? The first of which is the wake in terms of the shape a ship makes when it moves. The other is the wake as in a funeral, right? Or the celebration of life is how she conceptualizes it. And then the third is the wake as in being woke, as in being aware of what we're doing and continuing it regardless. So this poem is a contrapuntal. I know there are quite a few writers here. Are people familiar with the contrapuntal? Yes, and it's OK to yell things out here, no. So, contrapuntal is a poem that is essentially written in three parts, right? So there is the left side that reads down, and then the right side that reads down, and then you read them across and ideally get a third voice. So this is my attempt at the contrapuntal with the three definitions of the wake. And so part one in the wake. A ship sets sail across a body of water, and turbulence occurs beneath the gluttic belly. Even the ocean bursts waves and places unfamiliar. The bow pierces forward. A trail restructures the gods of the Atlantic. Once a vast portal, now an atlas unmade. A wake where it had it been. Objects in motion never mourn what was killed in order to be born. Instead, crossing continues with the wreckage of sea. Sainted ocean, keep in memory the self, who breathed formed gills of Elantans. A sopping procession, silting the silk of water, yet tied, still running over what tried to sever a saline reflection. And two, a slave ship hauls bodies as cargo, and both the surface and ocean floor rifts. Even the clouds break open and sobs. Trauma welts, swells the earth. The past is not past, but vessel. People emerge from the bow, but never the ship. Now a grave, cast unto the back. A wake where we have been. We never mourn ourselves. Instead, we feast. Instead, we ritualize the evasion of death and the death itself. How holy, us who have not drowned when they drowned us. With the resurrection of bones along our mouths, us grinning steel, what tried to grind us into sand failed and cannot keep us from surging. And three, a cross in the shape of the wake. When a ship sets sail, a slave ship hauls across a body of water, bodies as cargo, and turbulence occurs beneath both the surface and ocean floor. The glutted belly rifts. Even the clouds break. Even the ocean bursts waves open and sobs. Trauma in places unfamiliar welts, swells the earth. The bow pierces forward. The past is not past, but vessel. A trail restructures the gods. People emerge from the bow of the Atlantic, but never the ship. Once a vast portal, now a grave. Now an atlas unmade, cast unto the back. A wake where it hadn't been. A wake where we have been. We, objects in motion, never mourn ourselves. Never mourn what was killed. Instead, we feast in order to be born. Instead, we ritualize. Instead, crossing continues with the evasion of death, the wreckage of sea, and the death itself. How holy, sainted ocean, keep in memory us who have not drowned the self, who breathe when they drowned us, formed fields of Elantans with the resurrection of bones, a sopping procession along our mouths, silting the silk of water, yet us grinning still, tied, still running over, what tried to grind, what tried to sever us into sand, failed, and a saline reflection cannot keep us from surging. And the context allows me to catch my breath, and that's crap, so thank you. I don't know what it is, but I've also started taking, what is it called, mulling leaves? So now, by accident, all the mucuses coming up, I shouldn't, sometimes I feel like, mucus is such a bad word. Yeah, I keep feeling bad for saying it. In any case, I've been slightly obsessed with the poet Phyllis Wheatley-Peters. Obviously, as a person who's serving as the poet laureate for the city of Boston, and Phyllis Wheatley-Peters writing and living in Boston, it just naturally feels like we're constantly in conversation. But this poem is about the poet Phyllis Wheatley-Peters, and more specifically, I've been hunted by the fact that she was named after the ship that she came in on. And so I've been just struggling with that and talking to her about it by way of poems. But this is called The Phyllis, 1761. And it begins with an epigraph from the poet Phyllis Wheatley-Peters that reads by what sweet name and in what tuneful sound without be praised. A vessel can be a shipped prison, to which her purpose is to haul pretty cargo. A girl, however prisoned, can be ship and cargo. A vessel can be a shipped person, to which her purpose is to haul precious cargo. A girl, however precious, can be shipwrecked. A shipped person can also be a vessel, to which her purpose is to haul petty cargo. A girl, however priced, can be both ship and cargo. A ship can also be a prison vessel, to which her purpose is to hide her pretty. A girl, however wrecked, can be a vessel. Thank you for giving me the space. It's like your claps are like wind coming in too much. I'm sorry. OK, the next three, four poems are American Sonnets. And I say that because I'm an American? No, I say that because I mean, if you know anything about the American Sonnet, it's like actually very much so American in that it drops all of the rules with the exception of the Volta. I think the only things that it keeps is it's a love poem. It has the Volta or the change at the end and then 14 lines. And for those who don't know, the American Sonnet was invented by a black woman by the name of Wanda Coleman and then made famous or revitalized by the poet Terence Hayes. And I realize it's just about American politics, really. And maybe this is about that. But in any case, have folks heard of Lake Lanier? Yeah, it's like so I love this. It's been trending recently and primarily because there have been a lot of drownings. It's like outside of Atlanta or rather in Georgia. And there have been a lot of drownings. I think it's like the highest rated number of disappearances. And people have theorized it's cursed. It used to be an all black town. And then for reasons associated with racism, they ran black folks out of the town and eventually filled it in with water. And I was watching TikTok, which is where I get most of my information these days. Unfortunately, it depends on which talk you're on. If you're on book talk or whatever. But there was a TikToker saying that sometimes the tie gets so low, you can see the steeple. And that obviously has haunted me. And also, we're in this beautiful space. What a gorgeous steeple. And so maybe this is an ode to steeples. It's called Lake Lanier. It's going to be edited. That's what I'm doing. Nothing burns more radiant than the Bible of a hell-bid preacher. The gleaming Sunday shoes of a little girl and a cross pitched on the lawn. Martin and Malcolm could tell you playing from the apertures in their chests. You got the sanctuary first. Pray away, Apostles. Salt the tongue to sever the wings. Blaspheme the Orishas. God is always the most necessary to destroy. Crucify and become history's cursed lover. Drowned town hex. The nightriders reaping. Man-made lakes belong to their holy ghosts. Vengeful deities understand the spire of the church is just the good Lord's gather. Another American sonnet. You guys are awesome. Another one entitled, Before He Was Deported, My Father Taught Me to Fish Like a Man. Good man, Jacob is. Thank you so much. You guys are so supportive. Before He Was Deported, my father taught me to fish like a man. Good man, my father was. He could catch the best God had to offer and the worst. Like devout fishermen, we were religious at the lake. My image, swimming in my father's reflection. Girl learning man. Man-girl learning to cast a line like how the country did. Split a border between my father and the eye. Half like a filet of croakers flopping onto the beach of our mother countries. It took years to learn how to unlearn anger. I wanted only to lie in the blood of my father. Cast away body bones, swallowed up. How hunger never allows you to keep who it is you love. Another sonnet. I just haven't too many, too much fun. Last word echo in me because you're so good. You know, I'm like known for abrupt endings. And it's hilarious to me, you know, so. But this poem is after the poet Nicole Sealy, who's just an incredible poet. But she wrote a sonnet. I think it's called Legendary. And every word except the last ends with the word white. And so every word here ends in black. And it's called Legend Heavy. I want to be married in church, in black. Not like tradition. No, it must be black. Black dress, black suit, black roses and cake, black wife. View of us. Pretty skin, smiling, black. And let the chorus come. Witness this black love down the aisle, each piano key, black. Each note of song lifted, black. Our vows, black like promise. I want three. No four. Small, black, jubilee kid, safe sound behind a black picket fence. Grandmother, my mother, black in a rocking chair, cooing, hey there, black child. Be careful. Take those school clothes off. Black don't clean easy. It stays. Moonrise stays black till sunrise. Sometimes white never shines through. I got some really great news today. Oh, maybe you guys are the first people I tell it to. But I just got offered 10-year track assistant professorship at a school. And I'm very excited about it. I'm doing my readings, all of my readings here. I'm bringing you guys with me, no. But maybe they'll retract this after they hear this poem, no. But I teach poetry currently. And I had a really great class. I mean, there are so many incredible young writers that I just get to spend time with. And this particular student, I just really love their poems. That's fascinating with their poems. But in any case, they were giving a very in-depth presentation. And they said one thing. And I just kind of started writing in the middle of their presentation, so bad. But they were a stellar student. In any case, this is also a sonnet about them. Or not about them, but about that moment. I assign my students final presentations. The poet says, skinny black trees. And all I think is black. Skinny black kids. Skinny black legs dangling off the side of lips like lollipops. Skinny black limbs. Skinned knees. Black with hope. Skinned black hopes. So thin, it vanishes on the line. It vanishes like a line lynched on the horizon. What's right with me? Am I wired to think lack? A gravekeeper? Paul Barrow? Whose child rancid with morbidity am I? Do I belong to God? Is God bound back to black like this? All rope and a loose neck. All cross and clean hands. No skinny blood, spiel and steel. Grief cockles my mouth like a chain gang. The student finishes. A. No, A plus. I've been obsessed with contrapuntals. You guys tell me if I'm going too far with them. So I'm gonna do a couple more. But this one in particular is about resistance, really. But it's more specifically about the, I'm not gonna take my shoes off. This is like, you should keep things to yourself. But you guys can't see my shoes. So I'm like, ah, should be comfortable. But it is about Margaret Garner. Have folks heard of Margaret Garner? And you're like, stop asking us if we heard of these things. But if you've read Beloved, which a lot of us have, I assume. Toni Morrison's Beloved is based off this woman named Margaret Garner. And Margaret Garner was an enslaved woman in the American South and she had a family. She had a husband and she had four kids. And if you look at the records, you'll note that the first child was dark and the other three were lighter shade, right? Which we can assume she had been assaulted by the master. But her and her family, her husband, her four kids and her in-laws, her two in-laws, they run away by way of the Ohio River. And they wait until it freezes over. They cross the Ohio River. Slave catchers catch up with them once they cross over. And in an order to avoid going back into slavery, she begins to kill her children in this daring moment of resistance. She only kills one and then has to stand trial for destruction of property. And then it's found guilty and is so further down south on the Mississippi River, which is supposed to be a harsher life, is the story. And I told you, I was writing about black folks at the intersection of water, which is how I found my way here. But in any case, this is a controversial about that moment of resistance for Margaret Garner. And the first is called, Margaret Garner crosses the Ohio River in the voice of the Ohio River. Folk stay gunning toward me, like I'm the second coming, like every magia ain't a God with purpose. Cross me like a crucifix and I will lay Ohio bare. There is no word for a mother who has lost just an unjust law wrought in sweetly, blighting a fetus into the property of somebody willing to break a woman into a hollow harvest. A sin up yonder, chat, wade through me like a hymn, a prayer, a river of Jordan, a gateway fleeing the Dixie. I, the chariot, freezing up, heartening myself in your quest. Two, Margaret Garner crosses the Ohio River only to get caught and sold down the Mississippi in the voice of the Mississippi River. Like I'm some type of pistol, folk stay running from me. Mercy me, I thin the bloodline. I devein the country with a kitchen shape. Mississippi, sell them down river. There is no sympathy for a child gone to queen sugar, cotton stock, crowning the bones, cane fields, cankering the mouth, split the family into quarters with a slip of sail, big muddy, old man river, steamboat. I may be a womb of water, but can as easily be a rope, a tree, popular or dull wood, the soil of the south, the blood on my hands, a bomb. And three, Margaret Garner crosses the Ohio River only to get caught and sold down the Mississippi or the mother stands trial for murdering her children in the voice of Margaret Garner. Folk stay gunning toward me. Like I'm some type of pistol. Like I'm the second coming. Folk stay running from me like every media ain't a God. Mercy me, I thin the bloodline with purpose. Cross me like a crucifix and I devein the country with a kitchen shape. I will lay Ohio bare. There is no Mississippi, sell them down river. There is no word for a mother who has lost sympathy for a child gone to clean sugar. Just an unjust law rotting sweetly, cotton stalk crowning the bones, blighting a fetus into the property, cane fields cankering the mouth of somebody willing to break, split the family into quarters, a woman into a hollow harvest with a slip of sail, big muddy, ascend up yonder child, wade, old man river, steamboat through me like a hen. I may be a womb of water, a prayer, a river of Jordan, but can as easily be a rope, a gateway fleeing the Dixie. I a tree, poplar or dogwood, the chariot freezing up the soil of the south, heartening myself in your quest, the blood on my hands, a ball. Also, I've been thinking a lot about pleasure. Yeah, it's about that time, no. And we really have been theorizing, you know that everybody, I mean folks are human, right? Even under the institution of slavery, people still had joyous moments. And so I guess these are theories. This poem is kind of like a transition to my own exploration of joy, but theorizing around folks who were under the institution of slavery and still exercising joy. Right now it's called Run Away Love. Amid crisis, there exists no sanctuary better than us. Me and my baby moisten the sheets. Our salt spray asterisks, making the risk of loving, living worth it. We North Star our bed. Ancient maroon in heat. I've heard many make the case. The revolution is the time to fuck shit up and not fuck each other. Limitably, God is a ruthless lover. Black is a limitless being. We are always opportune. Name a mutiny that has not been moist in its end. Reader, what did you think? Solves did not fornicate, did not enjoy the moonlight salivating the skin. You think there was no uprising every night. Slave shack shack up, heavy painting, wade and wet, wade and want. I aim to be that thirsty. I ache to be that thirsty after my girl and me a sweet escape, an ecstasy of sweat. We this free every break of dawn. Super excited. I'm like getting married later this year. It's gonna be a good time, you know, and hopefully a long lasting marriage, right? Cause you know, the wedding is the wedding, but, yeah, very excited. I mean, I could go on and on, but I won't stop here. In any case, this has been a poem that has changed forms, like over the last probably like five or six years. I still am not decided upon it. I don't know what it wants to be, but today it's masquerading as a apsadarin, which is, you know, the poem that follows A-B-C-D-E-F and et cetera. It's called apsadarin for the runway my fiance and I turn the sidewalk into. Because we are so undeniably stunning, chrysanthemum says we end homophobia. Darling and I, sweet pea and me, high stakes edging the highlight of a cheekbone, how fine and finite our fight, how gorgeous our gallantry. There's a shrine altered of our war, however hostile. Fashion is as fatal as a blood carpet. We ignore punctuality like bad timing. It's what we joke about, entering a restaurant, knowing not what the other has conquered. Lowling our own wounds, hers separate from mine, mine heavy in reflection. They have not been through the wake we waved, our fears keeping us from the joy two morals away. The pop concert, the last brunch, gawking questions reaching from singed eyes, we rakeish beauty, we untamed affection, our skin, a soft shield stowed beyond this life. We toss aside apprehension, treat the heart as a fist underneath our garments, praise bodies raised in vain. We laugh like we are the only people, even though we are not. We show, gloriously late, devastatingly gorgeous, examining a room of gawking molars, mouths yearning for what keeps us living, a look in the mirror, and Zion is the glint in our teeth, the nails painted, our hands clasped. Weird stuff. It's written, the title allegedly is sometimes I eat, but I think it's called I Grow Obese. And you know, sometimes you're like finishing a manuscript, but then secretly you start writing another one while you're finishing this one. So I think the next one is about hunger, hunger desire and those two things, you know, they feel closely related. Anyway, I grow obese. Once out of anger, I told a lover I wanted to gobble her up, devour her bones until we were both dust. I am that thirsty. I thirst for a meal forged from the dainty fingers that feed me. Once just the two of us had a picnic alongside the Charles and I slurped up the whole bank of water between my cheeks, bass, perch, newt, ill and all. I did not stop. I did not leave the city a drop of blood. In bed, I say grace before I swallow. I swallow. When I am alone, I skip over my prayers. The hunger is enough to forsake my God body. I cheated, confession. Sometimes I play with my food because I am enamored with the sounds. I slosh my face and her wide mouth, nape of breasts, nails, toes licked. Even the eyeballs, like bad apples, ravished and ravished ready. Sweetie pie, you are not a turn of endearment. Star, I want all of me consumed, famished. I desire all of me gone. Another weird one I'm working through. Right now it's called, my therapist says I should be more vulnerable about what I want. If I'm being honest, I think about eating baked macaroni and gouda off. If I'm being honest, I think about you eating baked macaroni and gouda off my boobs. I think about, I think about biting into a ham-hawk and chowing down a plate of collards and then slithering the juices between your thighs. Slide, I am black with desire. I hunger history. Hollowed thirst. Is this what she means? Opened myself. I whisper, sex me like a runaway baby. Tall grass. I whimper, pool my hair. I'll eat your lips. Nibble my nipples scarlet. Open my legs. Open my mouth. Feel me. Trickle down. Tiffle my lungs. There are only so many places to feel safe. Make me tender like country fried chicken. Hush pussy, but make me scream your name. I'll cry out like a feast of fried gator. Let my tongue soggy your toes. Fine-painted like green beans. Like jalapeno poppers. Like safe watermelon woman. Oprah slime. Slurp me up. Serve me up. I love you guys. Keep me hoppin' John. Let's fester like wet sugar. Love me like freedom baby. To the pig ears, roast crisp. I think it's telling that I start to hear you when we get to the sex pose. You guys did that. I know, we probably got like five more minutes before we get to the Q and A if that's over. I know, war weird poems. I wish I was actually a stranger, but I'm not. Let me see what else is on this list. I know, right? We love love. This is kind of love. It's not kind of love. And it's edit, it's being edited. It's out to a friend who's giving feedback, which is to say, you know, if you hear something you're like, oh, I think you should change it. I'm accepting the feedback here. Also inspired by TikTok. I was watching, I was following some drama, multi talk drama in which a woman was telling the story about how her husband cheated on her and she met him while he was cheating on somebody else with her. So it was really weird. But in any case, she said that he sent her a lot of flowers and he sent her so many flowers that it made her office look like a morgue. And I was like, don't you see the problem lady? And you know, like you can never make these things up. You know, people just kind of give you the poem. But yeah, completely undone. But maybe when I read it out loud, I'll get closer to an ending. Right now, it's called all the flowers he sent me made my office look like a morgue. Says the woman, viral on TikTok. She's talking about her husband before he was her husband, how he was somebody else's husband, how he turned her workspace into a casket spray and the eye watch, petrified, cemented to the drama or what the Greeks call tragedy. Comedy, I suppose, that my stomach hums like milk at the thought of looking to the things that make us less humane, but more human, humbling to think of myself at a dissent. The procession to hell is lined with pretty summons, the path to heaven, even worse, I'm sure. I once buried myself alive in a safety net, cloaked in untruth. I once stewed the silence of the grave in my mouth like a cherry stone pit. This office bouquet makes me think about the time for the end of the end of my last relationship before I could properly lay us to rest, before we could be considered paths. Take the curtains down, divide the plants, split the couch into pillows and fluff. The love story goes, I sent a new friend some new flowers for a new book, she wrote. My sweet, sweet new friend, new lover, how my soon-to-be ex-lover, former lover, found the receipt in my email inbox at 3 a.m., and she woke me, screaming, asking, how could I, hollering, midnight, like a banshee, like a sobbing lover, wilting at her patrol's funeral? So yeah, feedback is open for that one. And then this will be my last, and then we'll open it up for Q and A, yes? Yeah. Okay, word. Afro-futuristic re-imagination of Dorothy, a story about Dorothy Dandridge, do people know Dorothy? She played Carmen Jones, here I go, more history questions, no. But she played Carmen Jones, and was famous black singer. People say she didn't get all of her, all of the opportunities afforded to her because she was before the Civil Rights Movement. In any case, there's this urban legend, and I call it a urban legend because a lot of folks say that it happened to them. And so there's like poetry, you need to come and see these poems. And so, I mean, it was, I couldn't remember my first time being in a room and like hearing slam poetry. And so yeah, so that's how I got started. I did it once, one year in high school, was louder than a bomb. I went to college, U of I, in Champaign-Romana, and we didn't have a slam team. There was one other person who did poems. And once we drove to Indiana to compete, but we didn't have enough people. So when I moved to Boston, Boston has a very rich slam culture. And it's not the city in which slam has founded, but it is one of the four that held the first poetry slam with four cities or four teams. And so that is kind of where I just, I volunteered for a year after college with AmeriCorps. So I didn't have money, and I moved to a city where I didn't know anybody, so I didn't have friends. So I would just write. I would just write, and then I would go and slam every single week with new poems. And then, yeah, eventually just started doing national competition, so. But yeah, love slam. Do folks have other questions? Yeah, I also don't want to stress you. You know, it's like, okay, if nobody has questions. Yeah. I know, right? Yeah, I don't mind saying that. I mean, cut the camera, sir. No, I'm just kidding. But I don't know if folks know what you're referring to, but I'll just give a brief recap. I was set to do a commencement speech at Concord Academy in about a month. And then, I mean, I'll tell you it from my perspective. So I got an email that was saying, oh my God, the students have elected you to be the commencement speaker. We're very excited. And then received, you know, a text message. Okay, now this is where the truth comes out. You know, I haven't told you about this part, but I received a text message from folks at the school asking if I could meet with the headmaster. And you know, one, usually when I do a gig, you know, they just send me an email and you know, we close the case, or we might meet via Zoom. Or for example, Jacob emailed me almost a year ago to the date, right? And you know, here I am, you know. So that's how it typically goes. And so I was a little shocked that they asked to meet in person. And then, you know, he was a really lovely guy. Great conversation. And like, I felt moved, you know. And I felt as though he might've been in a hard position. The headmaster, right? And so he'd never really articulated what was happening. But just that, you know, when I walked away from that particular lunch meeting, I assumed that he was about to offer me a position to work at the school. That's what I thought. And so I left the meeting feeling flattered and confused. I was like, oh, you know, I was telling one of my colleagues like, I don't really know what's going on. He's like, oh, this guy's courting you. Like, he wants, you know, he like, oh, said we'll send you some gifts. What's your address? And so I was a little confused because I had never seen anything like this. And also flattered. I'm like, they like my work and they want me to work with students in a more intimate capacity in addition to the commencement address, right? And so that was that. You know, I just kind of left with that and thought that I would receive something by way of email. In any case, so maybe two or three weeks later, I got an email from somebody at the globe saying that, oh, is it true that you've been removed? That's the commencement speaker. And if so, this is a terrible injustice. And I'm like, injustice, what's going on? You know, and so I reached out to my booking manager who said to me that they sent him an email saying it was a mutual agreement that we wouldn't do the commencement speech and they'll send over payment. And I was like, that's so strange and I don't know exactly what's going on but I assumed immediately that it was related to what's going on in the world. And eventually I talked to some students and I think it was the students who reached out to the globe because they were upset. They were upset and I took my own little notes from the young person who was just like, this is antithetical to what they tell us about the exchange of ideas. And then I'm like, I'm sad for you. I'm sad that this could have been a great teachable moment for all of us to have a conversation and maybe like the rest of the world could also learn something from it. But instead, you guys one lied. You lied about me, which is like terrible. And then also avoided having a difficult conversation. And so I sent that in a very elaborate email that I'm just extremely disappointed. I was like, I definitely was, in my mind I was really mean to that email but I'm sure it was like actually relatively sweet. I sent them a lot of quotes from poets in particular. The first opening was I think from Zora Neale Hurtson that said, if you're silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it. And then also close with something from June Jordan that is a poem that says, I'm a black woman. But now I've become a Palestinian against the, I don't wanna misquote it and I have it somewhere here. Oh, let me see if this is it, if I can get the internet. But in any case, send them a very elaborate email. And I wasn't necessarily sure of what will come of it. I'm also like kind of skeptical journalist, no offense. But just because I assume they have a thesis, they have a story that they want to tell. And I didn't think the story should be about me, frankly, I thought it should be about the students or actually what's happening in Palestine. So, but anyway, yeah, I came out this morning. I haven't heard from them since. Unfortunately, I did get an email today from two students who identify as Jewish and said, this is what happened and we're so sorry and we don't agree and let us know if you wanna chat. So that's kind of where it was, but really unfortunate. I think it just should have been handled differently. I just wish they would have did a better job. I think I would have been open to the conversation of having a different kind of conversation to be frank, but you know, politics, I suppose. Yeah, thank you for that. I hope that wasn't too much drama about my life. Fortunately, you're not the only one. Yeah, I know, it is unfortunate. I think there was a young person from, I think USC who was valedictorian and recently got removed from their speech. So I just wish we were in better places to have conversations. It's unfortunate. But are there more questions? Not necessarily a downer though. Yeah. What has been your most powerful moments as a lawyer? Ooh, yeah, that is a great question. And hard too. There have been several, I think. One, just like actually working with folks and being able to share poetry and listen to other people's poetry. The fact that I have to read poems, which sounds ridiculous, but like residents, like on the way here, I'm in the car right here, I just spent reading poems that would go up in city hall. And I think about that work in terms of, the people who make the laws or the people who run the city get to read poetry every day and work at which poems get to be published on the walls of city hall. And so for me, that is like a joy of doing that kind of work. I will say, we helped to start the Youth Po Laureate program in Boston. And we've had some incredible young people. But this young person right now is like 15, identifies as trans and is like a writer like I've never seen before. So the fact that we mentor each other is really exciting. But overall, I think it really is about, for me at least, showing up when I have the space and capacity to, and just like actually listening to other people's poems, it's really a joy. But thank you for that. Their poetry and it inspired you to write a poem. But when you, so that's like a beginning. When do you know when that poem is done? Sometimes you'd be like, come on. Yeah, see I think it's easier to know when the poem is not done. Yeah. And then they say that the poem is never done, right? That you might always go back and do a little, but I think, I guess when I read it out loud and I note that I am not cringed about a certain thing. Or even like, I never say that the poem about my father and the fishing is, I never say it's not done, but I know that I dislike the ending. So it's easier to know when it's not done as opposed to when it's done. Which is, I think exciting, you know? That's kind of expansive. Yeah, oh, but it's alive. I don't know if people heard that, but thank you. Did you have your hand raised or did I mix that up? No, I just saw. Okay, yeah. Are you part of poems? Yeah, so the Contrapuntal. Usually, I mean, I prefer to write by hand. So I don't really start by tech. And usually I have my little no-wind, what is it called when there are no lines on it? Hilarious. But I start, I buy the same kind of journal every time. It doesn't have lines. And I usually write in that, but when I'm doing the Contrapuntal, I usually take printer paper and I fold it in half. And I probably start with an idea or something that is complex enough in which there need to be two distinct voices. And if I know the two distinct voices that I start. And usually I maybe write two lines and then another two lines and then maybe a line and then two lines. And then, you know, so I kind of go back and forth between the two. And then I think, for me at least, repetition helps, right? Like whether that be, or I was even analyzing what I was reading today in terms of, you know, one word, one side had the word holy and the other side had sainted, you know? So even if you're not repeating the words, you're repeating some kind of images or ideas between them. But there is this great essay by this poet and Kosi and Kule Luke, excuse me, I might be mispronouncing it, but the essay is a Contrapuntal, which is insane. It's also a palindrome, which means you can read it backwards. But in it, yeah, like, I don't know what he's doing, but in it he talks about, he talks about writing the Contrapuntal. And he suggests starting each line with a verb and doing that all the way through and that will, and ending each one with a noun, I think. You start with a verb and with a noun and that will allow you to connect it. For me, I like to just play with repetition. I think it's called Double Consciousness. Yeah, and it has, you know, then it has the colon and a longer title, but it is by the poet and Kosi and I can maybe email it to you, yeah. And maybe we have time for two more, but you guys tell me. Tucson, Jacob, yeah. Reading tonight aired really incredible poems and I was just curious, I don't know if you could wait to say this, I never thought of language being layered that way. And, you know, the idea of reading it, the different meanings, the different order of reading it, I was just curious if there is a format or a type of poem which like really blew your mind in terms of what it was able to do in a different way of using language the first time that you tried it. Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, I would say Taimba Jess. I don't know if folks know this poet, but one of the Pulitzer, maybe in the 90s, but don't quote me, might be in the 2000s, but one of the Pulitzer with a book of, a book of contrapuntals that are also sonnets. And so I think just that notion, the fact that they were both of those and most of them were both of those was really amazing. I think the poem by Warsaw Shire, who's the poet who wrote For Lemonade, she has this poem called Backwards. That's a palindrome, right? Like, so it starts and then if you read it backwards, it's a whole nother poem, but that one always blows my mind. You know, the bidirectionality of language and the ways in which she like actually uses directions to kind of like reverse itself. You know, and the poet, Franny Choi, has a poem called It Is What It Is, which is also the title is a palindrome, but it's about being Asian-American during the time of COVID. And so that one is a really good one too, but yeah, I just love how poets, you know, I was like thinking about the fact that, I was theorizing that all the language, if language is like water and water only has the water that has ever existed, there's no new water, then the language is the same, right? And so everything always, the material for the poet is always there and we can reuse it and play with it and do those things. But thank you for noting that and being on the same wavelength. So embarrassing, no. Yeah, I feel like there are poets who write every day and I'm like, jealous to be frank, envious. Because life, life's, you know? I will say, I started out the year reading the 12-week year, have people heard of that? It's like, ridiculous. But it tries to get you to conceptualize your goals within 12 weeks or yearly quarters as opposed to the actual full year. So I have been reading that and then following a journal version of that. But in it, he suggested, you know, your long-term goals, you should actually dedicate time or like dedicate a certain amount of hours each week. And so at the beginning of this year, I started by doing three hours every Friday morning. And that worked really well for me. You know, I'm in a new quarter now and so I have to reset my goals. But I have not been writing every day. I think it's really hard. But what I have been doing is reading every day, attempting to do 30 minutes each morning. And you know, reading yields us to the writing that we need, where we need to go in the writing, so. But yeah, you know, I think it's important to do what works for you and understand that everything's different. Everybody's different. But the morning is the best. And then we'll have this, yeah, last question. Why are you just doing that? Yeah, sometimes actually. You know, I think, I like to think that the poems are always happening. You know, that like, this moment at some point will accumulate into a poem. There's a poem, I don't, this like always sounds weird to say this, but there's a poem of mine that has been trending or viral because somebody said something racist. And somebody stitched the poem to it in response. But it's about late names and the lineage of names. But you know, that one, even though it was written not too long ago, I like first thought of it in college when my roommate's boyfriend had the same last name as my mother. And I like couldn't figure, I was like, oh, what does this mean, sir? You know, and then maybe 10, 15 years later the poem actually comes, so. But yeah, every moment, everything. This is all being documented. I'll write about you all. You know, I used to have this prompt and maybe I'll give it to you, but I had this prompt that I give to my students, which is the East Drop Cento. Cento is a poem composed of lines from other people. But I just have them just go around East Drop and taking notes and then make a poem from it. So have that prompt. It's National Poetry Month, people should be writing. But yeah, so you might be in a poem later. But thank you all so much. And I don't know, Toussaint or Jacob, are you guys coming up? Are you closing us out? That's it. Thank you guys so much. Have a great evening. You are great.