 We'll begin with a round of this conversation in poetry. So I'll start it off by reading a poem and then someone, I don't know if we decided who's going second. Jump in like double Dutch. Like double Dutch, so whoever feels the spirit, jump in. So someone will then respond with a poem. No, you're fine. So whatever I read, they will take something from it and then find one of their pieces to read and then it'll keep going. We're gonna do three rounds of that. So that's nine poems, quick math, hopefully that's correct. That'll be nine poems and then we'll do a conversation in conversation about what we did with poems. And then we will open it up to you all if you have questions for us. So let's get started. I'm going to start with a new poem. Yeah, yeah, y'all didn't know. No, I knew. I knew, I knew. You knew. But I think you'll be able to, it'll be fine. It's a new poem that you probably, you may have heard already. And it's about Harriet Tubman. I thought I would start with Harriet Tubman because earlier today I spoke with the students at Tuscaloosa Magnet School, I believe is the name of the school. And I talked about how I started writing and it was because of Harriet Tubman, interestingly enough. I read a poem about her by Eloise Greenfield and it inspired me to write poems, to keep connecting with my own history and with that power that's within us. If we've read Audre Lorde, we know that she describes poetry as that light within us that helps us to survive. And I really found that light when I recited a poem about Harriet Tubman. So this is a poem about Tubman that I've written as a part of a series for the Alabama School of Fine Arts Music Department. They have commissioned someone to create an orchestral piece for these poems about Tubman. So this one talks about her injury, which was caused by an anvil, I believe, to her head by the person who owned her and it caused her visions, which led her to escape. Holy head Harriet. The eye of God is planted between my brow. The eye of God is opening at the top of my head. The eye of God was made with blood, was made from the hands of an ungodly master. The eye of God pierced my head in two. The eye of God said, look, and I saw it. The eye of God showed me rivers and fields and trees that would shelter me on my way. The eye of God told me I would not be enslaved. The eye of God showed me all the shades of my humanity, showed me how to see my people. My people, my people are the eye of God too. My people bloom from my brow. My people are the top of my head and the soles of my feet. My people are made with blood. My people are hurting at the hands of an ungodly master. My people have pierced me in two. My people said, look, and I saw them. My people showed me their blood in the rivers. My people showed me their blood in the fields. My people showed me their bodies in the trees and the shelter I could make for them on my way. My people told me they were not enslaved. My people showed me all the shades of my humanity. My people showed me how to see my people, how to see my God, my God, my God, and my people are made of the same cloth, the same blood. My people showed up in my vision and I said, oh, God. Show me how to make a way. Second sight, one, let the spirits gather here in my mother's eye. Let some moon-struck apparition walk her into the eternal. Three days the dogs will bark at our door and the old women sing. Their voice is smooth as ruby elixir, their tobacco skin soft as clay. Let her sickness depart. Let morphine days vaporize like breath in winter. Let the preacher say the end. Tell him pour the wine and blood. Let her earthly dreams be finished. Come, gather beneath the swollen moon and touch this life fragile and resilient as skin. Two, my mother swears that death walked in her room last night, smiled at her and shook her foot. But I bear witness only to the scream that shook the house and each day's obituary of sudden causes. Three, the lamp shines on her distended face. I listen for each breath that rattles, spirit in a sack, a spree, a spire, expire, expiration date unknown. She has come to this. The old ways will not come to me. My palms turn outward and prayers fall through my open hands. Old women sing, I hiss at the moon and pray for sight. Wondrous and mystic light, embrace my soul. Enflame my vacant eye. This is from my poetry collection, Mind. And in it, one of the women is in a very day state, after having been experimented on by the doctor. The day we were born, we belonged to you. These clay sculpted women, yours. There is no respite to offer. Such exquisite wrongs remain. Our volvas, the future you rode against the back of your hand. Born to be seen by you, we are the bodies you strive against. The triangle axis gleams. It is June, your glinting silver blade new. You, slick as butter. So yours, we wonder if saliva in our mouths is still ours. We're denied water to protect sutures. My parched tongue circles for whisk of spit. You could leave me this one thing, thief, all night you drink water from my body. All night you drink water from my body. You sneak from your bed, taking the worn way towards the wood shack, over the chickweed and white clover. We call it shack. You say, hospital. You stop bedside, and full of need you straddle me, squat down your haunches hovering below, graze my throbbing vola. You call the back of my neck so my head falls aside like a pansy. Then you call for the water in my body to rise. Come up, you sing. Dizzied and stunned, I watch it rising like so many beads of wine. In the mornings I am bare. I am shut. I am dead where I lie, already plucked. I cannot talk about the South without talking about black women. My grandmothers made America, made the fibers that made us warm, made us invincible, heroines. To tell you who they are, I must start with who they are not, servants, kitchen bound, mammies, silently obedient wives. We can't, in our modern comforts, imagine the survival they learned was theirs to claim. Can't hold the light they burned through this colonial darkness. What tricks this nation, this American South, pull minute by minute to keep my grandmothers convinced. The body you're in is not enough. Your race and your gender work together to mark you less, to mark you takeable. But what they didn't know was that my grandmothers still had an unmovable strength, enough to build a bridge from here to heaven. I know when I leave this broken earth, I'll find them there, sweetening every hour. My grandmothers raised a generation of American men. There is no other way to say this. Look at any southern family, and you'll find somewhere in a past most will not claim a black woman. These men who call themselves bootstrapping and self-made, somewhere there's a black woman and her unthinked hands who lifted them to where they are now. My father tells a story of the sons of his grandmother's employers. How they, instead of the pension she was promised, decided to give her a damned old tire, an old suitcase, dusty in the yard. What thanks is this for the years she raised that family, for the care they cannot forget? My father could never forgive those men, their southern tradition, their American tradition. Even now, they tell us black women are going to save this whole nation with votes or magic or our style taken and renamed. But this is no longer the land of masses and mammies, and we are only super heroines for our own daughters and sons. My grandmothers did not give their lives for me to keep nursing this country, to keep shucking and jiving in a bizarro American dream. My grandmothers are worth more than this corrupt remembering. Now there is no room for the Dixieland lie. We no longer hold these truths you made us accept. Under God, yes, we hear him singing a song of powerful love despite the united hate of America. Grandmothers, women made of salt and spirit, you are faith continuous. Continue us, raise us to be heroes and heroines, to tell this country that we are not mules, not beasts. You, an army of workers and wives, we hid our fears and woes in your indestructible, ever-present, ladiness. The blood you pass down to us is all we will ever need to save our lives. I feel like I might want to read that other poem now. OK. But that's all. You want me to grab it for you? I'll grab it. Is that OK? That's fine. OK. Sorry, y'all. Technical break. Ashley did this. OK. This is a new poem. I'm going to say just a second about it. So my daughter lives in Memphis. She's a lawyer. And she was on Martin Luther King Boulevard at a light when she was caught in the middle of a gunfight, people shooting at each other. And I wrote this poem for my daughter. I hear America singing the blues. Three birds, their fat body's mangoes among the winter branches, belted blues outside my house the morning my father died. Nobody foretold it. Not even the doctor, though the old folks would later claim the birds as sign. 3 AM, pitch black January, a song loud and full-throated, troubling the Alabama morning. And my father, not knowing his heart would quit that day, filled his thermos with coffee, put on press pants, starch shirt, shoes polished to sparkle, while my mother sang when sunny gets blue with Johnny Mathis on the clock radio. I was dreaming of red bell bottoms and new white kids, throwing my legs out as I leaned back on a blue swing. My ponytails, a tandem of happiness, red bows tied just so. Again and again, I flung my body against the air, kicked, hovered like a held note, like the momentary stillness before the hawk dives and murders its startled prey. Then and only then would I launch as only a child can launch my whole body and heart unafraid of landing or the blues of hard ground that always comes one day. My father kissed me minutes before his body wedged itself between tub and toilet, before my mother, a singing bird, heard the song his body made when it hit the floor. His name became a question repeating, so loud it stopped me mid-swing, so loud the bird stopped to listen as she called and called in the silence of his departing soul. The morning my father died, Martin Luther King, Jr. was 39, and Lyndon Johnson slept uneasy. Bessie Smith, long dead, was singing in their heads. Nobody knows you when you're down and out. She sang to the drowning men, to a whole nation underwater on fire on the precipice of new tombs. Where were the blues going? Outside war, on poverty, in the streets, in Vietnam, where the jungle bristled with singing birds. My cousin was fighting there. The one my father raised his son, the one who later gave me a pearl ring, told me the story of Okinawan divers had a wife, daughter, in good times. One day that cousin would steal from me for a fix. The shambles of his life shuffled like a losing hand, like a story only the blues can tell. I saw him for the last time, stranger and relative, hands shoved in his pocket, prison style, walking down my street. Then watched him uncalled until he disappeared beyond the tree line into memory. Maybe he died that day. Maybe he went to rehab. Maybe he is alive and well and diving for pearls. Pearls more delicate than bullets that whizzed past my daughter's car as she waited at the crossroad of MLK Avenue and BB King Boulevard in Memphis. Where was she to turn? Assaulted by flying pearls, caught between young men set on the blues. She feared the song her body might make, the sound of her mother's song, a whole nation of mothers, a hallelujah chorus of Ma Rainey, their throats raw, the color of red bell bottoms. Lord, going to sleep now, just now I got bad news to try to dream away my troubles counting these blues. Ma Rainey, tell us your dream now. What will our future be? We're stuck in these blues, Ma Rainey. Can't do nothing but wait and see. Four months after my father died, Mahalia told the Lord to take King's hand. He was tired, weary and plum-worn out. The third of his body hitting the balcony, the repetition of these themes. Second line keeps playing. Blues replicating like rifle shots, the grocery, the store, the mosque, the church. I am black and blue with singing. The synagogue in the street, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, bodies falling like soldiers in the jungle, like children hurling themselves off swings indifferent to the ground or birds that bellow the blues. Loud and wroth-roated, full of lament and portend. And we go on as if the world is not prime for destruction, as if each day is as ordinary as the morning my father got up, put on his clothes, reached for his cigarettes and died. There on the bathroom floor, while my mother sang with Johnny Mathis, love is gone, so what does it matter? And I dreamed of summer. Last year, my last day of the semester, and Ashley's inauguration, as I recall, yes, I was headed down to Montgomery. And my husband also had an event in Montgomery, so he was headed down to Montgomery, too, in a separate car. He was about 20 minutes ahead of me and called me and told me that he had stopped at a gas station for gas and he was randomly attacked and was stabbed in the back by just someone at the gas station. And then I wrote this book. Y'all can tell me about the title while I'm still working on the task. Yeah, that's right. Okay, to a Karen. Or, in this way, all becomes sacred. Police, police, a bizarre attack, Tennessee woman assaults man at Prattville Hotel, stabs another at gas station. WFSA 12 News, staff, December, 2021. You wouldn't know, I first nursed our children beside him. Nor how, in one glance, I noted, he held care for both my wits and the infant need fastened. Its mouth, the sting and quiver of a thrush. Somewhere, a whole tongue knots in the bottom of your head. Outside the sweat interior of your vehicle that morning, gasoline fumes sent heads nodding into days of scrolling, fingertips to pockets to count change. My husband's back magnetic as he picked up, crayon debris, orange peels, bubblegum wrappers from the floorboard. They were in your hands too. One winding hard on the vibrating wheel, the other's thumb stroking the teeth of a knife. All of this body has held his. He doesn't belong to me. I could never sign my name to the known and unknown planet of his body. I have not even drawn a heart. And he has loved me enough to leave me unmarked, no dark sign of his visits to this colony. The interbreth, praise to conspiring, praise for woven cotton strands and the work of multi-hued hands gathering yards from machinery, brown eyes overseeing darting thread and seam that became his shirt. Praise the wind factor now that urges him to slip on his suit coat too. And the breastplate all conspiring in protection. The air, a hide of entropy and fury, the curse of what brought you here, knocking your unknown heart and charged knife, seeking anyone to open. And my beloved glows. Praise both your palm slip on the handle and unwieldy edge. Praise synapse and startle, neurons that made quick journey, spun him around to face you, fading colonizer claiming access to a brown body with weapon raised like a standard. Praise be to Yahweh, Nisi, breath of awe that surged against the knife, sunk alongside capillaries, vessels, deer undershirt. Praise that I was nowhere near to lay my hands on you. So this is our last round. I love that poem so much. And you really didn't have to do that to us with that poem, Jackie. You did not have to. So I'm going to end my section and then you two will go. I really love the idea of praising the thing, praising the thing that is hurting us, but also praising the thing that stops the thing from hurting us. I think that's a very powerful notion and I think it's what's kept us alive here in America. And when I say us, I mean black people here in America, it's kept us alive for a very long time. So this poem that I'm going to close with has two epigraphs that I will read and it is called The Hymn of the Dogwood Tree. And the first epigraph is a poem. It's a lynching postcard poem from 1908. If you're not aware, lynching postcards were very popular in America at a certain time. And basically what would happen is people would have a lynching. They would take a picture, make it into a postcard, write either a happy message to their friends or more likely they would write a message to their local black family to say, this is what's going to happen to you if you don't act right. So this poem reads, This is only the branch of a dogwood tree, an emblem of white supremacy, a lesson once taught in the pioneer school that this is a land of white man's rule. The red man once in an early day was told by the whites to mend his way. The Negro now, by eternal grace, must learn to stay in the Negro's place. In the sunny south, the land of the free, let the white supreme forever be. This is a warning to all Negroes be where they'll suffer the fate of the dogwood tree. And that's what went on a lot of these postcards, that poem. The other quote is from Kimberly Daniels, who I believe is a representative somewhere in Florida, or of Florida, and she said this thing that I'm about to read that I thought was just outrageous. She said, I thank God for slavery. She's black, I should say. I thank God for slavery. I might be somewhere in Africa worshiping a tree. That is what she said. I think she's missing a lot there. It would take too long for me to really unpack all of it. But something that I clung to was that to me, God is in everything, including the tree. You can't say a worshiping tree is bad because a tree is not of God. Everything is of God. So the hymn of the dogwood tree. Let us praise the roots and the leaf. Praise the dangling branch. Praise the tender throat, the wailing neck. Praise, let us gather at this dogwood altar. Praise each vein and the blood, the blood. Jesus call us home and whole. Even here we praise. Praise each shaking branch, the sigh of the bark rubbed raw. Dark southern trees, so far from our far away home. Praise each dogwood oak, the pine of the slave ships never ending whole. Let us praise, Lord, this tree holds us up, up, up so heaven's not so far away. Up so high they mistake our praise for cries. I love that poem. So I guess I'm going to close out on a poem that also connects history with now. So I'm going to do, if I can find it, I don't know where things are in my own book. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, well I can't find that poem so I'll do this one. It's called, Oh, Say, Can You See? And the epigram is, of course, from the Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key. No refuge could save the harling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave about killing black people. Okay, Oh, Say, Can You See? Those slaves at Fort McHenry never had a chance to kneel, probably dead before they hit the ground. Like that boy, shot 20 times, his cell phone still smoking in his hand, his grandmother's backyard a burial ground, not sacred enough, nor was his body a temple the cops dare not enter. Maybe if he had wrapped himself in stars and stripes, someone would have unholstered a hand, placed it on the heart and begun to sing. Patriotic songs of the brave, lift every voice, my soul looks back before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave. How many black bodies must fall to hallow these urban battlefields? This is not a rhetorical question. I am asking for the exact body count. So this poem that I'm going to read is a poem that I wrote this week, so it's real new. I thought you were going to challenge us to read something we had just wrote, so I'm sorry. So this is based on a photograph by Rebell Ross, who's an African-American photographer, and right now the exhibit is in Auburn at the Fine Arts Museum there. So I chose to respond to a photograph of an African-American woman and she is holding the viewer accountable and the poem is directed at the viewer, Sheik Wan, after a Rebell Ross' photograph. If we are here meeting eye to eye, consider not, as I am, infinite beads past your abacus, and you cannot know this road or the soft business of my hands or how the trees study sheltering and no black joy is not merely transcendence because I don't think about European-Americans at any variation of hook-out. Where bass notes open for Betty Wright to sing a song even her own mama told her not to sing on account of how free it is. If we are not eye to eye, you keep looking while you look like you smell like outside. You look like you've been thrown away. You look like a tinderbox dog with eyes as big as saucers, not to mention your head is so big it almost eclipsed my picture. What I'm trying to say is, I let my music breathe air, free to wander while yours breathes like a slow-dying bass. This joy, like a yellow brighter than sun, I hope you get something like it, some off-brand loop fruit, not quite the same. The light bass in my hair and it cannot be known, like the truth, that my boot size is a number. The ground is still damp enough to mark my tracks, the road is clear, and you should really worry about where I'm going. Nice. Well, I was really just still sitting in the poem, but I'm going to switch. I'm very excited to just look at that poem. I'm glad that that's the one you're going to be submitting to the Southern Humanities Review. At this point, we're just going to do a short little conversation. I'm keeping an eye on time. In fact, Michael, when did you say this was over? What is our overtime? We've got time. We'll play it by ear, but if I feel the room feeling like it's time for us to go, I'm happy to say and thank you so much for coming so that you can go. I just want to ask you all first, how was that for you? Had we done this before? What was the feeling? Did you feel, I'll say it this way, I know both of you were a little like, oh no, what are we going to do? But how did it turn out for you? I think it was great. It felt really great for me. I was a little nervous about it. I thought I had to bring it. I told you every single poem I had written. I was like, how do I prepare for this? But my only context was one time I was doing a reading in this huge field and it started raining and people were kind of moving around and thinking about leaving the tent and I just kept reading and I started responding to the rain as I was reading and the sound of the rain and so then I started pacing out the poems, collaborating with the rain. And so that was my only context. I was like, okay, well, I could do that in a moment. This is something like that. Wow, that's so cool. So now I haven't done anything exactly like this, but yeah, I think whenever you do a reading, you're always kind of sensing the audience anyway. So I don't always, I always go in with maybe a few poems I'm going to read, but then I just sort of think, oh, what is the spirit telling me to read right at this moment? So it was fun. I'm glad it was fun. I really enjoyed it. The hard part for me is that I always am like ready to sit in the poems that I'm hearing and then you have to respond. So it's just like, wait, wait, wait, which mind do I follow, the one that's still with Sheik Wan or the one that's still with these birds or whatever I'm supposed to do after all of that. So it's very exciting and it makes me want to write actually like I'm itching to write something, which is a nice feeling to have. Honestly, which maybe is a controversy to be a poet and not want to write every day, but I like to, as Jackie said, follow the spirit, which leads me to another question. Both of your work is very concerned with the truth, which is why I love it so much. Both of you as people are concerned with the truth, which is why we associate, I think, too. And so I wonder, I know for me sometimes, when the spirit is leading me to write something, but I don't want to do that. That is scary or that is a lot or that's my husband getting stabbed or there's a lot of scary things that we tackle. So I wondered if you each could talk about those moments when where the poem is leading you, like it has to drag you there, basically. Anybody? So I'm older than both of you. So I think I have lived past the age of having to worry about it. I'm headed to that age when I'm looking for it to 80. I'm not 80, but I'm looking for it in a few decades being 80, because then I will say exactly everything I think and invite you to come at me. And so almost at that point now, I mean, I don't have to, there's nothing I have to do. There's nothing I have to do. And so it's great to be a tenured full professor. It's like, you know, fire me, right, whatever. And so it's a really wonderful time to be alive, that I write whatever's in my head. It comes out and if it makes you mad, good. Something make you think about things. So I sort of think you can just already do that, Jackie. Like nobody's coming at you. I know. Well, you'd be surprised. Sometimes people get a little nervous about things, I say. And they come and try to explain things to me. They try to explain. We don't like that. Not at all. Goya. It's a struggle for me. It's still a struggle for me. I just turned 40 and I'm super happy about that because I've heard a lot of people. I'm 40 in June. I heard that a lot of people like start saying whatever they want to say when they're 40. So I'm really waiting. I've been looking forward to that. But I've really had to work very hard at it. Telling the truth, especially about anything that has to do with my family so hard. To constantly be thinking about protecting the people that you love. One of the things that has helped me was thinking about the idea of speaking truth to power. I have to be good to myself. I have to tell the truth for myself. I started writing a book. I'm working on a book right now that is more biographical. Just from my own life. There are poems that deal with childhood and everything. They don't paint people in a flattering light. One of the things I try to do is to put myself out there as not being a perfect person. As much as possible. If I write a poem about one of my parents or write something that is unflattering about someone else. I try to put myself under the same microscope. I have a poem in there about being sweaty and smelly. Being stinking like a stinking person. It's an ongoing struggle. I have really been working on that all year long. Challenging myself. The writers that have been around me have been challenging me to know. Tell the truth. What did the camera see? Don't try to disguise this. I feel very similar to you, Koya. I don't struggle saying the true things about America, society, politics. I can do that all day long. And it's easy. We're all here. It's very easy to say, hey, that's bad. It's very simple. I feel empowered to do so because I feel like I'm doing the good work. Doing the Lord's work to help us all become educated and try to liberate ourselves. But when it comes to me, I definitely, as you said, I struggled to kind of uncover that part of myself. And with family, I'm afraid of my family hating me. I try to run everything by my mom. Like, hey, is somebody going to hate me for this? Should I word it this way? And there's a lot of things I want to write, which I don't think I will write right now. I'll wait until everybody's in heaven. And then I can write about it here. And then when I get up there, they can't fight me because it's heaven, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So, but I have written a few poems which talk about people in my family, difficult people in my family. And I think being a poet, although you have to tell the truth, you also can do it poetically. And that's kind of what has saved me to like not exactly say the exact thing. I'm saying it truthfully, but like there's a metaphor right there. So you can be distracted by this metaphor. And then my like creepy uncle is over here and can't really see him. But I know he's there. Do you write about your neighbors? Because I write about my neighbors. Oh my gosh. Okay, so that poem, sidebar. The poem that Jackie has in her book about, tell us what it's called, Jackie. It's called, for my neighbor whose good intentions are wolf pelt. Okay, so this poem is ridiculous. Like Jackie does not have a problem telling people exactly what they need to know at all. Like at the end of this poem, I've never heard Jackie curse in my life. Let me just say that. This poem curses and it earns the curse word. But yeah, I'm trying to be like you. I'm trying to like say, you know what, I can say, even to say a curse word. Like I agonize like the word damned is in the poem about the grandmother. Yeah, yeah. I don't curse in my regular life normally unless there's a really extreme situation in which I really just got to say it. And I worry so much about like my image or what people are going to think about me. And oh no, I said that word and it's written there. And oh my gosh, now like every grandmother in America is going to hate me. Like it's a lot. So I too am working toward being more authentic because it really does matter. I mean, I think the poets who we love. We love them because they were exactly who they were. And they said what they had to say. And they didn't maybe they cared, but they didn't care enough to not say those things. So anyway, I have one more question and then I would love to open it up to you all. So this last question is since this is called past is present. And we all discuss issues of social justice and personal justice and all of that. What do you think poetry can teach us about ourselves? What can it teach us about our country? Is it a part of the revolution, personal, political, any of that you want to answer? You can take. Can you say that again? One more time. I zoned out. What can poetry teach us about ourselves or our nation or the political hullabaloo? And is it a part of liberation of ourselves or of this whole space? Anybody? Sure. I'll go. Mine will be short. I obviously think that poetry can liberate us. I think because on an individual level, it liberates me as a writer. If I am liberated, then the folks who are around me in my community have access to my liberation. And they are better because I am liberated. So from an individual perspective, certainly, I could speak to a societal perspective, but I'll let Jackie do that. So for me, that's the function of art. I mean, is to liberate, to free people and the function of the poet. The poet is, for me, the truth teller. And so the poets that I admire pretty much come from revolutionary sort of movements. And I think that because that's important. And the reason I think it's so important in poetry and in art is because art is the thing that we allow in even if we don't allow other things in. I'm never going to be a politician because that's not me. And so I sort of have two talents, teaching and writing. And so when you write something or when you create something, people look at it. If it's a piece of art, if it's a piece of literature, they take it in. And they allow themselves to sort of take it in. They may not agree with it. They may not like it. But there's a kind of a disarming quality to it because it is entertaining. I use a lot of humor in my poetry that disarms people. You'd be surprised what you can get away with saying if it's funny. And so I think that for me is the important function of art to liberate, to show us the world. I think the poets show us the world as it is and not always as we imagine it to be. Amen. Let's open it up to you all. If anybody has a question, feel free to raise your hand, yes? Hi. That we realized, right? Or that we accepted it. I'll try to respond. I think it's a case by case basis for real. I think it's like an ongoing pursuit. Like sometimes you're more successful at it than others. Yeah, I agree. There are definitely things I'm still surprised by. And I still have those moments where I'm like, whoa, I really can't control what people do say or think about me. But if I had to like pinpoint a good grief, I mean, I think I first learned that people would think things about me and I wouldn't be able to control it. I learned that when I was five. But I didn't accept it fully, I think, until maybe high school, college. I don't know, honestly, as an adult, like in my 20s, I really came to terms with, okay, let me not fight the, do they like me battle? Because it's unwinnable, you know. Yeah, so I think, and I'm still kind of going through that, especially now with this position, like, we don't have the time. Really, every day it's almost like, oh wait, okay, I can't control how I'm perceived, even in ways that people think are good. Like I can't control tokenism, for example. I've tried to control that my entire life and you can't, it's impossible. So anyway, I'll stop there because I feel like I could really just keep on talking about this. I was going to say the sort of same thing. I think I realized it pretty early on in my life, like, you know, like six or seven. Because I was thrust into a lot of institution spaces and situations where I was often the only child of color. And so people say really crazy things to you. And I'm not even talking about mean things, I'm just talking about things based on perception that are just weird. And so I think I had to learn early on to have a very strong sense of who I was and my identity, and not worry at all about what other people thought about me or how they perceived me. And I'm with Ashley, whether it's good or bad, whether it sounds good or bad. You just have to, and of course I have an advantage of not having come up during a period in social media where everything was based on being liked, you know, it was like, who cares? People like you, people's opinions are, you know, just their opinions. So is that something you struggle with? Is that something? It is. So here's the thing. People's opinions are unlike, you know, a roller coaster. They're up and down, they're all around. They don't even remember what they thought, you know. And nine times out of ten, this is the absolute truth. People are so busy thinking about themselves, they really aren't thinking about you. It's just sometimes things come out of their mouths, or they're having a bad day, or their foot hurts or whatever. So I would not put a lot of stock in people's opinions of you, good or bad. I'm going to tell you all a real quick Hank Lazar story since we're at the University of Alabama. Hank Lazar, they may not know who that is, but Hank Lazar taught me American poetry. He's a wonderful poet, written tons and tons of books, retired from University of Alabama. And Hank Lazar had written tons of books, and he sent this article out to get published. And it got rejected, right? And every time he would get a rejection letter, and he was well established, he would say, what do they know, right? So he sent it out again, got rejected again. So this happened like ten times. So finally he gets this letter saying, you know, ah, we want to publish this, this is wonderful. And he shows it to his wife, and he says, see, it's wonderful. And his wife says, what do they know? That's how you got to live your life, right? Thank you. You're welcome. That's good advice. Okay, so I'm looking at my watch. Maybe one more question from the audience? Okay, like three of you raised your hands. I don't know how to fairly do that. Just call everybody, about three people that raised their hands. Okay, so at the same time they just called them. It's 434. I'm just saying we got some time, so you could just call with me. Okay, so I guess we'll just, Michael, you're standing up. That makes me nervous. Let's go with three questions all at night. Fantastic. So we'll go with you and then, you and then, did you have your hand up here? Somebody over here. Oh, you, okay. So those three of you, you know who you are. So we can start with you. Hi. I know. But I realized lately that the feeling of, I don't mean literal cookouts. I just mean any gathering of people, of my people, right? That I don't have to worry about my identity. I don't have to worry about, like, the music, the feeling, there's so much, like, just nurture and love in that and just to not be under a microscope. Just to not, I mean, I've been to places, you know, recently I went to Atlanta and I was at an art museum and it was like this event where people were dancing and everything like that. There were a lot of people of color, people from different backgrounds, you know, on the dance floor and there was, there was a woman who, a European American woman who was standing off to the side and the look that she had on her face was kind of like, she looked kind of slightly entertained kind of, but she wasn't participating. She was just watching as if we were entertainment instead of participating. So I think the idea for me of a cookout is like to not have to worry about a gaze that others me. Yeah. I would ditto that for sure. I'm trying to think about joy specifically. I think, okay, so one thing that I think is black joy for me or Ashley Joy, since I'm already black, the joy of Ashley. Ashley Joy. Is feeling in community, but like on the page as well. And even beyond the page, like feeling community in poetry, like I think this little trio is poetry, like alive. And that makes me feel very joyful to know that I'm not alone at all, you know, that I can be my authentic self. I can be whatever weirdness I am that day. And black women who are awesome, like will accept me and we can write together. We can share poems. Like that's so joyful to me to know that I'm in the lineage of our four mothers who did the same thing with each other. And to know that I can model that for people coming after us. So they can see that it's not dog eat dog, whatever people say about the writing industry. Yes, it's like wild in the writing industry. But the like the heart of it. And of course we know that writing is not just the industry. It's something totally different. It's a soul sort of thing. That part of it is amazing to me. And it does feel very much like we're all dancing and nobody's watching us or asking us, oh, can you show me that dance? Can you do that little dance that you all do? Like we're just doing it for each other to remind each other that we are here in the live. That's why she's poet, Laurie. That's why she's poet. Yes, yes. So for me, black joy is all of that. And it's always undergirded by music. There's like a soundtrack in my head to black joy. And yeah, yeah, that's it. To be free, to be in community. Awesome. The next question was you. Yes. I want to get, how do you still love them? How do you choose to still love them? That's something that this city books me in. How do I take in these things that people say that still try to put some food in the world? That's a great question. I don't think people who are ignorant, I think that people who are ignorant also need love. Yeah. And I can't, if you don't know, I can't hold it against you that you don't know. When I tell you and you still act the same way. You know what I mean? That's when it's the problem to me. If you're completely unaware, you just don't know, you can't help that you don't know. There are things that I don't know. You know, I'm a human being. There are things I don't know. You know, I can offend someone else. So if I want to be forgiven in my mind, I also have to forgive at the same time. I'm not going to put up with someone trying to intentionally hurt or intentionally ignore after I've already let them know. That's right. I really believe that you should love all people. Not just for them, but for yourself. And I think you should be give people, not just for them, but for yourself. Because you don't want to carry all of that around in you. And I write poetry because I am a black woman in the state of Alabama. And I am often surrounded by crazy people. But I love this state. I love this state. I love the people in this state. I have a crazy neighbor who is probably, you know, like racist is possible. But this is how he acts. If he was driving down the street one day and I was at my car and some weird person was about to accost me. He pulled his truck up and he stayed right there. And he basically was going to be there to make sure I got in my car safely. Because he's still my neighbor and I'm still his neighbor. And that's kind of Alabama. It's a weird place. And so I think you should love all people. I still love all people. I still call it out. I call it out when I see it. You know, I don't let people get away with it. But I think also you can love people from a distance. You know? You can love them from a distance. And that's okay. I wish no one ill will. Even people who wish me ill will. Yes, and yes. All that I would add to that is to think about our definition of love. I talk about this a lot when I talk about why I came back to Alabama and why I also love Alabama and try to tell everybody who's not from here to please visit here and stop pretending like this is a circle of hell. I mean, if we're honest, maybe the whole country is that circle. But anyway, it's at least pretty here. If it is, well, it's lovely. But I would complicate what we say when we say we love someone. I think if you really love someone or something, you have to, as Jackie said, call it out. And as Koya said, let them know. You have to do that. So sometimes that love will look like, you know, hey person who's calling my school and saying I shouldn't teach this thing because it's going to hurt their child's feelings. This is why I'm doing it. Here's why I'm going to keep doing it. Why don't you want me to do it? Love yourself enough to figure out what your issue is. I have no issue with doing this. And you're not going to make me have an issue with doing it. So really the work is on you to invite yourself into yourself and interrogate yourself. And sometimes that's how to get through that. Other times, distance is good. Sometimes love looks like goodbye. We can't be together. We can't be friends in the way that you want us to be because this thing keeps happening. You keep hurting me. You keep saying these things that are horrible. So yeah, I mean, it's difficult, but I think everything and everyone is worth love in whatever way that looks. And that's not an easy thing to say because there are plenty of people who we all write about. I mean, I don't want to sit with them. I don't want them to know me or I don't want to make them a cake or whatever. I don't like them, but I do love their existence and I wish them to understand love because then they wouldn't suck so much. There was one more question. There are two hands. You can do both. We can do both. You can't deny anyone. Yes. Imposter. I'm going to start because I don't want to follow y'all anymore. That's a bad plan for my life. You guys say such good things that I'm just trying to come up with something. So I will start by saying, yes, I do deal with imposter syndrome. I don't know anybody who doesn't, honestly. I would be very concerned about someone who didn't feel a little bit of like, am I doing this right? If you're always completely sure of what you're doing, I don't know. There's definitely times, honestly, almost every time I get up to teach, I'm like, hmm, really, I'm about to say something to all these people and they're going to believe what I say. It's like a really wild concept when you think about it. Anyway, so there's that. And being a poet too, sometimes you feel or I have felt, oh, I'm not as creative as that poet and oh goodness, I don't belong in this room with this poet and their metaphor is just otherworldly. I'm never going to be able to do that. Of course you feel that, but I also think it's sort of healthy to challenge yourself against that feeling and to always feel like you have something else to learn. Again, like I said before, if you ever feel like I've mastered it all the best there is, maybe not. There's goodness in a healthy amount of wanting to improve and always questioning if there's more you can learn. As far as justifying myself to aunties, I am lucky to have a family that does not question me in that way. And I didn't know that was unusual until I went to art school and everybody was like, my family doesn't want me to be an artist. I can't relate to that. My family is cool. The only stipulation is that we had to get a job. All my siblings are artsy too and my parents are like, yeah, we love it. Also be able to feed yourself. And so it never was a conflict for me and I never treated it like something to hide. But again, I know that's not typical. A lot of people have to really fight to accepting that as a career for themselves. So I would say to that, if you are in a family where people are just like, what are you doing? Maybe find your people elsewhere who can give you that encouragement that when you go back to your family, you can walk into the room and say, I'm a poet, period. I always encourage my students because I know sometimes we put this distance between what we do in our families. Have you gone home and read a poem at Thanksgiving for your family? Go home and read a poem to your family at Thanksgiving. Bring them into what you're doing and demystify it so it's not like, oh, there else are being a writer. I've had my family, my family made fun of me a lot when I was saying that I was doing writer. Even right before I started graduate school, I had had a little bit of like, when I won a couple of undergraduate awards I was very lucky to win. And they came up for that and they were like, okay. They just didn't know this thing was something that was serious for me. But they also would tease me about it. So anytime something came up, why don't you write a poem about it? Go write a poem about this. Why don't you write a poem about that? You know, write a poem about the time that that boy beat you up. You know, and you're in the dirt and you pull up and you take care. Why don't you write a poem about that? So that's kind of like, but my family teases really, really hard. And I think that teasing kind of comes into my own work. Like sometimes I like, people call dozens where you're doing, you know, like your mom is so dumb she sat on the TV and watched the couch. That's where I mean, I bring that into my writing sometimes because my family, they tease so hard. So I just feel like you have to kind of know what you're doing and you have to, it's really up to you to make it. This is what I'm doing. This is important to me. This is valuable to me and I have to protect this. And if I have to protect this from the people who are supposed to be close to me and love me, then I'll have to do that until they get over it. Until they see that this is something real for me and this can make a way for me. This can make a path for me that you just haven't seen before. So I'm just going to tell you what I've learned. I started out my life. I started writing when I was like six years old. I wrote poetry. I went to, I started off graduate school to be a poet. My mother died. I went home. I got a job. And I got a job at an institution and they wanted me to go back to school to finish up graduate school. And they said, but you need to get the PhD, not the MFA because there's no creative writing here. And I did that. And I stopped writing for decades. And my husband said to me one day when I was 50 years old, you're not happy. I was a tenured full professor and he said to me, you're not happy. And I said, what do you mean? I'm happy? He said, no. No. You're not writing. And so at 50 years old, after having tried to be a poet, had studied with Gary Hongo and Chase Twitchell and had just given that up, given that up completely, I started on this journey to be the poet I always wanted to be. Don't waste 30 years of your life trying to please somebody else. Do you, do you? Reverend Dr. Jacqueline Trimble, I'm saying. Okay, so I know we had one more person if you want to ask that question. Thank you. Okay, thank you. We will end there. Thank you for being so gracious. Thank you. Thanks everybody for listening and for your energy and we will sign and sell books if you would like them. Thanks again.