Tell us about your poem “My Black Boy Dead” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

Photo Credit: Aly Almore

“My Black Boy Dead” emerged from a kind of haunting. Although the poem resonates with recent anti-black violence, it came from a state of emergency in my youth. I grew up in Detroit during “the crisis of the black boy” and as people talked about their brothers, their cousins, their boyfriends, as teachers, preachers, and politicians wrung their hands and shook their heads, it was clear how much black boys were highly prized, precious, and deeply endangered. The poem emerges as a dream response to this state of impending loss. The black boy is loved, mourned, and never really known. A black boy becomes a stereotype, a target, a fortune, a consumer, a salvation. The poem exposes a desire to heal (man I cure ) and a deep craving for actual embodied connection (“someone to hold my hands”).  

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

Experimentation, interiority, and surprise! The latest issue of American Theatre arrived in my mailbox with Adrienne Kennedy on the cover and my heart leapt out of my chest. Yes! Her writing is so unexpected, so original, so psychological, and poetic. It refuses to conform to reader, audience, or societal expectations. This excites me deeply. I also admire bravery in writing, intelligence, humor, and insight.

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?  

So many! I’m a voracious reader and am usually reading 3-4 things at least at a time. I read broadly and love world poetry and drama and novels by and about artists, but the deepest inspiration for me remains the brilliant matriarchs of the black feminist tradition. I lift up the work of Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Jayne Cortez, Audre Lorde, Alexis de Veaux, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, and the dearly departed Paule Marshall and Toni Morrison. These women gave me my life! You can check out some specific book suggestions that I made recently for The Rumpus in the black feminist tradition. Artists like Adrian Piper, Howardena Pindell, and María Magdalena Campos-Pons also help me forge specific links between writing and art making. I am so grateful to them and to many others. 

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

Performance art is a central part of my creative practice, along with some installation, conceptual art, and book making. I’ve premiered over 50 original solo and collaborative performance art works around the world and all of them could be considered poems! I actually came to making performance art through poetry, and the desire to rethink the poetry reading and recirculate language in space and time in a different way. I went from articulating figures of speech on a page to articulating figures of the body in the world. It was quite an adventure, one that I detail in my first book Swallow the Fish. To this day, performance art and writing remain deeply interconnected—and I love them both very much.

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

Dream states have become important in my writing. States of mind, states of the body, states of history. I’m also always interested in black diasporic culture, ritual, loss, mourning, and reconnection. Like so many of us today, I’m interested in epigenetics, generational trauma and transferences of joy. 

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write? 

I am a great lover of notebooks. I have a personal journal, a notebook for every specific project, a book to chart creative ideas, a paper calendar, and more. Some notebooks have lines and others have graph paper or blank pages. I use colored pens and markers and sometimes draw figures to mark how I want a poem or performance to move. These notebooks and pens usually live on a desk or table. A bouquet of flowers is often there, a candle, a tarot spread, stones to hold when I need a surge of energy, an art book or book by someone else can be there for inspiration too—or sometimes I have to be away from everyone else’s words to get closer to my own. I’m lucky to live in a place where I have access to different rooms. So sometimes I hunker down in the living room or can even write in bed.  

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

Right now, I’m revising yet again my translation of Haitian poet Jacqueline Beaugé-Rosier’s long poem “A Vol d’ombre”. I’ve been working on it for soooo long! But it’s almost done and I’d like to release it with accompanying essays and writing and false starts in the translation as a meditation on diaspora silence and expression. I’m also deep into the third volume of what I think of as the Swallow the Fish trilogy where I engage diaspora and discuss my performance work in Africa and the Caribbean. I’m also sending around my performance catalogue and artist writing from work I did in Mexico. So it’s really been about bringing long standing projects into the world!

Gabrielle Civil is the author of two black feminist memoirs in performance art: Swallow the Fish, an Entropy Best Non-Fiction Book of 2017, and the recently released Experiments in Joy. Her writing has appeared in Poem-a-Day, Dancing While Black, Small Axe, Art21, MAI Journal, Kitchen Table Translation, and Obsidian. She has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Mexico and a 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist Award. She teaches creative writing and critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts. You can read more about her work on her website. 

Tell us about your CNF piece “Isle of Refuge” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

A few years ago, I was in Bermuda over spring break researching the life of Mary Prince, an abolitionist from the nineteenth-century. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this fantasy island with pink sand beaches and translucent, aquamarine water had been a place of torture for its enslaved population. “Isle of Refuge” is the first of a series of essays following in Prince’s footsteps.  The second is “Saltworks.”  

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

Free-writing and exploration of an initial idea excites me. Finding out that someone has already written what I want to write is deflating. I’ll stop reading until I get over myself. I won’t read deliberately or inadvertently racist, sexist, or homophobic writing. It’s just lazy.

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

Editing my high school literary journal with my best friend, who is now a filmmaker. Initially, I wanted to be an actress—I grew up in LA, but I’m too body conscious to be on screen, so I “lettered” in theater. At some point, I started writing my own characters instead of pretending to be someone else’s. 

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

Toni Morrison’s ability to write in any genre. I went to graduate school to learn how to be a better reader of her books. Reading Sonia Sanchez’s homegirls and handgrenades taught me that poetry could be a sharp knife. When I finally met her in a workshop at Cave Canem, it was transformative. Other writers that excite me include Jaquira Díaz for her honesty and exquisite structure; Jesmyn Ward for her courage and shattering subjects; Vievee Francis and Safiya Sinclair, whose poetry tells the stories I want to hear about what it means to be a woman in the diaspora at every stage of life. 

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

I am also a poet. Creative nonfiction is similar to poetry in that I have to force myself to be economic with my diction, and not overwrite. But I do feel like poetry allows me to give in to the lyric and occasionally indulge my image-making impulse. Each genre has its own set of parameters and demands.

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Writing convincing dialogue in creative nonfiction is a challenge. Making it sound authentic even if it’s not exactly how it was. In my poetry and fiction, I use the imagination as a shield. In creative nonfiction, you have to let yourself be vulnerable or readers disengage. I’m a very private person, but I also have a deep need to speak my truth and sometimes that wins out over my preference for abstraction.      

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

What is it the Hulk said in The Avengers movie? “That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.” Sometimes writing helps me cope; other times I do yoga. I just contributed to a collection in a forthcoming series from Terrain called Letter to America. Being part of a collection that addresses our current climate—political, social, and environmental—felt like a productive way to channel cynicism and disappointment. 

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

I love museums, special collections, and old books. In another life I may have been docent or curator.  I’m weirdly attracted to decay, plantations ruins, the foundations of castles, a forest after a fire. Also, my kids; when they stop playing baseball and video games long enough to take notice of the world, their insights can be shattering.

 What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

I write in the morning. Later in the day I don’t have the clarity to generate new work. I can revise in the afternoon, but I need my kids to be gone or otherwise occupied. I used to work in cafes, roaming like an itinerant James Baldwin in search of the perfect latte, but there was too much instability. Now, I put my faith in habit instead of inspiration.

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’m always working on multiple projects at the same time. I just finished a new poetry collection, Grimoire, which will be published in 2020 by Autumn House Press. Right now, I’m outlining a CNF piece about coral cities and black girls who surf. In preparation, I finally learned how to swim with the correct form: I stopped being afraid to put my face in the water and found the right rhythm to freestyle.    

Cherene Sherrard is a writer and scholar of African American and Caribbean literature. She is the author of Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color and the poetry collection Vixen from Autumn House Press. Her work has recently appeared in The Rumpus, the Journal, Terrain, and The New York Times Magazine. She teaches in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can find more about her and her work at her website here.

1. Tell us about your fiction piece “Jim” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

I had a short story collection that was evolving for years and finally it evolved into a cesspool of a novel. I knew it was, and so I ended up revising it, but that’s one of the pieces that’s survived into the final manuscript, though there are those who think it incongruent with the rest.

2. What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

I’m pretty open as to form, but I want to see that somebody is doing it for a reason. In other words, a bunch of exciting action doesn’t equal narrative tension. And a bunch of big words doesn’t equal beautiful language.

3. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

You know people ask this a lot and it’s a good question, but honestly I don’t really have an answer beyond that I didn’t know anybody who was a writer, and I wanted to be one. My dad did read The Martian Chronicles and Louis L’Amour, however, and I think this sharpened my taste for something different early on.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

Honestly though it can be a mess. I’m extremely excited by Native American fiction in the last few years. Finally there is a plethora, all writing different genres. Rebecca Roanhorse is writing fantasy. Kelli Jo Ford has a collection of short stories coming out. Brandon Hobson was shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and of course there’s Tommy Orange, the last three of these writing what I call realism to avoid the snottiness of literary fiction. Then there’s Daniel H. Wilson who is writing science fiction, Natanya Ann Pulley has a collection coming out that’s fairly experimental, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden has a thriller coming out soon.

5. Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

If poetry counts as another art form, then yes, though I don’t write poetry anymore. I thought it had died, but it’s actually reincarnated itself into some of the more experimental pieces that I write, as I try to borrow a bit from poetic form.

6. What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Ultimately I think, like a lot of people who think of themselves as literary writers, I struggled with structure. A lot of folks think it shouldn’t matter, but I really do. I think that experimental pieces are great and they’re great for short pieces, especially ones attempting to describe an inner landscape. But for my money, I like a longer piece to be more traditionally narrative, with dialogue and action and some sort of structure. I had to learn the hard way to ignore my peers and chart that stuff out before I started the novel.

7. How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I don’t think it really influences my work directly. Of course being American Indian, I’m always keenly aware, pre-Trump, of how American politics affects our communities, from urban to reservation. I am noticing that more Native writers are being paid attention to, so I guess that’s some small silver lining. It shouldn’t have taken that much.

Erika T. Wurth’s publications include two novels, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend and You Who Enter Here; two collections of poetry; and a collection of short stories, Buckskin Cocaine. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver. You can find more of her work at her website here. 

Tell us about your poem “Mother” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

I came across Warsan Shire’s epigraph from her poem “The House” that I used in my poem “Mother” via an AFREADA x Africa Writes Competition in which we were asked to use her line “Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women” as a writing prompt. 

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

The last two short pieces by Leo Tolstoy I recently finished via audiobook, i.e., “The Candle” and “The Three Questions” really excited me as a writer. There was so much truth in those stories that serve as teaching tools for the betterment of humanity. What turns me off is pretentious erudition. Writing that throws esoteric words left and right on the page just to sound learned. Mostafa Nissabouri is the latest example of a poet I’ve read whose erudition comes off as natural when putting pen to paper. 

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

Rap / Hip-Hop music. When I was in the 7th/8th grade, I started writing raps on a regular basis. This was crucial to me (I learned to write in the English language in the 6th grade) because I was using metaphors, similes, and various rhyming schemes, internal rhymes, end-rhymes, consonance, assonance, etc. I didn’t know the terms at the time, but for over a decade, I would write raps on a regular basis, and then I transitioned to children’s poetry, and by 2007, when I started writing poetry, I had been writing constantly for almost two decades.  

Photo credit: Eduardo C. Corral

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

The Old and New Testaments in The Holy Scriptures are my major influences as a poet and creative thinker. It is incredibly rare for me to read a book more than once, even if I love the book. For example, I absolutely loved Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Richard Wright’s Native Son (1939) and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998), but I’ve only read them once. There are so many books that I’ve read that I adored when I first read them, but I move on to the next one without looking back. Perhaps, I learned this from Lot’s wife. The Bible is an exception to this rule. It’s the only book that I constantly read and have done so from a very early age.

My poetry is at times very dark, and so is The Bible, e.g., “They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. They then put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.” 2 Kings 25:7 (NIV)

My poetry is at times surreal, and so is The Bible, “Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.” Ezekiel 1:10 (NIV).

My poetry focuses heavily on the speculative, e.g., magical realism, and the miracles of Jesus in the four Gospels, e.g., walking on water, fit into that category. My poetry, as in “Mother” is also heavy on documentary poetry, as is The Bible, e.g., “The descendants of Judah: Perez, Hezron, Karmi, Hur and Shobal.” 1 Chronicles 4:1 (NIV).

Not to mention the aphorisms found in The Bible, e.g., Proverbs & Ecclesiastes. I also use aphorisms in my poetry. Of course, poetry itself can be found in The Bible, i.e., The Song of Solomon and the Psalms.

My poetry mentors are my thesis advisors in graduate school, Kyle Dargan and David Keplinger, and in undergraduate school at Indiana University-Bloomington, Christopher Citro, Maurice Manning and Maura Stanton. All of the five poets, aforementioned above, have always been incredibly supportive of my poetry from the very beginning

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

During my sixth month stay in Kibbutz Evron in Israel, I came across a t-shirt that in the front read “Same, Same” and the back it read “But different.” Baseball, softball and wiffle ball are the same in that they all use a ball and a stick to get on base. I write poetry, including prose poetry, but also flash-fiction (rarely nowadays) and children’s poetry (also poetry, but usually best told with the help of visual aids, e.g., illustrations), which in a way all three are the same, same but different. Wiffle ball would be poetry, since it makes the least amount of money. Baseball is fiction, which also makes a killing financially. 

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Formal poetry challenges me the most. Many years ago, I took an 8-week online poetry course with the formalist poet Moira Egan, and we workshopped some of my formal poetry, e.g., sonnets, villanelles, even a sestina I wrote. I’ve also written pantoums, haikus, limericks, etc. I believe it’s important for a poet to try writing in form because it restricts your writing style and helps you to think differently. Writing in meter, pentameter, is something that I avoid. I prefer writing my sonnets using strict syllabic line counts. But, perhaps, in the distant future, I will dedicate some serious time to that strenuous endeavor.

As to my quirk as a writer, I will just quote a small part of Kyle Dargan’s jacket note that he wrote for my debut poetry collection: “Blue Whale Phenomena introduces Steve Castro as a relentless storyteller and story interrupter—inventing narrative moments or instead etching his brilliant quirks into the narratives with which we were born into the world.”

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

Even though my forte as a poet is the speculative and the documentary, I recently wrote a political poem, i.e., “Xenophobia” published in [PANK] – Latinx : Latinidad 1.0 issue. I wrote “Xenophobia” because I was really bothered with how Trump’s rhetoric emboldened people to be openly racist. About two years ago, I was speaking Spanish with my mother at a gas station on the west side of Evansville, Indiana, when an older white male, yelled our way, “speak fucking English.” The racism that was internalized and whispered are now shouted from the housetops, as the saying in Luke 12:3 goes.

As an editor, I also try to shed a light to issues regarding social justice. When I was the poetry editor at Folio, I came across a very powerful poem written by Cortney Lamar Charleston titled “Six Shot on Fergusson, Missouri” dedicated to the memory of Mike Brown. There are political/social justice elements embedded into my documentary poems at times, such as in my poem “Ancient Brown Skin,” which can be found in my collection Blue Whale Phenomena. 

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

As mentioned above: documentary poetry, and the speculative, e.g., magical realism, surrealism, fantasy, fabulism, absurdism, etc. Plus, ekphrastic poetry and writing prompts, are mostly how I construct my poems.

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

My creative process varies. It sometimes (not often) comes from a prompt like the origin for my poem “Mother.” It sometimes comes from a line or an idea that I put down on my voice recorder. Sometimes, I just sit down or lie down, and start writing from scratch or I may sit in silence and think until the opening comes to me. There are times when I listen to my ideas in my voice recorder and then I write the poem in my head, and when it is finished or sufficiently finished, I start writing it down. As for how the environment shapes my work, I at times write apocalyptic pieces about our environment in total chaos, e.g., “The One.” 

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I recently finished a children’s poetry book called Poems for genius children with dictionaries who like to read and ponder, and also poems for brave children who aren’t afraid of the dark. Once I edit it/revise it, the hard part will come, meaning, I will start looking for illustrators that are interested in collaborating. 

Steve Castro’s book Blue Whale Phenomena was published in May, 2019. You can find more of Steve’s work on his website www.thepoetryengineer.com, and follow him on Twitter: @PoetryEngineer. 

Tell us about your poem “Run the Jewels” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

I had read, several times, of the horrific lynching of Chinese in Los Angeles in 1871, but was surprised that there was so little awareness of it in the American consciousness. In a way, poetry and writing is a type of history, a type of memory, and I felt like it was an incident I should write about. To do my part in the intervention, you know, as the history of Asian Americans is often intentionally erased and dismissed.  

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

I was a refugee in a large, poor family who turned to books as an escape and solace. When I was very young, I discovered the joy of creating worlds, and my own stories. There was never just one thing – it was many things. Dungeons and Dragons, books of all genres, theater, comics, and so on.

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

(photo credit: Anna Min)

Yes, too many to name here. But special shout outs go to David Mura, Diane Glancy, and Diego Vazquez. 

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I’ve been a writer across more than two decades of upheaval, struggle, and growth, and I’ve tried to be engaged throughout those years in the world around me. So I can’t say that the current political climate has changed me that much. I don’t mean to say that things aren’t terrible—but to a degree, things have always been terrible. But there has also always been change, and growth, and I try to hang on to that.

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

Resistance against the constant erasure of Asian American people. At heart, that’s what drives my work.

 What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’ve been tinkering with a Vietnamese American zombie apocalypse novel for years. Also trying to write a weird book full of poetic and not so poetic essays, as well as more children’s books.

Bao Phi is the author of two poetry collections, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, both published by Coffee House Press, as well as two picture books for children, the 2017 Caldecott Honor and Charlotte Zolotow award winner A Different Pond, and My Footprints, both published by Capstone. He works at the Loft Literary Center and lives in Minneapolis with his daughter. You can find more about Bao at his website.