Diamond Forde, "The Book of Alice" (Scribner, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Diamond Forde, "The Book of Alice" (Scribner, 2026)

New Books Network, February 28, 2026
Host: Sullivan Sommer | Guest: Diamond Forde

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Overview

In this episode of the New Books Network, host Sullivan Sommer interviews poet and professor Diamond Forde about her poetry collection, The Book of Alice (Scribner, 2026). The discussion centers on inheritance, black familial history, the power and limitations of written text, biblical and nontraditional archives, and poetic form. Forde explores personal and communal memory, the legacy of her grandmother, and the creative process behind turning the familiar—especially physical and spoken inheritances—into poetry that resists easy categorization.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Inheritance, Objects, and Defamiliarization

• Forde begins by reflecting on inheriting her grandmother’s King James Bible and how it became a framing object for the collection, sparking questions about history, recovery, and the nature of poetic discovery.
  • “The core of poetry to me is that act of discovery, to think through what we take for granted. I think that poetry encourages us to even think about language as, like, part of that thing that we take for granted.” (Diamond Forde, 03:31)
• She emphasizes the poetic concept of defamiliarization—making the known strange—in both objects and language.
• Sitting with the Bible helped her deepen self-understanding and connect familial patterns across generations.

2. Personal and Spiritual Relationship to the Bible

• Raised in a megachurch under preacher Creflo Dollar, Forde’s first experience of God was musical and communal rather than textual.
  • The Bible passed from her grandmother became a protective talisman during moments of fear (like a tornado warning in Tuscaloosa), but its importance remained rooted in family legacy rather than doctrinal study.
  • “My relationship with that book is not direct, but it is intimate. It's primarily always through family that it has been this kind of connecting force for me...” (Diamond Forde, 08:41)

3. Re-reading, Canon, and Black Women’s Biblical Inheritance

• Forde notes the Bible's status as a canonical, universally mediated text, creating special challenges for poetic reinterpretation.
• She draws on scholarly work (e.g., Renita J. Weems) regarding how black women inherit—and read—the Bible, often identifying with marginalized biblical figures to uncover overlooked stories and voices.
  • “For a lot of black women this is like their sole inheritance…One of the ways [to approach the Bible] is about, what am I overlooking?” (Diamond Forde, 10:59)

4. Research, Reading Strategies, and Generosity to Readers

• The robust notes section in the book is meant to bridge the alienation readers sometimes feel with poetry, especially work rooted in references or traditions unfamiliar to some audiences.
  • Forde refrains from explaining poems, instead offering “deepening” notes to welcome diverse readers. She recognizes that not all readers bring the same religious or cultural background and wants to enrich their experience without flattening ambiguity.
  • “The note section…is an opportunity to kind of close the gap that I think sometimes the performance of poetry can open.” (Diamond Forde, 15:23)

5. Autobiography, Biomythography, and Persona

• Drawing on Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography, Forde clarifies her collection as both autobiography and collective biography—her self-understanding interwoven with her grandmother’s life and community mythologies.
  • “Calling it an autobiography feels fair. It is as much a biography of my grandmother as it is an autobiography of the self.” (Diamond Forde, 20:52)

6. Recipe Poems, Alternative Archives, and Black Women’s History

• Inspired by Melinda Russell’s 1866 cookbook (the oldest known by a black woman), the recipe poems embody alternative archives—testimonies to black life that resist the death-centered, white-mediated historical archive as described by Saidiya Hartman.
  • Forde discusses translating oral, familial recipes (often “just a splash”) into poetic form while honoring improvisation and community knowledge.
  • “Something…that feels more full of life than a recipe. Because…the idea is, like, you're sharing this with, like, ideally, your loved ones.” (Diamond Forde, 27:13)
• The act of writing recipes becomes both a political and joyful gesture—insisting on black women’s lived presence.

7. Audience, Whiteness, and the Politics of Reception

• Forde candidly wrestles with the knowledge that her publisher and a large part of her audience will be white. She recounts reactions that misinterpret her intentions (e.g., a white reader calling her recipes “colorblind”), highlighting the burden of having one’s work read through dominant cultural perspectives.
  • “Everything that we eat is in and of itself a kind of political statement, whether or not we're thinking about where the food comes from or who's allowed to eat it, right?” (Diamond Forde, 31:03)
• Despite imperfect receptions, she values any genuine connection the poems can forge and upholds poetry as “the bridge between us.”

8. Reading: “Lot's Wife”

• Forde reads her poem “Lot’s Wife,” reimagining the biblical figure’s transformation as a metaphor for longing and legacy, with striking sensory and culinary metaphors.
  • “I want to be a spice men burn for. I want to be architecture, the pillar of a temple where men line to floss their tongues on the salt snowing my trust…God, give me a name worth remembering.” (Diamond Forde, 38:05)

9. Form, Embodiment, and Accessibility

• Forde disrupts traditional page layouts—e.g., the poem “What Alice Saw” is formatted in the shape of a book, demanding physical interaction from readers. This challenges passive, Western reading habits and symbolically addresses the (in)visibility of black women on the page.
  • “I am trying to tell you my grandmother's black ass story of all of the survivals that she had to navigate, and not once ever in her life did she get to be passive, right? And to expect a passive experience from the act of reading a book is so privileged…” (Diamond Forde, 45:05)
• Accessibility is considered: alternate, straightforward formats appear for those who may need them.

10. The “Red Letter” Device: Speaking and Remembering

• Some poems use red ink—referencing the “red letter edition” Bibles (where Jesus’ spoken words appear in red)—to mark her grandmother’s words or what she imagines her grandmother might say.
  • “In this book, it’s my grandmother speaking…I am not remotely interested in making my grandmother Jesus. Instead, what I am interested in is asking you to think about what is spoken.” (Diamond Forde, 47:02)
• The device serves as both homage and a method for distinguishing oral legacy within the written text.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Inheritance and Self-Knowledge:
  • “All I’m ultimately trying to do is understand myself…by understanding all of my inheritances, both good and bad.” (Diamond Forde, 03:54)
• On the Politics of Food:
  • “If I'm writing about candied yam and you're like, oh, yeah, this feels like home to me, well, how did that get on your plate in the first place, right? What is the history behind that?” (Diamond Forde, 30:23)
• On Poetry’s Demands:
  • “To expect a passive experience from the act of reading a book is so privileged to me… I want you to work just a little bit…The more that you dig into the poem, I want you to get just a little bit more back because of that.” (Diamond Forde, 45:05)
• On Form as Resistance:
  • “There's even, like, a poem that looks like a census, like a government census. And that couldn't exist without Fred Moten, for sure. Thinking about what it means to be the governorable, ungovernable. Thinking about what it means to be counted.” (Diamond Forde, 42:33)
• On the Value of Connection Despite Misreading:
  • “The fact that regardless of the intent behind the connection, the work still resonated in the first place, that means that I'm doing my job.” (Diamond Forde, 36:03)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [00:49] Opening: Sommer reads from “Womaning” and welcomes Forde
• [02:00–04:54] On inheritance, the family Bible as “object,” and poetry as discovery
• [05:23–09:01] Forde’s religious/family background and intimacy through the Bible
• [09:44–12:49] Defamiliarizing the Bible; Black women’s identification with biblical figures
• [14:26–17:45] Notes for readers, closing the gap between poet and audience
• [20:48–22:05] Biomythography and autobiography; the book’s origins and aims
• [22:05–28:15] Recipe poems, black women’s culinary archives, and honoring Melinda Russell
• [28:59–34:21] Race, food, and the politics of poetic reception
• [37:39–38:43] Reading: “Lot’s Wife”
• [39:52–46:57] On visual/formal innovation, interactivity, and access
• [46:57–49:47] The “red letter” device—grandmother’s speech and memory
• [49:47] Closing remarks; finding Forde online

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a vibrant discussion of poetry as both an act of personal memory and political resistance. Forde’s The Book of Alice emerges as a multi-voiced, deeply embodied work committed to reimagining the archive, honoring black women’s lives, and inviting readers—across backgrounds—into an active relationship with the text.

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Transcript

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[Diamond Ford]

Welcome to the New Books Network

[Sullivan Sommer]

Womaning love, God say is obedience so I obey the alarm of sun song through my window, Climb down cold steps to him and hem to cook, clatter and kid myself into believing these tasks don't hook familiar shackles and when my man kiss me in the soft spot below my ear, I dream he really want me. But that's what's wrong with womaning. We stay spinning yarn from the colorful crochet of our minds, but few admire it. Dear Lord, why did you make me in your image? If you wanted me to kneel, let me break the rules one time, Lace the loafers by the front door on my large girlish feet Then walk like I got somewhere everywhere to go. That is from the collection the Book of Alice by writer and professor Diamond Ford Diamond. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Diamond Ford]

Oh my God. Thank you for having me, Sullivan. I appreciate you.

[Sullivan Sommer]

So this book grew from your inheritance of a family Bible. And I am so curious then about this intersection between objects and poetry. Talk about that.

[Diamond Ford]

Yeah, I think that one of the things that I was really trying to think through and look through in this project is the testaments that we have to history. What can be recovered, what can't be recovered. And it's really funny to think about the object, that physical book, as the entryway into this larger kind of conversation around history, around recovery, because it's one of the first prompts that I give to my students. We talk about this process in poetry called defamiliarization, which is literally just the process of making the familiar unfamiliar. And one of the things that I ask them to do is to think about an object that they encounter every day. And then the goal of the poem is to then take that object and defamiliarize it, to make it feel strange, to make it feel new, to discover something about it. Because I think this is the Kind of core of poetry to me is that act of discovery, to think through what we take for granted. I think that poetry encourages us to even to think about language as, like, part of that thing that we take for granted. And what happens if we are very purposeful with our language? What happens if we think about not just what we mean, but how we mean it, how we've inherited these definitions? And so, in this weird way, all of this grappling with this book is ultimately just me trying to be, I guess, a student of myself in that particular moment that I am trying to understand me, that I'm using a lens of that King James Bible to reach back for my grandmother. But at the end of it, all I'm ultimately trying to do is understand myself and understand why I am the way that I am by understanding all of my inheritances, both good and bad, and understanding why my grandmother raised my mother the way she did, and why my mother, in turn, raised me the way that she did. Um, and so this object, again, by really sitting with it, and I really sat with it for quite a while, really sitting with it, made me realize I had a whole lot more to learn.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I think when you talk about this idea of making the familiar unfamiliar, and we talk about this Bible in particular, I would love to hear about your relationship to it. Meaning, was this something, you know, you sort of had for a while and took back out again? Was it new to you? And. And even within the Bible, are you familiar with. With the biblical passages and, you know, how much of it did you read and reread in the process of making this collection?

[Diamond Ford]

This is a great question. My parents raised me in the church, but I had a very different church experience and that. I was raised in a mega church. Yeah. One of those massive churches out in Atlanta called World Changers. I was raised in one of those mega churches under, I think his name is Creflo Dollar. There we go. Creflo Dollar, who's a televangelist. And this was my first trained understanding into churches. It was not remotely intimate, but it was, I think, powerful. And powerful primarily through what is spoken. And I remember my first understanding of God was like the choir where my mom and my aunt sang. They would start to sing. They would always kick off with music. And it felt like God was entering into the room. And so for me, I think that has always probably been some slanted idea of how I view myself in relationship to that book is, I think, primarily through those first moments of understanding the power of what is spoken, not just what's read. I think that the book that I was given was given to me, like, several years after my grandmother had already passed. I was moving to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for my grad program. And my aunt had some not so great experiences at Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her and my uncle have been pulled over in the middle of the night. Pretty scary experience by the police. And so she knew that this was the city, the environment that I was moving into. And I think she was scared for me. And so she gave me this book. And part of it, I think, was because she felt like I was old enough to be trusted with it now. But also, I think she saw it as a means of protecting me in this space where I would be a little bit more out of reach. And to be honest, it was mostly just something that I kept in the background. It's always kind of, like, near me, but mostly just because I kind of set it down in proximity. The first time I ever really used it was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and it was during a tornado warning. And this was, like, a couple years or two years after the F5 tornado that blew through Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And I think everybody in the city was a little freaked out and a little on edge. And it was the middle of the night. I remember I took that Bible and I went and hid in my bathroom. And my mom used to tell me that my grandmother's favorite passage was a Psalms. And so I was like, okay, I'll just read the Psalms. And so I'm huddled in the bathtub with my phone and this Bible, reading the Psalms for the first time in their entirety. And I just stayed that way until the morning came back. And so I guess what I'm trying to say in my weird, long winded way, is that my relationship with that book is not direct, but it is intimate. It's primarily always through family that it has been this kind of connecting force for me to understand my family a little better, for my family to reach me a little bit more deeply. And so I think that my work with the book was the same. It was always first and foremost about family, whether it was my mom and my aunts in the choir or my grandmother accompanying me in the bathtub in Tuscaloosa. It's always the same.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I'm thinking more about this idea of. Of the object, not unlike poetry itself. I feel like when you talk about this Bible, where you've got multiple layers working at the same time, which is the Bible itself is an object that was hand to your point was handed down is a physical object, but there's also text inside. You know, it's different than say, getting a lamp from your grandma, but there's actually text inside the Bible. How do you think the, how do you think the object is being a book with text in it impacted your defamiliarization exercise?

[Diamond Ford]

It's a big challenge because one of the things that you have to now, especially when we're thinking about the Bible, which is literally the most canonized text right in the Western tradition. And so even if I hadn't read the stories myself, we're still spoon fed these stories in other forms of media. And so it's really hard to try to take something that you've been made so familiar with and that you know, like speaks for itself and then try to speak in it without like within it and around it and through it in a new light. One of the things that I think was like super helpful for me is I actually spent some time researching the process of translation for the Bible, understanding that it wasn't obviously originally in English and thinking about the journey, and in particular the journey of power that kind of carried that book into English in the first place and recognizing that even in its current iteration in English, it is still flawed and mistranslated. And to kind of understand that this is another step in the translation process. One of the things that I really wanted to do, there's this scholar, her name is Renita J. Weaves, and she has this essay, it's probably online, about black women and their reading strategies in the Bible. And one of the things that she talks about is like one that this idea of the Bible as an inheritance for black women, it's actually a pretty common one that for a lot of black women this is like their sole inheritance, which I think from the outset made this a very kind of like diasporic communal experience for me. But also she says one of the things that black women do is that we tend to identify more with the marginalized characters within the book. And I thought that was so cool, it's so smart. And also the perfect strategy for approaching this text because again, it's about like, what am I overlooking? How do I make the familiar unfamiliar? And so my thinking about some of these big stories, like the story of Noah's Ark, thinking about like the story of like Sodom and Gomorrah, thinking about all of these big texts that we have encountered and then looking at them to say, okay, who's forgotten here? Where do the black women exist to Be that was, I think, one of the ways that I could re. Approach the text portion, but in a new light. And some of the, like, performance of the Bible and its language, like some of the. There's an opening poem that literally uses the refrain in the beginning. In the beginning, in the beginning. Like some of the ways that the Bible is stylized in language was something that I still wanted to like, hold onto in this project. So it did give me, I think, the gift of connection while also opening up the opportunity for insight.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I want to talk a little bit more about your research and also how you thought about the reader. And so this will be maybe a little bit of a long question, but then you can go wherever you want with, with. With the answer. So for, for myself as a reader, you know, I. I read a lot of poetry, I read a lot of literature. I am not strong in a religious tradition at all. So for me, whenever I encounter something that I know, like this book is reliant on the Bible, I also go in knowing I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss a lot of the references because I just don't have that tradition. And for example, you have a poem called Sethis Speaks to Hagar, and I recognize the Toni Morrison reference immediately. And then I also thought, I wonder if this is a Bible thing too that I'm missing. But, but you also have a very robust notes section, which I loved, by the way. I loved the note section. And so my, my question is, how did you think about your reader and what your reader may or may not be bringing to the. The page as they're encountering your work and what, what may need to be what, what you decide to put in a note section versus what you decide not to put in a note section. And you know, just talk about some of those decisions.

[Diamond Ford]

I think that was a big challenge for me. Um, but one of the advantages of that and one of the things that I even actively talk to my students about is like, I try to withhold this thinking about larger audience until it's time to like, edit and revise. Because if I'm holding audience expectations while I'm trying to write the poem, I will freeze up and I won't say what needs to be said. I won't say the truth. But I do spend a lot of time after the poem is written really thinking about both who the poem is for, but also who the poem is not for, whom I encounter. Right. Anyway, and one of my biggest goals with the notes section, there's a lot of, of research Backing this project. And a big part of that is because this book was literally my dissertation when I was at Florida State. And that required quite a bit of research, especially because I was trying to create my own poetics in the process. But part of what I was trying to figure out is what will deepen my readers understanding of these poems. Thinking about the note section as an opportunity to kind of close the gap that I think sometimes the performance of poetry can open. I know how many folks encounter poetry and feel immediately, like, alienated by it because we've been taught that poetry is supposed to be a thing that is obscure. It never says exactly what it means. It always has some kind of deep hidden meaning if I can just unlock the key. And I know that even in the best of times that while I do try to perform in a way that still feels narrative, that still feels accessible, that still feels like it's welcoming the reader in, there might still be those moments where the kind of necessities of performance for poetry might still be kind of holding the door slightly closed. And so I really wanted the note section to be the kind of insight the reader needed to really feel that door swing open and to really feel that they were getting. I don't want them to have an explanation of the poem per se, because I think the poem is what it needs to be and who it needs to be. Right. But I think that using the note section as a way of deepening their engagement, of saying, like, oh, no, when, by the way, when you encounter this poem, like Lot's wife, you should know that her name is like, Edith. Right? Like, having them hold that extra layer of knowledge, I think becomes just deeply satisfying. And honestly, it's one of my favorite things to do when I read like, a new poetry collection is to like, go back to the note section. I learned so many random things just by paging with the notes. Like, it makes me a better person. I think so.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I love a note. I have never met a note section I didn't like. And I think they should always be longer. Like, no matter what, I'm always like, more, more notes.

[Diamond Ford]

It also gives you some insight too, into, like, the writer's research process. Right. Is like, what were you thinking about when you were writing this? What were you holding? What were you curious about? What were you, like, looking into? Like, it really is also, I think, a beautiful insight into the writing process as much as it is like the poems itself. And so I do. I like that. I like that insight. I like being curious, I like being nosy. I like the opportunities to feel nosy.

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[Sullivan Sommer]

Well, I think too there's. To your point, there's this thing with poetry, I think for people who don't read it frequently or who haven't studied it, this idea that there's a right answer. And I think only after you begin to have more experience with it do you realize there isn't a right answer at all. And so I think, I think notes for people who know there's no right answer, I think note sections are just really interesting to get more insight to your point into the poem and into the, into the. The writer. And I think for people who are not familiar with poetry, it, it's a welcoming in to them. About. Here's what, here's what I was thinking about.

[Diamond Ford]

I agree.

[Sullivan Sommer]

Talk about, you know, this is a very personal collection. You're very upfront and clear with, with its origins. And so I, I mean there's certainly Personas in here but I don't think there's any confusion about. Well, I was going to say whether or not this is autobiographical, but maybe that's not even a fair statement either.

[Diamond Ford]

Kind of, though actually it is, because I think what I'm wrestling with is like, Audre Lorde has this term called biomythography, and it is a kind of telling of one's own biography, but in a way that does invite in myth, in a way that does invite in the kind of stories that shape us, in a way that invites in the alternative text. Right. I think calling it an autobiography feels fair. It is as much a biography of my grandmother as it is an autobiography of the self.

[Sullivan Sommer]

So you have. And I go to the back to the notes for a second that will bring us into the text. You have a note that. A couple of notes that go into the section entitled Genesis, and you talk about. You have a series of recipe poems, and you write in the notes. I decided to imitate the measurements in Melinda Russell's a Domestic cookbook published in 1866 and credited as one of the oldest cookbooks written by a black woman. Talk about the recipe poems, but also the decision to imitate the measurements in Melinda Russell's cookbook.

[Diamond Ford]

Yeah, I mean, that was like, one of the beautiful things that I discovered just out of pure curiosity. I was like, what are some of the first black cookbooks? And even just some of the first cookbooks in America? And then, like, coming across that. And also we had a specialist collections in our library at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, where I was at the time. And I'm pretty sure there was a copy of that cookbook there. And so this all. It felt like it was all coming together to make this divine. But for the recipe poems, one of the things that I am thinking about and through is what are the alternative texts of history? I think that in a Western and especially an American tradition, we tend to privilege text as like, a testament to history more than anything else, especially like, you know, printing. If it is written in a history book, it is therefore accurate. And part of what this book is trying to push against is that particular idea. One of the things that I have been reading at the time, there is a writer named Cydia Hartman, and she wrote this essay called Venus in Two Acts.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I've got her book behind my head.

[Diamond Ford]

Isn't it so good? Yeah. She changed my life.

[Sullivan Sommer]

Is she mine too? Mine too. I feel like for listeners, if you've not read Sadia Hartman, I don't know how you read Cydia Hartman. And your life isn't changed. Let's put it that way. I've never met a person. Her name gets mentioned on this podcast a lot. I've never met a person that reads the Hartman and their life was not changed.

[Diamond Ford]

Private isn't to Lacks, right? And she's, like, talking about the process of trying to recover, you know, like, the names and subjectivities of these two enslaved girls who she calls Venus, but finds that that task is insurmountable because, Right. The archive, the print and texts creating evidence of black life are all evidence of black death that we have. The. The ship manifests, stock inventories, police reports, auction reports. Like, it is all just erasure. And thinking about that legacy, thinking about that as history and how a reliance on print can contextualize our laws. I really wanted to think about what other forms of history exist, and in particular, history of black life. How are we resisting these narratives that constantly perpetuate our death? Again, even in a book where I am thinking about the impact of my grandmother's death on me and my family, even in that book, how am I still creating a testament to her life? And because I am thinking about inheritance and very increasingly abstract ways, one of the things that I also realized was an inheritance were those recipes, right? The act of cooking, thinking about the way that I learned cooking was, which was not actually in print at all. It was like being in the kitchen with your mama, right? And mama tells you what to do, what to add. And sometimes I think the hardest part was trying to give measurements for things where I didn't have measurements, right? Because we don't use a half teaspoon of Lowry's. You just put it in there until spirits messed up, until it is, you know, like, eat that vibes. And so, like, trying to translate that into measurements was actually probably one of the first ways that I had to actually contend with my audience. And there were ways that I tried to give myself permission. Like, there will be times where I say, just a splash, right? Because, like, real talk, that's what it is. There's no way I can't put that in, like, a quarter cup. Like, I don't know. It's a splash. Trying to give myself that permission while also trying to figure out how do I make my individual circumstance part of a larger conversation right around black women who are also navigating these same challenges and circumstances, who have also experienced the same erasure. How am I reaching for the black women who have been erased in this process? And so those recipe poems. Because, again, like, something. There's nothing that feels more full of life than a Recipe. Because the idea is, like, you're sharing this with, like, ideally, your loved ones. Right. Like, you're sharing this food with someone you love. It could be at a reunion. It could be at holiday dinners, Sunday dinners, what have you. Right. But you are making these recipes to partake in and to celebrate and to be full of joy. And so that felt important. But also taking this, which felt individually important to my family, and then connecting this back to Melinda Russell and saying, like, this is a larger act that black women have been kind of doing and pouring into their communities, you know, for. For years, since 1866, at least. Right. That also felt important to me, too. And so changing the way that the measurements looked as a kind of nod to Russell and even bringing her name into the conversation. Right. Because I don't know how many people, before they read that note, even know who Melinda Russell is. Right. And know about her contributions to the kind of. The cookbook. And so really making sure that I am paying homage where homage is due, I think was also really important to me for this book. And part of the ways that the recipe, Paul allowed that to happen, I'm

[Sullivan Sommer]

realizing also, as you're talking through, you know, the inspiration and the research and how you were thinking about all these things, is that forced so many of the records that we have, as you pointed out, Cydia Hartman talks about them being these records of death, but they're also records that are mediated through whiteness.

[Diamond Ford]

Right.

[Sullivan Sommer]

We. That's. That's why we. That's why we have. That's why they get saved, because they're mediated through whiteness versus a recipe from Melinda Russell, which is. Which is not, I would not think. And so that's interesting.

[Diamond Ford]

Unless we kind of count the performance of, like, publishing. Even when I'm thinking about, for instance, this is something I was thinking about in the echoes of, like, enslaved narratives.

[Sullivan Sommer]

Yeah, right. Right. I was going to say that as well. Yeah.

[Diamond Ford]

How do we use performances, even though we are really adamantly trying to talk about our own black life? How do we use expectations, especially of the white audience, influence the way that the work comes to us? And this was a tension that I had to hold the entire time that I am navigating this, because I am trying to really write my own black experiences with the knowledge that, like, oh, my editor who picked this book and read this book is white and that the publishing company that is going to put this book in the world is largely white and that the vast majority of the people who are probably going to consume this book are probably going to be largely white. Like, having to know all of that is still going to happen, right? One of the. I think the most interesting things that happened to me, especially with these recipe poems, is I had a white woman in the audience of one of my readings tell me that what she liked about the recipe poems was because it felt so colorblind. And I was like, but I think that this is what is so interesting about food. And the food based poem is. I do think that it creates that illusion where we can remove the identity behind it, but not really. That's an illusion, right? To think about these, like to look at these southern foods, right? And to say, like, this reminds me of home. And it's like, oh, well, how did that get to you? Right? If I'm writing about candied yam and you're like, oh, yeah, this feels like home to me, well, how did that get on your plate in the first place, right? What is the history behind that? What are the politics behind that? Everything that we eat is in and of itself a kind of political statement, whether or not we're thinking about where the food comes from or who's allowed to eat it, right? And so in that moment, I think there's a kind of really interesting tension happening in terms of what she wanted to see in these poems. And what I try to create, and I think that is probably the burden of being a writer, is that your best intentions might not always kind of carry through, right? But you still intend and you still work with it and you still do it anyway. Because then there will be folks who will see this and see that work and recognize that history, and they won't say, this feels colorblind, right? This feels black. Because it is. It's very. Right. Very southern. Again, I think trying to reach back into myself was also trying to reach back into, like, what does it mean to be a fat black woman in the South? What does it mean to exist in these spaces? And to know that my grandmother, who also was a fat black woman in the south for a while, right? How did she navigate that same existence? And really kind of trying to understand myself through the language of food and what it means to eat it. And again, who's allowed to eat it, right? Who's really important to me even one of the ways the ghost of food shows up in these poems is that they're very musical poems. And one of the goals that I had for at least one of these poems is I wanted to create a poem that felt like eating cake. I was like, what Is it like the way that your mouth moves when you eat cake? Is there a way to kind of create that decadence and that sensation through poetry? Right? And so, like, I want. I want you to feel compelled to want to move your mouth when you read these poems. Don't say them out loud. That's probably the ultimate gift to me, because when you say it out loud, except for the choir, is like my first entry into understanding God. And I mean that, because when you say the poems out loud, that means we get to sing together. And that is, like, a really cool and beautiful and surreal thing to think about. All of these potential voices participating in the story of Alice singing with me. That's a gift. And again, I'm not an intensely religious person. I'm probably more like my idea of God is like the color purple.

[Sullivan Sommer]

Like the book or the color.

[Diamond Ford]

It is the whole book. Now, this fantastic scene where Shook and Celia are looking at a field of violets. And Shug says, I think that, like, if you look at a field of violence and you don't admire it, it just pisses God off. And she's kind of talking about, like, the divinity of the world around them. And I'm a firm believer of the divinity in the world around us, both in us and beyond. But that, I think, is probably the greatest gift and another way that I'm also thinking about food in a sneaky way. All of this book is food. And so, yeah, not the most ideal comment that I got, but also, hopefully the entryway into her realizing that there is far more politics on the plate that she makes.

[Sullivan Sommer]

This is your fix.

[Stassi Schroeder]

I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three?

[Redfin Ad Voice]

Steven.

[Sullivan Sommer]

Because he's so evil, I do think,

[Diamond Ford]

think he is misunderstood. You see everyone face consequences. It's intoxicating.

[Stassi Schroeder]

The writers just know how to trick. Yeah, there's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast, January 6th. And stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I interviewed Honore Fanon Jeffers when her most recent collection came out, and she was talking about who the book was for, and she said, you know, it's for black women. I write for black women. But I. But I assume white women are listening. And I. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about, as you said, not. Not the most ideal comment. And also, we can't control how people connect with the book. And also, I think I would rather have someone connect with the book, even if they're connecting in a way that I don't necessarily want them to connect, but maybe not. Like, as thinking through all this as you're talking, I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I would just rather that person not connect, but maybe not also, like, I don't. You know, it's a hard thing to think about.

[Diamond Ford]

I think that regardless of how the book connects, because, again, one of the things that I have to recognize is that once the book is no longer in my hands, it is its own thing. And that means that the only thing that I can do while it's still in my hands is to create the most resonant book that I can. And I have no control over how it resonates. And I have been found in poems in ways that I never intended, but have been so grateful for that discovery. Um, and so, yeah, again, not the most ideal feedback to hear about those poems. Probably gonna have some nightmares about that for a while. But the fact that she was willing to be open to them in the first place, right? The fact that regardless of the intent behind the connection, the work still resonated in the first place, that means that I'm doing my job. And that is, I think, affirming. Not just about me and the individual work I do, but I think about poetry writ large. I believe that poetry is the bridge between us, that it is the thing that allows us to get back to our greatest humanity and to know that those poems touched some part of humanity in her. Right. We all have our journeys in terms of what we're ready to confront and win. But for her to have felt these poems in that moment, I think that means that we opened up to each other just a bit at that moment. And for that, I'm grateful.

[Sullivan Sommer]

Will you read a poem for us? Yes.

[Diamond Ford]

I feel like all this talk about recipe poems. I should have read a. A food poem. Actually, you know what? I mentioned Lot's Wife earlier. Let's do Lot's Wife. Lot's Wife. The truth is, I'd do it again. Turn into the winking eye of a city flushed with fire I hope I burn this time My body coraling like the ruffled apron on the hook, the pin scratched books, the candles cinder to sense to at least let me be Turmeric, carnama, saffron sprinkling from heaven like the dandruff of Mars I want to be a spice men burn for. I want to be architecture, the pillar of a temple where men line to floss their tongues on the salt snowing my trust Salt cathedral, salt palace Mountaintops crested with salt country whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast of a continent, Its oceans full of the bones of women like me whose tombs are the only homes we keep. God, give me a name worth remembering.

[Sullivan Sommer]

I would say that that's one of my favorites. But then I also, I feel like if you read, if you kept reading poems, I'd be like, oh, that, that one's my favorite. Oh, but that, oh, but that one's my favorite. There is so much power in so many of these poems. Thank you. I want to talk about, I wanna talk about form for a second. Both maybe, maybe capital F form and lowercase F form. Cause we were, we've been talking about these recipe poems. You have a poem titled what Alice Saw that's actually written twice, side by side and one on the left hand page. The text is actually in the shape of a book, in the shape of an outline of a book, which is a little bit, maybe a little bit hard to imagine if you're not looking at it. But I mean you, you physically have to like turn the book around over 360 degrees to like, to read all the text, talk about, talk about that poem.

[Diamond Ford]

Isn't it delightfully interactive? First, there is an. A poet named Kenzie Allen who does this beautif. Multimodal. And basically what I mean by that is like poetry in different kinds of mediums, not just on the page. And actually came and talked to my class about creating a poem in a water basket, which was phenomenal and so really made me think about the shape of the work that I'm doing. Speaking of whiteness, kind of coding the text that we use. One of the things that I am also thinking about is how is the idea of whiteness prevalent even in the idea of poem. Right. That when we think about or imagine poems, we have particular ideas that we've been spoon fed about what a poem is. And so part of the way that I am trying to contend against the archive, contend against that history is by pushing the boundaries of what is poem. Just a little book. And so creating a poem in the shape of a book felt like a really kind of meta moment that I think we don't necessarily allow. It's literally seeing the man behind the curtain that's peeking into like the wizard. Because the poem is talking about creating my grandmother's story while it's literally creating the book and trying to really dig past, I think the limitations of form. To be transparent about the power that I hold by being the person who gets to articulate my grandmother's story. My grandmother's gone. She can't speak for herself anymore. I think a lot of the success that the book has had, even in its ability to be published, is one of the ways that my grandmother does speak towards this book. But I think that one of the ways that I have to be aware in the telling of that story is thinking about the opportunities to perpetuate whiteness. Because whiteness is not a race in and of itself. Right. It is a kind of idea around power and supremacy. And there are ways that I can even incidentally perpetuate whiteness in the telling of my grandmother and my own story. And by trying to be aware of that power, of trying to push past the boundaries of poetry, to make that power plain and also liberate all of the ways that I want to be liberated as, like, a fat black woman. I think taking all of that and using form as a vehicle for exploring that, I think was big for me for this project. There's even, like, a poem that looks like a census, like a government census. And that couldn't exist without Fred Moten, for sure. Thinking about what it means to be the governorable, ungovernable. Thinking about what it means to be kind of counted. Right. Yeah. Really wanted to resist. What are our expectations when we walk into this book? And how is that book defamiliarizing those expectations? It is more than just writing good poems. It's about giving ourselves the permission to live.

[Sullivan Sommer]

To me, one of my favorite experiences in reading the book was the poem what Alice saw. Yes. The substance of it, but the act of reading it in the book form. Because I thought in order to read. In order just to read it, you cannot hold the book the way you normally hold the book and read top to bottom, left to right. You can't. You cannot do that. Because some of the writing's upside down. It's vertical. It's like all of these kind of ways. You physically, as I said, have to turn the book over several

[Diamond Ford]

in order

[Sullivan Sommer]

to read the poem. And I thought about that in terms of the legibility of a black woman. Also, that if we're going to read top to bottom, left to right. I don't know that I thought about it as a sort of steeped in whiteness way of reading. But of course it is. Of course it is exactly what it is. And you can't read it like that and understand it. I mean, you could read it like that. It would just be like gibberish. Gibberish at that point, if that's the way you're gonna read it. It's nonsensical.

[Diamond Ford]

I even think the kind of passivity is. Is something that I'm trying to ask you to resist, right? Because if we think about the very nature of silence and the very nature of being able to kind of fence it and the very nature of being able to step. Take a step back and to be apolitical, all of those things are constructions of whiteness. It is such a privilege, right? And to say that I want to passively receive something from this book is such a privilege, right? Because again, I am trying to tell you my grandmother's black ass story of all of the survivals that she had to navigate, and not once ever in her life did she get to be passive, right? And to expect a passive experience from the act of reading a book is so privileged to me, right? Like, I do want you to work just a little bit, right? I think that I do. I'm. You know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna praise myself. I think that I do a good job of trying to keep the book both open, but also challenging, right? Because I want. The more that you dig into the poem, I want you to get just a little bit more back because of that. I want the more time that you spend with the poems to reward you. And you can choose to glance, right? That is your right to choose. But think about how much more you get out of it. You just turn the book, and at the same time, it's in two different forums. Because I am, of course, always going to think about accessibility. First and foremost, there are some folks who like even thinking about my own partner who navigates dyslexia, like, there's gonna be, I think, the challenge of interacting with that form. And so always, always, always, we're gonna have the kind of more accessible reading beside. But to commit to trying.

[Sullivan Sommer]

All right, I have to ask you one last forum question, which is, you know, the book is predominantly. The text in the book is predominantly black. I mean, the ink. The ink is predominantly black, but there's a bunch of it in red.

[Diamond Ford]

So one of the additions or styles of the Bible that you can get is the red letter edition. Red letter font. And in those moments, typically when we encounter the red letter, it's Jesus speaking. In this book, it's my grandmother speaking. And I am not remotely interested in making my grandmother Jesus. That is not at all the case. In fact, there's a poem in the book, that's like an addendum for the Savior. And it's like, I don't want to be a savior. I don't want to be saint. Instead, what I am interested in asking you to think about is what is spoken. Because, again, if part of what this book is asking us to think about is what exists beyond print, right? Part of the gravitas of that history is also what is said. And using this shorthand, again, that already exists within this book, right? The Bible itself, as a way of acknowledging what is spoken by asking you to do the same here in the Book of Alice, to acknowledge what is spoken and spoken by this black woman who could be so easily forgotten if I let it out, so easily forgotten, all of these words, these wisdoms, all of these things that she could have said and did say, all of it could be forgotten. And I want us to have to sit with that. And so the red letter is that that invitation into, again, what is spoken and allowing her at times to speak for herself. There are moments in the book, obviously, that are just straight up, verbatim what she said. And then there's like a. Like womaning, which is in her voice, which is me conjecturing into that space, but is still recognizing that there's very little difference between me and my grandmother's experiences of womanhood and why that is and how hard that is. Because I don't think womanhood was a comfy experience for my grandmother. And I think to pretend like womanhood is always a comfy experience for all of us would be fantastical at best. But I do think there is something powerful when womanhood is something that you want to occupy, being able to speak into it. In that moment, I am speaking into it. I have very large feet, courtesy of my father, but they can go anywhere. And I hope that in that articulation, I am giving my grandmother permission in ways that she didn't have while she was still here, too.

[Sullivan Sommer]

The book is the Book of Alice by Diamond Ford. Find diamond [e-mail] and on Instagram oemsandcake. And I'm your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me [e-mail] on Instagram, he SullivanSummer and over on substackullivansummer, where diamond and I are headed right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to the New Books Network,

[Stassi Schroeder]

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