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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
While reading Lucille Clifton, my father visited me. While wind turned its nightly pages and his grave gave purpose to the movable earth. His smile careening through past and future, summoned me. I answered my sonhood furious and a man seeing at once all four corners of his life. I remember him despite myself flirting with rage. I no longer believe in the worst of my father. Spoons let go their heat in his hand, his reflection right side up and singing. That was the poem while reading Lucille Clifton from the collection Lift Every Voice by. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award, American Book Award, Whiting Award, and too many other awards to list here, but we've got them in the show Notes. Philip B. Williams. Philip, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:09]
A
Thank you for having me. Beautiful reading of that poem, by the way.
- [01:13]
B
Thank you. There are so many. I was going to say readable poems in here. I mean. I mean, readable aloud poems. You know, some poems I feel like are just. Are so amazing on the page. They don't necessarily want to be read aloud, I feel like. Necessarily. But like, this po. There's. There's so many poems in this book, I feel like. Want to be read aloud.
- [01:34]
A
Good, good.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah.
- [01:36]
A
Get the body involved.
- [01:37]
B
Yes. You know, and what's funny is I. So in preparation for this interview, and I mean. I mean, like the last minute prep. So the prep. Like 10 minutes before we got on the phone, I re. I reread this poem aloud because I wanted it sort of fresh on my tongue, and I realized for the first time that the ro. This poem can be read backwards as well.
- [01:59]
A
Oh, you want to try it?
- [02:01]
B
Yeah, yeah. Was that int. Was. I mean, was that intentional?
- [02:05]
A
No, not at all. No.
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B
I think.
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A
I know we're supposed. We're supposed to lie and say, oh, yeah, you know. No, I didn't try to do that.
- [02:12]
B
No, I actually think this one. I actually think this one works.
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A
Okay, how about at the end of the show, we. I'll read it backwards.
- [02:19]
B
Okay. Okay. All right. Perfect. Perfect. I love that. I love that. No, it's interesting when you say. I know we're supposed to say it's intentional. I. You know, I know poets are always incredibly intentional with so much, but I. I feel like part of the fun of the work getting out there in the world is suddenly it. I mean, it leaves you. Right. And. And the work is going to do what it's going to do, and people are going to do what they're going to do with it.
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A
Talk about that nightmare of it.
- [02:46]
B
Well, yeah, no, talk about that because, you know, this is not your first collection. So talk. Talk about what that feeling is between having it, you know, live in your com. In your head and in your computer or in your notebooks or whatever. And then now it's like, in the
- [03:00]
A
world, I'm just glad that I have the disposition of surrender where I don't feel as though I have to constantly defend a poem or explain a poem. People come to me and they have their own readings. I'm excited by that. For one, it becomes a conversation that I'm having with my readers. And then two, it puts a lot. It takes a lot of pressure off of me to have done something right. I found, though, that it happened more with the novel than it has with the poem. People are interpreting certain events. Yeah, people are interpreting certain events in ways where. And sometimes I have to say, well, read that again, because there are some. You know, there's like in the paragraph, it says the opposite of what you're thinking. But in some aspects, there are ways where they'll interpret a character's behavior in a way that I didn't think would be possible. They'll see something more positive that I thought was only negative, or I would say that, you know, something that was metaphorical. They would make it. Make it literal in a way that was actually still useful. So, yeah, with a novel, that kind of flexibility, that flexible reading has been really interesting.
- [04:12]
B
And so you're talking about your 20, 24 novel, Hours.
- [04:16]
A
Oh, our.
- [04:17]
B
And this collection I mentioned before, you know, this is not your first poetry collection, but this is your first poetry collection since Hours came out, which was your first novel.
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A
Yes.
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B
And so does this feel like. Is this a. Feel like a return or is this a. Like. Don't call it a comeback. Is this like, what is. Well, talk about the, like, the. The, like the poetry after the novel.
- [04:41]
A
Well, when you said that this is readable poetry, I absolutely agree. And I think it's because it's poetry after prose. I had written this novel, all these sentences, you know, these direct statements, and I carried that over into writing, lift every voice. And so. And I'm always reading my poems aloud to make sure that when I have to go on stage, I can say the poems. I don't want to, you know, trip over my own words, but there's definitely, I think, easier there. There are more doorways into vulnerability in this book, in my opinion, at least, because I was able to access that in hours in ways that I hadn't done in the priority to portrait collections.
- [05:28]
B
So, yeah, more Doorways into your own vulnerability.
- [05:35]
A
Yeah. So being I was, I've. I'm always honest in my poems, but to just say the thing straight up and say, this is what I'm writing about, this is what it is. I consider myself to be a lyrical poet and to even be more microscopic and elegistic. But I wanted to do all of that while also being very honest about the difficulty it is to just say, I'm talking about addiction and I'm talking about loneliness. And here it is. No flowery language when it's not absolutely necessary. Sometimes it's just okay to say, this is really difficult. And writing ours, it allowed me more access to myself in that way. I opened up a lot emotionally. After writing the novel,
- [06:28]
B
We started off kind of talking about reading and readers and reading poems. You have a series of poems in this collection that start. That begin with while reading. Yes, talk about this sort of while reading series.
- [06:50]
A
I wanted to write poems from my inspirations that are no longer with us. So Lucille Clifton. And there's also, in a kind of slippery way, it happens later on with a Strange Air Draws near, where we have Gwendolyn Brooks as an inspiration. And. And so throughout the entire book, there are ways where my own personal canon of writers who are no longer with us comes up in a way where I'm thinking and look, Every Voice. Every Voice includes the voice of the dead. The voices of the dead. And so I wanted to pay homage to them. And the Lucille Clifton poem that you just read for me, I was trying to mimic her voice, mimic the way she would write, having a kind of minimalist style. And then there's While reading the Orchard, which is a book by Bridget Peguine Kelly, who is no longer with us, that is still within the same vein of what are my inspirations from those writers of the dead. So I wanted to think about the idea of voice as not just of the living and not just of music, but voice in general. What is or who are the people speaking to me and through me as I'm writing these poems about grief? You know, who. How can death be or the death of others be a learning tool to figure out my voice after so much has been taken away from me?
- [08:25]
B
I'm always interested in who shows up in poets work. And you just talked about many of your inspirations that are no longer with us. But did anyone show up that surprised you that you didn't know they were going to show up until you were like, oh my gosh, why? How did they wind up here?
- [08:43]
A
Well, when I wrote the poems that have the music epigraphs like Don't Play that Song, Aretha Franklin. I didn't know that I was going to have these poems that took song titles and, you know, used that as a kind of framework for the poems. So when Dionne Warwick showed up, I wasn't mad at it. But, like, girl, where you come from,
- [09:08]
B
no one's ever mad when Dionne Warwick shows up.
- [09:10]
A
I mean, how could you be? She's a genius, you know, and in many ways, still very under underrated. So, yeah, those musical references, I wasn't planning on. On using anyone like that, even though I'm thinking about music constantly, because my father was a singer and so much of the book is about his death. He sang in a group called Superior Movement. So I was always thinking about music, but the way that these musicians showed up, I wasn't actually expecting that to happen.
- [09:45]
B
So, as we're recording this, well, over the weekend, I think it was over the weekend I got my monthly issue of Poets and Writers, and you are on the COVID of Poets and Writers as we're recording this. And in it, Destiny Birdsong wrote a beautiful profile of you.
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A
Gorgeous. Yes, yes.
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B
And in it, she calls you an astute observer of human suffering.
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A
I loved it.
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B
Okay, well, yeah, talk about how you felt about that, about being called that.
- [10:21]
A
And I think added to that, I think she said I was irreverent, which was like, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Even with the first full collection, Thief in the Interior, and then Going Into Mutiny, definitely in Ours, and certainly in Lift Every Voice, there's a way that I just don't shy away from what hurts. I don't shy away from what is considered to be grotesque, ugly, dangerous, traumatic. And it's because. And I don't think that my intention. I don't even think it's possible really, to write an honest poem where what we're trying to do is mute the impact of violence or beautify what is ugly. But what I do want to show is that there is a kind of multifaceted way of considering the. The harsh experiences that we go through. And that language can find the blossoms in the rot. It can find different trajectories to get through what, you know. In all intents and purposes, it's just grief. Like, I write about loss and loss of innocence, loss of feelings of safety. All of that is wrapped up. And writing about enslavement, writing about physical abuse, writing about sexual abuse and making it so that when people read it, it's not just a repeat of the trauma. It is me sharing the psychological and emotional impact that it's had on me and also the questions that it's brought up in me. So it's really important that she noticed that in my work because I have grown so much in reading writers who also, I think, did, you know, similar work, like Sonia Sanchez and her poems about the Move bombing in Philadelphia. So I want to be part of a lineage of what some people call the poets of witness. I rather think of it as just purely the elegy writ large of anything that could be lost. How we can regain some sense of. Of self in sitting in that discomfort and allowing our. Our bodies to just go through the motions of what hurts us. That was a long answer.
- [12:47]
B
No, it's. I mean, I'm thinking about how much do you think about care for the reader, if at all?
- [13:01]
A
You know, there are different needs that every reader has. What I try to do sincerely is not say, this is what happened. It happened in this way. Look at all this blood. Look at all. You know, so in that way, I'm very careful. I'm not always successful in that, because there does have to be, I think, some representation of the violence to make it visceral and to understand what is at stake and what has been lost. But I don't want to make the reader sit through a point by point reliving of any harm that I'm exploring in the book. With that, I also can't predict the sensitivities of every reader. I could be as gentle as possible, and someone can still say, oh, that poem was too much for me. So the way that I go about it is transfiguration of the moment without losing the necessary gravitas of what I'm trying to express, while also honoring myself as a writer. I have to put myself first in these creations, too. So, yeah, there's only so much that I can do, but what is possible for me to do, I take very seriously.
- [14:17]
B
I think I was reflecting on my experience reading the collection, and. And I'm. I'm someone, by the way. Like, I have a really hard time accessing grief at all. Not that I don't have it, because, of course, I'm human. But, you know, my. My. My therapist would tell you it's not something I sit with a whole lot. And I felt. You know, I felt the weight of the emotion in the collection, but I didn't feel mired in it, if that makes sense.
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A
Yes. Yes.
- [15:00]
B
And so for me. So I. It was a. It was a. It was an emotional read. In all the good. Like, in all the good ways.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Of being an emotional read. And so that. I think that was a. I was in awe of that, you know, that you were able to do that in. In the collection.
- [15:23]
A
Part of that might even be with. So I teach, or I have taught a workshop, a poetry workshop called the Poetics of the Poetry of Trauma and Violence, where we read poetry collections that are about traumatic events, about violent experiences that the writers had. If they're, you know, if they're biographical, sometimes they're historical, like Marilyn Nelson's Aretha Emmett McTeel, which is a book I teach often. And in that, I ask my students to maintain a somatic journal so that as they're reading, if they feel something in their body, like their heart drops or they feel anxiety or their breathing changes, I ask them to stop, to write down the line or the image that they. They began to feel that feeling, you know, from reading, and then document what their body is going through. That way we can then come back to class and we can say, well, is there a craft element that's not. Is there repetition that's creating a kind of anxiety? Is there a word choice? Is there maybe some. Some image that is zilly embodied in a way that was shocking to you? And so we move those feelings into the development of their own art, into. How do we then get those feelings not away from us, but we use them as fuel so that we can then have a transference onto the page of a kind of emotional tangibility. And I think it. I think it works in as much as they understand even how to explain what their body is going through. Well, it's difficult to say that, oh, my head was foggy, or. Because so much of that language is just not given to us as we develop into adults. So to be able to, in my own work, get emotions transferred, but not that pain. I'm happy that you were able to experience your own kind of interpretations of that without feeling weighted by what is, you know, really serious and heavy topics in the book.
- [17:29]
B
Are there poetic forms, do you think, that lend themselves to work about grief or work dealing with grief?
- [17:38]
A
Yeah, ones that have a lot of repetition. So the villanelle, where you have the first line and the second, the first and the third line of that first opening terse, that repeating an alternating pattern in. As the last line in the next following tersets, that kind of repetition can feel as though there's a trap, like you're trapped inside of a moment. You're trapped inside of an experience. I would also say that, you know, the pantomime can feel that way because it keeps you going two steps forward, two steps back in the way that it repeats. It's alternating lines. But yeah, repetition is the way that I often see that emotional texture coming through, whether it be, there's a poem, oh, I can't. I can't remember, it doesn't matter. But there's a poem that ends with the word repeating three times. There are quite a few of poems that do that. And each time the word oblivion repeats, like oblivion. Oblivion, oblivion. It changed the way that that words initial impact had on me, as though I was being asked to, or being shown. I was being shown the aftermath of being forced to forget when. Because oblivion is a kind of amnesia. And so what if you lose language and the only thing you can remember is one word or. Or the only feeling you can remember is that one feeling of loss. So for me, repetition is the most powerful way to get that feeling across, that experience of grief across, because it's perpetual and it's almost obsessive to be unable to find release this idea of
- [19:35]
B
loss, of language, of memory. You know, the first poem in the collection is Aid Memoir, which.
- [19:43]
A
Oh, a lot of repetition in that translates.
- [19:46]
B
Well, I had to go. You know, I don't have. I have no French genes in my body, so I have to. Whenever there's like a French word I have to Google, it translates to a memory aid. And so talk about this collection as a memory aid.
- [20:03]
A
That's a great question. Who first? When I think about my father and my feelings that I had and that I had about my father growing up, I did not as a child and even as a young adult understand that he had a life of his own. And as a child, that's not my responsibility to understand. I'm supposed to be supported, protected, all of the things that a parent is responsible for. But I can't sit in those child feelings as an adult. And I had to understand that the way that I remembered him as a child was not the only life that he had. It was a. It was a fraction of who he was. So much of my memory in this book is not necessarily an exercise of revision, but it's certainly an exercise of grace. And in that there are some things that I had to reimagine about him that I had to unbelieve about him in order to make him fully human, fully a person complex. So for me, memory is less about in this collection. It's less about a precision of how things were exactly. And more about how do I preserve a person who was still relatively unknown to me with care that is not. That doesn't stray too far or stray really at all from the impact that this person had on my life. So I didn't want it to make it so that I'm punishing him because my memories of him are painful. But more so that. How can my active memory bring a new light to who he was and bring a new life into me? Because that was. That was killing me, those negative feelings about. About my father. And then also honoring. How do we honor people? How do we honor those that we've lost? How do we. How do we make a ritual of art, make a ritual of what we believe in, and the spiritual process of being able to move forward from oblivion, move forward from devastation?
- [22:18]
B
There's. I feel like there's a lot of spirituality in this collection. Yeah. So we're. I mean, we're on audio, right? People just didn't see the smile break into your face when you said, oh, yeah,
- [22:33]
A
on my spiritual kick. I was raised to be Baptist. It wasn't successful, but I still have a lot. I still have a lot of.
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B
What is success?
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A
What is it like?
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B
What's the measure of success?
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A
The measure of success is being baptized.
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B
Oh, okay. So you could see how religious. You could see how religious I am.
- [22:53]
A
Yeah. I am not. I am not baptized. I am also not someone who goes to church regularly. I read the Bible. I believe Jesus Christ existed. I believe he was a prophet. The supernatural metaphorical language around him, the paternalistic language that a lot of people use to describe him, to define him. I don't prescribe to or subscribe to. Excuse me. I don't subscribe to that language. And I believe that there's a way that multiple spiritualities can be compatible. Like being Christian does not mean everything outside of that is wrong or witchcraft. Surely that's not how a lot of people who practice Christianity, particularly in the Baptist tradition, actually practice. There is, whether people like to say so or not, African spiritual tradition expression in the way black Christianity is explored in the United States. And so I don't shy away from hoodoo. I don't shy away from learning about Santeria or. Or the Yoruba traditions, ifa. I think all of it is really important to be a full spiritual person. So, yeah, I am not a successful. To. To many people. I am not.
- [24:15]
B
Well, again, I revealed myself when I just asked the question of, like, I. I don't.
- [24:20]
A
I don't know.
- [24:25]
B
It's Interesting, though, to think about again, to go back to this idea of grief and working through grief in the collection and how that intersects with spirituality in unexpected ways or different ways in the collection.
- [24:44]
A
Yeah, I think what's possible the first time when I moved to was when I moved to Philadelphia. Yeah. Yeah. When I moved to Philadelphia was the first time I created an altar. And I found on a used furniture website that's very heavy. Wooden chest dresser, old. I mean, solid wood. I wish I could have taken it with me. It was too heavy, so I had to leave it in the alley. I'm pretty sure someone took it. It was very good quality. And I put all of my obituaries on there. A game of dominoes on there, because my paternal grandmother used to play dominoes with me. The Bible. All of my grandparents had a relationship with the Bible. My. My mother's father was a pastor and a jade dragon. I added on there because my grandmother liked to collect figurines that her eldest son would send when he was off and fighting overseas in different wars. What else was on there? Incense. You know, that was mostly for me to. To focus, to hone in on. On what was there. And money. I would leave money on there for prosperity, for the sense of, yeah, I know that we are all here to do our spiritual work, but, baby, I need help. So in order for me to survive, to do the spiritual work, I need rent. So, you know, to bring. To bring that. That to me. And when I started doing that, it. It made the grief that I felt feel. It. It. It minimized it because I. I started to rebuild a connection to people who, yes, they. They are dead, but it doesn't mean they have to be gone. It doesn't mean that anything that I've learned from them is no longer useful, is no longer there. And it also didn't mean that I'm believing in a kind of ghostliness. And I don't, you know, believe or disbelieve in that. But the. The point for me of the altars to remain connected to my ancestors and remain in awe of what they experienced and in honor that they experienced it in such a way that they continued on through me. They were able to make somebody, to make me. Eventually it really helped to think of the dead in that way as living in perpetuity as opposed to having an expiration date.
- [27:21]
B
This collection has four parts to it. Fervor, recumbent, paradise, and psychopomp. Psychopomp was another word I had to look up because I wasn't familiar with psychopomp Talk about, talk about what it is, what psychopomp means to you. Because I'm looking at, I'm looking at my notes and I'm like, well, I have a definition here that I copied from the Internet for, you know, for myself. But you. What is it? What does it mean to you?
- [27:55]
A
I thought it was a useful word for the last section because already the reader had been journeying in a kind of afterlife. I had been, I had, I had been playing a kind of psychopomp in that way of, you know, leading the reader to better understand the dead and to journey to the land of the dead. So for me, psychopomp is me as a writer finally being able to lead myself to the other side, to really sit in that and say, okay. I remember when my grandfather, he howled. He howled in the sanctuary. He was the only one in there with. When the, when the, his. When my grandmother's funeral ended, it was. It was like he waited for everyone to leave and the door closed. And like a film, a beautifully written film, this bellow came. I remember looking up and then looking at my mother and we couldn't say anything to that. So in. In some ways, even though he was still alive, he had been taken to the other side. That grief had snatched him up. And when he died, I'm pretty sure he died of heartbreak. There was nothing sickly about him. He was still able to move. But when you lose someone that you've been with, I think they were together for at least 40 years, there's. There's a way that a part of you goes to the other side with them. So all of this is. I'm starting to wax poetic, but all of it.
- [29:35]
B
No, keep going, keep going.
- [29:40]
A
It's just these connections, these connections, you know, in the way that my grandfather's how showed me that there's a thin veil between the living and the dead. I wanted to also explore that in this book. It's like, let's go there together. Let's. Let's see, you know, what that trip is like together.
- [30:01]
B
The section that comes right before psychopomp is. The section is titled Paradise. Every poem is titled paradise in the section and begins with an epigraph related to Paradise.
- [30:19]
A
Something, right? Talk about.
- [30:23]
B
I was super intrigued by this, this section and, and those pieces that I just talked about to just talk, just talk about this section.
- [30:32]
A
And I think, and I think for me the, the word paradise is at least in the book, a lot looser than this idea of what is the perfect post world. What is, you know, for some people, paradise is heaven, or paradise is the place where all of your dreams and fantasies are fulfilled. You can relax. You don't have to worry about anything. I was thinking of paradise as more of an argument. What is. What is possible or reachable for us when we are honest about what we have lost? And is that a kind of paradise? Is being able to sit with the self and sit with that loss a bridge to better living in a way. So, for instance, in. Because I have, I have my favorites, you know, we don't.
- [31:17]
B
What are your favorite?
- [31:19]
A
So my favorite paradise is there. There are like two or three. So thou art my father, thou my author, Thou my being gavest me quoting John Milton from Paradise Lost in book two, where I'm sitting through actually revising my father's death and seeing myself differently through that loss that from, from the overdose. This overdose. So what did we have that was similar? For so much of my life, I was trying to distance myself from this man. I'm like, no, we have a lot of things that were similar. He loved music. I love music. You know, he could sing. I could carry a tune I used to be better at. I was singing in a choir all the way until, like, through undergrad. So I've always sang in school. He could draw, I could draw. So there's, there's a way. I, I, I had gained so many skills from him that I wanted to make sure that I wasn't betraying myself by rejecting him. And this poem helps me to do that. So this, this paradise for me means how do I reconnect with my father? And what are the benefits of that? Even if it's not something about happiness or joy, a benefit is I know myself a lot better. I don't have the kind of anger that I had against him. The, the, Another paradise fave of mine is the, the Abecederian. I'm yours, you're mine. Like paradise with Sade as the inspiration for that. Because it's a kind of complex love poem in a way. So where did you go? Abandoned? A jester who staggers. Who staggers. A stuttering heart. I have depression, anxiety, adhd. I am very neurodivergent. And thank goodness for therapy because we were able to talk about how a father wound often is the source of the sense of abandonment. Sure. And so, you know, feeling as though any slight is someone saying, you're not good enough. Any misunderstanding is someone trying to throw you away. And so that poem helped me to, to, to move through those feelings.
- [33:35]
B
Why an Abecedarian to do that. And, and for people who are. Can you just say a word about what an abecedarian is? If people don't know what that is?
- [33:44]
A
And this, and this one is twofold. And so it goes in order of A through Z in the front end and then from Z to A in the back end. And so the abecedarian is a poem where the first letter of each word in a 26 line poem is the beginning of the Alphabet. It's the beginning of the Alphabet. So the first line is A. So the word can be and, or apple. And then the second line, the. The line will begin with the word beginning with the letter B. And then for the flip side, the A line will end with the word that ends with the letter Z. And so, and I did that because I had a sign that, that as a prompt to a student and one of my colleagues, she said, so did you. Are you. Can you do this? I was like, I don't have to do it. It's just a homework, but just to show you that I can do it. So that's where it came from. And then beautifully, it became a vessel, it became a container for these feelings that, that I had that I can then, you know, look inside and say, oh, yeah, I can. In a very organized fashion. Yeah, I can. I can look at this more easily.
- [34:58]
B
I want to stick for a second on. On process for another second. When you have an idea, you know, there's always, maybe I'll talk about myself for a second. Oftentimes I get an idea and it's an idea of. I'll usually say, like a small F form. So not like a formal form, but like, I want a poem that, like, sort of does this with the shape.
- [35:19]
A
Yes, yes.
- [35:20]
B
And then I'll sort of wait for the right subject matter to come along, which might be a day, a month, a week, a year for that idea that I already have. And I feel like I get dinged for that a lot because people are like, you're not supposed to, like, start with what you want it to be and work like you're supposed to just like, let it come.
- [35:43]
A
I have the perfect answer for a question you have not even asked yet.
- [35:47]
B
Okay, please, no, no, Say things because
- [35:50]
A
that, because that comment is something I had said. And then I asked myself, why am I saying that? Where did it come from? Process is process, and in lift every voice. I did not plan on writing a book of poetry that soon, but something was bothering me. I kept having these ideas that were titles, and I would Constantly tell my students, do not write your titles. First write the poem and then title it. And so I said, why am I doing that? And I wrote all of these titles for what I thought would be poems that are interesting and said, yeah, Morrisonian started off as a title. It didn't start off as me wanting to write this poem that pulls from all of her novels to speak about my own life. I said, you would be really cool to have a poem called Morrisonian. It would be really cool to have a poem called a memoir. It would be really cool. Was another one to have a poem called the Head of Goliath. And then from that, I used that. I used those titles as prompts to then build the work, to then create. So there is no right or wrong way. Whatever works, works. There are some risks. And doing things in particular ways, you know, like knowing the end of your poem and writing towards that end can make a poem predictable, right? It can. You know, it can. All surprise can be sucked out of it, but not necessarily. You know, you might know how to end it, but you might not know how to get there. How you gonna get there? And that's where the surprise for the reader and for you as a writer can come. So I just wanted to throw that in there.
- [37:24]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. So we. We talked before about the. The last section being called Psychopomp. That last section only has one poem in it.
- [37:36]
A
Talk about one really long poem.
- [37:38]
B
Yeah, one really long poem. Talk about. Yeah, talk about that.
- [37:43]
A
So it's the closing poem to. To Lift Every Voice. And it's called Till Earth and Heaven and Ring. And so it's pulling from the lyrics of Lift Every Voice and sing what we know as the black national anthem. And, you know, when James Weldon Johnson composed this poem and his brother, John Rosamund Johnson, composed the music, it was a song for. Or to me, it's a song that represents how there can still be something built on a foundation of loss. And a lot of that is memory. You know, we have come. It's part of the. So, like, you know, we have come over. And I can only remember when I think of that. I'm not thinking on this. On this call. You could, you know that doing it, it's like, wait, how does it go? We have come. So, like, perseverance is part of it, but it's also like recognizing everything that has been lost and devastated during enslavement, during Reconstruction. And now, okay, what is. What is next? And what do we need to. To. To know about ourselves, to know about our journey to get to the. To the other side of. Of this. And one of my favorite parts of the song, it's like a Thou, Thou who has brought us thus far along the way. Thou who has by thy might led us into the light. Keep us forever on the path we pray. And so this, this prayer, sure, but this request is this. Keep us able to work, keep us able to believe, keep us on a trajectory that we already know is righteous. And I really love that part of the song, this petition to God that is saying, actually, I think what we're already doing is in your name and is going to give us a kind of freedom, a kind of power over our agency. So let's keep us forever in your light, which is on the right path. And in writing this poem, all of the lines end with the word from the song. So the entire song is in the poem in a similar way to the Abecedarian. You know how it has A through Z. This has all of the lyrics in order which they appear. So Lift Every voice and sing appears as. And here begins the impossible lift no narrative should undertake as every vein in me down plucks into a voice. So being inspired by the path of the song and remembering and building tradition, I thought it would be helpful to lift every voice again for the people that I lost and to finally lift my own voice out of this grief, to finally lift my voice out of the silence that I was putting myself through because I was so angry and never wanted to talk about all of these losses. This is the first time I even wrote about my paternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather and their. Their deaths. And I needed to. I needed to do that. I needed to do that.
- [41:18]
B
Did the title of the collection come early? Did it come late? Like, talk about at what point the collection became Lift Every Voice?
- [41:30]
A
I don't remember. I don't remember because I don't know if. I don't know if the title came first. And then that was inspiration for me to write to Lith and Heaven Ring or if I. I wanted to write the Golden Shovel, which is the form of having the. The song up here, as in words and the lines. I don't know if the poem came first. And then it inspired me to name the collection the Fairy Voice. I don't actually remember. I'm glad that it came to me because it is very fitting, I think, even for this moment, which says so much. Every moment is this moment is what I usually say. But it's very frightening to have a 6, 3 split in the Supreme Court over something that is absolutely, blatantly constitutional.
- [42:18]
B
Birthright citizenship.
- [42:20]
A
Birthright citizenship. That makes no, that makes zero sense. It's horrifying. Right. And so when I say especially now, I think, because now it is a blatant, that there is some revisionist stuff happening without, without the, the mass that we. I didn't, I didn't. I was just born, I think, at the end of the Reagan era. But there was some. There was a way that language would be obfuscated. You know, you would have the welfare queen and the crack baby. All of that was very much about poor black women and, you know, but none of that lame, none of that dog whistling is happening now. It is very much out in the open. The. The kind of hate rhetoric that is foundational to the kind of country that the leadership wants. For me, that's new for other generations, maybe they experience something similar. All of that is to say for lift. Every voice is of utmost importance, I think for me for sure, but as a guiding lyric, as a. A call to arms. A call to spiritual arms. Yeah. So I don't know what came first. I'm just glad I got there.
- [43:39]
B
Yeah. It's interesting because the title for me, when I. When I first saw the book and first picked it up, of course I thought of. Of the black national anthem, of course. But when the. When I was done reading it, the word every took on a different meaning for me in. In the title, to me then truly meant. Meant every voice to. What you're getting at when you're talking about this time right now, you know, includes the immigrant voices and the unhoused voices and the. The non citizen voices and that like that sort of every. The word every just really. Yeah. Was important to me after I read the collection in a way that the word every wasn't necessarily important to me.
- [44:29]
A
When I think of the book, there is another part of the song at the end of the song. I don't know why I'm trying to remember it. I have the book sitting right here. But it's important to me to try to embody, to have the song in memory. Even if I get the lyrics wrong, it's important for me to try. Shadow beneath thy hand maybe forever stand true to our God True to our native land. That true to our native land is very tricky for me. It's very, very tricky for me. I am native to this land. I was born here. The idea of indigeneity is, I think, always in flux for black Americans. Some have argued that we were also, you Know, here, indigenously before enslavement. And then others, you know, believe in this idea of being ados African descendants of. Of slaves. I. For me, what is most important is the diaspora and how we're in conversation with everyone who is a part of Africanity. And so when I think of, you know, true to our native land, I am always thinking of the native land of the body so true to the flesh that we have. True to the body that we have command over, that we can make decisions for and about. And then, too true to our native land of diaspora, where wherever our feet touch, we are welcomed and we are. We make it better. And, and we deserve to be there. We earn our right to be there. The word Native for me in that. That way has a lot more, I think, a lot more oxygen in it, as opposed to thinking of native in a way that creates more borders and creates more entitlement. I was here first, so I can do. And for. For. For many reasons that is important to think about colonialism. They think about definitely, you know, those who, who, Who. Who were in the. In Turtle island as they hate. They hate it when you call America Turtle, Turtle Island. But, but, you know, I'm. I'm. I'm thinking too, like, how can that word be used not just for honoring our Native American, I like to say, allies, our Native American kin, but also to honor how we come up together. How do we think about land as what we always share the planet as something that we're indigenous to and that we have to take care of. And that's a harder conversation to have, I think. I think for some people, considering that feels as though it's erasing the importance of having land to one zone and who are the caretakers of a place and space face. And I don't mean to do that. I mean to have both. I want both. And especially as a. As a black American who is still speaking for myself, who's still trying to figure out what. What am I. Am I historically a tool of colonialism, of colonization? And. But then too, can I say that I've been colonized and the answer is yes and yes. Sure, it's yes and yes. So I can't just think of the word native in that way. That is incredibly important as far as how do we get justice for those whose lands have been stolen? Because I don't fit in a category where people like to imagine me as. You know what I mean? Like to imagine me as being part of that conversation. And I am part of that conversation. Right, right. That was the longest answer, but I needed to think it through. Thank you for giving me space to do that.
- [48:41]
B
No, absolutely. I don't want to end without talking
- [48:46]
A
about the COVID Oh, Shakis artwork. Yeah.
- [48:51]
B
So could you. Can you describe it for people that we hope they'll go on even while they're listening to this, and look it up and see it and buy book, obviously. But, yeah, describe. Talk about this cover.
- [49:10]
A
So the COVID is a depiction of. Oh, that is interesting. Two things came to mind. So originally I was thinking that it's a depiction of someone who is a man in a suit. This is a metal carving. It's not copper. What did he carve this out of? And it's dark, so everything is black. But also the features are of black people, so you can tell they're race. They're raced in a particular way. And it shows a man whose hands are over a figure, as that figure levitates in front of him as though he's pulling them up from the ground. And they're just floating and their body is flat, so they're running parallel to the ground. And he's looking upon this figure almost. Almost in a way that is so calming. It's not. It's. There's no power. Even though he's. He seems to be influencing the floating, he's not looking at it as though he's trying to overpower this person. It seems as though they're in collaboration. And it could either be a magician, like a kind of magic trick, or it can be spiritual elevation. You know, like, this is a person who has reached the apex of being able to converse with the spirit within a person. And when I saw. When I initially saw this art piece by Shaikh, and the piece is called oh, My Body, Make Me make of Me Always a man who questions. I knew for sure this had to be the COVID I knew immediately. I sent it to my press to say I said this was the COVID I just knew it encapsulates everything that I'm trying to do in the book, which is how do we have a spiritual connection that we can share with somebody else? It's just. It's mind blowing to me.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, It's. There are so many interpretations of it which make it. And they all go. They all go. Right. They all go. I think for me, it was a magician.
- [51:31]
A
Yeah.
- [51:31]
B
And the reason why for me it was a magician is there's. I interviewed an author over a year ago by the name of James B. Hale, and he is a philosopher and a historian, and he writes About. He writes about black people such as Frederick Douglass as having magical powers, but he writes about it in such a way, a realist way, and makes arguments about why the archive and the writing shows us that he was capable of these magical acts. And people like Henry Box Brown he talks about, you know, clearly had powers. That's how he was able to survive
- [52:22]
A
in the box and that train for HeLa.
- [52:24]
B
HeLa, like. And so when I saw this right away, although it is a very contemporary looking man, just by his suit and his haircut looks contemporary, I thought about like Frederick Douglass the magician right away. And so it was like channeling that ancestral while still being this very contemporary figure that was like, to me, very obviously, like had the power to levitate someone.
- [52:56]
A
Yeah. It's beyond time. It transcends time.
- [52:58]
B
Yeah. Or he could or. This was again, not my immediate thought, but I think there's also a question of maybe this is a healer. Right. Like, maybe like we don't see a table, though. He's laying on the word every. So maybe that is sort of a table, but like this person, he's actually healing this man underneath his fingers.
- [53:17]
A
Yeah. And. And shout out to Lynn Buckley, who designed it, you know, so that the body would be right over every. And you know, and lift would be right where the lifting is happening and voice being where the feet are. Because that's where we're standing on. We're standing on the voices of. Of others. Shout out to Lynn Buckley. Yeah, Healer. Absolutely.
- [53:39]
B
Yeah.
- [53:39]
A
Look at you, Solomon. Come on. It's your interpretation.
- [53:43]
B
You don't want to get me started. I'll be. We'll be on here for another hour.
- [53:46]
A
I'm. I'll be interpreting.
- [53:50]
B
Interpreting.
- [53:50]
A
Do you want to give the. Do you want to give the Luca Tiffan poem the reverse reading of it?
- [53:54]
B
Yeah. Can I read? Do you want me to read it?
- [53:57]
A
You can if you want. Yeah.
- [53:58]
B
No, you can read it. You.
- [54:00]
A
I'll do it. Yeah, I'll do it.
- [54:01]
B
You want to do it?
- [54:02]
A
Okay. Yeah. I just have to find it first.
- [54:04]
B
While reading L, page 26.
- [54:08]
A
And so starting from the last line and then reading up his reflection right side up and singing let go their heat in his hand. The worst of my father, spoons flirting with rage I no longer believe in. I remember. Oh, I like that. The worst of my father, spoons flirting with rage I no longer believe in. I remember him despite myself, seeing at once all four corners of his life. That's beautiful. I answered my sonhood furious and a man past and future summoned me his smile careening through to the movable earth. And his grave gave purpose while wind turned its nightly pages. My father visited me. Yeah, that's good work.
- [54:52]
B
My father visited me while reading Lucille Clifton.
- [54:55]
A
While reading Lucille Clifton. Yeah. Going straight into the title.
- [54:58]
B
Whoever wrote this is brilliant.
- [55:02]
A
I don't know who wrote this for.
- [55:04]
B
Who wrote this?
- [55:07]
A
It was me.
- [55:09]
B
No, it's good, right? It works. Yeah, it works both. It works.
- [55:14]
A
Thank you for showing that to me ways. I'm gonna start reading it that way and reading now.
- [55:20]
B
Amazing. Amazing. I want. I. I want credit.
- [55:24]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. Shout out to Sullivan Silver. Your name is absolutely stunning, too. When I. Yeah, when I got the email asking if I wanted to work with you, I was like, well, can we also talk about how lovely your name is?
- [55:41]
B
Thank you. We can talk about it once I stop recording.
- [55:44]
A
Absolutely.
- [55:48]
B
So we want people to go out if you are listening to this. The book is available now. Lift Every Voice by Philip B. Williams. You can find Philip online at Instagram at Philip. Philip Bwauthor. You have been listening to Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer, a new books network podcast. And I'm your host, Sullivan Sommer. If you like what you heard, like, follow and drop us a rating on your favorite podcast app. We're on Instagram ditions to the Archive and we're free over on substack2 where you can find more great author interviews. Thank you for listening. Two additions to the Archive.