Original subtitles

Hello. Welcome to the 2021 Bronx Book Festival. My name is Sarita Gonzalez

and I am the Bronx Book Festival adult co-chair and I am thrilled to introduce this panel.

You're listening to Poetry & Resistance. The panel is moderated by Elizabet Velasquez.

Elizabet Velasquez is a Boricua writer from Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Her upcoming novel When We Make It is set to the debut in September of 2021. Here is Elizabet.

Thank you so much, um. Hello everyone, welcome to our panel discussion Poetry and Resistance. It is

my immense honor to moderate this conversation with some of my favorite brilliant and important

writers of our generation. I would like to take a moment to thank the Bronx Book Festival for all of

the love and the labor that went into making this panel possible. I want to thank the panelists for

joining me and thank also our ASL interpreters who are joining us today and thank you for uh

reading and watching. So just to give you an idea of how this panel is going to go uh, poets will,

I'm going to introduce the poets and read their bios and then they're going to read a poem

uh from their book. And I will then ask them some questions about their process

and then some specific questions about uh their work in their book and their poems.

And so without further ado I will uh introduce the poets that we have joining us today.

Our first poet is uh t'ai freedom ford, author of & more black

& more black t'ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher. Her poetry, fiction,

and essays have appeared in Apogee, Bomb Magazine, Calyx, Drunken Boat, Electric Literature,

Gulf Coast, Kweli, Tin House, Poetry and others. Her poetry has been anthologized in A Body of

Athletics edited by Natalie Diaz, The Break Beat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop,

and Nepantla: An Anthology of Queer Poets of Color, and others. t’ai has received

awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Camargo Foundation, The Center for Fiction,

Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, Kimbilio, and The Poetry Project.

In 2019, t’ai became a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship inaugural fellow. She is the author

of two poetry collections, how to get over from Red Hen Press and & more black from Augury Books,

a 2020 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award Finalist, winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for

Lesbian Poetry, and finalist for the 2021 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Claremont Graduate University.

t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn where she is an editor at No, Dear Magazine. Our next panelist

is María Fernanda. María Fernanda's poems and translations appear in the Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4:

LatiNext, The Wide Shore, Cynthia Mannick's Soul Sister Review and more. Awarded the Andrea K.

Willison prize for poetry and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Amistad award in poetry.

María Fernanda serves as the Black Artist and Designers Association's secondary advisor at ASU.

And last but not least is Jasmin Kaur. Jasmin Kaur is a writer, illustrator, and poet

living in on unceded Sto:lo territory. Her writing which explores themes of feminism,

womanhood, social justice and love, acts as a means of healing and reclaiming identity.

As a spoken word artist and creative writing facilitator she has toured across North America,

the UK and Australia to connect with youth through the power of artistic expression.

Named a "rising star" by Vogue Magazine, and a "Writer to Watch" by CBC Books,

her work has been celebrated at the American Music Awards by musical icon Jennifer Lopez

and shared by celebrities like Tessa Mae Thompson and Reese Witherspoon. She has been featured by

Harper’s Bazaar India, Huffington Post, The Indy 100, Elle India, Popsugar and other publications.

Jasmin completed her Bachelor of Arts in English with a focus on Creative Writing

at the University of the Fraser Valley. She went on to become a public school

teacher and is now completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her

debut poetry and prose collection, When You Ask Me Where I’m Going, is available with HarperTeen

in North America and with Penguin Random House in the Indian Subcontinent. Her sophomore novel,

If I Tell You The Truth, is available now with HarperTeen. You can find Jasmin on instagram at

at jusmun j-u-s-m-u-n. All right we're gonna get into some poems y'all ready?

All right we throwing it over, we're starting with uh t'ai freedom ford, author of & more black.

t'ai, take it away. Word, thank you everybody. It's a pleasure to be here.

Uh the Bronx Books Festival, finally. This is so dope. So I'm gonna read a poem

called "if someone should take your picture & make you black"

for Aunjanue

remember when r&b singers were all the rage & all the rage was trademarked Black & mary

j blige wailed coked-up love songs & oprah was king of every little black box inside white

folks minds & white folks minds wasn't nothing but a pancake box of stereotype & al b. sure's

lightskinned voice pimped the airwaves--- & then came Wesley black & smooth as all our scars we

thought ugly & Hallie quit David Justice & no justice no peace---but that [ __ ] Rodney was

already drunk off the settlement & celebrity & yes mediocrity is a [ __ ] although you'd never

say it like that still i understand how tiring it is the way rage bubbles like a pot of grits

except ain't no Al Green or any other reverend to receive your holy metaphors & you are better for

it & the world is better because you present like Christmas morning and Aretha's gospel

ain't nothing but black magic in the way that flour & water & fatback make gravy in the way

we die broke & indebted with nothing for family to inherit but our gifts blood-borne & cosmic &

illegitimate & inexplicable as any bastard---black as any mirror staring back at us with our own eyes

Ooooooh, t'ai kicking it off for us with some fire.

Thank you so much, t'ai. Next up we have María Fernanda. Take it away María Fernanda.

So I'm working on a series of uh 100 word love stories about being Black and queer in Phoenix

um. Actually last year during the pan the beginning of the pandemic was

I think it was the 20th or 25th anniversary of Waiting to Exhale being shot here

um so a group of writers that are natives except for me from here we're working on

something. So this is part of my contribution um. Gloria’s story.

Early, we named a safe word. One to say when Jamila or I felt the pull of our car’s engine

to drive against the pandemic—to leave Los Angeles for Phoenix, or leave Phoenix for Los Angeles—to

see the other. ‘Turtle’ was our safe word, our myth of a love’s slow propel forward. It didn’t

work. Turtles retract to withdraw, to protect themselves and, in recent research, to eat,

and I wanted to extend everything: my head, my legs, and my love with her. We returned to this

waterline, blurry and often. Until, we couldn’t. And then I'm going to read from LatinNext.

If you're reading along it's Brothers Under the Skin, After Piri Thomas.

i buried my brother alive / once, as a joke, with his head / burning and his tongue lissom. / North

American now, / he had learned to land / a twang into any syllable to its near / breaking.

He mastered / even a Yankee English. / He had the last name, / the accent, the pass / -port, and the

blue / contacts. I wondered / if he remembered, / he had our eyes first: / the color of syrup /

sapped in the spring. / We used to sit at the mirror, / him, braiding my hair / and calling us

beautiful. Thank you. Ooo. I wonder if he remembered he had our eyes first. Okay y'all okay.

Oooo, thank you, María Fernanda, uh. Up next we have Jasmine Kaur. Take it away, Jasmin.

Hey guys I'm gonna be reading from my book When You Ask Me Where I'm Going,

um. This poem is on page 32 and it speaks to what it feels like to be a Punjabi woman

living in a largely white conservative community in Canada.

he tells me he doesn't care about politics and i am lost. i am a brown woman born on land stolen,

sacrificed and then silenced. i am a brown woman born into a body that turns

heads that only house glares. glares that ask me to leave. mouths that spit blood towards my kind.

hands and fists and forces that want to push me back to where i come from. while where i come

from screams in ways that go unheard. where i come from is buried under blistering earth and

burning minds that are set aflame by a state that brings kerosene instead of water when my

people are thirsty. where i come from has been dug out of the dried soil by people young enough

and old enough to demand more than justice from those who have tried and failed to crush them.

he tells me he doesn't care about politics and i wonder if he can see the political boundaries on

my body---the conflict zones between my shoulder blades. the border built between my tongue and me.

the partition carved into my palms. all the ways in which it is political for me to live. thank you

I thank you, Jasmin, and thank you um to all the poets um. They asked me to moderate a panel and I

just, I could sit here all day and just be like, let's just read poems, um, and make it a poetry

reading. But we're gonna get into the questions, um. If y'all see me hype is because I am,

um. I'm really excited to be here uh with these incredible poets. But let's um stop with the

fangirling we're gonna start with the basics, um. So I know we just went through all of your bios

with all your incredible accolades um, but none of us start there, right, none of us start there.

If we are being metaphorical, right, we all begin on a blank page. So can you tell us a little bit,

and this question is for all the panelists um, can you tell us a little bit about your uh blank page?

Before the bio, before the accolades um, when and how did you come into writing? And I just want to

uh preface this by saying that um I know sometimes panels can feel like a ping pong between the

moderators questioning and the and the authors so I just want to invite everyone because like we're

all poets and we feed off each other's energy, um. So I want to invite that energy into the space and

um, feel free to feed off of each other and if a free-flowing conversation happens then

let that happen um organically. And also, most questions are directed towards all panelists but

if there's a question that's specifically directed towards one panelist and it sparks some sort of

inspiration or thought, feel free to jump in afterwards and share in that energy um. So yeah!

How did y'all um, when when and how did you come into writing, um? I will uh kick it off with t'ai.

Yeah pick the old lady. Stop picking on me Elizabet. *laughter* Man I just really um

I honestly don't remember a time in my life uh where I wasn't writing something or um I feel like

I always paid attention to words and you know, I mean I'm a child of hip-hop. I was, you know,

10 years old in 1983, when like DMC was on the radio. And and you know I'm like so I I was like

trying to rap, you know, since I was like 10, you know. And beatboxing in Astoria Projects and

and so I feel like I've always tried to express myself through writing, um. Always like, you know.

So I was writing my little corny rhymes, you know, as shorty t and tiny t and then poet t supreme.

You know I mean it's like I've always always, there's never been a time when I've not like

um written, but I definitely feel like hip-hop was my entryway into a writing space and then

um, you know, reading like the typical writers in your public school setting, you know,

reading your Maya Angelous and, you know, Toni Morrison and stuff I felt like I became

more, Alice Walker's book uh, The Temple of My Familiar. I remember reading that book and being

like I want to write a book like this and um you know but like and then like I remember like

when we left New York and drove you know the 16 hours to Atlanta and I was like 13 years old I was

in the back like writing my autobiography you know what I mean in the back of the station wagon so

again it's just like I feel like words have always been like my saving grace my my vehicle

my my my way of expressing myself my way of like um you know my my sort of therapy

you know like you know just just I can't remember of time when I've not written not thought about

writing have not been reading words have not been trying to like surround myself by words to use

them as like a bomb or a salve like they've always just been a part of my life so yeah

I know that sounds corny because like I feel like but it's like really kind of true for me

the the truth is never corny never corny anybody else you feel free to jump in you have to

I would say what came to my mind first was when I realized my mother and my story was different and

that I wanted it to be known um but before that I was always journaling and I recently listened

to this really amazing conversation between Annette Lawrence and Nikky Finney and they had

a whole section just talking about like Black girl journaling um so before I was like writing poems

more rigorously, I was always just in my notebook. Like I would write even little songs in my room

about things that, you know, I got made fun of. I got made fun of for my voice for a long time.

I was known as the girl that had a voice like I was, like I had smoked cigarettes for 30 years

um. So it was crazy. And then um about being short and all that stuff, and then slowly,

I can't remember who introduced me to this, but someone was like, oh you can write "Dear Diary"

and so I started as a young person writing "Dear Diary" in my journals and then I got really lucky

growing up in Washington DC in the 90s before like what it looks like now I went to an all-Black

arts magnet public school in DC, Duke Ellington, and that changed my life. My neighborhood

school was different. It was more your typical public school Eastern, and I had friends who,

their brothers would teach there and they would tell me how their brother got beat up that day and

it really sucked, and so I had I had to apply to Duke. And I told my mom like, this is what I want

and um, you know, people weren't sure because they're like, oh like the academics aren't

supposed to be so good. And I was like, I just want to write, right. I just want to be around

my people. I just want to like, you know, see what more I can learn. And it was the

best experience because we were learning about like Steve Biko. Like I knew more about Steve

Biko than I did in Nelson Mandela. I was like, who's Mandela, like but you know at some point,

um. And it was just cool you know. I was reading Toni Morrison at 14 and I fell in love with my

first girlfriend over Sula right like, it was just as you can imagine. But I I will stop there.

I love that, but it's Toni Morrison love stories. There's so many. (laughter) Yeah I was also a

huge journaler in high school. Like, I, back when tumblr was the place to be in like 2011,

that's where I was. I had my I had my public tumblr account and my private tumblr account.

And the private tumblr account was where I had like three friends following me where I would

journal things that I felt like sharing with my friends, um. And it never crossed my mind that

time to share any of those poems publicly. It was just like this outlet for myself to um to be able

to explore my writing in a safe space um. I grew up very introverted, like, I was a very shy kid.

My like, it wouldn't have been intuitive for me to, like, want to stand in front of an

audience with a mic in my hand performing a poem. Like that was not me um, but I was a huge admirer

of spoken word poetry. I remember like when I was 19 years old like just getting into university um,

my one of my close friends and I, we discovered spoken word on youtube like Def Jam Poetry and

like fun poetry and those kinds of youtube pages um and we were just we just said links back and

forth um of poems that we really, really loved. And that's where my love for poetry came from was

more as like an admirer of this art form rather than someone who's self-identified as a poet,

um. And I fell in love with poetry as a listener to the point where I was like,

to my friend like, we need to host an open mic like we need to just get people in a room together

in person so we can just sit there and experience this live, um. And we did. We figured out a way

to organize an open mic in our local community um, but as we were organizing someone was like to me,

like, Jasmin are you gonna perform at the event that you're hosting? And I was like,

no like that's not me. Like I'm just there because I love this craft so much as like

an um as like a listener, um. But I kind of that that thought kind of sat in my mind. It sprouted.

And I ended up writing something um that um that I thought spoke to like the political

themes of the event, the event that we wanted to host and somehow found the courage to stand in

front of an audience in like a theater um with mic in my hand, performing this thing um. And

it was at that moment when I realized that maybe there's more to this path for me as well um,

not just as an admirer of the craft, but as like an actual um contributor to this beautiful

art form that that gives me joy and gives me like sustenance at a soul level and a spiritual level.

It's so funny I have to say when back at my high school we used to organize readings in

the cafeteria and even before you would start on the mic or the host would start,

who was like a classmate of ours, people would just be ragging on us so hard. They'd be like

all those waves like they're making me seasick and [ __ ]. And it was like this big confidence

that you had to have to be able to like say okay y'all are making fun of us and whatever,

but we're gonna do this because we were the literary department, which is the same department

that Dave Chappelle was in many years ago, but no one really knew we exist, um, but yeah. It was

it was just such an amazing exchange, right, that I don't usually get to get um like in a theater

or something like that, if I'm not in a Black city or Black originated city, but yeah, that's real .

Thank you, it's so amazing to me every time I um talk to writers and I ask this question and I just

hear folks talk about their writing journey about how, like uh, each of you were saying

your own ways, writing has always been a part of your identity and just who you are and how

you've existed. And now I know a lot of folks write, right, whether it's confessional and um,

bell hooks was talking about how um some of her first writing was confessional writing,

like in the diary like María Fernanda was saying, right, um and but a lot of folks also haven't

um come to embrace the label writer, right, or like the label poet um uh and Jasmin you talked

a little bit about this like that the moment on the stage was the moment the first moment that you

were like oh maybe there's more um to this. When did y'all truly believe, if that's still a thing

because I know I still have my moments where I'm like I don't know, right, but when did y'all truly

believe that you or or were able to say, you know what, I am a writer or maybe not you know using

the word writer because I know some folks go by like literary artists or you know whatever it is

that you um call to yourself, but that you that writing was what you were absolutely meant to do.

It was there like a particular moment um that you can, maybe it was multiple moments, but. I don't

know if this was uh the moment where I realized like, this is what I absolutely have to do,

but but I think there this was a moment of recognition for me as a

as a writer and a friend of mine had given me a cassette tape of Toni Cade Bambara talking

somewhere it's like a lecture. This was like this was like maybe '96 or something like that.

And I remember listening to this cassette tape and understanding and vibing like and shaking

my head with everything she's saying. And I thought like damn, I must I must be a writer,

like I've read her short stories. I love you know like I love Toni Cade Bambara, but I'm sitting

there listening to her as, you know, this kid who like was working at the mall selling t-shirts and

I was still writing of course and like doing like, you know, going to poetry readings and

stuff like that, but I in the back of my mind I never you know thought of myself as like you know

you know writer capital W and um, when I heard that cassette tape of her speaking, I remember I

related to it so much and I'm like damn, like I must be a writer, like I I like felt this kinship

with her and I I like, all of like, what she was talking about it was just like yes, I I understand

these sensibilities and I really felt like bold enough to sort of put myself on her level

as you know and to say like, yeah I must really I must be a writer, too um. And then a few years

later I like uh apply for Brooklyn College's MFA program um and move back to New York so you know.

I would say there's like a moment I was with my friend Aleca and she had just gotten and she was

an actress, is an actress um, the ability to like I think she was traveling with like the

Shakespeare Theater or something on a tour and I had just gotten um, this was 2014,

and I had just heard that Terence Hayes had chosen my poem for something as a finalist,

and specifically Hurston/Wright, and that was just like this moment like oh shh like I could

be an artist first because privately, in in my privacy, I felt like I was always writing

and I didn't it didn't matter whether I called myself a writer or not,

but that initial recognition was wild and I don't like centering those kinds of moments

of like outward public-facing stuff, but it was definitely the first one where I was like,

is this real? Is this really happening? Wait what does this mean? And I was I was shaking at

the little award ceremony they had for everybody and I was just like, I can't believe that like

this is happening in public, if that makes sense. Like I can't believe that I get to be part of this

world that I feel like I've always um you know, revered. And now like I'm seeing like

Brian Gilmore who's a really amazing DC poet. I'm seeing, you know, just Marita goldman and just,

uh Golden, and just seeing people that I love and didn't realize like oh [ __ ] like I'm kind like

this is also part of my my ancestry, right, um. That was that was kind of one of those moments.

I am somebody who struggles constantly with imposter syndrome. Like it hasn't gone away

two books later. It's still very much there and I think that that's something that I really have

to work hard at and and challenge within myself because I feel like white supremacy really has

this power to try to put us in our place, as like, writers of color. And these white institutions do

that as well and we think of like I just think of like gatekeeping within the publishing industry

and in like literary spaces that are very often white um, and I was like grappling with this

whole concept, like just recently I wrote this poem that dealt with the fact that I'm sitting

here questioning my identity as a writer so hard, but there's a white man somewhere in the world

um with the mic in his hand who's saying who's telling my people's stories with no fear or no um,

guilt or no question about his identity or or his, you know, worth as a writer. So why am I

questioning who I am um? But it's like this ebb and flow thing with me constantly and I

and I almost like meditate on it. It's um it's like ongoing work within myself to be able to

break down those internal barriers um, but one one really beautiful moment for me was like when I got

to first hold my first book in my hands for the first time. Like being able to hold these poems

physically in my hand. There was something about being able to touch those words and

and see them bound in this in this form as a book as this, this object, like this living thing

that um that someone else is going to hold and that is going to take on another life for that

person who reads it, that was like a really beautiful moment for me. And I think that as

as a reader, as someone who has grown up finding safety and solace and comfort and home in books,

to be able to have this book in my head was that was that moment for me I think.

Thank you for that. And then I think that's a really good segue into the title of this panel

which is Poetry and Resistance. So when y'all hear that um title, resistance and poetry,

or that phrase, what does that mean for you? What does that mean to you and for your

work? Somebody better speak because I'm tired to be the first one.

Can you start us off? Yes you're on mute.

María Fernanda, can you start us off? I don't know if you heard me, sorry I think my computer

froze for a second. So I was like uh got it I'm honestly this is an excellent question and I am

still thinking about it um, but in terms of resistance I mean, I feel like that's kind of

where my poetry started. Like I grew up in a white family in a Black city, right,

and I was the one that was always running away from home, not necessarily in a dramatic kind

of way, but like in a like, I I can see that I'm different and I gotta go somewhere to figure that

out right. And I knew it wasn't gonna happen in my home. But it was never on some like, you know,

I don't want to be in my family da da da, but I was like, I got a journey and I gotta go,

you know what I mean? It was more like that um, so it was at first it's resistance to being told that

I need to act a certain way, because I think even in to my mother's credit, she was trying to debunk

like, the things that she had been told as a white woman growing up in Texas,

but I needed more right? And I required more and I wanted to seek that out for myself.

So um in that way that's kind of where resistance began, but it now presently it's really just

like I'm constantly in conversation with the things I'm experiencing the things that I'm um

you know a part of. I mean being in Arizona during 2019 / 2020 / 2021 like, they're still like white

guys shooting outside my apartment because they're bored, because it's the pandemic, and wrote a poem

about it, but still like participating in the mutual aid in Phoenix and just trying my best to

figure out where can I contribute um without, with also being mindful of being a transplant, right,

because I just got here to a certain degree. So it's yeah there's so much I want to say,

but I also want to think. No and I feel like that's ongoing. It's like, you know, consistent,

like how how does my work contribute um to this larger narrative right um yeah. Thank you.

Um so when you said like the title poetry and resistance, the first thing that came to my mind

um was just like the history of my people, of the Sikh people um

in Punjab, back in my motherland um, and the way that poetry has had this like

community building role um in our psyches and our identities as Sikhs for like hundreds of hundreds

hundreds and hundreds of years um. So like for example, like back in around the 1500s um when

Sikhs were actively like, you know, fighting to protect their protect their existence

as like a minority community, as a marginalized community, um we were learning how to defend

ourselves, but poetry was a part of that of that um of that community building. Like

Sikhs were taught to write poems and share poetry that would inspire political resistance um among

among all of us. And and those poems were just as important as being able to, you know,

learn how to ride a horse or to learn how to like um to defend yourself in like a in a physical way.

And that translated over hundreds of years of poetry being part of the way that our community

has um resisted oppression. Like um for example in the 1980s and 1990s, when when Sikhs were actively

being targeted in Punjab um within like a a state crackdown um and as the as the government was

um targeting Sikh youth and disappearing Sikh youth, I mean extra-judicial violence, um Sikhs

were writing poems. Sikh were publishing poems in like local newspapers um and just refusing to

erase themselves, refusing to just disappear into the darkness and today um we're seeing

another movement in Punjab, the Farmer's Protest movement, where farmers are fighting for their

lives and livelihoods um under state agricultural bills that are um making it impossible to to be a

farmer and to to continue that work. And we're seeing poetry being used um at like grassroots

level within these protests. We're seeing poetry in the form of song and folk song and and folk

tales being celebrated um, organically like just kind of sprouting up within like these um these

organizing spaces. So it's like this has been a part of my identity, I think, for as long as I can

remember. And it came naturally to me to become a poet because of where I came from historically.

Thank you for that. Um yeah I don't know if you wanted to add to that um, t'ai.

Um well I'll just say that um

for me as of late um a lot of when I'm writing poetry, when I'm thinking about poetry or

resistance in relation to poetry, I'm really thinking about resisting, I guess um

sort of like, poetic form that has has been the forms that have been created by white folks

uh white men, you know what I mean, so like the sonnet, right, my book is

a collection of sonnets, but you know I call them Black ass sonnets and they're like, you know,

I'm I have created my sort of you know own interpretation or translation of what a sonnet is

you know in the spirit of like Wanda Coleman and and and then really you

know and sort of so thinking about like how I can subvert you know traditional white forms

thinking about um the way in which language appears on the page. I don't think there is

a period anywhere in this book um you know so using like you know you know I don't think they're

they're capital letters but I didn't you know it's like even thinking about like why do I have to to

capitalize you know proper nouns or like why do I have you know what I mean so like really think

I I'm an English teacher right I teach grammar and [ __ ] but I'm like at the same time I'm trying to

resist and subvert you know like when I write you know letters and I used to like what

write you know emails back people you know enter you know invite me professionally to do something

and I write and I'm all like "capital letter this. period that" and now I'm like [ __ ] it yo

everything is lowercase, everything, you know what I mean. I'm like, what's up like, I'm speaking,

I'm not I'm like trying to resist like all of that like you know um I don't I don't even,

you know, just all of these like, this sort of like you know the Strunk and White rules and

and and you know like I just really want to just like you know just like middle finger to the

King's English and the standard English and you know like for me that is the I feel like it's a

like a line by line you know sort of resistance, a word by word sort of resistance within the poem

um. And then of course subject matter and content is sort of speaking to like larger

issues of you know all the isms that exist. But for me I feel like I'm I've really taken to like

you know resisting and these very like, you're almost on a like you know molecular level and you

know just like a line by line level um you know syllable by syllable by syllable in the case of

sonnets you know what I mean um and really trying to like sort of like have you know these you know

Shakespeare and the rest of them you know just like literally turning in their graves you know

when I read my poems and they're hearing like how I'm just [ __ ] with their forms you know.

So yeah. Thank you for that. First of all I feel like I want an "I'm an English teacher. I

teach grammar and [ __ ]" t-shirt, um t'ai freedom ford, so if that could happen that would be great.

Um but I think that this is a really good um segue into um your book right, because um I think that

when you're talking about sub subverting form, one of the things that I noticed, or

that anybody notices, immediately when they pick up your book is that um you do that from jump,

like from the cover, like from the way that you decided to um create the book. So your book exists

see exists as two books in one um. And literally it has two um different sets of table of contents.

You have two different sets of acknowledgements, because I was like maybe the acknowledgements are

the same right, because I'm like maybe it's in the middle right. I was like trying to figure it

out. I'm like maybe the acknowledgements are like in the middle and they share the book. Nope t'ai

was like, two different sets of acknowledgements um and you know a lot of the poems um exist as

sonnets. So what inspires uh your choice in terms of form. I know you talked about subverting,

but I guess I'm wondering like, do you sit down and like intentionally like, how do I like just

just do what I like do like just you know or um you know how do you decide on what forms your book

is going to take or your poems are going to take like what comes first like the poem of the form,

the form of the poem. Like what happens there? Yeah thank you for the question,

uh. The form I think definitely came first. I was at a Cave Canem retreat and I had the pleasure of

being a student of Terence Hayes' and uh he's just you know amazing. And he brought in a packet

of Wand- Wanda Coleman's sonnets. And I had been teaching my kids Shakespearean sonnets, which were

like the only sonnets I seem to be familiar with, although I knew the work of Countee Cullen

and um all of these like sort of like um you know Harlem Renaissance poets who were writing sonnets

you know what I mean. And I didn't even realize it. Like I'm going back,

I'm finding it now I'm like holy [ __ ] they were writing sonnets um. But reading Wanda's sonnets

really opened me up. They were like off meter and like just like really doing it their own

thing with language and and meter and you know, there was no like a b a b c d c d sort of rhyme

scheme and all this [ __ ] that I had learned as a so-called sonnet. And so I was like, yo,

like this has really opened me up and I just the rest of that retreat

was, everything that I was writing I was writing in a sonnet form, whatever, but I sort of like,

I was like I'm gonna make it my own. This is gonna be maybe this is gonna be 13 lines and

maybe it'll have 15 syllables and maybe like you know what I mean, like I'm just gonna

I'm a riff on it and sort of like you know. And at first I really was like following this like I was

like okay I'm gonna do like you know I'll do the 10 syllables per line. I'll do 14 lines. But then

when I was going back, a lot of the revision was about like how can I break that up and how

can I really like you know funk it up um. And so yeah definitely, the form came. Also I think um

at that time I probably was having a lot of trouble trying to write. And knowing that I had

this container to dump words in even if it was this traditional sonnet form that I had known,

which was like a four-, I had a 14 line container I had you know basically 140 syllables in that

container, and I was like, I could do this right. And so it was like I can dump my images into this

container and sort of like you know finagle it how I need to. And that was very easy for me. I

I am a artist and I am I teach English, but I went to college as a math and computer science major.

So there is a mathematical part of my brain that very much thrives on symmetry and

numbers and so like counting that, you know. And I'm also like you know Virgo rising like

mad kind of OCD with it. And so like you know like we were talking about that whole type A

you know personality. And so like it really suited me, it suited the math part of my brain,

but then to be able to like funk it up creatively and bring like my you know my

wordsmith side and you know bring image to like what felt like a mathematical equation to me

was really fun um in it. And so it was like a challenge, but it also was very easy for me,

because I didn't have to think about writing like you know some you know 15 stanza poem. It's like

can I get 14 lines down? I can, right. Um and so yeah. And then this part I you know I thought I

was doing something fresh, but then after I I did it then I started again like retroactively you

start this to discover like all of these other books. Like people been doing this [ __ ] for

years. Eileen Myles has a has a book like this and I'm like you know what I mean so I'm like,

oh man. I'm thinking I'm all fresh. You know how it goes. Ain't nothing new under this sun, so.

You realize you know how much your work is in conversation with so and and that happens a lot

in your book, you're in conversation, you're speaking with, like if people are wise they're

going to read your book like with Google next to them. Because you really shout out so many

artists and so many different forms of art so um. And also hearing you talk it was uh

thinking about the form, I really appreciate how you um just mentioned fun with the word form,

because sometimes I feel like that can um feel sometimes maybe not fun um. But it makes me think

of like the form as like a beat that's already you know like thinking back to like mixtape origins,

right? Like the form is like a beat and you just write it. You gotta write it. You gotta write it.

So thinking of form in that way. So thank you for that because I just kind of opened up something in

my head. Um. I have a question for María Fernanda. Your work is really beautifully narrative um and

listening to you talk today where you were talking about how you're in conversation right with

the world around you and what's happening um in your environment, your direct environment,

and so the images in your um writing are like really, just you know, beautiful.

Um, your writing is is like a a painting um, it really paints pictures that leads the reader

inside of a story with characters and scenery um and it's almost like a a movie

um like. So what advice do you have for poets who want to tell stories using poetry? Um well

first what comes to mind is when Nikky I'm I'm so I'm obsessed with Nikky Finney. It's clear,

you're going to hear her name a lot. But she says that film is poetry's first cousin. So for me I'm

just like, that opened up so much which is why I started writing this project around Waiting

to Exhale, because I'd always feel like oh films are over here and like I'm over here scribbling,

but I've always been in love with screenplay. Like when you see those awards ceremonies and

they like kind of display the screenplay on the um on the screen like, I just was obsessed and

would go to the library and read it and so on. But in terms of advice, I mean. I would just say it's

it's hard to give advice because I think you know everyone's approached poetry so so so different

um. But I think the biggest, and I think I've even heard you say this too Elizabet,

is that you should write when when you're not um even when you don't want to right. Like just just

keep it moving, keep it going um. What I would say also is read as wide as you can. Like again

to quote the amazing Mahogany Brown, one of the things that she says is that she reads everything,

but the but there are poets that she returns to. There's writers that she returns to um. And so

I think kind of having that um as something that's just guiding you when you're thinking

about your reading as well as a writer is really important. I I hope that answers the question.

Okay um I I was just informed that we have five minutes. So I have one more question for

um Jasmin and I want to direct those questions to Jasmin, but I also want us to kind of end um

with this question, so each of you will have a chance to answer it, um. Jasmin, one of my

favorite poems in your book is "Scream so that one day a hundred years from now another sister

will not have to dry her tears wondering where in history she lost her voice." So Jasmin we'll start

with you and then we'll end with the panelists responses. How did you find your poetic voice?

I think it's like an ongoing um journey to find that voice because it's never been like this

one kind of static thing. It's been evolving constantly as I've gone from you know mostly

like doing spoken word poetry to um thinking about novels in verse. Now thinking about like fiction

and fantasy and all these different genres um, and I think that like we're often asked

um to figure out our voices like right off the bat, like when we start um when you start

this work we get into MFA programs or um we you know establish ourselves as as writers

um. And I was always like, I don't know what my voice is. Like do I have a voice? Like

what is my voice? What is my style? Like like I would reread my poems, like is that is that me?

Like is that not me? Like do I need to work on it still? Um so it's definitely been like this

ongoing experience and as you mentioned like that poem specifically um. I wrote that poem

because I was thinking about how um back in you know back 100 and 200 300 years ago, um

we we have all these documents, like historical documents written by Punjabi men and Sikh men,

um. But it's it's rare to find a primary resource or a historical document or like a journal entry

or diary entry or like um, even poems written by Sikh women hundreds of years ago. And not that

they weren't writing or yeah or sharing poems. Just that those those things weren't documented as

um as carefully as like um, as those of of male writers, um. And I was thinking about how

my understanding of myself and my voice, um my my poetry even, would be so different if if I had

access to to the diary entries of Punjabi women in small villages back in Punjab from hundreds of

years ago. And then I was thinking, as I thought about that, the fact that you know today in the

day and age that I live in it's possible for me to document my life in so many different ways

in the blink of an eye. Like I can I can write a poem on my phone and just screenshot it and then

put it on Instagram and a second later like that's there for the world to see without a gatekeeper

having to decide that poem is is worthy of being being read. Without a gatekeeper having to decide

that my voice matters enough to be shared with the world. Um, and just like the power of that and

being able to to create my voice just like I said um through this ongoing journey. It's happening

in real time. It's happening on Instagram and Twitter and through these these physical

books as well. Um but it's a journey that is happening right now and I'm grateful to be on it.

Thank you. Yeah I used to think like oh my god I gotta like find my voice. Where is it,

whatever. I love a prop. Um but but really (laughter) um, I think now that now that

you've asked that question that a lot of it came from letter writing um. I was always a

big letter writer growing up and then even now I write people back on the East coast

and even when I was in New York, I would write my friend living on the west side while I was

like you know uptown or something and um it was just the way that we had time for each

other. And I think a lot of my poetry, why it's like narrative, is because it has that origin,

um. And what's the the third kind of texture that comes through is as I'm reading like other

Black Ecuadorian writers like myself over time, we have our own style styles. We have our own verses,

um things that originated from like the three main Black areas of Ecuador um. And it's kind of crazy

to be like oh [ __ ] like, so I don't know if we can curse here um, like there's I have been

dislocated as a human being by being an orphan and yet at the same time there's some sort of,

again literary ancestry that is present. Like that that has been a wild uh experience as

well. Yeah um you know it's funny like I mean I I would say um kind of like Jasmin that um

I feel like it's a journey um but I definitely attribute a lot of my voice um to like people

who I see as mentors um like uh Patricia Smith and um Sapphire and even um asha bandele, who's whose

book was given me by my friend Mariahadessa when I was you know like 20 years old and I remember just

cherishing this book. It was like like a modern book of poetry from a young Black woman, where I

had been reading like you know Alice Walker and and Maya Angelou and like all of the you know

what I mean like more like older women who were kind of not in my generation. So to read asha's

work and be like. And then to read Sapphire's first book of poems um uh American Dreams,

it like you know, she's writing about incest and I'm going holy [ __ ] you can write about that?

Like and so like all of these writers giving me permission, um giving me voice to to explore

um poems that I didn't think could be written about much less shared publicly um.

And I feel like that has continued that you know as I like Wanda Wanda Coleman you know she gave

me permission to write you know these sonnets how I saw fit um and you know and I feel like there

are other you know that I keep you know stumbling upon the works of people that that give me more

permission to you know to to say something in a way you know like even I'm thinking about um

American Dreams, Sapphire's first book, and then her second book which was something about angels

or whatever. It was markedly different and I know that she, the first one was pre-MFA and the second

one was post-MFA. And the second one was all like more formal. Like every word capitalized. Like it

was just like complete difference in like and I was like oh like what is you know it was good, but

like you could see the mark that the MFA had made on her. And I feel like for me like I felt that

when I went through the MFA process, too, and I felt like after that a lot of it even

though that MFA was in fiction, I felt like I still had to unlearn a lot of the [ __ ] that

had been you know tried to be you know force-fed me by you know the white folks in this program

um. And and so, I feel like that's why I'm I'm still in that process of like really trying to

be authentic to who I am as a Black queer woman um. And to really um I really want to write stuff

that is accessible to all my peoples regardless of their educational status or you know I mean?

Like I really want to write some [ __ ] that everybody [ __ ] with and not it be like you

know only my people who have MFAs can can can feel it or only my people you know I mean? And so like

that's why I feel like I'm really like this I'm getting there, but I'm not quite there yet. But I

feel like I'm I'm definitely much closer um than I was say when I wrote my first book which was again

very like formal and like you know I felt like it was you know it was I I made it you know I had

a notes section in the back, you know to break [ __ ] down for for white folks and and other folks

and like in this book I was like there's gonna be no notes section. You either get it or you don't,

right? It's like, you know what I mean, so it's like in those ways I'm like I'm moving toward that

like that authentic that really authentic Black ass voice. I'm not there yet, but I'm close I'm

close

I think you're on mute, love. Elizabet. Wow I was going off on a spiel. I was I

was saying (laughter) thank you all so much um for this because when I think about um you know

resistance and poetry like just the fact that we're here, like just the fact that we're alive,

just the fact that we're writing, right, whether that writing is for public consumption or for

our own history keeping, right, that is uh an act of of resistance um because there are a lot of uh

systems that don't want us to be here right. Don't want us to be alive. And so you know my

hope is that um one day in the future I don't know what's gonna happen in my lifetime, but uh my hope

is that one day we're on a panel uh that's you know how poetry created a world where injustice is

obsolete right. How poetry created a world where we are in a on panels about poetry and resistance

right where resistance is um unnecessary because injustice doesn't exist. So let's keep writing um

and let's keep um, like t'ai saying getting there. Let's keep getting there um and I think that we

get there every day the uh moments that we uh wake up so um. Shout out to y'all. Thank you so much

um for um being in conversation with me. Thank you to the Bronx Book Festival. Um just so you know I

had my other questions because I was like but I'm gonna hit y'all up on the side. I'm probably gonna

email you like look, y'all wanna answer this y'all can, um, but yeah let's continue to be

in conversation with each other um in and out of these panels. I'm so grateful to y'all. Gracias.

Thank you.