VS Season 6 Episode 13

Alexis Pauline Gumbs vs. Chasing Awe

Transcription by: Akilah Muhammad

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hello, everyone, my name is Ajanaé Dawkins, and I just got approved for a community garden club.

Brittany Rogers

That's so cute and so very like you. Hi, I'm Brittany Rogers, and I'm counting down until whitetail season, and then my life will be together. It’s over for these hoes.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And we are your co-hosts of VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them. Welcome, y'all.

Brittany Rogers

Heeey. 

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

Today, we have the absolute honor of interviewing Alexis Pauline Gumbs. And we got to talk with her about love, and about Audre Lorde, and about sustaining research practices when you've been researching for so long. And honestly, all of it is inspiring, and I'm still very much in awe. But before we get into this interview, best, I'm wondering whose art you could engage with and never get tired of?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm gonna have to go with Beyoncé. 

Brittany Rogers

Okay (laughs). You know what, you’re right. I think that is, of all the answers, that was that was the right answer for you, best (laughs). 

Ajanaé Dawkins 

I think Beyoncé has given me everything that I need to engage, because I wanted to go with a writer. I'm like, obviously, Toni Morrison, read every book, you what I mean, all of that. Beyoncé is giving me multiple mediums. Beyoncé is giving me multiple modes. If I want to be sad, If I want to be sad, I can be sad. If I want to be happy, if I want to be mad, if I want to be in my country bag, in my rock bag, in my disco bag. I think I could have 25 Different dissertations on Beyoncé’s discography.

Brittany Rogers

And I want to read all of them to be clear. So let's, let's get to writing.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen, okay, because I'ma, I'ma, I'ma work it out. I wanted that to be a hard question, but it wasn't.

Brittany Rogers

I think my most honest answer is Jesmyn Ward. I don't think I've ever read a thing that Jesmyn has written that I have not loved. I think that Jesmyn is a writer who I’ll look up and be in the middle of a book and be like, nigga, is my face wet? (Laughs). Like, am I crying? What's happening? Like, whew, best, I remember reading Sing, Unburied, Sing, and I got somewhere in the middle of that book and realized I was crying and I had to stop and pause. And there was like a different book of hers that I hadn't read yet, and I was like, okay, this is just, whew, it was giving me too many feels, so I’ma have to pause this book and come back and read a different one of her books. And I think that was when I was like, you know what? Yeah, if there's a fan club, I'm in it, so.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Ah, I love it. I love it. Are you ready to get into this interview?

Brittany Rogers

I am. I am. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is cherished by a wide range of communities as an oracle and a vessel of love. Her books include Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Dub: Finding Ceremony, M Archive: After the End of the World, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. Alexis was honored with a Whiting Award, a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and a National Humanities Center Fellowship. Alexis lives in Durham, North Carolina where she nurtures, and is nurtured by, a visionary creative community while seeming towards her dream of being your favorite cousin. Wow, love that. Definitely my favorite cousin.

Brittany Rogers

Awe and she is my favorite cousin now, listen.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen, the dream is achieved.

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Let’s get into this interview, best. 

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Brittany Rogers

Alexis, would you do us the honor of reading us a poem?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Yes, this is called “Translation”. [Recites poem]. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Why would you do that to us?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

This is, you know, my prayer for all of us.

Ajanaé Dawkins

“War don't war for you.” 

Brittany Rogers

Listen, that line took all the restraint I had.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

(Laughs).

Brittany Rogers

I was just thinking about poems about mythology aren't typically the ones that draw me in, because I think I'm already expecting this very familiar story. And the constant turns in that poem, I was like, oh, let me, like best said, let me buckle up. This is doing something to my heart. That's all.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah. I think, I think that and I think the part of the familiarity, am I saying that right? 

Brittany Rogers

Familiarity. Yep. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Thank you. Okay, I cannot pronounce that word to save my life. But part of that is also what feels like, I guess with obviousness, the very white landscape of Greek mythology. And I feel like the entrance you gave me was that I could see myself, and I could see myself in that place. And I think that makes me, it's just very reminiscent of your work for me to be able to see myself where I previously could not. And the way that then gives me access to the narrative. Because I'm like, oh, I ain’t never related to this before, but now, that's me!

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Yeah. Forget you, Perseus.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I think I always identified with Medusa, but for me, that poem was like, oh, this is all the unlearning that I had to do. And when, I wrote that poem in my process of relearning the constellations and deciding to study the constellations through an indigenous lens, specifically a Caribbean indigenous lens and I was like, oh, this is no small thing. You know, the changed relationship to myself, and to the violence that I experienced, and the colonial violence of my whole education, but also physical and sexual violence that I survived in college was all there. And I was like, yeah, this entire story is a story where the rapist always win. And there has to be another. 

Brittany Rogers

(Softly) yeah.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

There has to be another story. I now insist on another story.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So we'll, we'll start, we'll open with what is moving you today?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Oh, Audre Lorde, as every day. I was just writing a biography, a new biography of Audre Lorde, and I was just reading to myself this particular chapter, that's about the dedication of the Audre Lorde Women's Poetry Center at Hunter College, which there's a recording of it. So like to get to listen to Audre Lorde receiving these accolades from all of these people who are like, we love you, we place you at the center of poetry, and to hear her get up and just like, I mean, first of all, just be like, this event is about my three favorite things: beautiful women, poetry, and me.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Just like to fully receive it, and then to do this, recite her poem “Call”, which is one of my favorite poems ever. In this impromptu speech where she was like, this is for the goddess in all of us. You know, I feel like I could just listen to Audre Lorde receiving celebrations of herself all day, and I'm really moved by the generations of love that showed up for her during her life and insisted that her legacy would continue so it could reach, so it could reach me, so it could reach us.

Brittany Rogers

I think that's so beautiful. It also made me think of Ntozake Shonge saying that she writes for young women who don't exist yet, young girls who don't exist so that when they get here, there’ll be work waiting for them. So I love that sentiment.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

It's such a huge act of love that I especially feel from Black women poets, and writers who are like, this is for you who aren't even here yet. And that idea that we were so loved before we even existed is exactly what I need in a world that's like, we'll never learn how to love you (laughs). Like that, that's the that's how I know that's a lie. Because I'm like, nope, nope. 

Brittany Rogers

Yes. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Been loved. There was never a moment when I was not loved because Black feminism got here before me, so.

Brittany Rogers

Period. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

That's it, period! 

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think the like emotional, I don't know, I definitely had a kind of reckoning when I started arriving to work. And realizing like, oh, this is my inheritance. Like, this is, this is the thing that's been left and it completely shifted my relationship to a lot of texts coming from like elders and ancestors. So yeah, I love, I love hearing that. But I also love the three favorite things! I know that's right. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

(Laughing) I know that’s right.

Ajanaé Dawkins

You better be on the list. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

You better beee. One of your three favorite things.

Ajanaé Dawkins

You better be one of your best things.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

(Laughing). Exactly. 

Brittany Rogers

And that is what I love about a matriarchy because if an elder don’t do nothing else, they teach you how to center yourself and I love that. I love that for us. I think the thing that I admire most about elders is getting to the space where you say exactly what you're thinking. And where you've lost any need for like that pretense. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Yeah.

Brittany Rogers

And I'm not rushing, but I look forward to that space (laughs) very much so. Um, I know you mentioned in earlier correspondence that you've been researching, and archiving, and writing about, and thinking about Audre Lorde since you were like a teenager, right? And so I'm wondering, you know, what continues to draw you to that work?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I mean, what I know is that learning about Audre Lorde and reading her collected poems, I have it sitting right here, like, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde is never far from my hand. Like it's always, it's always within reach, it’s right here. And it's falling apart, because it's like, that is the same copy that I had. Yes!

Brittany Rogers

I have this by my bedside. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Yours is much more intact. Here, let me show you. Mine is like, Lord, look at the spine of this.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That look like a Bible, you know, the old mothers? The church mothers?

Brittany Rogers

That’s what I was about to say.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

This is exactly what, because this is like, where I have gone in my hour of need. It's such a sacred text to me. And, you know, when I was 14 and 15, then I started using Audre Lorde epigraphs to all my English papers.

Brittany Rogers

Come on.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I didn't know like what she was talking about, you know, I was just like, oh, that's so beautiful. I was like, this is, you know, it was something that, it was something that held me in such an important way. And it, it literally made space for me. I mean, I think that I didn't think of it consciously when I was in high school, but when I would put those epigraphs, and James Baldwin was a person whose epigraphs I put often, but it was, but it was Audre Lorde more. When I would put those epigraphs, it was like she kicked in the door for me to be able to actually write in the context that I was educated in which were all predominantly white, elite, educational spaces that we're not, you know, not necessarily expecting me to be me. 

Brittany Rogers

Yeah.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

But I felt that Audre Lorde was like demanding for me to be me. And her words held space for me in that way. So I have this kind of eternal gratitude. And just the reality, and I know that it's like this, you know, with some of our foremothers, I can't actually imagine myself without what this work provided me at such a crucial time. So returning to it is, in a way, returning to myself. That said, there's so much in it to come back to again and again at different stages in my life and at different times. I mean, right now, I'm just really geeking out about how much of a science nerd Audre Lorde was, and writing this biography, I've had to learn so much about geology, and about like, I didn't know there was something called astrobiology. There's all sorts of fields of science I never even heard of, but in order to really talk about Audre Lorde's work, and also the scope of how she understood her own cosmic existence, I have to learn so much more. I think that there will always be a question and an assignment for me in Audre Lorde’s poetry. I mean, I can just read any poem in The Black Unicorn, and it'll it will be like a question for my life on that day, an urgent question for my emotional, spiritual, physical life that is in there. And so what draws me to Audre Lorde's work is that I need to be reborn. I have to be transformed again. I need the rigor of someone who believed that poetry could give people access to a power within them, that would change everything. And yeah, that's, that's why it's a never too much situation. I'm sure, you know, at some point, I should stop revising this biography, but it's like, it feels like my favorite room in my house. It feels like where I go hang out with Audre, and I’m like, okay, no, I have to go.

Brittany Rogers

Unhand it, the people need it. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I’m excited to share it. I'm excited for the conversations we'll be able to have once, you know, folks have been able to read it. And it's just it will never be, I don't see it. I don't see it happening that I'll be like, okay, well, I did that. So like, you know, I know all there is to know that Audre Lorde has had to teach me. It's just a lifelong relationship because she was in relationship with something that is so core that has to do with what life is, and how life is beyond even the experience of one body that I don't think it's possible to outgrow it. 

Brittany Rogers

Of all the things that you've learned, what surprised you the most?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

All the things I learned about Audre Lorde? Oh, wow. Or about myself because of Audre Lorde?

Brittany Rogers

I mean, we'll take both. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

We’ll take both. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I love the nuanced questions. All these things. I think that one of the things that was like surprising and delightful to me that I learned about Audre Lorde in this process was that she just loved science fiction so much. And she wrote this essay for Seventeen Magazine when she was a teenager, like trying to find other science fiction attics, and just this whole thing about like the I was like, I never even knew that Audre Lorde was into sci-fi. I loved learning that. That was, that was delightful to me. And it made so much sense because I was like, oh, right, she is like, actually, for me to exist, takes a more expansive frame than anything that people around me believe is possible. So, therefore, to sci fi. So I wouldn't say it was shocking that she had a machine in her kitchen to polish stones that she found because she just loved like she just loved earth that much, y'all. Speaking of, you know, eco-feminist theologies, she just would like anything for the beauty of Earth itself. And I love that she was just like, in her kitchen, like polishing stones she picked up on the ground. And I think she felt that way about community. You know like, every stone is precious. It's not like, oh, it has to be like, a diamond or ruby, like literally any rock you pick up can shine. And what are the most surprising things I've learned about myself? I mean, I don't know what I've even learned about myself that hasn't been assisted by the example, and the work of Audre Lorde. But I think what has been most important for me to learn recently is just about, and the poem that I read kind of speaks to it, is the pervasiveness of the walls that I put up to protect my heart. I think that's something that she thought about, and struggled with herself. And it's something that surprises me about myself, sometimes, you know, I'm like, Oh, but I love everyone. And I'm so like, wanting to embrace the universe. And some of my protective mechanisms are so instinctive at this point, that I don't even recognize them as what they are. And so that's, that's part of what I'm dissolving, and unlearning. And I feel like Audre Lorde’s, Audre Lorde had this relationship to stones, but she, you know, she has this place where she says, Those stones in my heart are you. Right, like she has these like calcified memories of hurt and betrayal that she held on to. And in her series of poems, Journey Stone, she was like finding a way like how can I release those? And I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah, that's also a part of what the function of my poetry is in my life, and my process, and practice, and my need for Audrey Lloyd as a, as a teacher to guide is about that too.

Brittany Rogers

Thank you so much for that like for that dual answer. I'm really reflecting. See now you're making me think about my protective measures that I'm not aware of, or what protective measures we as people have that we're not aware of. Listeners, y’all can’t see the way Ajanaé just smiled at me. It was not a real smile. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I tried to pull myself together real quick. 

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I tried to pull myself together real quick. I’m sorry (laughs).

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Yeah, it's true, though. The, that's part of part of the irony, at least for me, it's like the best protective measures. And I say best meaning like, most effective of shutting my heart off from the universe work without my awareness, right? Like, that's what makes them effective. That's what makes them able to engage faster than I could even have the thought. And I think that poetry is part of what allows me to slow those down. Because it's not like I never need to protect myself. It's not like, you know, I live in a world where there's never any need for me to have a shield. It's just that I would love to be able to choose that. And I don't want to have shields up that separate me from the community that I love, or the people who I want to be open-hearted with. So, you know, I think the most important work Audre Lorde felt that her most important work was really studying herself. So when she says like, her three favorite things, and one is herself. It's yes, she definitely had a grand idea of herself, which I'm here for, and I feel like was absolutely appropriate. But she also really studied herself and studied her emotions and asked herself, you know, like, having read all of her journals, she's asking herself, why did I respond this way? What does it mean that I feel this way? What does it mean that what are what are these patterns in my relationships? And she's really invested in her study of her own emotions, as something that was crucial. And that was always also political. And that was never a waste of time, or a distraction from quote, unquote, the work. And yeah, that is one of the reasons why I think she's so phenomenally brave. And one of the reasons that it’s terrifying. I mean, writing a biography of her is terrifying. It's like, dang, at every turn, she's like, well, you can't write about my daddy issues until you get clear about your daddy issues. You can't write about, you know, my fears, unless you face your fears. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, you know, for crying and all of this, but it's, it's the most rewarding process. And it's also like, there's just no way to stay on the surface of my own emotions, while seeking to, at all, represent someone who lived her life refusing that for herself, and for the people around her, honestly.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Thank you so much for that. That answer is bringing up a lot of things for me in thinking about your work, specifically, in thinking about Undrowned. 

Brittany Rogers

A banger. Okay. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Period. Okay, uncontested. And so in your book Undrowned, you're weaving this exploration of marine animals, and BIPOC, through our relationship to colonialism and our kind of interrelatedness to each other. And I don't even like to use the word weaving, because it's like a layering more than it is a weaving. It's like, all the transparent papers, like stacked on top of each other. So you kind of can't see where one thing ends and begins. I'm thinking about that text and this idea that you just shared about Audre Lorde of understanding the studying, the in-depth studying of her emotions, as not distracting from the work. I'm curious about the role the study of your own emotions play in how you approach your research.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

And thank y’all for reading it and engaging it. My process is, I mean, I think that maybe this is my kinship with Audre Lorde, is that my process is for me. And so what I need to know about marine mammals is very much shaped by the fact that I'm navigating unbreathable circumstances in a particular way as a queer, Black, feminist troublemaker. And also, that in this I mean, for Undrowned in particular, before it was Undrowned, it was just like me meditating about marine mammals. It really was this ocean of grief. That was terrifying to me, like, will I actually drown? I'm crying so much, will I actually drown? Like, what will, is there any end to this vastness of what grief and in particular in terms of my dad passing away; what does that mean? And I think that it's not to say that then okay, well, I go to like a place in my brain where there has to be some research I can do about this, though, that has been a historical theme of mine. Though, I'm not going to disclaim that. It's just that I have to follow my awe. And I, in the navigation of my own ocean of grief, just felt so much awe about the fact that like, there is a whole set of mammals that they are just in the saltwater. They're just in it. And it's like graceful, and how can they even do it? Like, I'm here, like, with the however, many gallons of tears a human can cry, which is nothing compared to the ocean. And I'm overwhelmed, right? So like, how is it that they do that? And it's this place of wonder. And it's a, it's an intimate wonder of, like, my research comes out of that, and it comes out of it's a practice. So it's like, how can I? How can I be with these beings? What's the way that I can be with these beings, and a lot, I mean, I wrote parts of Undrowned like very close to the ocean and on the shoreline, I wrote parts of Undrowned nowhere near an ocean. And the way that I could be with marine mammals was just returning every day, to information about them to sounds to, you know, this process of trying to get close to who I feel I need to get close to, because I'm just in such awe and wonder of how they can exist, it's so beautiful to me. And what I recognize is, that's the exact same reason that I research Black feminism, you know, it's like, how? So much awe, so much love, I’m like I just have to be with all the Black feminists, the way I can be with them is through the archival research, if the way I can be with them is through reading their poems over and over again, whatever that is, that's what I do. And I don't know, but I think that the layers of it come from the dailiness of it, because my process is like when I when I'm like, I have to be with you, I have to be with you every day, like I'm with these marine mammals every day, once I know that I need to be with them, why would I have a day that I'm not? Like that does not register for me. And when it's every day, it means that all the different things that are coming up for me in my life during every single day, different parts of this cycle, different seasons of the year, different parts of my emotional journey, different other things that happen in my life. On that day, I was with the marine mammals. And the next day, I'm still marine mammals and for every day for nine months, or a year and a half or until I'm like, okay, that I'm with them. Can y'all hear the train? Oh, there's a train. It sounds really beautiful, but I'm just marketing that there’s a train. 

Brittany Rogers

I just heard it.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

it sounds kind of like a whale to me.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I want that to be kept in just for (inaudible). Just for that sound interpretation.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

The research, research is just a way I know of getting next to who I need to be next to, and who I just want to be influenced by, and who I know will allow me to meet aspects of myself that I really need to be with, but I, I don't know how or I'm terrified to or, you know, whatever it is, and I never know really what it is that I'm supposed to learn from that experience. When I start in everyday practice, I just know that I need to be in that practice. And, and I trust that so it's like, you know, it’s like, well, marine mammals like you know, girl, you ain’t no marine biologists like what? Like who? That didn't matter. And it doesn't matter. It's just, there's so much to learn. And I honestly didn't know because all roads lead back to Audre Lorde, I didn't know that she was like that, you know, she was like, what? Bees? And she would go in on these different aspects of the world and nature that were important to her. And I know now that even though I've been thinking about Audre Lorde, I've been writing about Audre Lorde, literally my whole life since I was 14. I don't think, I think I had to surrender to the process that was Undrowned before I would really be able to write about Audre Lorde in the way that I spiritually believe that she would want me to write about her. That actually there had to be an interspecies scale, a beyond-human scale because that's how she thought about herself. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I really love the way you situate and imagine research as this like wandering and being with and then the way ritual enters into it. I think the Academy for me, the Academy can make it the idea of research so clinical, the idea of methodology and modes of assessing and gathering information, this very clinical detached experience. And I think that's what's so exciting about your work for me is that I can't read it and be detached. Like, I can't read about the way this animal's echolocation works, this dolphin's echolocation works in the river, and not be like, at the edge of myself (laughs). So I really, really appreciate that answer.

Brittany Rogers

It's making me wonder, really quick, before we move to our last question I was trying not to ask, but I’m like I must (laughs). Hearing the way that you reference Audre Lorde I think is so beautiful to me. And so instructive, and so important. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering if you have like hopes for the ways that people will engage with your scholarship as like time goes forward. So if we're thinking like decades from now, and folks are studying your work, which duh, they should be, right? Do you have any hopes for the way that they received that scholarship or what they do with that scholarship?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I'm thinking about Gwendolyn Brooks, you know, Gwendolyn Brooks, that “I have hopes for myself.” And I definitely have hopes, the most important thing to me is that people feel loved by the work, that's the most important thing. And what that will mean to different people at different times. I definitely don't have control over that. But that's my, that's my hope. I mean, really, that's my assignment, because that's what I've received. So that's, that's what I have to give. I actually, like we were saying, I feel loved by these Black feminist writers who have come before us. And it's phenomenal to me that I could be loved by people who did not overlap with me in life. We were not here at the same time, at least physically. The fact that love is possible, teaches me everything about what love even is. And that's if I share anything that I write, it's an order to continue that and to pour back into what I feel like is this infinite well that I draw from, which is, which is love. And so, you know, I think it's, it's important what you said about when you read the work not being able to do that distancing thing, because like, what, you know, why should you read it, and then it's distant, you know, what I mean? Like, you could not read it, then it would be at a distance. If you're gonna bother to read it, you know, it's and I think that the way that I think about it, I know that it's personal, you know, and I go to personal places in my writing, for sure. And I'm doing it for such personal reasons, but I don't share everything that I write, what I share, is because you're a part of that ceremony, and you're invited to it, and it's not, it's not something that is to be consumed. It's not something that is to, you know, be distilled into a set of facts, or even a set of approaches. It is a portable ceremony for you to participate in for your reasons, and for your transcendence, and for your journey. It's not about, it's not about me. It may be through me, but it's not about me. And so I would want people in the future. I mean, it's fine. If people are looking back, like what can we learn about Alexis Pauline Gumbs from the way that she did this, that, this? Because I do that, you know, like I do that, in a certain way, when I'm studying people's work, but just that the primary thing be that they feel that it belongs to them, they feel like it's for them, they feel like it's for their life. And it's, it's an offering, it's proof that they are loved. I think that that's I think that's my hope, because otherwise, yeah, I don't otherwise I don't necessarily need to return to it. No, I mean, I guess there could be people who are curious about like, what was it like? What was it like in the 1990s? What was it like in the 2020s. But that would be maybe for the historians but for people in general, if it's not loving them, they could let it go. And that's okay. But I think it will love them.

Brittany Rogers

It will. It will. Ten out of ten.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So we want to ask you one more question before we move to our break. And this is something we ask everybody who comes onto our show. So if we had to engage with the work of three people of any genre, era, dead or alive, fictional or not, who would those three people be? And I mean, like.

Brittany Rogers

To understand, to best understand your work?

Ajanaé Dawkins

To best understand your work. To best understand who you are. Thank you best, because my question was struggling.

Brittany Rogers

Nope, I got you.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

So I'll just say those three people and obviously Audre Lorde are implied. But in any, any, any form of creativity. Hmm, that's such a great question. Fannie Lou Hamer definitely be one. Should I be saying why?

Ajanaé Dawkins

It’s completely up to you.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I mean, I feel like y'all know why, but.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

We know the vibes.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Because she loves us. And she allowed her ancestors to come through when she sang. And she really used the vibration of the sound of her voice in a way that freed people from the smallness and the fear of their individuality. And that's my hope. And also, I just am continuing to benefit from that. So Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Hampton, I guess it's all for the same reason. Fred Hampton says, “Because I love the people.” And he had that clarity. I feel like it was looking at recordings of Fred Hampton. Also, when I was in high school, I just identified with him so much, and the way that he believes in our people, the expansiveness of who he understood to be his people, our people is something that has been a guide for me. And I would, I would want to be understood on those terms. I'll say Dionne Brand, because I'm saying Dionne Brand, and I mean, Dionne Brand, for sure, but I'm also thinking about actually that generation of Caribbean women writers, because I understand my work in the context of, of their work. And, yeah, she and they really shifted my understanding of what writing could do as ceremony within our families, within our communities, specifically between women of different generations. So I would say, if one day someone's like, I'm going to write a biography of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, I would hope that they would listen to Fannie Lou Hamer [The] Songs My Mother Taught Me. I would hope that they would watch recordings of Fred Hampton speaking and I would hope that they would read everything by Dionne Brand, but especially At the Full and Change of the Moon.

Brittany Rogers 

I so deeply, deeply fuck with that answer. Like every time you named a name I was like, yes! This is the trifecta right here. Fannie Lou Hamer has my heart.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[OCEAN WAVES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

So would you like to be an optimist or a pessimist today? 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

As every day, an optimist. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

We love it. So we are going to be playing a game called Fast Punch. So the way this game is going to go is that we are going to give you a category and you are going to give us the best thing in that category. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Okay, I can do it. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Ready? Okay, best music to listen to by the ocean.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Any music! The ocean itself.

Brittany Rogers

Great answer.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best date idea.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

It's been so long. Anything involving a bookstore or a place where you can be around a lot of different plants.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Facts.

Brittany Rogers

Best method of travel.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Walking, which for me includes potentially rolling.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Do you skate? Oh, okay, after the game. Best tea flavor.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Tulsi.

Brittany Rogers

Best movie to watch on a plane.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I just rewatched Moonlight and Pariah on a plane. I can't choose between the two.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best Audre Lorde epigraph

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Oh my goodness, okay. Well, this is what may end up being the epigraph to the whole book. So audience member at Audre Lorde poetry reading says, who are you talking about when you wrote “We Were Never Meant to Survive”? And Audrey Lord answers, “I was talking about you.”

Brittany Rogers

Okay, that's my breath. Best Caribbean dish.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Like a whole dish? I mean, plantain, rice, and peas. Stewed Chicken. But if I can only have one thing that's going to always be the plantain.

Brittany Rogers

The correct answer.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And that was our last one. You win our game! Congratulation!

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I get the ocean, I get the Audre, I get the dates. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Okay, we would ove to close by asking you to read us one more poem.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Oh, okay. So this is the Oracle one. So right now my daily practice is writing with Alma Thomas's artwork, and some like things from her archive. So I want you all to choose a number, but I just forgot how many times how many days I've been writing about her. I have been writing how perfect. One, two, three. Okay, so for 123 days, this is what I've been doing. And so if you could choose a number between 1 and 123, then I'll read that.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best, you know, my favorite number is seven.

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

We be on the same page.

Brittany Rogers

Okay, let’s do 77 for the both of us.

Ajanaé Dawkins

77, okay. Thank you, best.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Okay, great. So for folks who are just getting to find out Alma Thomas, wow, okay, Alma Thomas is this amazing painter. She was born in the 1800s in Georgia, her family moved to Washington, DC, and that's where she lived for the rest of her life. And she was a color theorist. And she was the first Black woman to have a solo show at the Whitney and she she did paintings about everything. You have to see her paintings, but this is what I wrote. Looking at “Blue Asteroid”. So I'm going to show you all even though the listeners can't see because I have her catalogue sitting here because it's my daily practice. Okay, so this one is “Blue Asteroid”.

Brittany Rogers

Listener, it is in fact a striking picture.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

She painted that in 1976. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

[Recites poem]. 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

That’s for Alma Thomas and that’s for y’all.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Please, we can’t take it. I don't know. I don't know if it's been obvious we're a little tender as a group.

Brittany Rogers

You can’t have us participating in communal stuff, listen. On the air? 

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I'll send that to you guys.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Please. 

Brittany Rogers

Oh, I would love that. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

That would make my whole day. This has been you don't even understand the way I’m in my chest.

Brittany Rogers

Thank you so much for joining us. Like it has been such a treasure. I’m so in love.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think I'm really invested in Alexis’s capacity for long form research and also research as ritual. And I feel like I'm gonna have to adopt some of these things in my own writing process. But this long, long relationship with research on the life and work and Andre Lorde, which to be so immersed in and never get exhausted or tired but to only continue to have more wonder like even just listening to the amount of love in her voice and on her face and seeing the amount of love on her face as she talked about it, to her talking about this daily writing process of being like for I forget how many days she said but for I'm just going to wake up and sit with the work of one artist every day as a part of a ritual and then write.

Brittany Rogers

Alexis’s capacity for curiosity was like, so inspiring and so stunning, I think is really easy for me to sometimes feel like okay, like whew, you can move on from this or you know, all there is to know about this. So to watch somebody so deeply in love and so deeply in research after so many years, you know what I mean, and still have like, curiosities and questions. It was like, oh girl, you ain't going deep enough. Like I gotta tighten up.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes, yes. 10 out of 10 and like that idea that if you've spent too long somewhere that you're either wasting time or that you should have been finished, you should have had it all figured out. I feel like she really absolved me of that feeling. And I'm grateful for that. 

Brittany Rogers

Same. I love I love your framing of that. Because I do think there's a way in which you like, Okay, what I don't want to keep writing the same poem over and over and over again, right? Or I don't want this to be the thing that I'm like, hinged on are stuck. But again, like, I think she made me think so much more about what it means to go deeper and deeper into a subject to grow more and more intimate with it, and that the more intimacy you foster with a subject, the more curiosity you can have, like.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, yeah. And the deeper your questions get the levels, levels. So then that makes me wonder best, what are the things that make up the ritual of writing or creating for you?

Brittany Rogers

I think creating any form, whether that's like poems, or essays, or visual stuff, I think always starts with music. And I think the music choice like differs depending on what I'm doing. If I'm just like, researching, didn't wrap around my collaging, then it's rap. If I'm working on, I think poetry or essays, then I have to listen. Ooh, this is gonna sound shady. But I don't mean in a shady way. I listen to Tiny Desk, I love Tiny Desk, but I usually listen to ones that I enjoy the music to. But I don't enjoy so much that I have to like, stop what I'm doing and sing along with them. Like, I can't listen to Aretha or Etta James or Nina Simone when I'm writing, I can't do that. Because nothing will get done. I can't listen to hymns when I'm writing, nothing will get done. But I can listen to like, you know, what are the new r&b girlies they do just enough to not have me overwhelmed, but not too much, not too much. And then I think from there, it's just a matter of like, okay, now I can, I think having that extra, it gives me something different to focus on. And I think that frees up the space in my brain for writing. So it's kind of like, okay, I have this familiar thing that I listen to all the time. I know the groove of it. I know the pace of it. Great. And while I'm focused on that groove and pace, then I'm like, Oh, these are things that I'm thinking this is what's coming up for me. What about you?

Ajanaé Dawkins

For me, it depends. It definitely does depend on what I'm writing. For poems, typically it is I might open with prayer, I cannot have anything that has lyrics in it, I cannot function as a human being. I work I write really well when I have people with me, not necessarily talking not even necessarily a workshop. But if I have other people who I know are also writing so that's helpful, and if not that, then shifting my place or position. So sitting in my bathtub. And also I think tea signals to my brain that it's time to write. So some like just slight level of physical discomfort with the comforting of tea if I'm doing like play or character work, then listening to songs that I think that the character I'm writing for would like listening to music that I think the character that I'm writing for would like. And if I'm doing essays I pretty much those happen nonlinearly in that I text myself lines of them while I'm traveling or while I'm moving around until I got a essay. And then I edit.

Brittany Rogers

I really mess with that. Some of that I didn’t know, best. My little heart is tender. Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Is there anyone you want to thank today, best?

Brittany Rogers

I can't listen to Etta James while I'm writing but I'm gonna shout out Etta for that album At Last. Because it has some of my favorite some of our favorite love songs. And it's what I listen to a lot in my classroom because I'm like, okay, I can get into a groove and it like kind of lifts and settles my spirit. My kids always think I’m sad. So I'm like, y’all, I'm not I'm not sad ballads are just like the joy of my heart. And that is one of my favorite albums. What about you?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that, best. Um, I am going to thank Sophia Snowe. Because Sophia, a long time ago was the first person to tell me in a workshop that the issue with a lot of us is that we are making art on accident and more than making art on accident that we don't know what to do with all the energy in our body when we come to perform, when we come to work. And it comes out in unintentional ways because it's begging for ritual, for a way to channel itself. And so, she gave me my first concept of the idea that I should approach writing creating performance with some form of a ritual. When I was wee young lad. When I was like 18 or 19. So I'm grateful for that. So shoutout Sophia Snowe.

Brittany Rogers

We also want to give thank yous to the Poetry Foundation, Itzel Blancas, Ydalmi Noriega, Elon Sloan, Cin Pim, and Ombie Productions. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Until next time.

Brittany Rogers

Byeee