VS Season 6 Episode 11

Jos Charles vs. Younger Jos

Transcription by: Akilah Muhammad

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hi, my name is Ajanaé Dawkins, and I am currently neck deep in a Marvin Gaye rabbit hole.

Brittany Rogers

Hey, y’all, my name is Brittany Rogers, and my students have found my Instagram account. Somebody send help, like right now (laughs). They following me, best, and I don't know why; send help.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Mrs. Rogers!

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins

You know you lookin’ cute this weekend! Yikes. 

Brittany Rogers

And on that note, we are your co-hosts of VS podcast, the podcast where poets confront the idea that move them. Best, would you like to tell them about our guest today?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes, today we have the privilege of interviewing the amazing, the phenomenal Jos Charles, where we'll be talking about getting re-engrossed in your childhood self, and devotion, and reconciling with the fact that it's okay to make mistakes. I'm super excited for y'all to get into this interview, but before we do, best, I have a question for you. 

Brittany Rogers

Mm hmm. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

What would the childhood or teenage version of you be proud of or surprised by yourself for doing?

Brittany Rogers

The childhood version of myself is somewhere being shocked and appalled by how fucking fem I am. Like she's pressed (laughs). She's like, bitch is that a skirt? (Laughs). Are your nails done? What are you doing? (Laughs). Um, the childhood version, probably all the way up until high school, of myself was very rough and tumble, very climbing off trees, playing all the football, gotta beat me to get me in a dress. So I think she'd be most shocked by that. And maybe teenage me would be shocked by how much I enjoy caring for folks. Um, because I think I did so much caring as a teenager that I was like, when I get my own house, I ain’t never gone (laughs). Then look at me, nevering; nevering like I never before. What about you, best?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think, first of all, all those things make so much sense. I think that if we're talking pre-high school, my childhood self would be surprised, and proud that I have friends. And like that I have like real friends. I think I was always like a little black sheep-ish (laughs) at my schools, and I don't know how much of that was like being in a very, very white school district. I don't know, I don't know how much of that is, but I think my childhood self would be very surprised, and proud of my community. And proud of the fact that I'm like, I'm actually in my community, and not like over on the sides somewhere being bullied, and made fun of. I don't know, maybe somebody is making fun of me, but like I don't see it.

Brittany Rogers

I’ll beat, let me tell you something (laughs). Let me not incriminate myself and finish that (laughs) finish that statement, but do go on, best. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

(Laughing). I’m sure someone somewhere is making fun of me, but it's like, it wouldn't even affect me today. So I think my child self will be very proud of my place in participation in community. I also think my childhood self would be very proud of, and surprised by this, what is for me, a riskier version of me (laughs).

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). 

Ajanaé Dawkins

And I think a bolder version of me. So, yes, those two.

Brittany Rogers

What I'm waiting for, is for your teenage self to meet yourself like two years from now, (sighs). Best, I'm ready (laughs). You hear me? (Laughing). I'm ready for it.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Oh my gosh. Okay, best, do you want to get into this interview?

Brittany Rogers

Absolutely. Jos Charles is author of the poetry collections a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022), feeld, a Pulitzer-finalist, and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series (selected by Fady Joudah) (Milkweed Editions, 2018), and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). She is a visiting assistant professor this year at UC RIverside (Creative Writing Department), as well as a faculty member at Randolph College's low-residency MFA program. She resides in Long Beach, CA. Alright, best, let's jump into this interview. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

Would you do the honor of starting us out with a poem?

Jos Charles

Sure. Should I give any lead in, or should I just read it? 

Brittany Rogers

It's up to you. 

Jos Charles

Oh, wow. I'll read it, and then we can talk about it.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that. 

Jos Charles

i.

I too have fallen into that pit.
Choked on the air we spit.

Covered the door in foil or sheet,
incomprehensible lettering. 

Said, the best yards have three dogs
in it. Or, resolution comes from 

the struggle that birthed it.
Empathy, someone wrote above 

in chalk. While the workers
took a currant colored tarp. 

Development in plain sight.
Gold, gold, gold, gold. 

Gabriel,a woman shouts,
Gabriel, come quick.

Brittany Rogers

Whew.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Goodness, Jos.

Jos Charles

That's a sonnet kind of. I've been calling them, in my mind, hard-lace sonnets. Like I want the effect of a sonnet, you know, but like not the, not the, like pristinest. Yeah, a little more off the cuff.

Brittany Rogers

It definitely gives the brevity and the sonic element. That's what I was still sitting over here being stung by like the, a hint of rhyme, but also just such precision. Well, more than a hint, but it wasn't continuous throughout was what I mean to say, but the precision of your language, and the precision of the lines is so like, studying and fascinating to me. 

Jos Charles

Aw, thank you. 

Brittany Rogers

The English teacher in me was like, ooh (laughs), I could teach this poem in class. I could (laughs). So that's what I was over here wondering. 

Jos Charles

Yeah, that's who I write for. And you Brittany.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). Why, thank you. I love that.

Jos Charles

So I'm glad it landed.

Brittany Rogers

Oh, I have a question. Because you mentioned the hard-lace sonnet, how close does it have to get to the sonnet?

Jos Charles

Yeah, that's a good question. It's, I think they're becoming more close as I write them. So I, I the only like, like a conventional maybe, no formal, there you go, a requirement, or a perceived requirement that I'm following is 14 lines. But the lines vary drastically in length. So like, for instance, in that poem, “Gold”, each gold is its own line. But then, now I'm really into like, ridiculously long lines, you know, that like, I don't know, can overflow like half a page or whatever, you know? Because I'm like, well, I guess that's the other extreme, right? Is like you have one really long line that's obnoxiously lodged in the middle or something. So I've been thinking that too. And I guess the idea of the weight of the line, you know. I guess I think of like lines, like I think of stanzas or anything else where like, I guess it's back to music, right? Like the idea, somewhere way back in there, at least in like a sort of troubadourian, that can't be a word, like thing. Is, is right, like you have the syllable count that matches the certain stanzas so it can be adapted to multiple forms of music that assume the same syllabic count or whatever. So that way, the performer can perform it in different contexts with different music on different instruments and so on, with different melodies. But so like there's this weird idea that stanzas are equivalent, or carry the same kind of weight, you know, and I guess I think of lines kind of that way too, right, you assume because they're the same length, and stress that they have some kind of equivalency. And then so I got really into that. And so the idea of just like dropping gold on its own line, you know, like gives it this weight, this heaviness that I really like, and so now, yeah, now I'm on the other side of I like having like a line that is just like a huge narrative thought that doesn't carry that much weight, you know, like, it's just got its own sort of little space there in a sonnet that otherwise might be doing other things. So these kind of little, little winding almost diaristic threads that I'm liking to put in, I also think I may be sometimes have a tendency towards disjunction or something. Yeah, so I'm trying to put in these little narrative moments also throughout the sonnets to give maybe a little more entry, or in to a kind of arc across them. Yeah, maybe a little more invitational that way. 

Brittany Rogers

Is what I hear you saying that the way that you typically enter a poem is, irregular is not quite the word that I'm thinking about, but the way that you normally enter a poem invites more distance, and you're trying to lessen that distance?

Jos Charles

I don't think that's what I meant, but now I'm thinking about it. Maybe. When I enter a poem, I think maybe sometimes, maybe my own poems more than poems generally. Yeah, I think what's hard to learn, or remember, or practice, practice is a better word, what's hard to practice is like, being able to read your own work, right? And not see what your intentions were, and just see the words that are there. But I think that's the joy of writing poems, for me, in part is like to see how the words, not, I guess, not just slip away, and go off on their own direction, and enable new things. But like how they turned against me a bit. Yeah. And maybe reveal that my intentions weren't the reason, yeah, that I wrote. That like, in fact, I was writing for something else, in addition to the words, define what I was trying to do in the first place. Yeah, so I guess that's a kind of distance, but I think when I enter other people's work, I guess it depends what the sort of protocols of the work are communicating to me. So if it like appears narrative, and appears to have a stable speaker, then I just assume it's a stable speaker, you know, and like, sometimes it may be matches with the individual poet, and then especially if I know the poet, and it's like, oh, yeah, that sounds like whoever you know. And then I just assume it's all transparent. But I think for my work, or in my practice, that's like the starting point. The starting point is a transparent, maybe speaker, but then I'll wander off to other places, sometimes.

Brittany Rogers

Interesting.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm fascinated with this idea of the intention is not why you write. I don't know if I'm wording that correctly, but this thing you just said about, like, the reason you wrote not being why you're writing, and then the work turning on you. Can you explain that a little bit more?

Jos Charles

I think with like the poem I read, for instance, I had started writing some of the sonnets, and I thought of this poem is like, an opening. Yeah, and, and I don't know, I maybe have like, forty or so of these written and I know, I want a lot more. So I don't know how long it's going to go or if it will be at the beginning, or not, or anything like this. But at the time when I wrote it, I was thinking, like, it was the start of these things I had started writing. So I wanted it to be like really, like city descriptions. Yeah. I'm in Long Beach, California, and just looking around at stuff, walking around a lot, especially during the pandemic, trying to get out some, but still be safe and everything. So a lot of just walks and looking at things. And I wanted something that maybe kinda had that, a splinter, maybe is the word. You have that kind of like poet walking around the city looking at flowers and stuff, you know, and then I started writing it. Yeah, I caught on to this other thread, which is like a, like a lot of what I'm trying to think like public art that had gone up that is like city endorsed, you know, that was like very vaguely political. Things like yeah, “empathy”, right? Being written above in chalk. And I had feelings about that. Yeah, it was strange, strange to see a city that creates these problems. And then, and then tries to position itself as like, on the side of the people that it's exploiting. So like that, that feeling was in the air. And then just all the displacement that was happening here was sad, and horrible. Yeah. And so this was the thing I think, just looking, just looking at the city. Come on, come on, Jos, who are you to be walking around and like naming things? You’re no Adam, you know, like, that's not, that's not your role here. So I thought it was better just to kind of listen, and write some things down that I was hearing and seeing, but I included some of my, some of my little thoughts and things in there. Like dogs, like I like yards with three dogs. That was the extent of that. 

Ajanaé & Brittany

(Laughing).

Jos Charles

Like that should go into poem. Why not? Got lots of it, pit, sit sounds. Yeah, so I mean, that's how I kind of got there with that one. So maybe, it wasn't just like, my intention was like, oh, I'm gonna write this cool, like introductory prelude poem, you know, to this collection that's gonna be so cool. You know, like, that may have been the starting place. Um, but yeah, then not just the poem told me no, but like, I don't think that's really what I wanted in the first place anyways, you know, and it was more about, yeah, this like, I can't like quite find the right word maybe like ushering in, but the the city is doing it through, and on behalf of me as well, and no posturing would remove that. Yeah, so it was feeling that as well, I suppose. And then I guess, devotion and or something like that, or the absolute, and outside prayer, things like this. Then, there was thinking of Gabriel, the angel, Archangel, but someone was really just yelling for someone named Gabriel.

Brittany Rogers

I caught the angel too, and that is why I was like, okay (laughs), I am going on a ride, and I am struck.

Jos Charles

Yeah, you blow the horn, right? Like it's the blowing of the horn above the, above the city. And maybe, maybe the city walls collapse. That’ll be nice.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Jos, you got me about to revisit all my poems and be like, are you turning on me? (Laughs).

Jos Charles

Much, much like, my mental health. My poems turn on me.

Brittany Rogers

Listen (laugsh). Every day I wake up. People wake up and their brains do exactly what they want them to do, and I wish (laughs).

Jos Charles

Don't know how some people got so lucky.

Brittany Rogers

That's what I'm trying to figure out. Like, what bargain did you make? Because I too will make that bargain if it means that I wake up in the morning, and my brain just goes like, oh. 

Jos Charles

Yeah. Oh, well. We have, we have other gifts.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). We have other things. They're always other things. Jos, is it cool if we ask what’s moving you these days?

Jos Charles

I've been into reading this collection of hymns to Anona that I have here, or as sometimes called Ashtoreth. Yeah, that that's been nice. And that's been really great. I've been reading some like language poets, or I don't really know how to say that. I guess L equal sign, A equal sign and so on. But like, who's going to do that? Yeah, and that's been, that's been good. I've been reading some Clark Coolidge. That's been really fun to me. I hadn't really encountered his work very much. Let's see, music wise, I've been listening to Roberta Flack. She's just so good. Feel Like Makin’ Love has been on repeat. It's got such a gentle sound to it. You know, I really hate that I've become this person, but at some point in my life, I was like a real like, I guess it's because I studied concert music or something. But like a real like, the writing I care about what you know, like, what, like, you could just print up the score, and that'd be fine or something. And like I wanted to, I don't know, but now I just care about the sound, you know, like, what's the sound of the album? What are the, what's like the overall like, ambience that that invites you into? And that album just has such a gentle, warm seventies sound to it. It's so pleasant just to, just to sit in for a while. Let's see. Yeah, what is that song, “Some Gospel According to Matthew”, I think is on there. Um, really, really beautiful song. Been listening to that one a lot. I've been, this is like, okay, so when I was really little, there's this period I was like raised evangelical Christian, so I like only listened to so called Christian music, but not like Bach, you know, I mean, like. 

Brittany Rogers

I know exactly what you mean. 

Jos Charles

Really bad alt rock first album I remember having on my little CD, no, is a Walkman, yeah. So I guess it was a cassette was Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo by MxPx. Oh, man. It's not worth it. Don't check it out. 

Ajanaé & Brittany

(Laughing). 

Jos Charles

Yeah, and I listened to that on repeat all the time, you know, and just always on, headphones on, sitting there happy as a clam. But anyways, my first like, quote, unquote, secular music that I remember really listening to was the Beatles, because that was like, my, my dad liked it. And yeah, let us start listening to it. And I had a, he had a friend who would burn these little CDs of different Beatles albums, and give them to me so this is how I encountered them. And like I didn't even, we didn't listen to the radio really except Radio Disney, and they didn't play the Beatles so all this to say like, I've been trying to connect with that little baby Jos maybe a little bit more. Because I spent a fair amount of time thinking that I'm, I guess far away from it. So I've been listening to George Harrison albums a lot again recently. And that's been really nice. Living in the material world is like my go to like, cleanse myself album. I guess. Like if I'm feeling really overwhelmed. I listened to the whole album, you know, and it like calms me down. 

Brittany Rogers

Yes, I love that. 

Jos Charles

Yeah, But, that's my slowly going the way of the buffalo album for thirty-three year old Jos. He also has an album [George Harrison], Thirty Three & 1/3, which is, yeah, which is roughly my age, though I don't like that one as much (laughs). Just making talk is not really profound. Yeah, no, living in the material world is really gorgeous though. And it like, it brings me out a little, and brings me back.

Brittany Rogers

Um, you mentioned kind of slowing down, and reaching back to like childhood Jos, or baby Jos. And I would love to hear you talk more about the impact that that's had, either on like yourself, or your writing?

Jos Charles

Yeah, let's see on myself, let's, um, goofier, more comfortable with, like, making mistakes. I guess I like forget words a lot, and mix up names, and things like this. I guess it's just dyslexia, you know, but, um, like, so I, I used to be very slow, and like intentional about how I would talk a lot more than I am now. Because I wanted to really make sure I got it right, which sometimes would make it worse, right, like, because I'm trying really hard. Yeah. So being a little more comfortable with toppling over my own words a little bit. I guess just being more okay with things going wrong, and feeling the fact that things are going wrong when they do, rather than trying to like quickly fix it. So I stopped having to feel the feelings of things going wrong. Yeah.

Brittany Rogers

Why would you drag me so casually like that? (Laughing).

Jos Charles

But you know what I mean? Like, I try to, like, solve it really quick. But my resolutions are always like, really bad. They like don't solve it, they make it worse normally, right. So like, that's back to maybe it's kind of slowing down in a way, I guess. Slowing down to be willing to trip up on yourself, but slowing down to allow yourself to sort through all the feelings you're feeling. And be okay with them. And I think I used to not as much want to feel them. Yeah. And it takes me a long time to sort them all still. But it very much feels like up here in my brain is like one person at a like control room. But it's like a 19th century control room. You know, it's like, theme, and gears and stuff. And when emotions happen, it's just like, a bunch of bowling balls come careening through, you know, and so it just like takes a long time to sort them all. But that's a lot better than just pretending there are no bowling balls in the room.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm a pretender. I'm like, there are no bowling balls (laughs). I'm listening to you, Jos, and I'm like, wow, that is, I guess what Jos is saying has lots of wisdom and merit to it.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing).

Jos Charles

Thanks, I mean, I'm saying all this because it's like in progress. So don't make it seem like, I don't want to make it seem like it's like, oh, yes. As we all know, process your feelings.

Brittany Rogers

No, we're learning, we're learning right along with you. 

Jos Charles

Just earlier today I was freaking out. And what did I do? I was like, I need to calm down. And then I drank a bunch of coffee. 

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing).

Jos Charles

Really counterintuitive. But then, let's see in terms of, yeah, then in terms of my poems though, I actually don't really know how it's been affecting it. I've been thinking about when I was seven a lot more, and writing about that. I'm writing some kind of loose memoir like thing. And it's changed that I think a lot, or maybe that's the result of thinking about seven year old Jos is these kind of diaristic entries? I'm just thinking about that time. Yeah, as I'm trying to go back and correct some some fatal whatever a patterns that I developed then depression or whatever neural pathways. I don't know, I don't know this stuff. But yeah, whatever happened, however I adapted to handle stress, then, you know, trying to undo it a little. And not just seven, obviously, like other years happened after that. But it was, it was a big one for me.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I, I want to ask a follow up, because I've heard you talk about faith before, and about religion before, which was lovely. When I got to sit in on the panel, you did a panel at Randolph's residency with some other writers, and it was just awesome. And you mentioned your evangelical upbringing, and music there. And I'm really curious how your understanding of the sacred, the secular, and the profane has like shifted, if that has a relationship to your writing, or if that impacts your writing?

Jos Charles

I think I used to think, yeah, they were very distinct things. And I thought I was in the sacred one. And I thought most people were in the profane world, you know, and then at some point, I think I got very, like, I don't know, John Donne Christian about everything, and I thought there was some kind of unity or overlap, you know, but then one went hard the other way, and went really William Blake or something. And yeah, and maybe I'm still there. Like, I tend to think that that maybe all is spirit. Yeah. And just the body is one part of that, and the body is spirit. It's just like a tip of the iceberg, you know? This I mean, I mean, I guess I guess I mean analog, like metaphorically or something like, whatever, I don't really have a practice or a religion I, or religious practice. Yeah, right now, or belief, I guess. What I develop that I held to I'm processing this right now. So forgive me if this is a, yeah, I haven't thought through it as much as I probably should have. But the absolute maybe, like I, because I believed that there was in something that was absolute that was never going to fail, you know, that I was constantly trying to bend my will towards, and that meant a lot to me, and it helped me get out a lot of my traps, you know, mind traps, I guess. And so that that meant a great deal. And then, you know, I guess I started displacing it and projecting it on people expecting some kind of absolute love from from people or that like, somehow that was going to be fulfilled in some way in the world. So it became really useful not to believe in it anymore. Because it was just getting me into a bunch of trouble. And yeah, that's maybe the simplest way to say it. My, my, my best friend, that evangelical Christianity got in the way of her loving people, you know, and that's kind of how I felt to. And it was just messing everything up. My expectations were for, my cat is at the door and very mad. I'm going to let her in. 

Brittany Rogers

We love pets! Yes, please.

Ajanaé Dawkins

This is a cat friendly podcast.

Jos Charles

Oh my god, walking around like she owns the place. Okay. But anyway, so now I guess I don't know. I don't know where to put the absolute, but I believe in a bit more, or I want to in the sense of like, I think it's good to imagine. Oh, no, she's gonna leave. She's gonna step on the keyboard. I know it. She loves to send messages while I'm on calls. Um.

Ajanaé Dawkins

She's trying to say hi.

Jos Charles

Yeah, she's right here, you see. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hi!

Brittany Rogers

Hey, kitty.

Jos Charles

Faye.

Ajanaé Dawkins

What’s her name? Faye?

Jos Charles

Back to belief, I guess. Yeah, now, I guess I find it useful in my poems, and in my teaching to kind of like, try and practice that kind of like belief in that there's something absolute and, and good. And maybe you will never achieve it. And maybe it's not really possible. But as a kind of promise, or a kind of branch that's too high, maybe beyond beyond my reach. I think there's a Sappho fragment, something like that. Like reaching to the top most bow, where the sweetest fruit are or something like this that one can't reach. You'll never reach it. Right? And it's like an imaginary outside, maybe, at worst, if you believe in it, then, then it's not. But for myself, it feels like I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just imaginary. But trying to reach for it means something. And I see that I get better. And I'm kinder when I try to. I don't know if this is making a lot of sense. But this is kind of my my thoughts right now, as I'm jazzed up on coffee, and with my cat.

Ajanaé Dawkins

No, it's making a ton of sense. And I really appreciate you articulating that. I love the idea of coming back to an absolute belief of like the good in something, and thinking about the things that get in the way of us loving people well. Yeah, yeah, no, it absolutely makes sense.

Jos Charles

And that's, yeah, I think that relates to poems too, right? Like, I like, I want the poem to reach a reader that doesn't exist, right? Like the, I guess the reader is like me at the moment that I sat down to write the poem. You know, like, by the time the poem is done, it's already past, it's too late. The poem always seems to arrive too late. Like, because it's information I needed before I wrote the poem. Like it's something I needed to hear that I didn't hear, or I wanted to read that I couldn't read. So it comes too late. But again, it's that kind of like, faith or belief that that I could maybe through some kind of trick, or some sort of miracle it could reach me or reach maybe a reader who is in a similar position.

Brittany Rogers

This is kind of a follow up question. Hearing you talk about your best friend, and like pedagogies on love, we would love to know if you could talk about your friendships, or relationships that have most intimately shaped your work?

Jos Charles

Well, we can start with with my best friend. She's definitely intimately shaped my work because like, on most any given day, she's the only person I see or hang out with. So yeah, we talk a lot, and that's a huge, huge aspect of my thinking, and work, and she's usually the person who first hears drafts of poems and things like that. And she's, she's not a poet. She's a pianist, but she's got an ear, you know, I guess, for all of it. So I share a lot with her. With the sonnets I'm writing right now. Yeah, there was someone dear to me, yeah, who passed near to recently. Yeah, and they meant a great deal to me at a certain time in my life, and part of this connecting to the Joses of your has me returning to that time a lot, too. So I've been thinking about them a lot and writing about it. I think, too, there's like, the things below maybe the surface a bit, I think about my grandma, who passed when I was young a lot. Yeah, she's kind of a, like, maybe less intimately so, but more like conceptually so, oversees a lot of the work. Yeah, I think about her a lot. Yeah, those are, those are some big ones. Faye is a big one right now, though. The, the sort of memoiry like thing that I'm working on has a lot about Faye. It's what started it actually, that's when I started writing it was when she showed up, because I was, I yeah, I wanted to write a poem about it, but it just wasn't working. It was to like, um, I don't know, like, like too, too sure of itself. Low caustic, maybe, or something I don't know. Like, I was trying to, like, have write a poem where like, she was resisting the things I wanted to have her represent, or see in her. And it just felt kind of like obnoxious or something to me. Like, like saying, who are you to, you know, think that she can represent something? Of course, she she goes way beyond that, but then to be, then then I got stuck in this metal loop, right of like, well, who are you to say that, you know, you can say that she rep, you know, you get it. So I scrapped that. And then I just started writing about in a more narrative form, that she showed up, what that was like, I wrote about reading her the Meister Eckhart, some of the things like that. And she just keeps on, keeps on showing up in it. And then I think, too, because for this memoir, like thing, a rule I gave myself as I wanted every entry to have as it's like, level of time and place be the composition of it. So like, if my, if I'm having a thought, and it gets interrupted, you know, I want to follow the interruption, too. And then maybe I'll edit it out later, but like to be open to the scene of composition, yields. And so they often shows up and interrupts what when I'm writing, so then that enters a lot of entries. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeaaah.

Brittany Rogers

Faye says, nobody allows me anything. Do you hear me? 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Period!

Brittany Rogers

That’s the energy I want to wake up with everyday.

Ajanaé Dawkins

How much you acknowledge Faye as a participator, not just as, like an autonomous being who's moving through the world. As like, the soon to be owner of a wildly stubborn pit bull who has like the personality of I don't even know. But seeing that person, not just as autonomous, which they are. So autonomous isn't the word. I think maybe as a participator is somebody who you can learn back from. And who's teaching you something I think is really beautiful. The idea of your grandmother as an overseer of your work is breaking my heart open in three million ways. Yeah, thank you for that answer. 

Jos Charles

Of course. It’s the truth.

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Yeah. Something that we wanted to ask you about, Jos, is if neurodivergence shapes your language form or your process?

Jos Charles

Yeah, I'm sure it does. It must. Right. Yeah. I feel like my relationship to language is pretty informed by it. Um, I, that's back to maybe seven year old Jos too, right, is like I'm, I was, like, homeschooled up until that point. So that was the first time I like encountered other people in a school setting. Yeah. So it's when I first I think, had to learn how to manage that and sort of, for lack of a better word, translate myself into that experience of being around others. Aside from, aside from my family, yeah. And that that's part of going back to seven right is like going back to see see some of those very early choices I made about how I was relating and communicating with people. So I suppose that's that's a big part. In terms of the work, I spoke, maybe the turns, you know, and narrative, I am not great at narrative normally. I guess by which I just mean like I don't, takes me a long time to to put together a story. Or if like, someone asks me what happened about something, I, I have no idea what happened normally, I'll just have like, a big sense of some impressions, you know, but like I can get there, it just takes me a long time to process it. And I think my poems are like that as well, in the sense that like, I don't, I don't tend to think, oh, there's a stable speaker in the eye, and the eye is expressing stuff that has happened to them, and so on. That's not my first entry into poems. I think my first entry is, like, how can I communicate what this whole experience felt like? Not for the sake of of communication, but to sort of just name it, I guess, to sort of say, all these things happened at once. And you know, I think, yeah, I remember being really surprised at how quickly everyone was at putting sensations together into objects. So like, like, if I, this is still the case, but I'm much better at it. But like, if I heard a sound, I wasn't always sure where it was coming from, or whatever, you know, and had difficulty processing it. And getting overwhelmed by auditory processing a lot when I was little. And just like being able to place where things were coming from. So I had this like, I guess it's object permanence or something like this confusion around it, where like, I didn't get how everyone seemed to be on the same page that like, these objects go together that like that sound, and that color, and that touch, you know, and that movement through the air all belong to one object that is impacting another object, and creating this sensation. Like, it always seemed strange to me. And, like, I had a pretty good working idea, but so I don't mean to say like, yeah, that I was putting together objects into new and weird creations all the time. But like, it was slow, it was a lot slower for me than it was for other people. I think that's how I remember it anyways, and it's still the case. So it's gotta be true. So I think for me, one thing I'm aware of in the poems is I'm often doing a version of that, where like, for instance, in the poem, I just read, all like, Faye deleted it, classic, she stepped on the keyboard. 

Ajanaé & Brittany

(Laughing).

Jos Charles

I gotta command Z the document a bit, okay. Like, where did the poems go?

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Classic is what took me out (laughing).

Jos Charles

She loves doing it. Yeah, so like said the best yards have three dogs in it, right. It's just something I said like, near the time that I was writing the poem. So it was like, yeah, let's put that in there. Empathy, someone wrote above in chalk, right. Like, I saw that out, I was sitting in a coffee shop and someone just had, you know, and, and this was like, at the same time that the city was like, really cracking down on policing unhoused people, and at the same time too, there was a lot of filming going on in the city, because Long Beach is kind of like the cheaper place to film for LA people. So they're always like, coming, coming down here, with their, like, huge trailers, you know, and like, they bring down like these huge trailer bathrooms. And so I was like, really struck by the irony of this at the time, and that moment of composition, it didn't make it into this poem, but it's in another one, where, like, there are these huge trailers for bathrooms that the city is willing to close down streets for, because they're filming, you know, whatever it was, the reboot of arrested development or something, you know, and like, simultaneously, not providing clean water to residents, you know, like, and simultaneously not providing bathrooms for people who are living here, you know, and simultaneously not providing basic living accommodations to unhoused people, right. So like this, the irony of that was also in the scene, and in that moment, so I was like, trying to not represent all this in context of like a testimony, right? Not like, oh, I'm going to write the poem that's going to change this, like, what a ridiculous thing, and who am I to do that. But like, insofar as I'm starting to think about my grief, and my mourning in this city where I was, you know, sort of born, where my parents were born, rather, and I have had the connection to my, throughout my life, but I'm now living in, like, how? How can I situate that grief with respect to the scope of the place, and the problems at the place? In a truthful way? Yeah. Small grief. You know, these are small griefs that we have in the global scheme of things. Yeah. So to try and like, right size, maybe to try and right size my grief a bit, and give it the, give it the context that exists within. So it's not just some sort of like, I don't know, I can't use the bathroom that I shouldn't be able to use, you know, at this coffee shop, like, sure. But like, in context of the city is just not providing bathrooms to like a huge portion of its residents. Right. Like, there's a larger con, like political context here. Right? And so to both respect the problem, but yeah, with respect to its size, yeah, and its context. So trying to fit all that into a very, very tiny poem that is like hardly a sonnet, yeah, is the challenge. But then also to let it accrue, because it's a sonnet cycle, you know, and like, like, things come back and develop maybe a little bit over time, rather than through a linear narrative seems to me how I think and process information, and language, and my memories in general. So so this is me talking about the project and trying to answer your question I guess, at the same time, but um, I think I see something neurodivergent there, and maybe in how I even answered the question.

Brittany Rogers

I was gonna say that was very much an answer. And in solidarity with you, piece of feedback I used to get all the time about my poems was that they would leap through time. 

Jos Charles

Yeah. 

Brittany Rogers

And not necessarily in a bad way. But it will be like, well, how do we get here? And then once I got the language for the way that my brain does things, or like, the ways that my thoughts kind of split off, it was like, oh, well, this makes perfect sense that first we were here, and then we were 20 years ago, and now we're like, you know, in this future self, but at the time, I don't think I have language for not being able to, or not, that my thinking doesn't come out in like a linear kind of way. 

Jos Charles

Yeah, that's like a cool thing about poems, right. Is like they're like, like a painting, right. It’s static, it just like sits there, but your experience of it is really temporal, right. Like you're, you can't see often the whole painting or take everything in at once. So your eyes starts in one place, move somewhere else, move somewhere else, move somewhere else, right. And poems are like that, because they're also static on the page if you're reading it on the page, but then they're also, right, a performance. Like you also read them. And they exist in a performative way, like a, like a piece of music, my or, I don't know, dance something. So like, they have the joy of doing both. And the difference between the both. Yeah, I don't really know why I'm saying this, but it's just something I thought, while hearing you talk, and there's something maybe neurodivergent about that, or like it allows itself a certain capacity that I really enjoy to manipulate time, yeah. Or represent it in other ways, yeah.

Brittany Rogers

So speaking of maps, we would love it if you would tell us about some of your influences, right? The way that we like to phrase this question is if a person wanted to deeply study and understand your work, like if they wanted to be able to read your poems and be like, bet I am like a expert at Jos, and what Jos does, who are three people that they need to engage with in order to best understand you, and these three people can be across any genre, like they don't have to be artists, they don't have to be poets, they can be literally anybody.

Jos Charles

Okay, what do you want to know for feeld specifically or for me? 

Brittany Rogers

No, for you. 

Jos Charles

Because I could answer that one too. They’re different answers so.

Brittany Rogers

Oh, I'm fascinated. Also, listener feeld is Jos’s second collection and it's a banger. So if you don't have it, you need to get into it.

Jos Charles

Yeah. Publisher weekly starred banger.

Brittany Rogers

Period! (Laughing).

Jos Charles

I like had three poets right away and then you throw the curveball of of any artists now now I'm really yeah, my mind is wide open. Maybe let's see. Okay, okay. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Let's go Édouard Glissant, both as a poet, and as a theorist, yeah, scholar. Um, Bach, it's really cliche, but that's when I first fell in love with concert music was with Johann Sebastian. And, and patterns, right patterns. And I gotta give credit to my best friend here, but András Schiff who is a pianist who in a lecture on Bach said that Bach establishes a problem, like creates a problem before your eyes only to solve it, you know, and like, that's what each piece is, it itself is the solution to the problem, it's posing, and I try to think of my poems, or I have thought of my poems in similar terms. And so hearing that was like, ah, that's the way to say it. But I think, I think I learned that there. And then I'll say, Emily, Emily Dickinson, because that was like the first poet I remember reading, and really just falling in love with a bit like that, too, a bit like solving the problems that she creates as well.

Brittany Rogers

I love that language that you just gave.

Jos Charles

Aw, thanks. And good. I mean, I don't know what the use is, and retroactively applying historical, you know, historically specific categories back into the past, but, you know, she could have very well been neurodivergent if it means anything. She's, she certainly could could be read that way. 

Brittany Rogers

I, for me, at least, having, I kind of look back on, and it's like, whew, we we're not alone in this world. So that's a fascinating aspect. That makes me wonder of like all the folks who I’ve read, if part of the appeal was just seeing that their brain was doing a thing that my brain was also doing.

Jos Charles

Oh, that's actually, yeah, I realized that at some point. I have like a stack of books that are like my faves, you know, that I returned to. And at some point, yeah, I looked at it, and I was like, wait, like, 75%, 80% of these people were hospitalized at some point for like mental health issues, you know, and oh, yeah, there you go. I guess that's real life. Yeah. Just me and my, me and my crazies, I guess as someone who's clinically crazy, I feel like.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing). I know exactly what you meant. Okay, so we're gonna take a break, and then me and Ajanaé are going to come up with some game questions, and then we will be back.

[TECHNO BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Welcome back, Jos. Okay, Jos, we are going to play a little game called Fast Punch. So ultimately, we are going to give you the best or worst of a thing in a category, and you have to name it. So let's start with, if you would like to be an optimist or a pessimist.

Jos Charles

I'll be an optimist. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

We love it. So, we’re gonna give you a thing, or a category, and you're gonna give us the best thing in that category. Okay?

Jos Charles

Yeah, I love it. Let's, I'm gonna get it wrong probably the first few times. We'll see though.

Ajanaé Dawkins

There's no right or wrong.

[BELL CHIMES]

Brittany Rogers

Best classical instrument. 

Jos Charles

Piano.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best Album to listen to with no skips.

Jos Charles

That's so hard; To Love Somebody Nina Simone.

Brittany Rogers

Taste. Okay, the taste. Best poetic form.

Jos Charles

I don't know. The first thing I thought was free verse. That's not really fair, though. Is it? 

Ajanaé Dawkins

It is. 

Jos Charles

Okay, I'll say a free verse. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best texture. 

Jos Charles

I'm a cotton person. So cotton, cotton smooth, soft.

Brittany Rogers

I like soft. Best of the language poets.

Jos Charles

I'm not sure if it counts, but Russell Atkins.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best breakfast.

Jos Charles

Best breakfast. For me, it's juice. I'm not a big breakfast person. Go juice. Green Juice.

Brittany Rogers

No food?

Jos Charles

No. 

Brittany Rogers

Best thing to order at the coffee shop.

Jos Charles

I'm a black coffee person. So just if you're feeling fancy, let the pour over or whatever.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And lastly, best comedy.

Jos Charles

Best Comedy. Oh, wow. I'm a Norm Macdonald fan. It's you know, maybe maybe there's some hashtag problematic stuff, but you know rest in peace norm. I think yeah, I know it's supposed to be rapid fire but I'm I'm re-associating. I hope that's okay. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that. 

Jos Charles

That I think yeah, I think I learned something from him that feels worth mentioning, yeah, which is like he learned that when he misread something you can turned into a joke. Yeah, and I think I do that a lot. Because I misread things a lot. And then if you just like hold your ground, it's really funny.

Ajanaé Dawkins 

I love it. I love it. I love it so much. Okay, so ding ding ding ding the plot twist is that Brittany and I won the game because we get to hear another poem.

Brittany Rogers

You won, but also, we won.

Jos Charles

Nice. Everyone wins. Everyone gets a trophy.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs). You get a prize. You get a prize. (Laughing).

Jos Charles

All right. Well, I'm gonna read another sonnet. And in my mind, I wrote this one as the second one. So, to me this, I again, I have no idea how this manuscript will coalesce or if it will, or what, but in my mind, this is the second one I thought that would be nice for for this. This is a sonnet. [Recites poem that starts with “I made my way to the waters”].

Brittany Rogers

So I can't see it on the page. I don't know if that was the last two lines, but that “it will not be non violent.” and “our story will be a story of water.” 

Ajanaé Dawkins

What? 

Jos Charles

Thank you. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

In the most respectful way, like I could throw things. 

Jos Charles

Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That last line would have been when I started throwing things.

Jos Charles

Nice. That's what I want. I want people to be throwing stones at the wickedest empire.

Brittany Rogers

At the empire thing, yes, absolutely. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

Whew, best, let me tell you where Jos me ship today, okay. There were numerous places where Jos has me shipped, but I'm stuck on the idea of how much I'm learning she's done. And how in touch she is with her inner like, with the with just being able to sit with her feelings, being able to process like what would my younger self want? What would my younger self need? And I want you to know the idea of doing some of that unlearning of the ways that I handled stress has me like bent.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best, I absolutely agree. While also giving permissions to the times we don't always employ the tools in our toolbox, and constantly giving ourselves grace. 

Brittany Rogers

I want you to know that I be looking at the tools and be like, hmm, that's not for me (laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best, and it do be for you. It do, I just want to put that out there. I appreciated the reprocessing of the sacred, and the profane as something that used to be separate and that are no longer separate is something I think about a lot. And I was a fan of Faye’s intro into the conversation. They got something to say, okay.

Brittany Rogers

Faye is a cutie pie, and also, this so on brand for you it don't make no sense (laughs). Ajanaé Dawkins see a animal and everything gotta stop. The world has to stop when she see a animal. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen, this is an animal friendly podcast, bring your pets. If I find out that you had a pet, and we did not meet it on the podcast, lowkey, are we even friends? Are we cool people?

Brittany Rogers

Do we even like each other? That's where you at?

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Do you know me as a person? Are you high right now? Do you ever get nervous?

Brittany Rogers

Shut up! (Laughing). Okay, y’all, Ajanaé has to be stopped. Okay. So this interview also had me thinking about things that our work does maybe that we weren't expecting it to do, the way that sometimes poems have a mind of their own. And I'm wondering if your work has done things that you didn't expect of it? And if so, like, what sort of things?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Girl, where do the list begin, okay? My poems don't care what I want. They don't care what I'm interested in. I think starting with the fact that they ain't all poems. Like, I think I used to think especially thinking about our earlier commentary on childhood, I used to think I was like, I am a poet poems are the end all be all, and being like, oh, this is an essay, this is a play, or this is something other than a poem is maybe the first way my poems be reading me down when nobody asked them to, like, nobody actually asked you for that information on my defense mechanisms. You know what I mean? Nobody actually asked you to highlight places where I need to be accountable. Mind your business, and I think maybe more recently, and both, I guess, craft and questions. My poems have been, like asking a lot more questions that I guess I didn't expect of, I didn't expect my work. I feel like I used to come to my work like, okay, I know this thing I want to write about. And now all of my work feels very curious about others, not even necessarily about myself about others. 

Brittany Rogers

I love that, best. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

What about you?

Brittany Rogers

I think definitely my work surprises me a lot lately with leaning into form. The number of times now that I looked up and been like, oh, I'm just writing this free write. Because I love a good no stanza having free write of a poem, and then seeing a poem be like, no bitch, I'm a ghazal, I'm a sonnet, like, get it together. And I'm like, oh, wait, what are you doing? What are you doing? Because I think, I think form is something that I used to be so resistant to that to think that, you know, my brain will naturally go there, or will pivot there when that’s what the poem needs, I think, is something that's been interesting to me. And then I think that my work always, my work, I think, reveals what I'm most obsessed with before I know that I'm obsessed with it. Or what I'm most struck by before I know that’s what I'm struck by, like, for a long time I was writing, and I'm like, no, this book isn’t about family, it’s about motherhood. I was like, I am not about motherhood. I'm about class, and ownership, and audacity, so switch all of that. And I was like, oh, wow, that is what, and then looking back to the poems I'm like, oh, no, clearly this was, this is clearly what the poems have been saying, and I don't know why you were trying to, to make it fit the thing that it wasn't saying

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. And I remember, I remember that shift happening for you too.

Brittany Rogers

I was mad as hell. (Laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins

These poems are (inaudible). 

Brittany Rogers

I was pressed, do you hear me?

Ajanaé Dawkins

You know what? I also feel like, I feel like we had similar moments. Because do you remember the meltdown I had? I said, (whispers) do you know this book is about my mom? 

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs) I do.

Brittany Rogers

And I do also remember being like, no, boo, this book been about your mom for a long time. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I was like, wow, yeah, that that just that just reconciled me to something. Yeah, I and I want to be clear, when you, when you started turning the form, and was turning them forms out, it made so much sense too. It made so much since. Oh, my God. Do you have anybody want to thank today, best?

Brittany Rogers

I was about to ask you the same thing. Who am I thinking today? I'm thinking today, I'm going to, if we're talking about form, I got a shout out Philip B. Williams, for making sure that I had the name and definition of every form that's ever existed, even when I was like, whew, I do not like that form. So, shoutout to him.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Period, I am going to second the shout out to Philip B. Williams. Because truly and honestly, we was a little stressed, we was a little stressed when we started getting into the research about forms, but I am just a tiny bit, but I am a better reader, and writer, and understander of form because of Philip talking about form. And I am going to shout out InsideOut Literary Arts Project and Aricka Foreman.

Brittany Rogers

Forever and ever.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Because we were talking about, earlier, things I would be surprised at, and that's where I got my first real circle of friends in the poetry community. So I want to shout out that space for being a space where I could come up, come in as my full self, and leave with lifelong friendships. 

Brittany Rogers

Amen, best. 

[BACKGROUND MUSIC BEGINS]

Ajanaé Dawkins

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

Brittany Rogers

Until next time, y’all.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Until next time. I'm gonna do your bye. Bye!

[BOTH LAUGHING]

[MUSIC CONTINUES]