AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

VS: Julian Randall vs. Forgiveness

June 11, 2019

 

Danez Smith: She’s the 404-error message of American poetry, Franny Choi.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) And they put the thick in mythical creature, Danez Smith.

 

Danez Smith: Wow, and you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

 

Franny Choi: Presented by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. 

 

Danez Smith: Franny, thank you so much for calling me thick.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah I see it, I clock it.

 

Danez Smith: I don’t know if you clock it, because I’m not actually that damn thick.

 

Franny Choi: Yes, you are.

 

Danez Smith: I’m thick for me. It’s a frame of mind.

 

Franny Choi: Uh-huh.

 

Danez Smith: You know, I’m thicker in my soul than in my body.

 

Franny Choi: You have ba-dunk-a-dysphoria.

 

Danez Smith: Yes, I have ba-dunk-a-dysphoria. Yes, indeed. I do. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Oh god, I’m sorry.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah, I’m also sorry.

 

Franny Choi: I feel like every episode we should just issue a public apology for all the things we say on the show.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah, probably. (LAUGHS) Sorry if we offended anybody.

 

Franny Choi: We don’t know what happened. We’re sorry.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah. But that would also take away from it, you know. A good apology is rare these days.

 

Franny Choi: It’s true. Have you seen any actually good apologies lately? Like, not the ones that make you cringe and say like, fuck this person even more. But no, like, that person really did that apology.

 

Danez Smith: No. I haven’t. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: Well, if I’m gonna be honest here, I think I still have a lot to learn about apologies.

 

Franny Choi: For sure.

 

Danez Smith: I did not grow up in a family that did the verbal apology a lot.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Danez Smith: It was more coded in these silent signs and ways of being. You know, I think about a great apology, I think about the tenderness that my grandfather had once he got cancer.

 

Franny Choi: Whoa, whoa.

 

Danez Smith: As a kind of apology.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Danez Smith: And as a thank-you to my grandmother.

 

Franny Choi: Wow.

 

Danez Smith: How he finally softened into somebody who probably would apologize for something. I don’t know if that ever happened between them. But I know he was on his almost deathbed the first time I saw them hold hands. And that in itself felt like a kind of apology that was powerful to me.

 

Franny Choi: Wow. Yeah. I mean I think a real apology takes humility, you know, and vulnerability.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah. Risk.

 

Franny Choi: When we were talking about this earlier, I thought about the best apology that I’ve seen recently was at Standing Rock. You might have seen this video. It was going around on the Internet, and it just moved me to fucking tears. It’s the council of elders and a lot of water protectors who were there, indigenous water protectors. And it’s the entrance of veterans who had joined to help defend the water and defend the water protectors. And in order to join that space, a thing that they offered to it was an apology on behalf of the U.S. military, for the past aggression and genocide and violence.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: And they got down on their knees to say this, and it was this beautiful and heartfelt—it was the only time when I’ve seen shame actually operate as a gift to somebody else. As a real offering that was part of a healing process.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: And like, obviously as someone who’s watching this video I can’t accept anyone’s apology on anyone’s behalf.

 

Danez Smith: Right.

 

Franny Choi: But it was so moving to see military people on their knees asking for forgiveness and supplicating themselves in that way.

 

Danez Smith: Wow, that is powerful. I think forgiveness is one of the strongest things we’ve figured out how to do as people.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah. Yeah. And in this conversation that we get to have today with Julian Randall, he talks about forgiveness as a long active process that’s complicated and thorny. And I just really appreciate this conversation that we get to have with Julian.

 

Danez Smith: Amen. Julian Randall is a living black queer poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, BOAT, and the Watering Hole, and was a 2015 College National Slam Best Poet. Julian is the curator of Winter Tangerine review’s Lineage of Mirrors. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, The Georgia Review, Sixth Finch and all over the place. He is an MFA candidate here at the University of Mississippi where we’re here recording this very special sequence of episodes.

 

Franny Choi: Yes! We’re really excited to get to talk to Julian about his book Refuse, which was the winner of the Cave Canem Prize, and also to talk about the new projects that are on the horizon for him here in Mississippi.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah. So let’s not hold our horses any longer. Let’s let Julian lead us in with a poem.

 

Franny Choi: Yes.

 

Julian Randall:

 

(READS POEM)

 

Moon Cricket

I have been living     despite myself

my territory hemmed by mud and threat

of mud    If there is a land without its own

subliminal violences    this night offers no

defense of what has died in it    Some things

are only nourished in a stutter of kudzu

and the inconsistencies of silver the moon

shucks off     Casual machines honey the dark

with the monotony of their health while

one theory of soil chokes out another     See

no land without violence    I’ve been staving off

the obvious      It is dark and so am I

Earlier heat makes me lush with failed stars

I tell the homies     Living in Mississippi is like living

on the moon   and I mean every day brings

several weathers and I am never dressed

for any of them     Kudzu in the right light

is like a gold front on a disintegrating tooth

Since I got here I have not written any throat

that was not straddled by something uninvited

The ground is brimming with sirens and children

of sirens    I have been living in an idea of dark

come from another man’s mind     watching

the rain loose inconvenient silk imagining

what lives in the soil the asphalt choked out

If the clouds are the capital city of a country

of perfect memory        then I am afraid    

No ocean formed against me will abandon me

Lately     the stars are dim so I count the niggas

I wish would try me      I have walked into the dark

seeking a saddle    and emerged with merely hands

I rock a trampled violet     play moonlight in reverse

blued with desire    I antithesis a lineage    I do not leave

because how will I get home     I have been here before

Flesh tenored with desperation   escape    like night

demands recursion     Opaque as land before a man bridled

the light      I am lonely in the season that widows everything

I have been waiting to tender the moon face an ancestral purple

I have been mothering a rage when I forget how to say escape

My favorite songs in any year all translate to Run or Mine

I am at my most named in the dark      sing into a parallel quiet   

name the song for the tether it casts    pleading silver   

towards a geography of light we barely name

I reach my hand out to a space of no stars

Where the clouds have torn like cotton    I forget

How much I love a song which muscles the silence

How much I would give for a grammar of no slaves

O historical dead      I am come from your unlanguaged apocalypse

like an ugly and deserved weather     Watch me

eclipse their dark with my own      Watch me citizen

the absence of your names

 

* * *

 

Danez Smith: Whew! That’s a great poem.

 

Franny Choi: Whew!

 

Danez Smith: Julian Randall is a poet, author, and fourth string strong safety for the Chicago Bears.

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Maybe even practice squad. How you doing, Julian?

 

Julian Randall: I’m doing alright, how are y’all?

 

Danez Smith: Good, thank you so much for joining us.

 

Franny Choi: Yes, thank you.

 

Julian Randall: Thanks for having me. Yo, I love this podcast.

 

Danez Smith: Aww.

 

Franny Choi: Aww, we love you!

 

Julian Randall: It’s lit.

 

Franny Choi: What is moving you these days, Julian?

 

Julian Randall: I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness.

 

Danez Smith: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: And I think it’s because I live here in Mississippi, where like, I think the question of forgiveness as black people’s superpower for me finds its genesis here.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Danez Smith: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: So, we’re in Oxford right now, which means that we are 53 miles away from Water Valley, Mississippi, which is the last place that you can find any trace of my father’s side of the family on record. So, ostensibly it is the town in which we were enslaved.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So I’ve been trying to think a lot about like, what it means to live here and is it forgiveness to have come back.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: Is it forgiveness, is it reclamation, are those two things antithetical to each other. So I’ve been thinking a lot about just like what that is and what are the actual physical consequences of forgiveness, because it’s something that is constantly demanded of black people, right.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: Like, we’re not allowed to mourn, we’re not allowed to process things out. Either you process it, or you die.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: Sometimes both.

 

Danez Smith: Where are you at in that line of questioning right now? Have you felt anything relieved or lifted in that sort of seeking of forgiveness when you thinking about this location?

 

Julian Randall: I think a little bit. I think that once I was able to let go of the idea that to live here and contemplate forgiveness was to forgive the people who thought they owned us. And rather to like, consider—because I was a big His Dark Materials fan as a kid, so I’m always thinking about the butterfly effect and this idea of parallel selves. And like, there’s a very precise sequence of things that need to happen in order for me to be alive and be here right now.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And one of those very particular sequences of things is that I am a black person who struggles with suicidal depression.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: A lot of trying to think about the violences that if I unwish them here, they unwish me, is also me trying to struggle and contemplate what it means that I have unwished myself for less, right.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So I think I’ve been working more towards forgiving myself, as a means of saying like, we were bad enough to come this far.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: And I live very firmly in the evidence of that. I’m hyped about where that’s taking me. The daring and the tenderness that’s growing in the place of that fear. Of that particular silence. So, I’m hyped about that.

 

Franny Choi: Just to stay on this for a second longer, because you said something fascinating—whether forgiveness and reclamation are antithetical to each other. Can you say more about that? Like, what is the difference for you between forgiveness and reclamation, or how do you see those two ideas in conversation specifically in the context of coming to a place like this?

 

Julian Randall: For sure. We’re living in a really fascinating time for that, where I think our collective—I’m always hesitant to say that it’s a generational thing, but I think that the generation of people that I generally find myself in conversation with have like wildly different and I think more useful standards of what constitutes an apology, for instance. And like what exactly does that forgiveness look like in terms of justice. So I think that the idea of forgiveness that I grew up with where it’s like, somebody pushed you down, and you’re like, dang, that sucked, I wish that you hadn’t done that, that fucking hurt. And then they’re like, well he’s a person, too; you have to forgive him so you can move on. It’s like, so forgiveness became this very passive thing, right, whereas reclamation felt like a very active agential thing.

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: So I’m trying to think more about like, how can I augment this kind of very binary relationship that I have between these two things towards more of what I think I see the people who I roll with and people who I love and people whose standards I consider to be the standards of my community. Forgiveness is a longstanding process. That it’s not all done in one moment.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And so doing that with myself has definitely allowed me to also reclaim parts of my narrative that I wasn’t able to talk about very explicitly before.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So I guess the two are intertwining now because I have a different understanding of what forgiveness looks like. Does that make sense?

 

Franny Choi: That it’s more of an active longer process. Is that what you mean?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Because I was just like—I thought that I was done talking about this particular section of my life.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: I think that I had sold myself this idea that like, okay, we’re gonna write this book, and this obsession is gonna be like, kinda done.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And this shame is gonna be like, it’s out there, and now people have read about it and it just kind of mutated. It shifted and it changed because now it’s like, okay, it’s out in the open. I’ve discussed it with my mom, which was not like, a thing that we had talked about.

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: And so now I live in the aftermath of that as well, right?

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: I think all the time about like, yo, if I had gone through with this, none of this is possible. A lot of good shit is happening right now, and I’m happy that I get to see it. And running in conversation with that happiness, there’s this kind of underriding shame that I have to be in conversation with, in order to open myself to a more full and just joy. Does that make sense?

 

Franny Choi: More full and—

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (IN UNISON) just joy.

 

Franny Choi: I love that.

 

Danez Smith: I love that. Get it tatted.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, right?

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: Can we talk about the book for a minute?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, for sure.

 

Franny Choi: I am so interested in this conversation about forgiveness and reclamation, and also a conversation about shame. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how those ideas played into how you put together and envisioned the book.

 

Danez Smith: The book being Refuse.

 

Franny Choi: Yes. Do you say “refuse” or “refuse”?

 

Julian Randall: It’s “refuse” to me. But that distinction is intentional.

 

Franny Choi: For sure, for sure.

 

Julian Randall: I was so hyped when y’all did your episode with Kimiko Hahn, because I was like, oh, word, it’s a portal.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Like, that’s what I was trying to do. And I hadn’t thought about it in that particular terminology.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: And I was like, word, there’s a duality to this.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: The way that people have to ask and they have to consider it. It’s either “refuse,” to be done away with, or “refuse,” to do away with.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So I liked the idea that there’s parallels on either side.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: But yeah, so Refuse came in stages like I think most books do. It started in this wildly different context, right, like, just gotten kicked out of college because my grades were low, because mental health is hard when you’re actively watching the genocide of your people and shit. So I started this chapbook, and it was supposed to be pretty much a posthumous thing.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: I assumed at some point or another that somebody was gonna kill me, was gonna do away with me. And I was like, okay, I’m gonna make sure I get a last shout-out into the world, right. So I create this thing that was supposed to be for a chapbook prize.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: And it was pretty much all poems about like, being black, and being killed. And there was no poem in there that I could make it out of, make it out of the poem alive, right.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Franny Choi: Right.

 

Julian Randall: So I think that’s the initial embryonic stage that really started is this thing that was deeply elegiac. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I think that it was so flat, because it didn’t have anything about the life that was being lost. I was just like, okay, word, I assume that you are going to be sad about this, because that’s the way that I’ve been told that things would work. And so it started to flesh out into more of a book that was in conversation with that but was also trying to think about the fact that like, I’m black, and I’m Dominican, and what does the intersection of these two cultures mean in terms of my understanding of my fragility and disposability. So still in the context of death, still in the context of what is being agenced. I don’t know if that’s word.

 

Danez Smith: Agenced? Yeah, sure, rock with it.

 

Julian Randall: Agenced upon me.

 

Franny Choi: Ooo! (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Like, yeah it was being inflicted. And then you know, through all of that, I was bisexual but we weren’t really talking about it. And then, to me, the real big turning point—and I think this is where we really start to think in depth about shame. Because throughout this whole thing it’s really a book that’s in so many ways about me and my dad.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: But none of that’s really in there. It’s implied, and it’s like, oh you know, I must’ve come from somewhere. But like, nobody’s actually talking about that.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: I go to Callaloo in 2016, work with Vievee Francis and Greg Pardlo.

 

Danez Smith: Shout-out.

 

Julian Randall: Shout-out to the goats. Best workshop ever. Vievee ran a workshop so well I came out to my parents.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: I am all out of identities, like, fresh out. Sorry. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: That’s an incredible testimonial.

 

Julian Randall: Like all her realism tips. So Callaloo happens like, right after—the Pulse shooting happens while I’m on the bus.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: I mean obviously it’s just real heavy on me, because I’m like, this is also me. If I die, I don’t want to die as not myself.

 

Danez Smith: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: Vievee’s there, and she gives us a prompt. She’s like, yo you should do a poem that involves a literary device that you never do. And I don’t really fuck with punctuation. So I was like, fuck it, I’m gonna write a prose poem. But really what I did was something else that I’d never done in poems—be honest.

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: So from that emerges “On the Night I Consider Coming Out to My Parents.” And Vievee’s like, this is the jam. She asked me why I hadn’t applied to CantoMundo, the Latinx literary fellowship. Which, by the time this comes out, it’ll probably be announced—I just got in!

 

Danez Smith: Oh, congratulations!

 

Franny Choi: Hey!

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, it’s lit. But I was like, I hadn’t applied because I didn’t feel Latinx. And I was like, now we’re starting to come in. Now we’re starting to come into that shame. I have to keep track of these things, because I have a tendency to like, go down a rabbit hole and not answer your question. Just give you my whole biopic.

 

Franny Choi: I mean, still, yeah. Great.

 

Danez Smith: This is inside the writer’s studio.

 

Franny Choi: Uh-huh.

 

Julian Randall: So I was feeling deeply ashamed. I was like, I don’t know, I don’t think I’m gonna fit in. So I just hadn’t applied, and she was just like, “Do you know who you are?”

 

Danez Smith: Hmm. Did you?

 

Julian Randall: Here’s the thing. I said yes, because I’m like, I’m sitting here, I’m 22, 23 years old at this point. But I’m thinking I know the answer here.

 

Danez Smith: A child.

 

Julian Randall: Right, yeah. She just said, “No you don’t.”

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) There’s so many times in my life I needed Vievee Francis to sit me down and say, “You don’t know who you are.” (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: She really did! She really started on me hard as hell. But like, it was so necessary, because she said, “No you don’t. You’re black, you’re Latinx, and you’re bisexual. You sit at the intersection of all of these things that are now moving into the center of what I call the great conversation. Julian, you are all of these things. And it means that you may never belong anywhere again. You are a vanguard. Are you prepared to act like it?”

 

Danez Smith: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And I was like, well, shit. I guess.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: So I started really trying to work through, like, okay, well if I’m a vanguard towards these identities and these selves that I never got the chance to see, then I owe it to those selves to be as honest as humanly possible.

 

Franny Choi: Mmm.

 

Julian Randall: Like, I don’t want y’all to have to find out anything about me in the biopic that you didn’t know about me in real life. Like, if I die, then the obituary is going to have to account for everything.

 

Danez Smith: Hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Right.

 

Julian Randall: So from there, like, shame turns from this constricting thing into a kind of engine. I had a theatre teacher, Tom Hegg, back in high school. Mad cool dude. Like right before my senior thesis presentation or whatever, he pulls up on me, and he sees me pacing a little bit. I’m trying not to look nervous, but he can tell. And he was just like, “Are you nervous?” And I said, “Yeah.”  For the first time I was honest with a teacher, in a long time. And he was just like, “Good.” And I was like, “Nigga, good?”

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: “What do you mean, I just told you I was nervous.” He’s like, “Yeah. Nerves mean that you care. If you weren’t nervous, it would mean that you don’t care about this. And it would mean that your performance is gonna suck, which means I’ve sunk a bunch of hours that I could’ve been watching TV.”

 

Danez Smith: Damn, Tom was real as shit. (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: He said, “Never make the mistake of conflating nerves and fear. Fear constrains us. Nerves make us stronger.”

 

Danez Smith: Mm.

 

Franny Choi: Oof!

 

Julian Randall: That conversation with Vievee, I was able to start doing the alchemy of converting shame from fear and straight up nervousness.

 

Franny Choi: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: Like, I’m nervous about people hearing me say these things, but that’s just because I know they’re true.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Danez Smith: And what has that process been like, now saying those things into the world in the way—like you know, you won a pretty big-ass prize to get this book out there, so.

 

Franny Choi: Yes, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

 

Danez Smith: So what has been like walking the world with these truths now bound up with a pretty spine?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, it’s been wild. I have never toured at this scale, and never from a position of this good of health. Which means like a wildly different experience.

 

Franny Choi: Oh yeah.

 

Julian Randall: I read somewhere, and I will forever be kicking myself that I didn’t save this article about just like, when you’re depressed, that gray that they have in the commercials, that shit is not a joke. It’s not like, just something that they put in there because they’re like, oh, what’s depression. Like it actually fucks with the cones in your eyes. The colors are duller.

 

Danez Smith: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So it was the first time that I’ve been on tour that I could see all the colors that were around me, too.

 

Franny Choi: Like literally see the colors.

 

Julian Randall: Literally genuinely see like, that’s orange.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Like, that’s orange as shit. The wonderful thing about this book is that it gave me this opportunity to dream wildly.

 

Danez Smith: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: About like, what, and more importantly, who is possible.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So like, for instance, in the book there’s that poem “Elegy for the Winter After Taina was Cancelled” right. Unpopular opinion: I believe that Taina was a better show than That’s So Raven.

 

Danez Smith: Totally. Totally.

 

Julian Randall: Thank you.

 

Danez Smith: I will die with you on that hill.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Thank you. It’s like, I can’t tell you how many times I do this, and then like, the whole audience is like, (SIGHS).

 

Danez Smith: Look, That’s So Raven is great, but Taina had potential, okay. They didn’t let it run long enough. (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: That’s what I’m saying. And it’s like, that’s the thing, right. It’s like, from the time that these two shows came out at relatively similar time periods—for me it was a way of contextualizing like, okay, one part of my family is over here, one part of my family’s over there. But it was also wild because in schools that I was at, that’s also how they were trying to figure out which of them are you. And I was like, I’m kind of like the static in between. Like, I’m the space where the two can’t ever touch. And then one day Taina got canceled because they were just like, oh, I guess there’s not enough kids out there who need this show, right. And then like, years and years and years later, I moved down here. And Moonlight comes out. But Moonlight wasn’t playing anywhere in Oxford. It wasn’t playing anywhere in Mississippi to my knowledge.

 

Franny Choi: Whoa.

 

Julian Randall: Throughout my entire life, so much of my ability to see myself was determined by people not expecting me to be there.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: And not expecting me to exist. So I was like, okay, word, we’re gonna book shows wherever the fuck. There might just be a kid like me in like, Huntsville, Alabama or some shit like that. More than every once in a while, there is, and they’re just like, yo, this is the first time that I feel like I’ve seen myself, and nothing else matters. So that’s been pretty cool. It’s had less tangible consequences than I thought there might be.

 

Franny Choi: What do you mean?

 

Danez Smith: What did you think was gonna happen?

 

Julian Randall: I think like, if you write like, “I almost jumped in front of a train” and you have to call your mom and be like, hey, this poem got published. It’s about how I almost jumped in front of a train. I was expecting that it was gonna hurt her in a different way.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: I think that I was deeply worried that, having kept this secret from her for so long, that she wouldn’t know how to react. Which has happened in the past.

 

Danez Smith: It’s like that diary exposure. It’s like she’s finding it in your room, kinda.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah. And there’s that tension between what you know as an artist and maybe even how you moved on from that point, and like, you know, your mother. She’s fragile.

 

Franny Choi: For sure.

 

Julian Randall: So yeah, I think like, it’s been things like that where I was just like okay, word, if you write about the fact that you have low key kind of always considered your grandma to be your enemy because of the way she treats your dad—

 

Danez Smith: Right.

 

Julian Randall: I expected when I said that that he was gonna be like, nigga that’s your grandmother, you can’t talk about her like that. But he just kind of nodded.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Silent respect.

 

Julian Randall: He just kinda was like, I see how you see it that way. So I think it was an interesting moment where I realized like, okay, word, this book has been published by an adult. Because when you’re in conversation with your parents, especially about certain kind of shames, I feel like you come to it from the subject position that you’re used to, which is that of a child.

 

Franny Choi: Right.

 

Julian Randall: And I’m just like, I expected them—I think unfairly—to be more concerned about how this was going to reflect on them.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Right.

 

Julian Randall: It’s like, they’ve just been nothing but mad supportive.

 

Danez Smith: That’s a blessing.

 

Julian Randall: And that’s been really cool. I’m very, very blessed and privileged to have that happen for me.

 

Franny Choi: Mm.

 

Danez Smith: Word.

 

Franny Choi: Have you learned anything new about the Julian that wrote that book?

 

Julian Randall: For sure. So I’m thinking a lot about—in this new work, I’ve been thinking about opacity.

 

Danez Smith: I’m dumb. Is that opaque-ity?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, yeah.

 

Danez Smith: Okay cool.

 

Julian Randall: Like, opaque. Yeah, the opaque quality of things.

 

Danez Smith: I’m good. I’m here, I’m smart.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: For sure, I appreciate you. (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: Yeah, I just had to figure out the root word, you know.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: There we go.

 

Franny Choi: Can I get the origin of the word, please?

 

(ALL LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: Shout-out to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

 

Danez Smith: I have spelling bee trauma. We’ll talk about that later.

 

Julian Randall: Oh no.

 

Franny Choi: Oh no. But opacity.

 

Danez Smith: Opacity.

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, so opacity, right. I’m thinking a lot about like, what I was doing with the titles throughout Refuse. Like, I think one of them still holds the record in the Nashville Review for longest title ever published, right.

 

Franny Choi: What’s the title?

 

Julian Randall: “In the Netflix Trailer Obama Says ‘I Don’t Fit in Anywhere’ While Anthony Hamilton Pulls a Burning City Out of His Mouth.”

 

Franny Choi: That is a long-ass title.

 

Danez Smith: A long-ass title.

 

Julian Randall: A long-ass title.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah. Long title.

 

Julian Randall: The speaker in Refuse, who, in many ways, is like the biographical “I.” There’s things that are different, but that’s always true. But for all intents and purposes, let’s just say “I.”

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: I wanted very badly to be understood in that book.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: You cannot wrest this narrative away from me, you are not going to gaslight me. Like, from the moment that this title has happened, I have set the scene for you. You know exactly where everybody is standing. Now, let’s lyricize. And in this new work, it’s like very, very different.

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: There’s two suites of poems actually that share titles. So I’ve been thinking about that a lot. First, from Reginald Dwayne Betts’s Bastards of the Reagan Era. Which like, I think is an absurdly underrated book. That shit is like the Section.80 of poetry.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: Like, it bangs hard as hell. And I don’t think that nearly enough people gave him flowers for that. But throughout it, there’s all these poems that are titled “For the City that Nearly Broke Me,” “For the City that Nearly Broke Me,” “For the City that Nearly Broke Me.” And they’re all different. They’re not part of the same larger poem. And so, you have to ask the reader for a certain kind of intimacy. In order for you to find your way back to what you want to do, I need you to engage with all of this. I need you to engage with this not knowing, right?

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And I think that so much of Refuse was like, recounting and recontextualizing and naming things that I knew. Whereas I knew almost nothing about like, where my family was from. Because this thing called slavery happened, and the records of us were erased.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So, if I don’t get to know, then you don’t get to know either.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: So we venture into the dark together. And I think that’s a very central shift between the two. And it took me starting to have these ideas about like, this is what I want to see out of this new manuscript to understand that that’s something I was making a departure from in the first book.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: The new manuscript is called Flex. So I was trying to figure out—I was like okay, well what the fuck is going to go on here.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: Because I was either feeling I was doing way too little, or then suddenly acknowledging that I was doing way too much.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And I was putting these weird, way too formal constraints, like shit that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. And I think that I was trying too hard to build on how much I loved form in Refuse. And how much it was able to give to me. So I was like, word, I’m just gonna make it harder. Like, that’ll bear this out. And it really just meant that I was sitting there frustrated.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah, sometimes you can make it impossible. I’ve done that to myself. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: Yeah. For sure.

 

Julian Randall: I was like, it’s gonna be like three syllables on the left hand margin—it was too much. I was trying to make the book into a circle. Like, there was a lot.

 

Franny Choi: I mean, this is already a highly structured book.

 

Julian Randall: Yeah.

 

Franny Choi: And the poems themselves. So then to be like, aha! I’m going to—you thought that was—

 

Danez Smith: You thought that was structure, you ain’t seen form yet!

 

(ALL LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: Just wait on it.

 

Franny Choi: A tall order, over the course of what, like, a year?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, so I was like, this is too much. It’s removing me from actually doing something that was calling to me. Which was like, how can we make these poems play more offense. Because I feel like so much of Refuse I was like on my heels.

 

Franny Choi: Oh for sure, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: What does it mean for me to assert myself. I think it’s been interesting looking at these poems. They name being poems more often. They name the fact that they’re elements of writing. For instance there’s a poem in there, an actual poem in Flex which—thank you Poetry Foundation—I name a radif, which is the repeating word in a ghazal. I name volta. These moments where the poems are more self-aware in that particular way.

 

Franny Choi: Oh I see, I see. Sort of self-referential, using the terminology of poetry.

 

Julian Randall: Yeah.

 

Danez Smith: Is that a meta-poem? Right, no? Is that what they’re called?

 

Franny Choi: Is there a term?

 

Danez Smith: I think there’s a term for it. I mean in theatre it would be like, breaking the fourth wall.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Danez Smith: So I feel like that’s meta-poetry. Poetry that is aware that it’s a poem as it’s being written.

 

Franny Choi: Right. Yeah, yeah.

 

Danez Smith: It can talk about its poemness as well as its aboutness, yeah.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: For sure. So I mean I think about that, and then like, when the poems started sharing titles, things started to click a little bit more into place about like, okay. It’s a very different project.

 

Danez Smith: Word. Can we talk about all the projects, though?

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: Because a little birdie called your Twitter told me that you’re working on like, four books right now. Which, one, nigga what?

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: And two, how do you see those projects all feeding off of each other right now?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah. So there is this thesis manuscript, which hopefully one day will be a really cool second book of poems.

 

Danez Smith: Flex is a great title, by the way.

 

Julian Randall: Thank you. I am working on a novel, I am working on a YA novel, and I am working on an essay collection.

 

Danez Smith: Why don’t you do more?

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS) I have other concepts.

 

Danez Smith: Where’s the ballet?

 

Julian Randall: Shit, nigga, you can check back in 2025.

 

(ALL LAUGH)

 

Franny Choi: It’s like, I’m also secretly in med school…

 

Julian Randall: I mean—

 

Danez Smith: I have three kids now…

 

(ALL LAUGH)

 

Danez Smith: What are they teaching each other though? And what are they teaching you?

 

Julian Randall: So the novel, which I can’t really talk too much about, is definitely trying to take that question of forgiveness as something that has like a physical consequence.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: I will say that it involves an epidemic, a kind of plague.

 

Danez Smith: Oo, let’s get ready for dystopia.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) That’s a great announcement. (IN ANNOUNCER VOICE) Let’s get ready for dystopia!

 

Danez Smith and Julian Randall: (LAUGH)

 

Franny Choi: That’s great.

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, so it’s been teaching me a lot about what I am as a prose writer.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: Which is like, somebody who definitely is way more interested in humor as a prose writer than I am as a poet.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm. For sure.

 

Julian Randall: I don’t think—like in this very office, actually, Aimee was like, you don’t make any jokes in your poems.

 

Danez Smith: You don’t.

 

Julian Randall: I was like—

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, you really don’t.

 

Julian Randall: There are things that I think are funny. She’s like, name one. Point it out to me.

 

Danez Smith: If there’s anything in—Refuse refuses to be funny. (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: Refuses to laugh. (LAUGHS)

 

(ALL LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: That’s funny as hell. But yeah, no, so there’s way more jokes. I think I find myself way more comfortable comedically. And the YA novel is also, I guess, kind of considering the question of forgiveness. Like that one we can talk about it more because Kiese Laymon

never said explicitly don’t tell nobody about that.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Is that what Kiese said about the novel?

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, I pitched him the idea for the novel, and he was like, don’t tell nobody. He was like, that’s a great fucking story. And niggas will steal it.

 

Franny Choi: Wow.

 

Julian Randall: So don’t tell nobody nothing.

 

Franny Choi: Wow, wow, wow.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Now I can’t wait to find out.

 

Danez Smith: Secret reveals, I am niggas.

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: I’m always looking for ideas, too.

 

(ALL LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: Great artists steal, I guess. But yeah, no, the YA novel is considering—it’s this kid who’s very similar to me in a lot of ways. He’s like a black Dominican 16-year-old, but he’s from Philly. And his parents are divorced. His dad has this award-winning collection of signed first editions and shit. Including—and this bothers the shit out of him—his mom’s books.

 

Danez Smith: Oh.

 

Julian Randall: His mom is like a famous author, and she left to California one day while he’s in school, and this is where we find him in the narrative. The house burns down. His dad was inside. So his dad is in critical condition. The game doesn’t change, so him and his little boyfriend take off. Rather than live with his mom, they go on this kind of like wacky journey across the country trying to find these authors again. He figures basically, if I can give him something to wake up to, he’ll wake up.

 

Danez Smith: Aw.

 

Julian Randall: And he’ll rebuild his library.

 

Franny Choi: Aw.

 

Julian Randall: So in that way, I think it’s also thinking about forgiveness, but more along familial lines. I’m thinking a lot about that.

 

Danez Smith: Right.

 

Julian Randall: Essay-wise, I think has been my time to think most explicitly, and kinda just meander more through a thought than I feel comfortable doing, or like, that it occurs to me to do in poems. I kinda will follow a thread.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And I think this is the way that it’s in kind of conversation with Flex is that like, both of them are thinking a lot about violence as something that reproduces itself, but also something that reproduces. And how do we reconcile both of those things. Because without a certain sequence of violences, I don’t exist.

 

Danez Smith: Right.

 

Julian Randall: And I think y’all were talking about this once on this podcast. It might’ve been on the first episode with Eve, when you were talking about the apocalypse. Like, what does the apocalypse grant us in terms of possibility.

 

Danez Smith: Ah. Yeah, yeah.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: Shout-out to Eve Ewing. Thinking about what does the end of history lend us.

 

Franny Choi: What do you mean by “the end of history”?

 

Julian Randall: Actually there’s a better way to phrase it. In the spot that I run for Winter Tangerine, Lineage of Mirrors, we got the opportunity to publish some poems from Safia Elhillo.

 

Danez Smith: God.

 

Franny Choi: Shout-out.

 

Julian Randall: God MC. And one of them is “Scenes From the Concluding World.”

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: So “we believe in apocalypse because we are arrogant,” because we have never experienced the end of a world, we believe the world has never ended.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: So I think that we’re sold this narrative that like, okay, the oceans are rising. Trump is in office. This is it. This is the end of history.

 

Franny Choi: Right, right.

 

Julian Randall: And it’s like, is it? Or is this the end of history that we’ve had the time and the ability to write down.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: To quote the homie Quenton Baker, black people don’t really have access to a linear chronology, right. Even the narrative that we’re sold about civil rights—it’s this idea that a bunch of white men came together and sat down in a room and agreed collectively to like, move time forward to an understanding of history, where they were like, oh word, black people can vote. Like, we always had a right to do this, but I’m glad that you’re on this page at least theoretically but not in Florida, like…

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) I love the sentence, “theoretically but not in Florida.” (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: If it’s not a linear chronology then there’s many different histories happening at the same time.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And if this one’s ending, cool, where we gonna go next?

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

(MUSIC PLAYS)

 

Franny Choi: I’m just so fascinated by what you said about intimacy in the newer poetry that you’ve been writing.

 

Julian Randall: For sure.

 

Franny Choi: And that unknowing is a way of creating intimacy. Which is also fascinating because you also identified the new work as playing more offense than defense. So like, playing offense and also creating intimacy through unknowing, like those are two modes of writing that I wouldn’t necessarily think of as being in conversation. So I was going to ask about those two things separately. Like, what does it mean to write with an offensive strategy? And also, what does it mean to create intimacy in your work? And are those separate projects?

 

Julian Randall: First of all, that’s a brilliant fucking question.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: The answer is still a draft and work in progress, but let me give it my best shot.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: So, quick anecdote.

 

Franny Choi: Okay.

 

Julian Randall: In Water Valley, there’s one street. It’s the main street and the street that runs parallel to where the railroad station used to be. And across from the railroad station there’s a railroad museum. Across from the railroad museum, there is a firehouse that is also city hall.

 

Danez Smith: Okay.

 

Franny Choi: Okay.

 

Julian Randall: So the reasoning behind that—very convenient metaphor. Very inconvenient research problem.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: The very same year that my great grandfather leaves from Greenville is the year that the city clerk’s office and city hall both burned down within a month of each other. So, all of these records—I’m still trying to work with the city clerk to find old maps of the town, and like, is there any census document about where they might have lived. Because I’m trying to hunt down like, where is this plantation.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: Where is this place that you thought that we were chattel. I would like to see it. Because until then all that’s theoretical, right. All of that’s an unknowing.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm. Is this specifically for a creative project? Or more just the life project? Or potentially both.

 

Julian Randall: It started as the creative project. And more and more, I’ve seen it feeding a certain kind of element of myself.

 

Franny Choi: Sure, sure, sure. I just wanted to know if it was like, because I’m writing a book about this specific thing, or.

 

Julian Randall: It gave me an excuse to, for sure.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: It definitely gave me the excuse and now I’m just like—

 

Danez Smith: Might as well write some poems. (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Yeah, yeah.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Like so long as I’m here. But because of that unknowing, at first I was like—and still am to a certain degree—really bummed out about it. Because I was like okay, word, now there’s no answers. Also, those answers were written in the colonizers’ time, right. So now I have this opportunity to play a little offense, where normally I would playing defense and trying to like, correct this record. If the record was already taken by the fire, then I write the record.

 

Franny Choi: Mmm.

 

Julian Randall: Then I make the new history.

 

Danez Smith: Ooo!

 

Julian Randall: So if they’re able to move into this, then I’m requiring of you a certain kind of intimacy, reader, to like—I’m writing this history, you’re not familiar with it, and I’m making it from an understanding that I have in my body, which means that I’m inviting you inside to a certain degree.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: But we’re playing offense against this dominant narrative. Either together, or you’re gonna watch me do it. Because some of you I can’t hold hands with along the way. Does that make sense?

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, totally. It seems like a kind of vulnerability too, to stray from playing defense, right?

 

Julian Randall: For sure.

 

Franny Choi: Like, opening oneself up, in that imagining, to being wrong or to not making sense, or, you know.

 

Julian Randall: For sure. Because it’s outside of the mode of what people have come to expect of me.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: Or what has previously been a path that has led me to like, having certain resources that I need in order to survive. There’s a very real possibility people will be like, well, he just made this shit up, and he ain’t got no receipts, we’re not gonna buy this book, which means that I will have less food.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: I think that’s a very palpable concern. To me, at least.

 

Franny Choi: For sure.

 

Julian Randall: So I’m like, okay, word. But if the book is going to do what it needs to do, then that’s a risk that I not only am willing to take, but am required to. So yeah, there’s definitely a vulnerability and an intimacy to departing from what I know how to do really well in order to not know. I think the terminology for that kind of came to me during Cave this year. I was in a workshop with Chris Abani.

 

Danez Smith: A god.

 

Julian Randall: Yeah. I had to go first. So I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. (LAUGHS) But he was like, “The reason that women make better writers than men, and they do—.” And then he paused and kind of looked at me to make sure that I was nodding before he continued.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

 

Julian Randall: He was like, “The reason that women make better writers than men, in general, is because men have been conditioned to think that we have to fix things. We have to know. And as a result, our writing sometimes concludes or walls itself off from like, possibility and not knowing.”

 

Franny Choi: Mmm.

 

Julian Randall: In a way that, traditionally, women’s work does significantly less of.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Julian Randall: I think it’s the mode that Refuse needed to be in. And I’m very happy with how it came out.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

 

Julian Randall: But if I have an ongoing critique of it, I think that it’s just like, the speaker—I—was very determined. I was like, I have this story that I need to tell.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And it meant that these wonders and possibilities, I kinda like—sometimes I had to wall them off, because I was so accustomed to being gaslighted out of them.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Franny Choi: I mean I think that also makes sense as a first book, to stake out your ground.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: To say like, I’m here, here’s the truth as I understand it. Here’s my story. And then to have that established and then to be like, okay, let’s bring a little more flexibility. Let’s make the walls a little more porous.

 

Julian Randall: For sure.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: But I think it’s also a beautiful idea that opening yourself up as a writer to doubt and vulnerability is something that creates intimacy with a reader. Being more willing to not know, or take more risks is something that actually can pull someone in.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah. Because it—

 

Franny Choi: That feels—

 

Danez Smith: You have to trust each other enough to—

 

Franny Choi: Right.

 

Danez Smith: —be able to go towards that trouble.

 

Franny Choi: Right, right, right. It’s like, once I read this article on like, how to get a cat to trust you.

 

Julian Randall: Cats can trust you?

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) But one thing was that you should try to make eye contact with the cat from across the room, and then close your eyes for a few seconds, and then open them again. Because it shows the cat, I feel comfortable closing my eyes in front of you. And then the cat trusts you a little bit more.

 

Julian Randall: Which kinda gets back to that whole thing we were talking about earlier. About like, I don’t sit with my back to the door, because I love you.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

 

Julian Randall: I trust you and think that you can throw hands, I do not turn my back to the door.

 

Franny Choi: Right.

 

Julian Randall: And in this one, I think I’m doing a little bit more of just—I’m like, okay, I don’t necessarily know what’s behind me.

 

Franny Choi: Uh-huh. Yeah.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: I’m leaning into this past, and I don’t know what’s behind me, and I may not make it back, but that’s the trust, right.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah. And like, let’s do it together.

 

Julian Randall: Exactly. I was a scholarship kid at a bunch of very affluent white private schools. And I’m very not that.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: Which meant that my superpower and my currency there was that I was very direct and clear, and was raised by a phenomenally talented code-switcher to be a phenomenally talented code-switcher.

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Julian Randall: There was nothing that felt more vulnerable to me than the possibility of being misinterpreted.

 

Franny Choi: Hm.

 

Danez Smith: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: And when I come in here and say like, hey, this very particular sequence of like, massive historical violences—not only what has happened here in Mississippi, but also what has happened to my mother’s side of the family in D.R. If Trujillo is not the dictator, there’s a line at the end of one of the poems where I say, “This would’ve been your fatherland before men who were fathers tore it apart with their dirty hands.” The only reason that I exist is because all of these violences kind of—well not the only reason, but a huge driving force, was that all of these violences coalesced.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Julian Randall: And there’s a very real possibility that people can look at that and be like, he’s saying thank you for slavery. And I’m like that’s not—

 

Danez Smith: No.

 

Julian Randall: —what I said, but in order to say the thing that I have to say, I have to open myself up to the possibility that somebody would like interpret it as that.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

(MUSIC PLAYS)

 

Danez Smith: Every episode of VS, we like to play a little game—(IN DEEP VOICE) a little game.

 

Franny Choi: A little fun.

 

Danez Smith: Is that what he says? (IN DEEP VOICE) I want to play a little game.

 

Franny Choi: Are you making Saw references?

 

Danez Smith: I am making Saw references. I am.

 

Franny Choi: I hate it when you make Saw references.

 

Danez Smith: Well I hate it when you make Harry Potter references, so here we are.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) So let’s play a little game.

 

Franny Choi: Okay, quick. What combination of two Harry Potter characters are you? Or a Harry Potter character and a Saw movie—

 

Danez Smith: So… on every episode of VS we play a little game.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: Called This vs. That where we’re gonna put two—

 

Julian Randall: Saved my ass, because I haven’t seen any of the Saw movies.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: Not even fooling with Franny today. We like to play a little game, (LAUGHS) where we’re gonna give you two nouns—you know, people, places, whatever it is—and ask you who would win in a game of fisticuffs. Today, in a game of, you know, people and violences that have led to Julian (LAUGHS)—

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: In this corner, we have known dictator, Trujillo, and in that corner, we have known workshop leader and forced comer-outer, and queer youth inspiration, Vievee Francis. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: Who wins in a fight? Trujillo or Vievee Francis. (LAUGHS) That’s the question we’re posing for you to today.

 

(BELL RINGS)

 

Julian Randall: Vievee Francis.

 

Danez Smith: Explain. Show your work.

 

Julian Randall: I mean, nigga, “Taking It.” Like, “What kind of girl are you? / The kind who wants to live, I said… But I wanted the leaving / to be on my terms, so I hit my father back.” Naw, that it, like—plus Vievee from Texas. Naw. Here the thing, Trujillo is absolutely the type of nigga—because I’m imagining we’re catching Vievee as she is right now, like, in her prime. He’s been dictator for a good minute now, which means that he hasn’t actually had to fight anybody in a long time.

 

Danez Smith: Right, right. Okay.

 

Franny Choi: Mm.

 

Julian Randall: He’s gonna try to call them soldiers. Honestly it could go either way. That she would like, slaughter those soldiers on her way to Trujillo or give them a prompt that they just couldn’t—

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: —make heads or tails of.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Amazing.

 

Julian Randall: And them niggas just out here like, fuck. What is the actual significance—

 

Danez Smith: A thousand soldiers came out—

 

Julian Randall: What is the significance of my “I” as part of this collective?

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Maybe I am indeed shaking an empty gourd. And in the meantime, while she’s doing that, she slips behind Trujillo, and she knifes that nigga.

 

Danez Smith: Word.

 

Franny Choi: Oof!

 

Danez Smith: I like this.

 

Franny Choi: This is a beautiful world to believe in. (LAUGHS) Truly.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

 

Julian Randall: Vievee Francis over everything.

 

Danez Smith: Vievee Francis, freedom fighter. Love it. Love it.

 

Franny Choi: Oh my gosh. Okay well, Julian would you close us out today by reading another poem for us?

 

Julian Randall: Sure thing.

 

Franny Choi: Amazing.

 

Julian Randall: This one’s like, fresh off the presses.

 

Danez Smith: Ooo!

 

Julian Randall: It’s called “Sun of a Bad.”

 

Son of a Bad

 

“I must become / I must become a menace to my enemies”- June Jordan
 

History only becomes more unmanageable      the longer that it goes on

                      This is America  
                                                        and that is precisely the problem

I’m singing    from the intersection of the relevant centuries

        I am doing something mean to what they have made    Consider

I am the last of the polite requests
           I am the last of the unsick Earth
                 I am the last of the ones who were stolen
                                                              or who stole themselves

Because this is America      I know where to look when I say scorch

I know what was escaped      I know I cannot give you back your violence

      only the promise of kudzu   O shelter that starves     I say

                                                     WANT

Softly     but trust      I mean to kill     the entire field
                                                                                            

1.  

I am sung from the fault line in a national morality      I would tell you

the story straight     but I have been too generous with my blood already

Suffice to say I am the son of a plural     I legion    My name is a consequence

because we are many       Archival erosion     I arrived bedecked and nasty

I arrived 808 hullsongs with no lyrics       I want you to hear me    I am lush

with fugitives       From a series of dirty Black eternitys    From a series of merciless

summers      I ride      I ride     I ride     I write to unblood the soil       I bang a song

Unabashed in the silence between what ought to be and what happened

 

1.  

 

Taste what is sharp when you need most badly to remember me     

I am telling you       as directly as gravity allows     there are miles

of threat and I am one of them     because when you hold the knife

observe it with your eyes     that tenderness you must have plucked

from somewhere     from someone     the blade beholds me in a way

that briefly makes us cousins      Circumstance whets me across years

and oceans      I gleam    I am a menace gowned by rumors    I’m your

ghost story     You know which one    Flinch/Praise  I am Bad on both sides   

you pressed me against a headstone   and I laughed    a warpland laugh

as your house collapsed behind you

1.  

 

To unwish the tragedy is to unwish myself        I have unwished myself for less     

Despite my best efforts      I am the son of this concept too    Once there was

a train      I rode it even though I meant for it to wear me     The end

 

of history as I could change it        Instead I live      I draw each hotter breath

on this planet      in this place     which I imagine will be the last to know

when the war climaxes     though to me      this is the only place it could have begun

I mistake a magnolia petal     for the wing my great grandfather could have been

How long until all my dead are the same beauty?        At my worst I am begging

the flood        My superheated ancestral      I am trusting a strength I invented

in a language that has taken me everywhere but home     I do not know what it is

to truly want to survive       only what it is to want to outlive      to want back

what is owed        O majesty        O knuckles knitting into the familiar    The end

 

 

is whatever tenderness I might sow in the wake of my vengeance

 

1.  

 

From those acres of ungovernable grief         the horns rose like gulls
           Some notes tethered to the sky      others to the heat
The enemy is urgent with guilt    and in this history    a boy

is blowing his notes on a cauterized landscape     I can see why

everyone my father has ever loved     once dressed like the moon

I’m the son of a bad     man       but the song cracks where I would have

had a father     Fine  I am fathered by the fire then     regardless    I am born

 

1.  

I am changing the     You     here      I am pivoting towards what some I love

cannot follow         I leave the smoldering gate of a house in my wake

If you can follow here     where the unimaginable became the survived

I name you   Bad       the oceans will stop short of wherever we stand

Our name is the living and the dead       for we are many         and what we are is

A technology lost    to the enemy      O my tender legion     for you I give

My name   to what we once called history or war or country when it saved us

to feign worship of what was inflicted          If I have any allegiance left     I pledge it

to the fugitives      and what was sung on the run to what I cannot call hope

Daughters-Sons-Children-Consequences-Survivals-Bullets That Missed-Bullets That Returned

Miles of Wings     Name then ourselves      If history is truly dead    I am glad

To spend what lies beyond the dominion of time with you

 

 

1.  

 

 

We rode a golden wrath through an unstable idea to the other side of nation

We turned the river and this is where it stopped

I am writing to you from a geography where we suffered a bad light

and survived because we were Badder       Praise   I gold the field in the whip

which plays my parents’ music      It is the song where the boy says he is the son

and I am talking to my mother in this place she dreads and knots pearls for

She worries   and yet she trusts I am even Badder than my daddy    And I am

naming what is beautiful in order to set it right      I am not always merciful

but I have the leashed the light at what the news tells me is the end of time

In this language I culled from the razor   Today   I am the mother of everything

 

* * *

 

(MUSIC PLAYS)

 

Danez Smith: I am so glad that we got to have that talk with Julian. And that fucking last poem!

 

Franny Choi: I know, that poem was bananas.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: If we had recorded past that, it would’ve just been me and Danez crying for five minutes.

 

Danez Smith: You crying, me having feelings.

 

Franny Choi: Yes. Feelings of a… sexual nature.

 

Danez Smith: Calm it down.

 

Franny Choi: Okay.

 

Danez Smith: The poem was just—had a lot of rhythm. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: I think poems—I think there’s a way to have poem-sexual feelings.

 

Danez Smith: There is, yeah. You know, sometimes meter just—you know, tap-a tap-a tap-as on ya.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: And does a little something to your body.

 

Franny Choi: Tap-a tap-a tap-as. (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: Tap-a tap-a tap-as. (LAUGHS) One of the amazing things, you know—and maybe it’s because my family is also from Mississippi—that it was so powerful to hear Julian talk about was searching for his family’s records.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah. Wild, wild, yeah.

 

Danez Smith: Searching for his history out here after they were burned. Franny, is there anything that in your family’s own history that you’re trying to seek out?

 

Franny Choi: My grandma’s getting up there in age, and I think a lot of my new sort of poems that I’m working on—I don’t want to say book or project, but my new project-book. It sort of takes place in her story.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Especially as somebody who grew up under Japanese colonial rule.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: And then also was living in the northern part of the country, what was then Northern Korea and is now North Korea. And then fled back down to the south to Seoul during the war. So it’s thinking about like what that journey from north to south was like, and what might have happened, you know.

 

Danez Smith: Hm.

 

Franny Choi: But I didn’t grow up with my grandma. Like, I don’t know that much about her story, except for what I know from my dad.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: So, I think that’s part of my family history that I’m thinking about. My grandmother’s story specifically.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah. What about you?

 

Danez Smith: Finding out where the women were in my family is something I’m interested in.

 

Franny Choi: Mmm.

 

Danez Smith: I think even my grandmother who has passed on a lot of the family information to me, I feel like it’s been filtered through what the men did. And how they moved, and how the women just kind of went with them.

 

Franny Choi: Hm. Yeah.

 

Danez Smith: But there are a lot of powerful women in my family’s history. You know, my grandmother’s mother: business owner, took care of a whole neighborhood in St. Louis out of her shop, you know.

 

Franny Choi: Hmm.

 

Danez Smith: And my family has a very matriarchal energy to it, first of all.

 

Franny Choi: Mm. Mm-hmm.

 

Danez Smith: And so I really want to sit down and figure out more about who those women were. Because a lot of those men also left. And a lot of it is gonna be just breaking down my grandma to sit down and like, not avoid a conversation. (LAUGHS)

 

Franny Choi: Surely, surely, surely.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Franny Choi: Yeah, it’s so fascinating, honestly, to think about traveling across the country or across the world to try to look at archival records and stuff, and like, what to do when shit has burned down.

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: And then also that maybe equally kind of hard research is just getting your grandma to answer a question, you know?

 

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

 

Franny Choi: That’s kind of wild, how much of a barrier that is, too, you know?

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Franny Choi: But I really appreciated everything that Julian was saying about excavating that history and what to do with the gaps in the knowledge.

 

Danez Smith: (IN VOICE AS IF ABOUT TO CRY) Same. Same. Made me pick up my microscope and want to go look.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: In myself.

 

Franny Choi: Go look at the holes.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Franny Choi: Not those holes.

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Well maybe, too. Why don’t we get on outta here. Let’s thank some folks and get on outta here.

 

Franny Choi: Alright, cool. I would like to thank my grandma and also my older aunts who took care of this family of eight kids. After my granddaddy left. Yes.

 

Danez Smith: Amen. I’m also gonna thank my grandma.

 

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

 

Danez Smith: And I’m gonna thank my cousin Melvin.

 

Franny Choi: Okay, Melvin.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah. Because Melvin decided at a very early age that he was gonna dedicate his life to being old.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: And so, Melvin has taken up—

 

Franny Choi: Go on.

 

Danez Smith: I mean, Melvin, he’s like, not that old, but that nigga old. And also has taken up the mantle, I think, of holding the family history. Keeping the family together, you know, like, Melvin is our Big Momma.

 

Franny Choi: I feel like if you’re born with the name Melvin, you are born old.

 

Danez Smith: Yeah.

 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: There’s no way to be a young Melvin. (LAUGHS) You just walk out like, Melvin Esquire, two months old.

 

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

 

Franny Choi: Incredible. We would also like to thank the Poetry Foundation. We’d like to thank Ydalmi Noriega. Thank you to Postloudness and also, always, and evermore our producer Daniel Kisslinger.

 

Danez Smith: Amen. He makes magic out of our nonsense.

 

Franny Choi: Uh-huh.

 

Danez Smith: We want to thank all of you. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review and subscribe. If you’re listening to this elsewhere, on the Poetry Foundation website or on SoundCloud, continue. Follow us on Twitter @Vsthepodcast. And that is it for us, y’all. We wish you an ever, ever, wonderful and splendid exploration into your family’s past and futures.

 

Franny Choi: Yes.

 

Danez Smith: And we’ll see you next time.

 

Franny Choi: Goodbye. (LAUGHS)

 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Bye, bitch.

 

(MUSIC PLAYS)