Danez Smith: She’s dressed either as a hot K-Pop star or his moody mom, Franny Choi.

Franny Choi: And they put the auntie in Antifa, Danez Smith.

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

Franny Choi: Unfortunately, your description of me is all too accurate.

Danez Smith: I know. You know, it’s the true gender-neutral look, I feel like. Are you hot boy or fashionable mom is the answer to gender-neutral clothing. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: See, that is the exact lane I’m trying to cut for myself. So, thank you. I feel seen.

Danez Smith: You’re really killing it.

Franny Choi: Oh, thanks. Thank you.

Danez Smith: Horny for the whole family, yeah.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Worst branding ever.

Franny Choi: Yeah, exactly. Oh, how are you, Danez?

Danez Smith: I am doing well.

Franny Choi: Within pandemical reason.

Danez Smith: Within pandemical reasons, yes. I’m aware of what day it is of the week. So that is, you know, we’re already winning. Time is slightly tangible today, and I’m here with you. And I’m having a good time.

Franny Choi: Wow. Love it when uhm… time is tangible, which is like very not often. But you know what I’ve been thinking about recently, is, you know, speaking of the past, looking at the past, is, what stories we thought we were supposed to tell when we were like in our, I don’t know, our early 20s, in our teens, and we were like, thinking of ourselves as people who might tell stories as writers. And whether we did it. Whether we actually ever completed that homework. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been having these dreams recently, where I like, arrive at class and realize I’ve been taking a class and haven’t done the homework. So I’m like, “Oh my god, have I done the homework?”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But yeah, one, do you have something like that? And two, do you think that you did it?

Danez Smith: Yeah. I mean, I do feel like there are the like, I don’t want to call them clichés, but the unavoidable, I guess, like, histories and selves that I feel like maybe you confront, right?

Franny Choi: Totally.

Danez Smith: They maybe become clichés, right? So it’s almost like, you know, every kid who has a absent or complicated relationship with their father, you know, you start saying like, oh, I have my dad poem, right? And I think that is like, maybe I feel like that was the earliest cliché that I knew in poetry, was the dad poem. It was kind of like expected, like, “Oh, I got my dad poem, too,” you know? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) “Oh, everybody’s got dad poem? Oh, okay. Yeah, me too. I got one of those.”

Danez Smith: Yeah. So like, I think I eventually fell into those things, right. Like, as a Black writer, right, I think like, naturally, even though other people had like, troubled slavery, or social justice, or all these things, right, had reached back into our, like, collective past and troubled them, it wasn’t like I didn’t still feel called to go back and complicate that or, like, look at it, examine it for myself, right? And I think there’s a jadedness sometimes, or even like, maybe like, even myself, that I feel like, “Ugh, someone’s writing about this again,” you know? And it’s so hard to fight, because I’m like, no, you also like, felt the need and will feel the need to go back and dig there, too. I think about people on Twitter trashing like, you know, quote-unquote diaspora poetry, right? Or like, Lord Jesus, never put like a fucking like, you know, iconic fruit from your people in poem, lest people call you out. But it’s like, you know, but fuck it, you know, I do want the poems about that, right? I’d be an asshole if I showed up to a youth poetry slam, or like a college slam and rolled my eyes every time a Black or maybe gay got up there and like, told a story that was maybe common, and maybe I’ve heard 80,000 poems about it already. But it’s their turn.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Right.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) So go on and get your cliché, baby, and work it out for you. And you know, also, you’re also going to add your own funk to it, to the long lineage of us having to tell that story. And I think that’s different than the pressure to maybe—I think what I’m talking about is like, the want to feed into your shared communities, right? Which can be negatively felt as like, the pressure to like, write a certain type of story, because you are of that people. And so you must. And when that external pressure, you know, “I have to write this poem because I’m Black. And also, I’m the only Black poet in this workshop, so who the fuck else gonna write about this shit?” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right. Right. I mean, I think that’s the thing that ends up putting people sometimes into pigeonholes. Or at least that’s when I’ve felt pigeonholed into something, into being only able to tell a certain kind of story. I was like, “Oh, writers aren’t writing about the Korean War. So I have to be the one to say it.” You know? When little did I know, writers had definitely been writing about the Korean War, you know what I mean? But until I got there, or like when my world was smaller, for reasons that had to do with age and also reasons that had to do with like, structural things that segregate people into certain kinds of discourse communities and like, erase writers, certain writers from the canon, uhm… then I didn’t know. And so it was like, my job. But also, like, I don’t know, I think also, for me what comes to mind when thinking about this, like what story I felt like I was supposed to tell, I mean, I guess it is the Korean War. And I was just thinking like, what’s my earliest memory of writing about the war?

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: My earliest memory of writing about the war is as a middle school student.

Danez Smith: Oh shit, beginning.

Franny Choi: Writing K-pop fan fiction about the old school K-pop group Shinhwa, who were Korean War—I think that they were, I guess that’s what it was. But it was like a-like a 40-chapter war epic.

Danez Smith: Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold up. I think the butterfly effect happened somewhere in that sentence.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Okay, so you wrote a 40-chapter epic of the Korean War that starred a K-pop band?

Franny Choi: Yeah. Well, they were like characters. I mean, they weren’t in a K-pop band in the story. You know, they were just like, soldiers in the war.

Danez Smith: No, it was just like, Blackpink: the nurses of the Korean War.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Min-woo was like a— was a soldier.

Danez Smith: Wait, nigga! (SQUEALS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Hold the fuck up. (LAUGHS) I don’t know who this band is, but I’m just like, Danez, if you wrote Destiny’s Child in the Civil War, this would be—(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right! That’s exactly what it was. It was as if Destiny’s Child had like—yeah.

Danez Smith: As if Beyoncé sat down on that bus and said, “I’m not getting up.”

Franny Choi: Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like.

Danez Smith: Franny, who have you ever been?

Franny Choi: Listen, I’m an artiste, okay. I’m an artiste. That’s what I am.

Danez Smith: Okay. That was very funny to me, but please continue making a good point.

Franny Choi: What I mean—

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I’ll try. But at that age, but also like, continuing now, as an adult, you know, one thinks about, like, what is a good story that I have access to? What’s the like, craziest, most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to my people, you know? I guess that’s the thing that I’m supposed to write about. Or like, that’s the interesting thing that’s like, painful enough for other people to be interested in or fascinated by. And if I had been in a context where like, that’s what everybody was writing about or something, then maybe it would have been different. But at the time, I was like, “This is what I got.” Like, this is my ammo. I’ve got these five beautiful boys and their personalities, which I know really well, and then also this traumatic history of my people.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) But also, thank god, I think for that, you know. I feel like I’m grateful. I stand now grateful for those stories that we feel pressure or obligation or allegiance to tell. I’m grateful for them because they do, in many ways, I think for writers, especially writers like the one we’re going to talk to today, Monica Sok, writing through and reading through and working through and complicating those stories that we feel inherited and charged to tell also make wonderful room for the spaces after that, right, for the stories that we never knew we’d get to. And we have to move through those inherited selves in order to get to maybe some future selves that are writing in landscapes that are unfamiliar and possible for us.

Franny Choi: Yeah, absolutely. We’re really excited to get to share this interview with Monica Sok, an amazing Cambodian American writer, debut author. Her first book, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, is an absolute event of a book, which came out last year. We got to talk to Monica about what it was like to write this book that, in so many ways, explicitly faces, the Khmer Rouge genocide and the traumas of that historical experience that she as a second generation Cambodian American has inherited. And also, yeah, that kind of complicated relationship with a story that you feel like you both have to tell and want to tell and also maybe feel, in some ways, hemmed in by and, you know, what complications come from that and also, like, what beautiful new spaces might open up past what happens with that first pass at that history. So yeah, we’re really excited to share this conversation with you all.

Danez Smith: Monica Sok is a Khmer writer and daughter of refugees. She is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On from Copper Canyon Press in 2020. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Kundiman, MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and others. Sok teaches poetry at Stanford University and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants. She lives in Oakland, California. Here is Monica Sok to start us off with a reading from her first book.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Monica Sok:

(READS POEM)

Ode to the Loom

Dear loom, dear box skeleton,
special ordered and
handcrafted from wood,
you rest on the floor
and wait for her
to sit down with you
and together weave
fabrics for weddings
between lovers and warriors,
the survivors, surviving.
Your sturdy frame
animates her as living
portrait, simple as the chain
on her glasses, the calm focus:
steady hands on the shuttle,
the weft and the warp,
feet on the treadle.
You obey the soft sheen
of turquoise, cherry, and gold
wrapped at the body’s waist,
your gift to the body,
hundreds of bodies for the new year,
for the blessings of ancestors.
Sweet loom, old friend of an old woman,
you are an ancestor she prays to,
so that when her hair falls
not as rain does
but as nails the evening hangs on,
and her hands slip no longer
from silk but on walls in the dark
hall to her room,
her daughters will sadly dismantle you,
remnant of a lost home, sacred language
coded inside her native language.
When she passes,
you will be stowed away
in the basement.
You will remind us of her,
you, loom, who have kept her company,
nonjudgmental witness to her secrets.
You will remember best
the way she works, the spots on her legs,
her bare toes peeking
from the edge of her sarong,
the slow motion of her hand
slapping flies in summertime
or the sound of gorges rushed
from her face in the quiet hours of the cloth
when she was depressed, she was depressed⏤
she pressed against you daily and wept.

* * *

Danez Smith: (EXHALES)

Franny Choi: (EXHALES) Monica, thank you so much for that poem. I love thinking about the loom as an ancestor as well. Can you talk a little bit about your thinking about the loom? And, I mean, I hear like, history weaving and even like, connections to the role of the artist and family historian in there, too. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what led you to loom as an object of that ode?

Monica Sok: Sure. So, this was the last poem that I wrote for the book. I was thinking about praise. Something to put in this book that was a little bit, just provided a different angle to my history, to my family. My grandmother is the first artist that I ever knew. And so, when I was young, I would sit with her in front of her floor loom. This was a loom that these women at the Presbyterian church that sponsored my family, my mom’s side of the family to come over to the US. This was a loom that they raised money to buy. And, you know, they made it-got it special-ordered, custom made for her. My grandmother comes from this village in Cambodia called Takéo and they’re known for their weaving. When I think about the loom as an ancestor, I think about how special it was for me to be able to see her doing her work. Like, combing the threads, you know, the silk scraps that she got from this tie factory in York, Pennsylvania. She would just comb it over with like, tapioca, you know, and make sure it was kind of stiff, and it would have that sheen. So when you saw her fabrics, it was just like, it just seems like there was like a third color, you know?

Danez Smith: That sort of luminescence, right, that you can’t—

Monica Sok: Yeah. Yeah.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Monica Sok: I think that she wove so many different kinds of fabrics for Cambodians and other people who just loved her, loved what she wove. She probably clothed so many people who were getting married, you know what I mean? And so many people who were just celebrating the New Year, the Khmer New Year in April. It’s really special to think of her doing this work as a refugee, who was really depressed having lost her husband, having lost her eldest son. I don’t think I ever knew that she was like, depressed, you know? I don’t think we really talked about mental health in my family growing up. But I would see her working. And I just wonder sometimes about her relationship to Cambodia, to the history. And I wish that I knew the language to really ask her. But now she’s passed. And I’ve dedicated this book to her. I’m grateful that I can still be in conversation with her through this, through the poems. And of course, the cover of the book has the silk that she wove for my mother. The gold fabric is the fabric that my mother wore for the first time. Uhm, and I’m moved by her work, for sure.

Danez Smith: That was moving, by the way. (LAUGHS) I’m interested in two things. One, you said that was the last poem you wrote for the book, but it also draws its title from it. Did the title exist before the poem? And if not, why did that line in particular call out to you for the title? And it’s so blessed to me, I guess, too, that the book is dedicated to your grandmother. That we get like, these two poems. I think it’s only two poems about, that kind of center the loom, in some way in the book.

Monica Sok: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: I’m wondering, do you see yourself as a weaver, when you think about yourself as a poet? What of this art making of your grandmother do you see, if you do, do you see in the way you make poetry?

Monica Sok: Yeah, I do see myself as a weaver of words. And when I said that this is the last poem that I worked on, I remember I was like taking a retreat with a friend of mine in Ithaca. When it was snowing and it was cold, we decided to go to one of the gorges, and it was so cold. I needed to kind of get out of the slump I was in with my writing. I really needed to take that little trip, you know? And seeing something so large as this gorge, and kind of being outside of myself and my writing, being in that space. And also there was like a house, like kind of above the gorge too. And I was just thinking, what would it look like to even live in a house where you can look out your window and just see a waterfall. So it felt really magical. That’s what helps me kind of get back into the process of writing the very last poem for the book. The title, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, existed before the poem.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Monica Sok: It came from this failed love poem. And I studied with Yusef Komunyakaa, who I would give him a bunch of poems in like, his office hours, and he would go through each of them. And I think I was too embarrassed about the failed love poem. And I was just like, “No, no, we don’t have to read that.” (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: And then he said, “I like this line. That will make a great title.” So then I just thought about that for a really long time, as I was working on this book, and as I was kind of piecing together, the themes of like history and intergenerational traumas. And when I finally started working on “Ode to the Loom,” I wanted to be joyful about something, you know? And I thought a lot about Pablo Neruda and some of his odes as well. “Ode to the Suit” is probably one of my favorite poems as well. I must have been reading some of his odes. He’s praising something ordinary. There’s always a kind of moment where the ode goes into despair just a little bit, and then it goes back into praise. And I think that I couldn’t write this ode without thinking about like, my grandmother’s depression. I think about just how hard it is to hold up your whole life, to hold up your whole world when so much has been shattered. But there she is, like, weaving, you know, piecing things together, and clothing people with this gift. When you ask me, “Are you a weaver too?” I mean, I hope I can call myself a weaver of words. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Ugh, so beautiful. I mean, I love the idea also of like, having the title first, and then having to kind of find your way to that title through writing the poems, you know? And getting to it at the end like I don’t know, it feels like—

Monica Sok: That was a journey.

Franny Choi: Yeah, was it?

Monica Sok: Yeah, it was a journey. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Can you talk about it?

Monica Sok: Yeah. I mean, I just knew that that image spoke to me so much. And sometimes people will ask me, “What does that mean?” You know, “What does that mean?” But I just think, yeah, this is kind of a dramatic image. You know? I think that there can be many ways to read this title, not just in the context of “Ode to the Loom.” But if you can just think about one nail that holds up the entire evening, sometimes I feel like that nail that holds up so much, as a second generation Khmer woman who has parents who lived through the genocide. Like, I connect to that-that responsibility, but then I connect to that weight. Sometimes it’s a lot. You know, sometimes it’s a lot. Intergenerational trauma is a very real thing. I learned what that was, like, as I was writing this book. You know, I learned that you can pass down these traumas.

Danez Smith: Well, speaking of that, I mean, of like, the book and what you learned from it, it’s been almost a year since the release of the book.

Monica Sok: Yeah.

Danez Smith: You know, this is such a deeply personal and communal book. I’m wondering, how has it been sharing this work, not only with intimate audiences, right, with other Khmer folks and Khmer women, but what has it been like sharing this work with people who maybe sit outside of this narrative a little bit as well? And how have those two experiences affected how you see the work and how you’ve been working since then?

Monica Sok: Mm-hmm. Okay, so yeah, it’s been a year. I celebrated the book on Leap Day, 2020. And I just want to talk about how incredible that book launch was —

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mmm.

Monica Sok: —in Oakland, at Eastside Arts Alliance. It was such an incredible experience. My community came out. The elders came out.

Danez Smith: Hmmm.

Monica Sok: And there were really special moments during that night that I’ll never forget. For example, someone brought pizza. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Just brought pizza?

Danez Smith: Just brought pizza unprompted?

Monica Sok: Yes!

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) That’s great.

Monica Sok: Someone ordered like, a lot of pizza. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, who ordered this pizza? And I look around, and I’m like, “Ban Hai, did you order the pizza?” He goes, “Oh, yeah, it was me.” (LAUGHS) And the pizza was like, from 7-Eleven. And I was like, “Who ordered 7-Eleven pizza to my book launch?”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: But I thought that was so funny, cuz I was actually kind of worried that I couldn’t provide food. I didn’t have the money to like, provide food for the audience. And so I had, I just had wine and like, a cake. But I love that, you know, community came out. And they were like, you know, “What do we bring?” They don’t just show up. People always— Khmer people always will bring food. So I love that there was food at my event because of my community. But there’s also like, this really, really important moment. So there were dancers, the Morodok Khmer Performing Arts dancers from Stockton. And they did a blessing dance. And I really wanted to have a dance be part of the show. Because I had lost a really dear friend of mine. His name is Jory Horn. And he was a dancer, you know. And so he didn’t get to come to the celebration. But he was able to kind of be there through this dance performance in a way. It was such a great time. And like, towards the end of the event, as I grabbed my coat, and I was about to make my way over to the bookstore next door to sign books, there was this young Khmer boy named Alan, who like, never came to this writing retreat that I was doing with like, my friend, Danny Thanh Nguyen and the late Anthony Veasna. So. I always just see him kind of like, smoking outside of the center, the community center, while his mom is inside. I’m just like, wait, what are you doing skipping school right now, right? But he came up to me after my reading. And he just gave me this really big hug. And I was like, oh my god, he really needed that. He really needed that hug. And so like, that was a really important moment for me, because something happened that night, you know, with the poems and with the community and with all the people there, with the dancers. Like, something happened that night for him. When you asked me how has my community responded, here in Oakland, they’ve been so supportive and so loving, and they’ve shown up. But shortly after the book tour just was cancelled. And so I wasn’t able to, like, read in front of audiences and really understand like, what it means to have that debut author experience. But I do feel lucky that I was able to go to Tucson, before my book launch. It was my first public reading. And I actually visited this middle school. I visited this ESL class. A lot of the students have histories like mine. And that was my first time like, reading with my book in front of an audience, was with these students. And when I was telling them about, like, familial silence, and like, the genocide and my parents’ experiences, umh, they understood, you know? Because they come from those similar histories. Beyond that, I don’t actually know how people are really responding to the book. I think people are reading it, and sometimes I get nice notes. But I have a lot of trouble celebrating what I have created due to a lot of reasons. Grief being one. But it is difficult not knowing how to celebrate. This is a time to celebrate, you know? And at the same time, this is just a really weird time to think about this being an accomplishment, when I feel like there are so many losses that I’ve been thinking on, you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah. It strikes me as like the same reason that maybe, I heard you articulate that you wanted to have a praise poem in the book, like in the midst of all of that grief, you know, like, god, when do we need celebration, like a reason to celebrate more, than in the midst of such massive grief? Like, I feel so grateful for the books that could kind of accompany me through the year and I know that other people feel the same about your book, and also about all the other 2020 and early 2021 releases, you know?

Monica Sok: Yeah, absolutely.

Franny Choi: What is your relationship generally with praise and celebration as a writer?

Monica Sok: Yeah. So, I am writing new poems now that turn towards desire. And I’m trying to play more, trying to embrace the dailyness of my life in the poems. People have told me that when they read A Nail the Evening Hangs On that they feel like it must have been psychically draining for me to write the book. And in so many ways, it was. But now I feel I had to break out of the poems that I’ve written in the first book. Sometimes people also tell me, like, “I don’t really see you in the poems as much,” you know? There are a couple of like, self-portraits, and a poem where like, I’m in New York City processing history, but it’s such a narrow portrait of who I am, because it really is just about, like, just me trying to understand the Khmer Rouge regime and my family’s displacement. And what that means for me, as a second generation daughter of survivors. And so that’s a very particular part of me, but it’s not all of who I am. So when you ask about celebration and praise, I mean, I celebrate the fact that I’m here, I’m alive. It’s raining here, the orchids are blooming, there is just so much to celebrate each day, each moment. And at the same time, sometimes I dip into that despair. I mean, I think that’s just called being human. Life is suffering, you know. But I try my hardest to, like, put my hand on my heart, and have compassion for myself. And I think that reminds me to stay grounded in my actual writing process, you know. I think it is something you have to actively try to do, is think about what it is that you love, who you love, you know? I’m really excited to keep on trying to celebrate exactly who I am as a whole person, not just as a daughter of survivors. Does that make sense? You know, I often feel like Cambodian literature is so focused on survival literature. And so maybe I’ll talk a little bit about the grief, you know. There are writers who I celebrate like Anthony Veasna So and Kimarlee Nguyen, who created characters who were just so full, and multitudinous. And I think that’s what I’m in conversation with right now. I’m trying to get to the future. It took a very long time for me to meet people like Anthony, like Kimarlee. They write about desire, you know what I mean? They are imagining things that I don’t think Cambodians have gone towards, like in literature.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Monica Sok: And so losing them this past year has been just really painful. And I think that’s also affecting the way I’m thinking about celebration and praise, because I also have to hold that process, that, you know, that searching for celebration and praise, alongside this grief. And that’s just a very real process for me right now. Like, I don’t know, how else to get around. I don’t think I can get around grief. You know? I think that’s going to be part of celebration and praise.

Franny Choi: Mmm.

Danez Smith: I mean, first, I mean, I just want to offer my condolences as a friend, for those amazing writers. I didn’t know Kimarlee, but I knew Anthony So, and he was just an incredible person. Is an incredible person with incredible words, and I can’t wait for his book to still come out, so we can still be touched by that genius that we lost way too soon. I loved reading your book again, because it is so unlike a debut collection, right? Where most of us are sort of like, this is what it was like to be ages zero through 21.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: It’s true!

Danez Smith: You know, there was still some of you in there, but it felt like … it felt Black to me, or what I recognize as like, a thing that Black people do, that I recognize happens in other diasporas, of course, of like, it felt like you had to write the us in order to make way for the “I”, right? It was like, let me write down my people first, which I loved. And I’m wondering, in the new poems, in these new griefs, right, ‘cause it’s not like the first book is not about grief, what is Monica the poet able to do more in these new realms of the self, when not so tied to persona and not so tied to the larger history that we share? What are the new tools you’re picking up?

Monica Sok: Something that I’ve been trying to do lately is not put too much pressure on myself. I put a lot of pressure on myself with the first book, in trying to hold myself accountable to my community and my history. Uhm…And, you know, like Anthony and Kimarlee and other Khmer friends of mine, they’d be like, “Well, you don’t have to carry the whole community,” you know? I needed that voice, right. So, how do I tell myself to put the pressure off right now? Like, I think I’m just out here kind of trying to explore all the other things that I can do in poetry now that this first book is done. Like, what was it like for you to finish your first books? Like, did you have trouble creating new obsessions? Or even like, starting other poems? Were you always like, writing throughout, you know, even as you finished? Even as you finished the first book?

Danez Smith: The first book is like, kind of like, you know, a little parade.

Franny Choi: It’s like your debutante ball, you know?

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah, I feel like we owe book tours to all the people who released books in 2020. And ’21, I’m guessing at this point. (LAUGHS) You know, we all need some parades. But to your question, I think I experienced my hardest like post-book feeling after the third one. Because after the first one, I was like, already writing the second one by the time the first one came out. And the same was true for the second into the third. But by the time, after the third, I was like, well, what the fuck now?

Franny Choi: Not even like you were already writing, you had like 30, 40 pages of your next book.

Danez Smith: I was submitting the second one by the time the first one came out.

Franny Choi: That’s wild.

Danez Smith: And I think it’s because those three books, I kind of think about them, and I didn’t do this until Philip B. Williams asked me about it, but they’re kind of a trilogy. I think their obsessions roll into each other so well. And like, you can see the links through all of them. And so, it wasn’t—like Monica, I think I feel the hard, what I think you’re talking about, which is like, the switch of obsession. That came after the third one, because I was like, oh, I think I’ve answered those questions. Like a year after that third one, I’m starting to feel creative again, the poems are coming again, other things are coming. And there are new questions. And for me, the answer was time. It just took time to find those. And I felt so panicked when I didn’t have obsessions and questions and things I wanted to do. When there wasn’t another book to fall into. I was like, maybe that was it. You know, maybe that was all the juice. And I can remember feeling like that, you know, even in writing those collections. But now I feel comfortable having gone through it and knowing that maybe next time I know my answer is time. I have to like, trust that I’ll still be a poet in the future. Right? And sometimes that takes a big leap, right? And I’m glad for whatever in me last year kind of trusted that this year would come, right. Because now I’m back in poems, and I’m back thinking, and I’m back imagining and dreaming. But it took trust to know that that feeling would return.

Franny Choi: Yeah, I love that, Danez. Yeah. I mean, my first book was really very much like a, here’s what I’ve been up to ages zero through 22, 23, you know? It was like, here’s all my best stuff. And I had so much admiration for books that had like a really clear focus in theme, you know, books that might be called project books. And so like, I knew I really wanted to do something like that. And so, I think that I kind of like wrote around until I found what the thing was. And then it happened to be robots. But then it turned out that like, the thing that I chose was like, very, very vast, and I was never going to be able to cover it all. But at least it gave me some kind of direction. Book two really was shaped by thinking about desire as well for me. I mean, I don’t think of my first book as a book that is exactly about excavating a historical past, but it is a book about, that is sort of processing a lot of trauma, and processing, kind of like what it’s been like, up until the moment I showed up. And maybe that makes sense for the second thing to be like—because desire is like a future-oriented feeling. You know, it’s like, I want this to happen. I want to get to this. To me, it makes—I don’t know, hearing you talk about that, I was like, yeah, of course. What comes after cataloging the survival is the like, okay, like, what next, and to call that desire makes sense. Yeah, I don’t know, that makes sense to me. Also I think that after the first book, I was like, well, my parents are just going to have to deal with the fact that I’m writing about sex. (LAUGHS) You know?

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

Franny Choi: We had one or two poems in there, and now they’ve gotten kind of used to it, so we’re just gonna dive right in. Yeah.

Monica Sok: Yeah, for sure. Like, I feel like I’m trying to get to a place where I can also write about those sex poems too. And like, also just, you know, write about my body and writing against like all that body shaming that I grew up with and all of that. I think, oh my gosh, just pushing through all of that and getting to the language on this page, I think is so, so important to me right now, too.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Is there anything funky happening in the language in these poems about desire? Anything new or different?

Monica Sok: I don’t know exactly. You know, I really do rely on imagery in my poetics. I still am trying to incorporate like that into the new poems, too. But lately, I’ve been thinking about tone as well. How that needs to become something that I sharpen. There are some things that I’ve been trying to work on. And I’m not sure if I’ll get back to it anytime soon. But there were like, some erasures that I’ve been working on for the last several years. And I was digging through like, old, old poems, kind of cherry picking the ones that I thought, “I see a glimmer here, I still, I’m still thinking about this, and I’m so glad that I’m revisiting this, I’m going to put this in the doc now where I can actually like, print it out and then like, scribble things out and cross things out and write things in.” I don’t know, like, I think that in the last several years, I had been on this fellowship and residency track. And I didn’t always have like, a place to return to after those residencies had ended, you know? So that sense of home was also just something I had to establish as I was starting to really commit to the craft of poetry, really commit to this life of poetry. I had to learn that I needed a home for my mind.

Franny Choi: What do you mean by home for your mind?

Monica Sok: Like, I had all my things—I think that in 2016, that I had left New York City to go on all of these different residences. And after the residencies had ended, I would go back to like my parents house, you know what I mean, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And I would go on little stints trying to just kind of like, put together my life. Do you know what I mean? Like, I didn’t know where I was going to go. I wasn’t sure what was next. But then I had this fellowship in Bucknell University that also was not a place for me in which I felt safe. And that was 2016. You know, the year that Trump had taken office. And I was just so out of place in that little town of Lewisburg. I didn’t have like, that safe space for my mind. Do you know what I mean? Like, when I think of home, you gotta feel safe. And so, I was just really struggling. Trying to write poems about intergenerational trauma, and trying to survive that institution as well. That wasn’t home for me. It’s just something that I still am trying to understand is, what kind of track, you know, was I on? Could I have entered this life in a different way, outside of these institutions? And so sometimes, I think about that. What kinds of poems could I write outside of the institution? I think about poets like June Jordan, who, you know, tied the institution to the community and created Poetry for the People. It’s now at UC Berkeley, but before I think, maybe it was at San Francisco State University, I think. Do you know?

Danez Smith: SF State sounds right, especially for like, politically, back in the day. But I know it’s at Berkeley now. I don’t know how long it’s been there. Yeah. When you say that, though, it makes me think, the problems with integration. You know, I think a lot of Black scholars think about like, what did Black folks lose when we integrated, right, into these systems that were not designed for us. What did we lose once it wasn’t exclusively Black? When you mentioned that, it makes me think about for poetry, what do we lose, as these elders and ancestors opened doors for us that we could walk into these institutions that, you know, previously, we would have had no or little access to? When actually maybe what fed us was being at Etheridge Knight’s workshop that he taught out of his house, or going to Cave Canem, right, when it didn’t have university funding, when it was just like, in a church with some monks, right. These spaces that we carved out for ourselves are actually, I think, you know, the most bountiful spaces we had. But when we start to marry them to the institution, right, we end up, like you’re saying, in these spaces that aren’t really for us. I left an MFA program for my own reasons. Uhm, and while, I think, you know, that program is great in general, you know, I think a lot of folks have this grief, right, especially writers of color. You talk to them, they have this grief, this heaviness of dealing with institutions, folks saying, you know, “My MFA almost made me stop writing,” or “I went to this thing and I felt so harmed by the faculty or by other poets that I no longer even wanted to participate in this art.” You know, I think this last year, especially, it’s given us an opportunity—every year gives us an opportunity to think about it. But how will we trouble and unmarry ourselves from these institutions? Because even though oftentimes, right, they have the bread for us to live our lives, they don’t allow us to live rich spiritual lives, you know, in ourselves and in the work, oftentimes. I don’t know if I have a question or an answer.

Monica Sok: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: I’m thinking about it with you.

Monica Sok: Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you saying that. Uhm…First of all, I might sound very ungrateful to a lot of people who covet these kinds of opportunities. And so I want to also acknowledge how that narrative of gratitude, “You should be grateful,” has also been harmful for me, you know, while trying to create different futures in my poems. And just trying to survive. In these institutions, I had always been looking for myself and my community. I had always been looking for Khmer people. Going to the library, where can I read about Cambodian people. I tried to look for my people in college. Couldn’t find any Khmer classes, even outside of-even outside of that university. Only until now, now that I’ve passed through a lot of different institutional spaces, I can actually learn Khmer, because I found a Khmer class actually, through Cornell. I was actually connected to uhm…a linguistics PhD student at Cornell, who is Khmer, who I learn Khmer with like three times a week. You know, I feel like you have to create spaces, you have to create these opportunities when you don’t see yourself. When you don’t see yourself, you have to ask for what you want, ask for what you need. And that’s something I had to learn while navigating these spaces. So now I’ve asked for a Khmer class. And so, I’ve been learning consonants, and like, there’s like 33 consonants. I don’t even know how many vowels, there’s a lot of vowels. It’s just such a beautiful language. Like, when you spell out the language, my teacher will refer to the hat of the character, or the leg, you know what I mean, the ជើង of this consonant. I’ve been learning a lot. The other day, I learned the word “anxious” in Khmer. I never knew how to say it. And I thought to myself, damn, how come I don’t know how to say anything other than “happy” in Khmer? And it made me think about, like, the limited vocabulary that I grew up with, you know? And my parents, they often wanted me to practice English with them so they could improve their English, so then I eventually lost my Khmer. And so, I think about like, Solmaz Sharif, one of her lines in a poem, English being the “first defeat,” I think about that a lot. And how the Khmer language was lost so early in my life, and something that I’m trying to get back to now. But I’ve been learning Khmer for the last two months, and now I can read. And that’s incredible to me that I’m like, putting these things together, sounding them out. I can recognize the language, you know, the words, like the sounds. I can just look at Khmer and piece it together. I’m so excited about that. And maybe in the future, I’ll learn Khmer poetry forms. Maybe in the future, I can learn how to translate Khmer poetry. The word to translate is បកប្រែ, which literally means “to flip and fold.”

Franny Choi: So cool.

Monica Sok: I know, right? I love how poetic the language is. And also the word “to like,” ចូលចិត្ត, which is a word I know how to say, like, I knew how to say this my whole life. But like, my teacher broke it down. And he said, ចូល​ means “to go inside.” And ចិត្ត is like this old, maybe archaic way of saying “the heart.” So when you like something, you take it inside the heart. I learned that Brother Number One, like បងប្រុសលេខមួយ it means “gangster.” But—

Danez Smith: Of course! Yes! Brother Number One, yes!

Monica Sok: Gangster. But then Brother Number Two, បងប្រុសលេខ២, it means “cop.” So—(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: You know?

Franny Choi: Wow.

Monica Sok: There’s just lots of things that I’m learning. But I also love how—we were learning tenses the other day, and like, as a poet taking this language class, right like, I just connect things. And so, my teacher was like, “We didn’t get to it today in class, but next class, we’re going to practice the past and the future.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Monica Sok: And I know he’s talking about tenses, but my poet mind is like, “Wowww,” you know, “we’re going to time travel. We’re gonna practice the past and the future at the same time.” You know? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Wow.

Monica Sok: I used to think that there were no tenses in Khmer. Uhm, I heard that somewhere from someone and like, I never verified if that was true or not. But, you know, someone just said, “Yeah, everything happens in the present.” I thought about that. And I was like, oh, that sounds amazing. But then now I’m learning, no, there are words to describe the past and the future. That’s just me trying to fill in the gaps of my knowledge of this language that I’ve grown up hearing my whole life and speaking a little bit here and there in a fragmented way, like a child, like I’m a child speaker. So learning Khmer is like, also helping me work through this kind of shame. You know? Uhm, it’s very telling to everyone in the class like how my family might have spoken to me, you know? (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: So, it’s something that really does invigorate me, though. Maybe that is helping me go towards desire too, in a way, and maybe it’s helping me to kind of heal something in order to get to the future.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: Now, it is time for the most entertaining, wild, careless part of the show: the games. Monica, our first game is going to be Fast Punch, in which we’re going to give you 10 categories, and you’re going to tell us either the best or the worst of that category, as fast as you can. Monica, would you like to be a pessimist or an optimist today?

Monica Sok: I’m gonna choose to be an optimist today, because other days I’m a pessimist. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Ok

Franny Choi: Great. Love it. Love it.

Danez Smith: We love it. Franny, you wanna go first?

Franny Choi: Yes. Okay. First is best kind of tree.

(TIMER TICKS)

Monica Sok: Eucalyptus.

Franny Choi: Ooo, great answer.

Danez Smith: Alright. Best person in the audience while you’re reading.

Monica Sok: Your student who you haven’t seen in a minute.

Danez Smith: Mmm

Monica Sok: Oh, and the auntie and the elders. Okay. I’m sorry. (LAUGHS) I’m going—I’m just gonna be like, everyone I love. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Best Khmer food.

Monica Sok: Oh my god. That’s a hard one. Somlar Kari. Curry. With the noodles. I like the noodles.

Franny Choi: Mmm.

Danez Smith: Best poetry form.

Monica Sok: The ones that I don’t even know yet.

Danez Smith: Mmm.

Monica Sok: The Khmer poetry forms that I haven’t even learned yet.

Franny Choi: Love that. Best pre-sex thing.

Danez Smith: What?

Franny Choi: Best thing to happen before sex as like, a precursor. (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS) Um, like, a kiss? (LAUGHING) I don’t know.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) Okay, yeah, cool, sure.

Monica Sok: I’m just gonna go with that. Which is also, like, damn, I would love to experience a kiss right now. But go on. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Monica Sok: Just a kiss on the cheek. How lovely that would feel. Which means I’m going to kiss both of you on the cheek when I see you in person next.

Danez Smith: Aww

Franny Choi: Oh my god, yes.

Danez Smith: I will take a kiss. But if this goes on for another year, I might need to make out.

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: No strings attached, just making out with everybody.

Franny Choi: With all of our friends.

Danez Smith: Yes. Alright. Best fabric.

Monica Sok: Oh. I’m so slow at Fast Punch. (LAUGHS) I’m just gonna say the fabric that my grandma wove. The gold one.

Danez Smith: Hmm

Franny Choi: Best boba. I don’t know if you’re a boba person.

Monica Sok: I love boba. But I’m a little basic. It’s just that black milk tea boba tea. And I will put some honey boba in there. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Mmm.

Danez Smith: Best animal.

Monica Sok: Um, the octopus. Yes.

Franny Choi: Ooo.

Danez Smith: Mm

Franny Choi: Very solid answer. Okay, best spot in Oakland to sit and read.

Monica Sok: I like the Rose Garden. The Morcom Rose Garden.

Danez Smith: Alright, last one. Best image you’ve ever put in a poem.

Monica Sok: Oh, it’s a new poem. And there’s a scrotum of lavender buds.

(TIMER DINGS)

Danez Smith: Oh, wow.

Franny Choi: Ooo.

Monica Sok: That’s a new poem (LAUGHING) that I’m going to keep that image in there. Even though I’ve been told lots of things by Louise Glück who read the poem and was just like, “Why are there genitals in this poem?” And all my other friends are just like, “Keep it.” (LAUGHS) “That makes the poem, you know what it is.” So hopefully you’ll see that in the future. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I can’t wait.

Franny Choi: Coming soon to a book near you.

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Scrotum of lavender buds.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Congratulations, Monica!

Danez Smith: You won!

Monica Sok: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Franny Choi: Man. Honestly, even if the poem is just, “scrotum of lavender buds,” I’d be like, Yeah, that’s a great poem.

Monica Sok: Yeah, absolutely.

Danez Smith: It could be that for 14 lines, and I’d be like, yep.

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS) That’s always the image that people are like, “Oh, yeah, I connect to that,” you know?

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I can really see myself here. (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Amazing.

Danez Smith: I hope to never see that sac in real life. Amen.

Monica Sok: It’s hilarious, too, because it’s a bath bomb. Like it was referring to a bath bomb.

Danez Smith: Oh!

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: And I am proud of this image, and I’m happy to incorporate this in the poem. So, I’m gonna keep it. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Great. Okay, This vs. That?

Danez Smith: Yep.

Franny Choi: So, now we’re going to play This vs. That, the game where we put two things in opposite corners, and you tell us which one will win in a fight, a physical fight. So, in this corner, we have the praise poem. And in that corner, we have the survival poem. Praise poem versus survival poem, who wins in a fight?

(BELL RINGS)

Monica Sok: Survival. Survival would win, I think.

Franny Choi: Yeah, tell us, walk us through it.

Monica Sok: Uhm, because survival is surviving.

(ALL LAUGH)

Monica Sok: Like, I just think that if you put survival and praise into a fight like, survival will want to come out on top first, and then praise will come later. You know what I mean? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Be like “that was great” or like, “Oh, I learned so much from that fight.”

(ALL LAUGH)

Monica Sok: Right.

Danez Smith: Yeah, I feel like they’re like, doing two different things. Like, praise is maybe trying to box but like, survival’s in a death match, you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah, survival is trying to scrap.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Monica Sok: Survival is scrappy.

(ALL LAUGH)

Monica Sok: Survival is scrappy.

Danez Smith: Survival’s got weapons, you know?

Franny Choi: Right, right. Survival like, was explicitly told that knives are not allowed but brought one just in case.

Monica Sok: Right, or made one.

Franny Choi: Or made one!

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Survival has had the same blade in their cheeks since seventh grade.

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Literally, don’t fuck with that ho. (LAUGHS)

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah no that one- that one-in retrospect that one seems pretty clear.

Danez Smith and Monica Sok: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Well, congratulations, survival poem.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Franny Choi: You did it again.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Got through it.

Danez Smith: Are you ready for our last and final and strangest game?

Monica Sok: Tell me what it is. Yes.

Danez Smith: Alright, Monica, this is our new game from Franny’s mind called This vs. Something Else. (MONICA LAUGHS) And we’re gonna ask you to choose between this reality—this—or another reality that we just made up—something else. And you tell us which one you’d rather live in. And so, today, we have either this bullshit or, in the other corner, you can live in a world where every time you write a poem about a memory, you lose the memory, and can only remember it when you read the poem.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Monica Sok: Oh, wow, y’all are wild!

(ALL LAUGH)

Monica Sok: What kind of realities do you come up with on your free time? (LAUGHS) Uhm…

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Very poetry-specific ones.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Monica Sok: Wow, so you just lose the memory until you read the poem.

Danez Smith: I think about it as, you lock the memory in the poem.

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: That’s how that kind of translates to me, because you can get the memory back, but only whenever you read the poem. Right?

Franny Choi: Right. It’s like an exorcism, kind of.

Monica Sok: But it’s like, if you read the poem, would you know that it’s a memory? Okay. Okay, cool.

Franny Choi: Whoa.

Monica Sok: Um … I think I would stay in this reality.

Franny Choi: Really?

Monica Sok: Yeah. There are lots of memories that I still have to learn from, that I have to cycle through many, many times. You know, you revisit things at various points in your life and you learn something new. Like sometimes, it just illuminates for you in a different way.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Monica Sok: Like, so if I read the poem in the other reality, and I remember that memory, only when I read the poem, I wouldn’t learn a full lesson, you know? So.

Franny Choi: Right, ‘cause you’d only read, you’d only remember the memory as it was written in the poem, so there’s no like, other thing to—

Monica Sok: Yeah. Because then, like you said, it’s locked into that poem. And what if there’s other ways to shape language around that memory? So I think that would limit me, perhaps in the way that I think or imagine or even dream. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: For sure. For sure! Wow.

Monica Sok: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Also, I feel like, I mean, I have a bad memory. So I feel like I would just run out of poems fast. I only remember like maybe 25 things—

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Just being like, wait, what happened? How old was I?

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: You know? Eventually, I’d have to go with poems, only write poems that were like, “Well, today, I did this.”

Danez Smith: Well, you actually would have to write like—poets in that world, like there’s such a risk to being autobiographical then, right? So then either like, all writing in imagination, or they’re just like, you know, persona, making up some shit, because like, to write your memory, that’d be such a huge act. To be like, “I’m ready to let this go.”

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: You know? Wow, shit.

Monica Sok: Yeah.

Danez Smith: I mean, yeah, what would poets be if like, you couldn’t write about yourself without losing yourself, right? I mean, don’t we already? Oh fuck, this question fucked me up. Damn.

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS) I mean, if I were in that world, I would write memories that I don’t want to remember.

Danez Smith: Exactly, yeah, yeah. You write the poem to flush it out. Yeah.

Monica Sok: But then like, if you have memories that you do want to remember, it’ll just—oh, no, that’s too much. I’ll stay in this world, happily.

Franny Choi: (GIGGLES) Wow. Well, congratulations to this current reality for beating out at least that other one.

Monica Sok: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: If not many, at least that one. Okay. Well, I think that that is—

Monica Sok: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Thus concludes our interview and the games. Monica, thank you so much for spending this time with us. It’s been such a joy and such a good thing for our brains and our hearts. Where can people find more of your work?

Monica Sok: You can go online to my website at monicasok.com. I’m on Instagram @monicajuice, and Twitter @monicasokwrites, and I think that’s it, right? That’s all I have to tell you.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Yes.

Monica Sok: Okay.

Danez Smith: Your phone number?

(ALL LAUGH)

Monica Sok: My mailing address, you can send me things. No, I’m playing. Please don’t. Don’t do that unless you’re my friend. (GIGGLES)

Franny Choi: Well, congratulations again on your book. It’s so beautiful. And if you haven’t gotten a copy of A Nail the Evening Hangs On, make sure you do that. And Monica, would you do us the honor of closing us out with one more poem?

Monica Sok: Absolutely. Yes. Here is the poem. A new poem that’s not in the book.

(READS POEM)

Ode to the Boy Who Jumped Me

You and your friend stood 
on the corner of the liquor store
as I left Champa Garden, 

takeout in hand, on the phone 
with Ashley who said, 
That was your tough voice.

I never heard your tough voice before. 
I gave you boys a quick nod, 
walked E 21st past dark houses. 

Before I could reach the lights 
on Park, you criss-crossed 
your hands around me,

like a friend and I’d hoped 
that you were Seng, 
the boy I’d kissed on First Friday 

in October. He paid for my lunch 
at that restaurant, split the leftovers. 
But that was a long time ago 

and we hadn’t spoken since, 
so I dropped to my knees 
to loosen myself from your grip, 

my back to the ground, I kicked 
and screamed but nobody 
in the neighborhood heard me, 

only Ashley on the other line, 
in Birmingham, where they say 
How are you? to strangers 

not what I said in my tough voice
but what I last texted Seng, 
no response. You didn’t get on top, 

you hovered. My elbows banged 
the sidewalk. I threw 
the takeout at you and saw 

your face. Young. More scared 
of me than I was of you. 
Hands on my ankles, I thought 

you’d take me or rape me. 
Instead you acted like a man 
who slipped out of my bed

and promised to call: 
You said nothing. 
Not even what you wanted.

* * *

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: Moni-fuckin-ca, everybody. God damn. Always better than Brandy. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: The boy is still hers. What a beautiful conversation that was.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, such a beautiful conversation that went to so many places that feel, I don’t know, that I just like, felt really deeply.

Danez Smith: Yeah. You know what nugget has stars and whistles all around it in my heart? When she said finding a home for her mind.

Franny Choi: Yeah, totally. It can feel so beautiful to have that and so lonely not to have it, you know?

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: What comes to mind for you when you hear that phrase, “a home for the mind”?

Danez Smith: Oh, the physical location that comes up for me is a place I miss. It’s Lathrop Hall, which is the dance department at UW Madison.

Franny Choi: Oh, First Wave.

Danez Smith: Yeah, First Wave. And so First Wave, my college program, our workshops were hosted there. And it was just a building that, you know, for those five years I came to associate with learning, with trying stuff out, with writing and performing with just like, the work, you know? And it changed—the way I walked to that building was different than when I walked other places because it was a place where we went to think and make and fuck up and, you know, and excel. And so, that’s one of the biggest things I miss from college is like having these places that I associate with making the work and going there to like do the thing, and so, I knew I could go there and be pushed and be loved and like, that was that was the work, too. Not just, you know, making content, but the community of which of folks that fed my art and that expected something of me. I think for the rest of my life, I’ll be like, trying to find that elsewhere and trying to recreate that. And thankfully, I can, you know? What about for you? Is there a place that comes up? Or what do you think about when you hear “home for the mind”?

Franny Choi: I mean, I think of spaces honestly like Dark Noise, you know?

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: That was a space that has sustained my mind-heart for years that like, I don’t know, I just so miss our retreats where like, we might all be like, in like a living room kitchen in some Airbnb and, you know, somebody’s making a snack and Aaron’s answering emails, and Fati is like writing an entire script and like, somebody will just say something into the room. And then three other people are down to be like, right there with them, like intellectually and spiritually, you know? That shit is so rare. And I don’t know, I just miss it every day.

Danez Smith: That just shows, you know, our retreats, you know, have never been in the same place, you know. We don’t have the keys to anywhere all together. Like a person can be a home for your mind, too, right? Because that’s what that is, right? It’s not physical at all. Like, you are a home for my mind, right?

Franny Choi: Aww.

Danez Smith: I trust you with my thoughts, you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: I’m excited to share my thoughts with you, right. That’s also what a home for the mind is. It’s not, you know, I think it is beautiful to have the physical space, especially, I think we all are pining for the physical space of somewhere else. And other people. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god. Any other physical space. Any other physical space than this one.

Danez Smith: I would like to be some new places and smell some new niggas. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: God. I wanna look at different walls. You know what I mean?

Danez Smith: Yes.

Franny Choi: I just want like a different wall.

Danez Smith: Some other beiges, the warmth of other beiges.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) The warmth of other beiges!

Danez Smith: But, at the same time, you know, like, we can still, you know, I think about the people I’ve been excited to call and text, right. And that is also like, me saying, hey, like, you are person who like, who’s a home.

Franny Choi: Totally. Yeah. And I will also say that, you know, right now I feel incredibly lucky that Cameron is like my, is like my number one mind companion, you know? Like, I feel like my mind has like a place to be home, you know? By which I mean, when I burst into the room and say, “What do you think about this?” Cameron’s often like, “Hm.” And then gives feedback.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: And what a fucking gift, my god.

Danez Smith: What a gift. Aw.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Let’s go ahead and thank some people and get on outta here. So I guess I’ll dedicate my little end of episode thank you to the poets and artists in Detroit, who, in my two years after my two years at the University of Michigan, made a home and a community for me, and were like, friends and family of my mind there for that year that I spent there. So shout-out to all of you.

Danez Smith: Aww, that’s wonderful. I’m gonna thank another like, poet home for the mind. When I lived in the Bay Area, I had the wonderful pleasure of going to the Starry Plough on Wednesday nights and kicking it in Berkeley with some wonderful and amazing poets. That was like my last sort of dip into regular slamming, and I miss slamming so much, but I miss slamming there so much because it was such a good room of folks that were just bringing in such incredible work and trying to have fun and in all seriousness push what their work was doing and who was doing it. So shout-out to folks like Toaster and Tatyana Brown and Jason Bayani, and you know, all the crew, Jaz Sufi, y’all know what’s good. Thank you, the Bay. I miss that. Aw, I’m going to some slams when this shit’s over. Alright, anyways, Franny.

Franny Choi: We also want to thank our producer Daniel Kisslinger. We want to thank Itzel Blancas and Ydalmi Noriega at the Poetry Foundation. Thank you to Postloudness. And thank you to all of you for continuing to listen to us in our fifth and final season.

Danez Smith: Awwwww…Please make sure you like, rate, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And make sure you follow us on Twitter @VSthepodcast. And with that, y’all, we are going to get out of here. Thank you so much for your time and attention today. Love you. Be safe.

Franny Choi: Be safe. Goodbye.