AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

The Poetry Magazine Podcast: Ashley M. Jones in Conversation with Marcus Wicker

(If you notice a mistake in the transcript, please let us know by emailing [email protected])

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Marcus Wicker:

(READS EXCERPT FROM “How did you learn to speak English?”)

i needed to

slow    down   & i did   leave pockets of air   here & there

Ashley M. Jones: Welcome to the Poetry Magazine Podcast. I’m Ashley M. Jones. Today, I’m thrilled to speak with poet Marcus Wicker, who joins us from Memphis, Tennessee. Two of Marcus’s poems are featured in the December issue of Poetry. The poems consider what an extraterrestrial landing in Atlanta in 2020 would think of America and its hall of horrors. Like much of Wicker’s poetry, these pieces incorporate popular culture and music references alongside his own unflinching observations and exciting wordplay. Marcus, welcome to the podcast.

Marcus Wicker: Thank you, Ashley. Good to be here.

Ashley M. Jones: So excited to talk to you today. And I have to tell you, I brought your book to the recording with us just so it could be here.

Marcus Wicker: Ah, appreciate it.

Ashley M. Jones: Of course, so this book, your 2017 book, Silencer, is a fantastic book, by the way, anybody out there who has not read it, please get it, read it. This book is full of poems which use playful but biting language, Black pop cultural references, and all these incredible dagger endings that you have, which makes the whole poem turn on its head. In my writing, life, I think, and in a lot of—in all of our writing lives, making a new lane isn’t always easy, especially for those of us who are marginalized, and who find ourselves as one of the only or the only marginalized person at the workshop table. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you developed your style. Because as I read it, it seems like you’re so comfortable incorporating all these different parts of our culture onto the page. You’re sort of gliding through pop culture, spirituality, Blackness, and this use of language that is so alive. How did you come to that?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah. So one of the things that I always think about when I’m writing my work is the audience that sort of set me forth on the path towards poetry anyway. And when I think about that audience, those are folks from my hometown of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Most people know Ann Arbor, because the University of Michigan. Ypsi is about 15 minutes away. It’s a little more diverse, it’s more working class. And so, you know, I went to a private school in Ann Arbor for first through eighth grade. And then I went to public high schools in Ypsilanti, Michigan. And it turns out that all of the people that sort of loved on me in high school that were like, in my neighborhood, those are the folks who told me, “You’ve got something,” you know, when I was in the English class. And so I always think about them as my audience. Some of these folks finished high school, some didn’t, some are in places that I wouldn’t encounter them at this point. But when I write my poetry, I imagine that they’re reading the work, right. And that even if they haven’t been through an MFA workshop, even if they don’t have the same lexicon, or the same sort of personal canon, I want them to hear pop culture and hip hop references that reflect them. I want them to hear the sort of seasoned speech and slang that we spoke in when I was in high school. And on the other hand, I’m also thinking about, I guess, my colleagues in academia and all the craft that I’ve learned over the years. I’d like to honor both. And so that’s sort of, I guess, the way that my style came about.

Ashley M. Jones: I think it’s so fascinating to hear you say that you want to bridge that academic side of yourself with, like, real humans, you know? I mean, no offense to academic people, I am one as well. But there is a sort of different way that we use language in those two spaces. Do you ever find it to be a battle between those two sides? Or even, what do you envision as the purpose of poetry, knowing that you have those two sides in contrast?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, well, I guess, you know, I think that people want to see themselves reflected on the page, just the way that they want to see themselves reflected on TV or a movie. And so maybe that’s the initial thought. I’m really interested in diglossia, this idea of high and low diction merging. I’m sort of a hyphenated person. I don’t like to be boxed in, in general. And so, these days, I think I’m just trying to get my bag, right, I’m trying to become more and more me on the page. And if that means that I’m walking further away from academia, and closer to my folk in Ypsi, or vice versa, I’m okay with that. I’m just, I’m trying to write the poems that will change the way that people think and that will change me, first and foremost, I guess, when I’m going through revision.

Ashley M. Jones: Agreed, same. That is truly what I’m trying to do as well. And I think as we grow in our poetry careers, how ever many books we get in, like, each book seems to allow us to walk through a different door

Marcus Wicker: That’s right.

Ashley M. Jones: that may be closer to our truer self, which is exciting. I’m very excited about these new poems and that door that you’re opening with them. So I wonder if you could read to us the poem, “Dear Mothership,”?

Marcus Wicker:

(READS POEM)

Dear Mothership,

Like witchgrass effacing a wheat bed   gradually    a ghoulish shadow

                                                                     swallowed me     from the earth up—

curtained ankles    stalk thighs & belt line   haunted every golden

                                                                     region—unhinged behemoth

jaws & inhaled me    into wailing dark    where I abided    numerous waning moons

                                                                     For what felt like 14,000    addling revolutions

of “The Real Slim Shady”    blasting at festival volume

                                                                     The apoplectic & gone     a fringe of seedlings—

violet heebie-jeebies    shrouding my body and a trespassed field   But today dear Mothership

                                                                     today you are augury     Your name a foretelling relief

scrolled across MARTA buses          in yellow script

                                                                     near Headland & Delowe   Bannered beneath the marquee

at Cascade roller rink    booming and Biggie’s classic “Juicy” verse   O Long-Playing

Mothership   forgive me my crackling radio static   i have seen things

Forgive me these months of turmoil    of glissandoed catastrophe   The disquiet

here is unprecedented    Like a crane fretboard    i have carried discord     As snapped

harp strings     i have streamed & ingested     the yokel mistreatment     of a half-Black

Duchess     by a blood-struck monarchy    i have gleaned     “protest” & “riot”

mean different things     Have seen tribalism star decency     via Twitter feed diet

Mercy me     & my lapsed correspondence    i came here seeking meaning    [hairline cracks

in the soul’s moss skin]    but vibed no such emerald enlightenment

          O High Matriarch     Maker of Melody    Luthier me    a tuning fork heart

                                                      EQ every Shih Tzu-     cable news car alarm knell

Strum me     in your key     of care and volition   Peachtree me    tent the windows

                                                      w/ roses     Sparkle every cogwheel fresh    & so clean

MAYDAY   Mothership save me:

                                                          a million leaking eyelets

                                obscure my visage w/ grief

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Ashley M. Jones: So I love that poem, “Dear Mothership,” and I think maybe it’s a part of a larger project. Could you talk more about that project and what you imagine it will be?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, so the project came out of the pandemic. I think that my reaction to it was a little delayed. The fall semester where I teach at University of Memphis had been over for a month. And when the university said, “Hey, we’re going to go on Zoom until we can figure out how to make classes happen safely,” I sort of insulated myself from some of the fear and panic that I should have been experiencing by keeping my mind trained on poetry. But that avoidance only worked for so long. So once the writing slowed, and I didn’t have as many ideas, the anxiety about the new normal creeped up, suddenly, I was stuck in the house, paralyzed by grief, all the social turmoil on TV, and Twitter, just like everybody else. And so I spent a lot of hours looking for sources of calm and familiar books, and also in music.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

So really anything space influenced like OutKast, or Thundercat, or Parliament-Funkadelic. And some of those nights, I’d read a few poems from the collected Robert Hayden before bed, wanting for something clear headed, something beautiful and precise. And a lot of those nights would end with me rereading his poem “[American Journal]” about an alien arriving in America and examining the human condition. And the poem is, you know, it’s three pages long, but it feels as if it could go on forever.

(RECORDING OF Robert Hayden READING “[American Journal]” PLAYS)

the americans        this baffling
multi people        extremes and variegations        their
noise        restlessness        their almost frightening
energy        how best describe these aliens in my
reports to The Counselors

disguise myself in order to study them unobserved
adapting their varied pigmentations        white black
red

(FADES OUT)

There are these great caesuras between each line, strange phrasing, and weird observations. And I just wanted more of it. And then I just thought, what would that look like in 2020? Like maybe if I write in persona, I can sift some of my feelings about what’s going on in the world through the lens of this extraterrestrial. And because I’ve been listening to OutKast and the ATLien album on repeat, I thought, okay, so maybe this extraterrestrial lands in Atlanta, in 2020, and maybe some of the ways that I filter my thoughts through are through OutKast lyrics and just sort of see what happens. And so I started to write this logbook. Each sonnet in the sequence is a page on a logbook, observing what the ATLien sees over the course of the pandemic.

Ashley M. Jones: That is so fascinating. And I think it needs to be said that the idea of being an extraterrestrial in a strange land does fit so well, I think, for the African American experience, because, I mean, literally, a people who were brought to a new place that did not look like home, they weren’t treated like it was home, there were all these strange noises and, and things just everywhere. And even now, as descendants of enslaved people, in many ways, sometimes I look at this country, the place where I was born, and I don’t know what this is. Like, it just doesn’t make any sense. Even before 2020.

Marcus Wicker: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: There were so many moments where I just would say, “What, why?” You know, “Why are we here? What is this culture? Why is there so much blood on everything?” you know. And so I was really drawn to these poems for that reason, first, without even really thinking about OutKast and ATLiens. But adding that in, just like, brings a whole other texture to these pieces. And I’m very excited for this project.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

That sort of futuristic music that we’ve seen for so long, you’d mentioned even George Clinton, who is truly I think, still on another planet, like I don’t think he was born here. (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Ashley M. Jones: I’m from Alabama, so I think of Sun Ra.

Marcus Wicker: Absolutely.

Ashley M. Jones: Literally, literally said, “We have to go to another planet,” like, “This is not home.” So I think it’s so fascinating and just right on time, because I do think during 2020, we heard a lot of people talking about, you know, moving away from America. There were all these conversations about, should we go back to Africa? Is Africa home for us? And then when people, when I guess, billionaires decided to go to space, some people started asking, “Should we leave Earth?”

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS) Right.

Ashley M. Jones: And I have a particular viewpoint on that, you know, I don’t know if I can survive up there. I’ll let all the billionaires go up there.

Marcus Wicker: Uh-huh.

Ashley M. Jones: Do their thing. But anyway, these poems, like I said, are just, I think, perfectly timed. And do you feel, I also—well, let me back up. So ATLiens from OutKast is also a Southern text.

Marcus Wicker: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: So the South, and I have to talk about the South of course, because that’s where I’m from. And you’re in Tennessee now.

Marcus Wicker: Yep.

Ashley M. Jones: So you are a Southern person? I don’t know if you describe yourself as that. Let me not put that on you, if you say your Southern.

Marcus Wicker: No, I’m getting there. It’s been like six years here. I’m getting there. And the South definitely got something to say. Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Yes, we do, we do. But I think that whole idea of somewhere else does take root in the South throughout history.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Obviously, when Black people were enslaved, that somewhere else maybe had a literal geography.

Marcus Wicker: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: But throughout time, it’s just, okay, somewhere else could be the sanctuary of my grandmother’s kitchen, or the slang that we use, the language that we have turned is somewhere else.

Marcus Wicker: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: So yeah, all of these things are at play in my head. And I hope, you know, that you’re able to get this project out so we can consume it as soon as possible. (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: I hope so. I’m ready to be done with it. Definitely. Yeah. Uh-huh, I also, you know, thinking about space, I kept thinking as I was writing these poems, like, if Black folks can’t be safe here, where can I be safe? Right? And in my mind, that was space, space was the place in the words of Sun Ra, right. And then also, thinking about all the death and the sickness that I was seeing, I was thinking about the way that grief sort of alienates one from themselves, right? Alienates you from the self that you were before you had experienced that grief.

(RECORDING OF Sun Ra PLAYS)

The music is different here. The vibrations are different. Not like Planet Earth. Planet Earth sounds of guns, anger, frustration. There was no one to talk to on Planet Earth who would understand. We set up a colony of Black people here. See what they can do on a planet on their own without any white people. They could drink in the beauty of this planet. It would affect their vibrations. For the better, of course.

Ashley M. Jones: You’re so right about grief also being another planet. I mean, all of us collectively experienced many kinds of grief, as you said, during 2020. And, I mean, 2020 is like not just the year 2020, I suppose. It’s like, we have started the era of 2020 now.

Marcus Wicker: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: And, you know, a lot of us lost a lot of people and we’re trying to figure out what that means. So, I’m just excited. Let me stop gushing over these poems and ask you to read, if you would read your other poem in the December issue called “How did you learn to speak English?” I have a question about that. But I’d like to hear that poem.

Marcus Wicker: Sure. Yeah.

(READS POEM)

How did you learn to speak English?

Fresh Prince / Freddie Gibbs / John Singleton flicks /
Rakim / OutKast / “talking heads” & Big Tech / B.I.G. &
Big Daddy Kane / i tried to exorcise Black pain w/ tragi-
comic irony / & some nights / the poltergeists came for me /
shrouded my pillow in picaninny shadows / spit /
was wild critical / i had an odd-metered sense of timing /
i wanted to file off & cascade / erode after-hour thought-
barbs / punitive / grandiloquent / the glow-
red steel brand of language / i wanted to wash over it
in a stream of arpeggios / my diction was afflicted
by an awareness of human scrutiny / which / looking
back / produced one or two wrong / notes / i needed to

slow   down   & i did   leave pockets of air   here & there
for ad lib   & care   until i learned to sing   inside them

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Ashley M. Jones: So, if you don’t have an audio book for your next book, I will be very angry, Marcus, please.

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: Jenny from Houghton Mifflin, if you’re listening. No I’m just playing. (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: You just read so beautifully, I could just swim in the sounds that you create in those

Marcus Wicker: You’re so kind.

Ashley M. Jones: Hey, I’m telling the truth, you can count on me to tell my absolute truth.

Marcus Wicker: All right.

Ashley M. Jones: And that is what that is. So this poem, “How did you learn to speak English?” fascinates me endlessly. It reminds me of the ways in which we, as descendants of enslaved Black people in America, the Americas, have had to make this language, English, work for us. How we have made new languages out of this thing called English, how we govern the way people speak. All slang leads back to us. You can apply that also to music, popular styles, almost everything, the way people walk, the way they want to look, the shade of everybody’s skin now, thanks to tanning and whatnot.

Marcus Wicker: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ashley M. Jones: It all leads back. We create the language of this place. And of course, I mean language quite broadly here. So can you talk about how language in that broadly defined sense moves in your life and your work?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, that’s a great question. Always there’s music playing in the background. So sometimes it’s the vocabulary of hip hop, especially sort of underground hip hop, or sort of conscious hip hop, where I think that—and maybe this is wrong—MCs work a little harder on their rhymes. And so, successive slant rhymes, lots of multisyllabic words and allusion, they’re sort of always running through the background. And then there’s the vocabulary of jazz, which is the music of my father and his father, and a hard-earned education for me, it’s not something that I came by easily, but I’m a fanatic now. And so the, I guess, escape, that I feel in the notes of John Coltrane, or Charlie Parker, or even new folks like BADBADNOTGOOD, or the late Roy Hargrove, that’s a certain kind of vocabulary that I’m always leaning into. And I think that both of those influences come out in my work.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, I agree. I’m very excited that I know all those references that you made,

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHING) I feel very cool that I know all those musicians, but it does come out and your work. I mean, the one you just read, “How did you learn to speak English?” the rhythm of it is really quite palpable, even just reading it, you know, on the page, but hearing it too. And I think that one is a sonnet. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Marcus Wicker: It is, yeah, I think they all are, right all the—so, the “Dear Mothership,” series is not only a sequence of poems, but it’s a sonnet sequence. They’re American sonnets, 14 lines with a volta. And the last line of one sonnet becomes the next in the sequence. And then it’s also a logbook, right? This is what the ATLien sees. And so I’ve got 11 of 14 of these written right now. And at some point, I decided there’s all this background information that I really can’t work out in 14 lines. And so I need a prologue. And so I started thinking towards this prologue, it’s called, “Frequently Asked Questions.” And that’s where the “How did you learn to speak English?” poem came in. And all of the titles start with questions that you might ask an extraterrestrial. Surely you must have thought about destroying us at some point, what God do you serve? Right. And so, I’m trying to come up with unorthodox answers throughout the poems.

Ashley M. Jones: Every time you say anything about this project, Marcus, I’m just so excited. So, I want to talk about sonnets and form. I find it really fascinating that you’re working in the sonnet form. I love sonnets, I think they’re so useful for so many things, but especially for telling a necessary story. For me, that small container and that volta— cannot overstate the importance of the volta—the volta always just turns the knife in the perfect way, for these sorts of topics, I think. And of course, knowing you have music in your mind as you’re writing these, of course, the sonnet. And I think you’re also really in line with this tradition that I see, at least, maybe others, hopefully everybody sees this tradition of Black poets who take these traditional forms, and make them our own, in the same way that we discussed language as becoming our own. There are so many we could name. Patricia Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, Wanda Coleman, Tyehimba Jess, the list goes on,

Marcus Wicker: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: of making these received forms, or forms that were, I guess, created by the ivory tower, so to speak, and making them alive with our own experiences. Are you typically working in form, or is this a new endeavor for you? And how did the forms come to be on the page? Are you using just the line length and the rhyme, or what else is at play?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, so I started the project just thinking about a 10-beat line. And then I started to think about, the thing about the spacey music that I got into over the pandemic is that it sort of feels like you’re in a Cadillac, like you hit a bump, and sort of the music keeps riding. And I thought, in order to do that, maybe I can’t use a 10-beat line. And so, some of them are sort of sonic approximations of that. I am conscious of the way that one can subvert form to work with the subject matter. That’s something that I’m thinking about often in the poems. The sonnet is a great form, I think, for questions and answers. And most of my poems start out with some sort of underlying question. So like, in the Italian sonnet, if the octave is the question, the sestet answers it, or complicates it. And in that way, thinking about politics, thinking about inequity, and unrest, and all the things that we are faced with at this current moment, the sonnet just made a lot of sense.

Ashley M. Jones: I really hope people were writing that down. That’s really fantastic. And I believe that to be true as well. I feel like the sonnet is the perfect container for opening up those questions.

Marcus Wicker: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: Okay. So, I also want to talk about the reader. We’ve talked a lot about your approach to the work and what you’re thinking about as you write, and you kind of touched a little bit on some of your audience. You mentioned those who you grew up with, and maybe also some in the academic world. I sort of think as poets, we are called to, of course, document the time that we live in, our poems can move our readers, as you said, change their thinking. What do you hope your readers receive from your work? And can you talk more about the audience you’re thinking of? And of course, I have to just say like, remember Toni Morrison. I feel like she always talked a lot about how Black people were her primary audience. And in fact, her work, all of her books centered Black characters, and I think it really speaks to a lot of us who are writing now. She is the one who gave us such an interesting way of thinking about audience and who really needs to hear these words. But I’m just curious about your thoughts there.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I’ll say, I guess sort of the canned answer is that I’m always thinking about the poems that I want to see sort of living and thriving in the world. And so if I want to see them, it’s my duty to write them and also to buy books and sort of be a part of this larger community. I’m always thinking about Black folks, period in my work. I’m often thinking about people who are music lovers, I’m thinking about people who are disenfranchised with poetry, who have either a limited view of what it looks like. Yeah, and the ways that my work can change that point of view, or can expand the definitions of what it means to write free verse, or what it means to subvert a form like the sonnet or like the ghazal in my work.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, I definitely think your work allows people in, in a way that’s very important to me as a poet. And I think like we talked about, a lineage of poets have done this work for us, you know, to let us feel like we’re welcome, that we can be represented. And even to see, like, we’ve been saying all these references to popular music, that is really something exciting to say, very clearly, this is art worth writing about.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Kendrick Lamar and OutKast, and there’s so many references you make in Silencer, too, which I’m trying to remember. But all of these things are worthy of “high art,” in quotes.

Marcus Wicker: And you know, everyone always says, you know, we are standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. But I think that in academia, specifically, there’s this way that we discredit anything that does not look like either a linear narrative, or something that uses buzzwords and terminology that have, you know, come to be accepted. And I just, the older I get, and the more I write, the less I care about that. And you know, I want the poems to reflect that too.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, amen.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: It’s true, the longer we stay in this business, the business of writing and being teachers and being literary beings, I think the clearer it becomes that the academic world is not really the destination. Like it’s maybe the means to our real end, which is connecting with ourselves, our ancestors, and the people. I’m like, getting really just fired up to like, do more poems, you know, just talking to you and hearing your philosophy on all of this. But I want to talk now about Afrofuturism, which is perhaps a buzzword in modern society. But it’s like a real survival thing, I think, for Black people.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: And it seems that this work is very concerned with that idea. Even though the ATLien is coming to this planet,

Marcus Wicker: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: they do exist somewhere else, where maybe it’s different. So, can you talk a little bit first about what Afrofuturism means to you, or if it was on your mind, as you wrote?

Marcus Wicker: It was on my mind as I started to write, as I got, I guess, deeper into the project. Not initially, I will say. But this idea in Afrofuturism that, you know, part of the deal is to create counter narratives that actually reflect Black folks and to create new realities, wherein things like inequity, or things like social injustice, racism, these things, they’re not as prevalent, or at least, they’re not things that have a hold over someone’s life in the same way. And so when I think about this ATLien, and the idea was that, you know, he comes from this planet Stankonia—thinking about OutKast—and on his planet, it’s sort of a cacophony. It’s filled with music.

(EXCERPT FROM Intro to Stankonia by OutKast PLAYS)

André 3000:

Live, from the center of the Earth
Seven light years below sea level we go
Welcome to Stankonia, the place from which all funky things come ...

Marcus Wicker: Everything sort of runs off sound. And that’s great. That means that you can live forever, right? If you tap into the sort of right energy, the right vibe. But at the same time, it means that if you’re thinking about anything else, you can’t live. And so for him to come to America, this place where he thought that he could sort of use his, his musical chops as a producer, actually, in Atlanta, and then realize that America is noisy, you know? Between Twitter and Facebook, and everything that we look at on the news, between the sometimes didactic conversations that happen among our colleagues, there is plenty of noise here. And so, thinking about the idea of escape, where can I go to be free, if not on my own planet in Stankonia, if not in America, where? Right, that’s one of the driving questions. But I would say that I’m new, I’m sort of new to Afrofuturism. I didn’t really grow up a comic book nerd. Don’t tell anybody that.

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: I didn’t have the same sort of Marvel vocabulary. But the more I read, and the more art I take in, the more I’m buying into it.

Ashley M. Jones: I won’t tell anybody, although you just did tell everybody, Marcus. (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, yeah, cut that out. (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: It’s okay. I mean, I think I would suggest for readers, or for listeners, I would suggest for listeners who are also trying to dip their toe into Afrofuturism, because I’m not necessarily an expert on it, I mean, I think maybe inherently, all of us who are Black have like, these ideas in our mind, and we don’t necessarily put the name Afrofuturism to them. And it might not be space, like we said earlier, it could just be what is what else is there.

Marcus Wicker: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: I would even argue that a negro spiritual is a version of an Afrofuturist mode.

Marcus Wicker: Huh. Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Because you’re imagining some unknown future that’s different or better than here. But if you would like to delve a little bit more into this, this mode, there’s a great anthology out from Blair press called The Future of Black. And it’s edited by Gary Jackson, who is also a poet you should check out.

Marcus Wicker: Ah, definitely. Love Gary.

Ashley M. Jones: He is an encyclopedia of all comic books, like, literally the man knows every thing about comic books. But The Future of Black is all about Afrofuturism. It has poems from all kinds of people. I am in there, but you can ignore my poems. There are other great poets in there. (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: Never. Never that. Nah.

Ashley M. Jones: And then, of course, the old standards, Octavia Butler, etcetera.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah. You know one, I guess one thing that I didn’t say is that, I guess I found a safe haven, and sort of renewed agency in considering the Blackness of space, like the canvas seem like the perfect space for charting a new vision of a thriving Black future, I guess, processing generational trauma, through Afrodiasporic experiences, but in this new land, right.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah.

Marcus Wicker: I’m definitely going to get that anthology. Gary is my man. And there’s never an occasion where I’m not going to read an Ashley M. Jones poem.

Ashley M. Jones: Oh, gosh. (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: C’mon now.

(OutKast PLAYS)

Ashley M. Jones: I do want to talk a little bit about OutKast, while we’re talking about Afrofuturism, because I think too, you know, I mentioned negro spirituals, but of course, so much hip hop, especially like weird hip hop, is very Afrofuturistic.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: And you know, growing up, I’m not like the deepest OutKast head in the world, like, I would not win any trivia, you know, I just know what I know. And I love what I have heard. And I’ve heard a lot. So again, everybody out there don’t, don’t judge me, I know a good amount of OutKast songs.

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: But growing up, I never really thought about how futuristic and like, just weird their stuff was, maybe because I already was a weird person. So it’s like, “Oh, I understand this. I too, am this way.” But their album ATLiens is a basis, as you’ve said, for this project. Can you talk about OutKast? Wherever you want to go with that, but specifically with your work. Why did you choose—I know you said you were listening to them during the pandemic, but what about OutKast informs your work in this project? And have they informed other works of yours?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, I mean, I think that they were or are, depending on whether or not they come back, a genius duo, right. I think that they are really good at being themselves. Their rhymes are slick, they’re inventive, they are a little nerdy. What speaks to me, I think that they’re cadences are varied and sort of hypnotic, which to me, I mean, sort of seems like it was coming from the same place as the Hayden poem, “American Journal.” The baselines are really warm, you can’t hear an OutKast song without that head nod sort of happening automatically. And the beats are just shock resistant, the beats and I guess the sort of electronic space influence in that album, but really, all of their work, it’s hard to miss. And something about that is just cathartic for me, I mean, and not just during this era, but growing up. It’s the kind of sound I guess that sort of equalized me, that calms things down. But in a very practical way, I think that yeah, I’m just, I’m inspired by their rhyme schemes and have been, you know, before this project.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, for sure if anybody out there has not listened to at least one OutKast album, please hasten to something.

Marcus Wicker: Do it.

Ashley M. Jones: I know for me, of course, we all love Miss Jackson. “Sorry, Miss Jackson,” like who doesn’t love that song? But I used to listen to The Love Below and Speakerboxxx like on repeat.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: When I was a kid. Now I had the clean versions because my parents made me listen to the clean version. So I’m just now hearing the full version of these songs.

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: And I’m like, wow, it’s even cooler than I even imagined, which kind of talks about language too, in an interesting way. But I just think that’s so fascinating that you’re centering them. And like we said before, they are a Southern group. I think all those things you described also feel very Southern, even the weirdness, you know, being here in the South—and I’ll ask you about this in a second—but being here in the South, there is sort of a strange energy in the air that makes some room for that weirdness, at least in my opinion. And I know you’re a transplant to the South. So, do you feel that your Southern surroundings impact how you write and your particular voice right now? Like, does being in the South impact that at all?

Marcus Wicker: Yeah, I think I do feel, well, I guess I’ll say that, okay, so I never expected to end up in the South. And I had a lot of assumptions. And it turns out, most of them were wrong about the South.

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Marcus Wicker: And there’s a sort of joy, there’s like an inherent joy about being around so many Black folks. Memphis is a really Black city. And I think that the kind of energy that we give each other when we’re walking around, that has seeped into my work. First time that you know, so I was out here for a year, and I did a reading somewhere where I had to drive through a cotton field. And I’d never seen one before. In fact, I didn’t realize that it was cotton, because it was so beautiful. And then I had to sort of reckon with that feeling. And so I started to think about all the ugly bits of history juxtaposed against this beauty that I didn’t know existed. And I think that that too has filtered into my work. And it wouldn’t have if I were not here.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, I wish you could say that louder for the people in the back, because, like, it can’t be overstated. What happens here in the South, I think, especially to Black people, but to anyone in America or even outside of America, people who aren’t even from here, from the US who come to the South, there is just something different here. And you’re right, I’m so glad you brought up cotton, because even though I grew up here in Alabama, I mean, I’m from Birmingham, so we don’t really have cotton fields here. But you know, visiting family across the state, the first time I saw it, I was pretty young. So I was sort of used to seeing it. But as I grew up, I started having that experience that you described, seeing it and thinking, “Wow, this is really beautiful,” and yet, you have this other feeling coming in, you know, as you encounter it. And so I do think it’s good that you’re here, because I think the South can feed this work in a particular way. And being around Black people, too, I think is necessary for anything that’s imagining a new future for Black people.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: It’s important, you know, to me, certainly, to immerse myself in Blackness, when I enter these sorts of poems. And of course, we’re imagining the future for us, we gotta be everywhere around it, you know, for it to happen.

Marcus Wicker: That’s right. I mean, the South also feels like, at least I’ll just speak for Memphis, anytime I go into an establishment, it feels like home. Like you go to the airport, and they’re playing Stax Records, right? You’re not hearing that in the airport in Connecticut, right? The food, sort of seeing people joke around in restaurants, to go into a local bookstore, and to see so many Black authors sort of stocked on the shelves out there in the open. There’s a way that sort of being in the South has made me more appreciative of this land that my folks helped build and of these spaces that I think are, I don’t know, maybe not more inclusive, but I think that they look a little bit more like the way that I look right here in the South. Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: And I don’t know which word it is you said, maybe more inclusive, and maybe it is inclusive, but also just more of an honest space.

Marcus Wicker: That’s what it is. Yep.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm-hmm. Like I feel, when you mentioned the Connecticut airport, and no shade to Connecticut out there, we love you, Connecticut, you’re great,

Marcus Wicker: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS) but you’re right, like there is a difference in the air, you know, when you walk into a particular Southern space, because again, there are other Southern spaces that don’t exactly feel like home. And I think we all know what I’m talking about here.

Marcus Wicker: Mm-hmm.

Ashley M. Jones: But when you walk into that home space, it is totally different. In the Birmingham airport, it’s a different feeling,

Marcus Wicker: Yep.

Ashley M. Jones: you know, than some far North or West airport. The greetings, the head nods, the acknowledgement, as you walk by somebody. I value that so much when I walk past another Black person or another southerner.

Marcus Wicker: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: And we both know we’re going to acknowledge each other’s existence, like.

Marcus Wicker: And you know, I think during the pandemic we’re thinking more and more about connection and distance. And there’s a way that, you’re right, you know, in the South people speak, and as a matter of fact, they’ll speak for you, right, if you don’t acknowledge them, they will acknowledge the fact that you have not done so. And I think that being in a place like that, where being cordial and sort of being outward is expected, that has really loved on my work. It’s easy, I think, to be a poet who spends a lot of time in the house, reading books and sort of feeding off of that introvert energy. And I got a lot of that, maybe it’s the Cancer in me. But I think that I have been more willing to, to be everywhere, right, here in Memphis, because everywhere I go feels a little like home. There’s a piece of it in every institution and every store and every space.

Ashley M. Jones: Well, thank you so much for your poems, which do that same thing for so many of us. They do feel like home. So I’m so glad I got to talk to you and thank you for reading your work and for writing your work.

Marcus Wicker: Thank you, Ashley. It was great to speak with you.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(READS EXCERPT)

But today dear Mothership

                                                                         today you are augury     Your name a foretelling relief

scrolled across MARTA buses           in yellow script

                                                                         near Headland & Delowe   Bannered beneath the marquee

at Cascade roller rink    booming and Biggie’s classic “Juicy” verse   O Long-Playing

Mothership   forgive me my crackling radio static   i have seen things

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Ashley M. Jones: A big thanks to Marcus Wicker. Wicker is the author of Silencer, winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award. You can read two of Wicker’s poems in the December 2022 issue of Poetry, in print and online. If you’re not a subscriber to Poetry magazine, consider it a gift that keeps on giving. For a limited time, you can buy one, gift one free for just $35. That’s 11 book-length issues for you and a friend, all for $35. Visit poetrymagazine.org/podcastholiday to subscribe. This show is produced by Rachel James. The music in this episode came from Resavoir, Alabaster DePlume, Angel Bat Dawid, John McCowen, Rob Mazurek, and Irreversible Entanglements. All right, that’s it. Until next time, be safe, be well, and thanks for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)