VS Season 6 Episode 4

Joy Priest vs. Absurdity

Transcription by: Akilah Muhammad

Brittany Rogers

Hey listeners, we're just dropping a quick note to let you know that these upcoming episodes are from our mini tour of the South.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Southern writers have been so integral to the canon, and to our own personal engagement with craft that we would have been remiss not to make a special visit to them.

Brittany Rogers

Our next six episodes were recorded in Houston and Atlanta, respectively. We hope that you enjoy our trip to the South as much as we did.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hi, my name is Ajanaé Dawkins. And I personally will never forgive Snapple for switching to plastic bottles after building their brand on the glass bottle.

Brittany Rogers

And my name is Brittany Rogers. And I am thrilled to be stepping into my auntie phase with multiple rings per hand, and wearing my acrylics curved, just a little bit.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And you're listening to VS the podcasts where poets confront the ideas that move them. And today we'll be interviewing the phenomenal Joy Priest. In this interview will talk about all kinds of exciting things like car culture, road tripping, and lack theory.

Brittany Rogers

Yes. Okay, before we get into it best, when you're prepping to go on a long road trip, what sort of things are you downloading to listen to?

Ajanaé Dawkins

So here's the thing, it depends, like, am I with people? Am I not people? If it's me by my lonesome, I'm audio books, it's not music. It's straight audiobooks. Either might be an old favorite series, or it'll be something new that I've been like waiting and excited to listen to. Either or will do the trick, especially if I need to stay awake; audiobooks are not fun with people. So unless like we're all listening to the same thing, so with people it's definitely some kind of joint listening experience so we can karaoke the trip.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) Ooh, thinking about you karaoking is sending me, best, for the record.

Ajanaé Dawkins

(Laughing) You know, I love a good karaoke.

Brittany Rogers

Hearing you say audiobooks actually reminded me of the time that me and Justin drove to Florida. And we picked just like the most drama filled books to listen to and lowkey that did, that went.

Ajanaé Dawkins

The audio books go crazy on a drive!

Brittany Rogers

It was like watching the episode of Maury, but listening. It was, it was dope, but ordinarily, I'm listening an album that I can either sing or rap along to like for every song so it doesn't even have to be my favorite album. It just has to be an album that I could put on and get into from start to finish.

Ajanaé Dawkins

That's very on-brand for you actually love that. I love that so much.

Brittany Rogers

Yes. So let's jump right into our interview so we can hear what sort of things Joy engages with during her favorite road trips. Joy Priest is the author of HORSEPOWER winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets’ Anthology. Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, The Atlantic and The Kenyon Review, as well as in commissions for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Joy, would you be willing to read us a poem to start us off?

Joy Priest

Yeah, I have one in mind. And it comes from a quote by Zora Neale Hurston when she says, “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.” [Priest recites unpublished poem].

Brittany Rogers

I just realized I don't think I've ever heard that quote in full. So the it’s beyond me is the part that I'm like, oh that sending me, that's the clincher, that’s it right there (laughs).

Joy Priest

It moves. I could talk about that phrase for 30 minutes though.

Brittany Rogers

Remind me to put a pin in that, the concept of womanhood versus what white folks think the concept of womanhood is, but before we get there, we want to know what's moving you today, Joy?

Joy Priest

What’s moving me right now, the Sun Ra song, “Springtime Again” I'm just, I'm still in spring. I just I turn that song on, and it's a it's a build. It has like, I don't know, like 12 different instruments in it. I'm really moved by, I'm reading Terrence Hayes's book on Etheridge Knight. And I just read this essay in there, I think the title is like “The Craft of Love”, and it was a it was a very medicinal essay. I like the way that he talks about how the lover like as a lovers, but as writers we create an object of desire and distance ourselves from it in order to, to create something around it or to create, we create it in order to inspire us. And you know, I don't know, it's a twenty-two page essay, but that moves me a lot. It also helped me through some things. And just in a long term sense around like my current manuscript I'm working on, I'm very moved by Black-surrealism. I would say I'm struck by that right now. I'm aspiring to that in my writing right now.

Brittany Rogers

Okay, do tell, what about Black-surrealism is, is getting you?

Joy Priest

Okay, so everybody talks about Afro-futurism, Afro-pessimism, which I like reading about both those things. I like reading into both of those theories. But Afro-surrealism just sounds cool. And I was like, what is that? And it sort of, as I read more into it, it sort of gave me language to talk about how Black people deal with time, the metaphysical, and absurdity. And, y’all know, I'm in the PhD School.

Brittany Rogers

I'm listenin’, I’m listenin’.

Joy Priest

And I got to, you know, produce some kind of thought project.

Brittany Rogers

Okay.

Joy Priest

In PhD school, not just poetry. And so, y'all ever feel like seeing the continuous media ticker of like, violence against Black people, y'all ever had this sensation where you feel like, is, is somebody playing a big trick on us?

Brittany Rogers

Absolutely.

Joy Priest

You know, for a century. What the hell.

Brittany Rogers

What used to be the show that Ashton Kutcher used to do? Like, sometimes it's really like, are you gone pop out? Where is Ashton?

Joy Priest

Seriously! Like that kind of surrealism.

Brittany Rogers

Yeah.

Joy Priest

And for me, like we're living in white realism, but it's surreal for us or hey there was this phrase I said to my friend, this poet Bernardo Wade, he's just kind of putting stuff out now. I was driving down the road, I think in like Tennessee, we were on the phone and just thinking out loud, and I said, we were kind of formulating together, I just bring him into the space because it was kind of like collaborative thought.

Brittany Rogers

And we love a communal, a communal worker.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Mhmm.

Joy Priest

We were so we were sort of riffing and I said, Blackness is ontological surrealism, meaning like to live Black is to be Black is to live in the surreal, or to be in the surreal. So it's just a experience of absurdity. And I'm trying to get that into the writing. And I'm trying to use that absurdity as as a kind of style or like a craft approach.

Brittany Rogers

I love that. I think I saw somebody tweet the other day, and I was trying to see if I could remember who it was. But something about the dissonance that we have to like embody right now to even be able to navigate mental health at least somewhat intact, through everything that's happening in the world, like there has to be some slight separation, some slight like, gap in time. And so I guess, thinking about what you just said, paired with the absurdity of the fact that we're really living through all of this. It’s interesting.

Joy Priest

But as writers who are, our awareness is amplified. You know what I'm saying? We sort of willingly expose ourselves to some degree of insanity. You know what I mean? So it's like, a part of it's kind of embracing like absurdity. Black-surrealism allows me to embrace that instead of like, struggle with it as a kind of terror. I'm moved by absurdity. I'm moved by Black-surrealism when I say that I'm thinking of Henry Dumas. So I've been reading a lot of Henry Dumas and I really love his poem in particular “Kef 12”, which is on the Poetry Foundation site, by the way.

Brittany Rogers

Okay, we love a plug. Listen!

Joy Priest

Just, you know, I appreciate that poem being accessible. I mean, I just got his his collected works, which is curated by (inaudible) Redmond’s Father, Yugi, who was close friends with him.

Brittany Rogers

I came to your work through your essay about music or through one of your essays about music. You were doing a talk I think with Kiese Laymon. And if I'm not mistaken, you read an excerpt of, it was the one about how Southern Hip-Hop raised you.

Joy Priest

Oh yeah.

Brittany Rogers

“I Feel Most Southern in the Hip-Hop of my Adolescence”.

Joy Priest

Yeah, mhmm.

Brittany Rogers

And you read the essay and I was like where this girl book at? Let me go and buy that because this is my my pedagogy right here.

Joy Priest

Yeah, thank you. I just looked into her eyes and when she said that.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

For those of y’all who are listening. Because that was an intimate moment.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) We had a moment.

Joy Priest

I see you.

Brittany Rogers

I had to pause I was blushin’ for a second like wait a minute now. Not us lookin’ at eachother like this.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I looked away it was too much for me.

Brittany Rogers

With all that said, I think something that as a person who also thinks about music like quite constantly and music informs a lot of my practice, I would love if you talked about how music influences or if music influences like form for you, craft for you? Do they pair together? Are they two separate jams?

Joy Priest

Oh my goodness. How much time do y'all have in this studio?

Brittany Rogers

I mena we got time (laughs).

Joy Priest

We in the studio and first of all, we in the studio in Houston and there’s rappers here, there's a Land Rover outside.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

Somebody was in a bathroom dropping a dookie and it wasn’t no motherfuckin’ hand soap okay.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

You know what I’m sayin’. Huh, music. Well first of all, I grew up in Black church. I went to performing art school. I was in the choir. If y'all can hear it, a contralto.

Brittany Rogers

Okay, you said trained!

Joy Priest

I love my contratos. My Amy Winehouses, Lauryn Hill? I guess. One of the things, one of the ways that music directly is a part of my work is like when I'm really working on a poem, which means like, I've already got the poem down on the piece of paper, and it's in the craft shop, it's in a you know, we at the table, I just keep a song, it's like, oh, a certain song will hit me. And I'll just leave that song on repeat the rest of the day because it matches the spirit that I'm in. Or that spirit is the spirit that's informing the poem, so I won't change it because then it can throw things off, and also when I'm sort of how I know like the poem is working or I did something right is I’ll catch the spirit. So I think a lot of my musical background is probably starts in church.

Ajanaé Dawkins

You see the smile on my face!

Joy Priest

I'm a PK [preacher’s kid].

Brittany Rogers

So am I.

Joy Priest

Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So am I!

Joy Priest

Mhmm. But I'm ratchet.

Brittany Rogers

So am I.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

I know that’s right!

[LAUGHING & OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Joy Priest

I always say like I'm a born again hood rat.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) I don’t even tell niggas I’m born again (laughs).

Joy Priest

Like born again hood rat because now I'm in PhD school and stuff, you know.

Brittany Rogers

When people be like, you know, where you from blah, blah, blah? I’m an eastside girl, I’m a red zone girl.

Joy Priest

Yeah. That's in Cleveland? No, Detroit.

Brittany Rogers

Yes ma’am!

Joy Priest

You from Detroit.

Brittany Rogers

You already know.

Joy Priest

But music is really, it's just all up and through the new book. Well, I shouldn't call it a book.

Brittany Rogers

It’s a book!

Joy Priest

It’s only some papers in a binder, but I don't know, was music in HORSEPOWER? I can't remember.

Brittany Rogers

A little bit.

Joy Priest

I had to, that book is so old to me, but.

Brittany Rogers

I felt like when you were talking about like the engines,

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah.

Brittany Rogers

Music would come up. And it definitely came up in signs.

Joy Priest

Like the cars and stuff.

Brittany Rogers

Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes.

Joy Priest

Because I just, I spent so much time in cars when I was a teenager.

Brittany Rogers

That was something that was dear to me because Detroit is a big car city too. So it was like, I think when I was telling Ajanaé when I first read the book that the book is is undeniably southern, but also so Black that I'm like, this feels like Detroit, minus the horses of course because that Detroit don't have. But I was like, this is such a Black book.

Joy Priest

Yeaah.

Brittany Rogers

It made me real happy.

Joy Priest

Without being like without (inaudible) the white liberals I shall say. Y’all might need to cut that out. I don't know what kind of podcast this is.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

I don't think people see the book as political, or as sometimes not even as Black, but it's like this is this is a Black political book for Black films, you know, but I love being like I have such an intimate relationship with with car culture. I realized that moving here to Houston that Louisville is a car culture city. It has its own distinct culture. Because it's not like the one here.

Brittany Rogers

What’s Houston’s car culture like just out of curiosity?

Joy Priest

There's different terminology. Like I forgot what those long spokes they have to come out from the wheel.

Brittany Rogers

Interesting, we don’t do that in Detroit.

Joy Priest

Yeah, we don't do that either. It's more about the car model. It's not even like really flashy paint jobs. It's usually like solid colors. But the interiors is really done up more so like features of the car like we were really into like what kind of engine and transmission you got.

Brittany Rogers

Interesting.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Detroit is about the classics. Detroit is about the like having something that is restored.

Joy Priest

Yes, exactly. That! Like the work that because I mean, you know, you know what I'm sayin’ (inaudible) I might’ve dated a dude when I was a teenager that had maybe like twenty-five cars. And he would just, you know, it was like about flipping a car. You know, like restoring as you said.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah.

Joy Priest

It's interesting. I gotta write that down. And like, we would like, I had a Cutlass when I was 15.

Brittany Rogers

Listen, okay! Okay, Joy!

Joy Priest

I didn't even have a driver's license. I was a part of like a crew like it was me, and like a bunch of boys like we would ride around after school. Like the thing, my city was like Buicks, Chevys, Oldsmobiles.

Brittany Rogers

We love a good chevy. Now it’s, now we know our D-Boys because they the Chargers versus like a old school flashy, or like a old school Chevy.

Joy Priest

That's what I need. Right. I don't care about the new cars.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Our older folks had Cadillacs. My granddaddy, he still got a Cadillac.

Joy Priest

Cadillac. I think the reason why I spent so much time in cars is because it's a particular listening experience. You, the way you listen to music in a car is, is singular. It's, it's distinct from the way you listen to music and at home, or at the club, you know?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah.

Joy Priest

There's something cinematic about driving around in an old school with a certain album on, you know.

Brittany Rogers

Would you say that it's a more, for you is that a more interior experience? Is it more communal? Like what about the impact of it feels different for you?

Joy Priest

That's a good question. I think it is interior. I think it it allows before I knew what that was doing. It was how my writer brain kicked in. Like it's, I remember a month ago, I took a two week drive across the country. Like I went all the way up to Indiana. I did the IU’s Writers’ Conference.

Brittany Rogers

Whew, Indiana. Jesus.

Joy Priest

Drove from Houston.

Brittany Rogers

Indiana is a place (laughs).

Brittany Rogers

I came back and stayed in Memphis for a few days, and I woke up one day and walked over to Beale Street and they had a car, a vintage car festival out. It’s been a while since we talkin’ about it, but someone I was talkin’ to said oh my goodness you drove like that was like four days on the road. You wasn’t bordered by yourself in the car? And it's like no the expansiveness of it. Like I call people that I hadn't talked to for a long time because I couldn't do nothing else. I'm always staying busy. So like, being in the car, some people's, I heard I've heard some writers talk about like, something like doing the dishes. It occupies your like physical body to where your mind can start turning. And then you throw some music into that. And I gotta, I gotta, suddenly I got, you know, 20 poems in my head.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that. I'm thinking about all the times that it does feel cinematic all the times that I've been driving, and we ended up doing, and also communal, we ended up doing karaoke, we end up.

Joy Priest

Oh, yeah, when somebody's in the car with you.

Ajanaé Dawkins

When somebody else is in the car with you, or even a way that you engage with like the tempo of somebody else's day because they got the aux cord. And like what all of that turns into so you just have me, you have me thinking about a lot and in regards to the differences, and where, and how you consume music, and then how that, how that transforms experience.

Joy Priest

I will say that when I get into a car, all of my friends is like, Joy you DJ’in’?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I know that's right!

Brittany Roger

You got the vibes? I saw the playlist for the essay. I'm like I'm hip, I’m hip.

Joy Priest

(Laughing) Yeah, I needed like a four hour playlist. It was for The Bitter Southerner. It made me happy.

Ajanaé Dawkins

And in HORSEPOWER, I was super invested in, and me and Brittany talked about this, was thematically how tight that collection was. I don't know that I've ever seen a symbol be woven in so consistently and stay fresh, and not like lose its edge or lose its power as a symbol. And I was kind of wondering about your process with that, like, what came first when you were approaching that collection? Like, did you just realize like, okay, there's something that is recurring here. And I want to, I'm gonna press deeper into that obsession, or, or how did that work?

Joy Priest

So I was just writing poems for about eight years. I started. I mean, I’ve been writing literally, since I was a little girl, like I remember in first grade, working on a short story, but in college, I started taking craft workshops, and I took Nikky Finney’s workshop. That’s who I started with. So Nikki Finney and Frank X Walker. That was when I was like an Appalachian Poet. Shout out to the Appalachian poets, of which I am a member. So I started writing poems, like really craft focused, I think I was on the slam team at University of Kentucky, you know, we went to (inaudible) but like craft focus on the page poems when I was 20. And the earliest poem in the book is from that, from about that age, so I and then my book came out when I was thirty-one. And it got accepted and won the prize [Donald Hall Prize for Poetry] when I was 30. So, that book was 10 years in the making, if we count like the earliest poem in the book, but for eight years, I was just writing poems. I even remember, like people I thought of as my peers. You know, like Nate Marshall, Jose Alvarez, Danez, like, they had like, two, three books out. And I was sitting here, like, you know, I ain’t read it yet. I was just writing poems, writing poems, and I was like, sometimes I was like, sometimes it was, it was hard, because people don't pay attention to you until you have a book to some degree, you know.

Brittany Rogers

Listen, the emerging poet struggle is real.

Joy Priest

And I need to say that to all the poets out there who don't have a book yet, that's the thing. So, and I didn't do a chapbook or anything like that. So I was just working on these poems for, you know, years and years. And then maybe in the last two years, when I was in the last two years of my MFA, the last two years of that, that decade, I'm talking about, I started to see that these poems belong together. So the poems were there first, and then I looked at them, and I was like, what are they talking about?

Brittany Rogers

Gotchu.

Joy Priest

The last one I wrote for the book was “Horsepower”, the title poem, and I didn't have the title of the book. The titles, I had titles they were, I laugh at them now when I see them it's so funny.

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Joy Priest

Absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. If you scroll like maybe four years back on Instagram, maybe you'll see one, but I wrote the poem, I titled the poem, I was walking across campus on my way to workshop my last year in MFA with this poem, that had everything in it, it had all the themes of, the manuscript I was carrying around, the cars, the horses, the racial dynamics, everything was in there, the mental fortitude, which I think of the last line of that poem, as an artist poetica  moment, like, you know, like, but wait, I know, the horses, and they're restless minds. That's a poet thing, you know, to have a restless mind. And so all of that was in that poem, and I'm walking across campus, and I'm just looking over the poem before workshop and I said, oh, my God, this is the book title, duh! Like (laughs), so it was like, it was like that. It was like the very end when it came together. It's like, I built everything. I built the book and then just at the end it kind of, I wrote all of the poems, I wrote all of the titles, and then suddenly, when it was time, when everything was there it was like, oh, this is the book.

Brittany Rogers

When you reference your pending manuscript that we’re excited for, was that process similar or has this been a different process?

Joy Priest

Oh, we still in the process (laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Can you talk about what the process looks like now, and if it's different?

Joy Priest

It's a lot quicker. I don't know what exactly I learned in an MFA (laughs). But I think one thing I did come away with is like, I'm able to identify problems quicker. Like at the craft level, I can understand quicker what a poem needs and like, but you never finally know how to write a poem. You just like, let's get into it. Each poem is a relationship, and you have to figure out what that relationship needs. But that's happening quicker, I think, and maybe that means I communicate with myself better, you know.

Brittany Rogers

I love that as a construct.

Joy Priest

Yeah, like awareness. I was talking to this yesterday with my students for my catapult class, because I have them the last week, we sort of went over a craft aspect every week. And then the last week, I gave them a revision exercise. And I had them reading, writing off subject by Richard Hugo, where he talks about the triggering subject and the generator subject. And I like to use that as a revision exercise to see what is the thing that caused you to write this poem? And then now that you have a draft down, what do you see has been generated in the poem? What is it really about?

Brittany Rogers

Yeah, what’s the poem really trying to say.

Joy Priest

Yeah. And I was just saying yesterday, or, again, collaborative thinking, we were talking and riffing and let's say, you know, it's like, kind of, like, really important to do this, because you have no awareness of like, you think you know what you're getting at, but you're actually getting something way more complex, which is why you wrote a poem in the first place. And that self in your awareness as a poet, directly contributes to your awareness of self, you know.

Brittany Rogers

I think what I hear you saying is like, there's a way in which you're more intuitive, and more interior to what you were before, is that what you're saying?

Joy Priest

No, I don't know if I can get more interior. I think that a certain kind of living with a rich interiority is what leads you to being a poet in the first place. And however, having a rich interior life doesn't mean that you, you immediately understand how you're feeling. It just means you spend a lot of time in there, you know.

Brittany Rogers

Interesting!

Joy Priest

But I think writing a poem is what helps you make sense of the rich interior that you spend a lot of time in.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So, I love that too. So for you the interiority is the experience, not the poem. The poem is its own thing? The poem is not a part of the interiority?

Joy Priest

I think, how can I say? So, recently, something didn't work out with someone, like in a romantic context. And I remember in the beginning, they were saying, oh, I really liked how they understood what it meant that I was a poet, because sometimes you tell people, oh, I'm a poet, sometimes I'm like, do I want to tell them? (Laughing) Because you can get any number of responses. It's not like a shamefulness about it. It's just like, this person is going to tell me who they are by how they understand that. And that might cut this thang short. And this person said, oh, you're kind of like a, you're kind of like, out of time, you're like a present day philosopher. That's very flattering, thank you (laughs). Then they sort of rejected me for the same reasons that they were like, you know, you are awkward. You're not coming out of yourself. You know, and I'm like, well, what the fuck you think (inaudible)?

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

Which is not, usually I don't have a lot of practice doing that out loud with somebody else. That's gonna take a level of intimacy I've never reached with another person. I would love to but it ain't happen yet. So I think as a, the reason why I'm a poet is always because I've lived in the interior more sometimes then this like for example, the social. Like even as a child, which isn't the same thing as being outside. I’ve always been outside and all the and I mean that and you know, I use outside in all of this capaciousness, you know, outside in nature and outside as in Megan Thee Stallion.

Brittany Rogers

Yeah, imma come back to that (laughs).

Joy Priest

But I've always been outside, but I've also always been inside, you know. And so I think as a result, I'm less quick to speak out loud what I'm thinking, and more quick to like, put that in a poem or use a poem to try to fit like, I don't know what I'm what I feel at first, I have to write a poem to know. It's like a it's like a, y’all ever seen them expressways in LA or even here that are just like, you look at them and there's just all kinds of loops and they stacked on top of each other and everything?

Brittany Rogers

Yeah, that shit stress me out I’m not gone lie.

Joy Priest

That’s my rich emotional interior! I need a poem to like pull one of those.

Brittany Rogers

Oh, to kind of like unspool them?

Joy Priest

To unspool, yes. To unspool things, yeah. One Tinder thread before I can even go to somebody and be like, this is how I feel, this is what I'm thinking.

Brittany Rogers

I love that, I find that so fascinating. I think I have an opposite process. So I think it's so interesting (inaudible).

Joy Priest

Of course, yeah, yeah. Of course I'm talking about myself even if I'm saying we I just like to say we because somebody out there might think.

Brittany Rogers

No, it’s resonating that’s why I’m like I am fascinated. Because I think I know how I feel all the time (laughs). It’s really weird. And then I think I'm baffled, them I’m like, What? You don't know how you feel?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Right, I'm like, I'm in here. I'm in these feelings. Do I know what they are? No, but imma journal!

Joy Priest

I’m feelin’ some thangs. I’m sensitive and I need somebody that’s sensitive.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing).

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

Joy Priest

Ajanaé’s doin’ the Usher, watch this.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

No, but seriously, like I need and that's why it's gone take somebody, is your husband patient?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I would say so. I would say he's grown patient. Yes, he's very patient.

Joy Priest

So the love and dedication came first. Right?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes.

Joy Priest

Okay, see.

Brittany Rogers

I feel the feelings. The feelings don't go into poems, that's what used to be my struggle so I know exactly how I feel. And that's exactly why I'm not telling y’all hoes (laughing). So I think for a long time, my writing was more communal because I'm like I think my interior is something I'm very like precious over.

Joy Priest

Now, what do you mean? Unpack that communal… Hold on a sec. Because y’all see, I was a journalist so I'll switch to interviewer mode real quick.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

Because when you say you don't put your feelings into the poem. Is that what you said?

Brittany Rogers

I think I had to grow to be more vulnerable in my work.

Joy Priest

Is the other side of that, what you were saying with the communal, are you implying, because this is an interesting I like to talk about this, are you implying that your poems in the communal, in the we, take a more of what people might be talking about when they say political kind of approach?

Brittany Rogers

I don't know that I can say that's like an intentional thing. I think when I think about the communal word of we, I'm talking about like my block, I'm talking about the girls I grew up with, I'm talking about my granny. You don't I'm saying, my auntie. Am I supposed to avoid that?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I feel like duty runs a lot of your work.

Brittany Rogers

Huh?

Ajanaé Dawkins

I feel like duty runs a lot of your work.

Joy Priest

Duty!

Brittany Rogers

That's fair. Duty and class, you know what I’m sayin’? So I think that those are.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Even the class I feel like is duty. It's like, it's like, who you feel a duty to?

Brittany Rogers.

That’s fair. Like who I feel obliged to.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, I think, and not in a bad way.

Brittany Rogers

Yeah for sure. And I think those are also like the folks I'm most protective over. So then that's, but for me, my interior is a whole nother locked box that I know, and I understand, like me and my husband are in a decade, and I'm just (laughs).

Joy Priest

Was you saying this the other day to me on Twitter?

Brittany Rogers

Maybe, yeah.

Joy Priest

Yeah, I think you said that to me and I was like wow.

Brittany Rogers

We’ve just now unlocked a new level of vulnerability, it’s been great, but.

Joy Priest

I'm like, how do people do that? Because I'm like, immediately, very immediately, like, you got to get intimate with me. That's why I'm single.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughs) I’m still trying to think, I don't remember what it was, he was like, I think (inaudible), can we talk about them? And I was like, nah, actually I’m not in the mood (laughing). I’ll talk to you about it when I want to (laughs), but I know the feelings, I think that unpeeling is difficult for me, and is a thing that again, that I think I protect very heavily. So my writing had to grow, to be able to be more vulnerable than what it was.

Joy Priest

I think an awareness, as a poet, is connected to an awareness of self. And if you sort of have been socialized not to be vulnerable, or not to unpack how you feel, and, but you are supposed to be strong. And so I just like wanting to bring that up, because I think sometimes the reason poems can be bad is because they're not bringing the vulnerability.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I think every time I hear interiority talked about, it's always fems and not just that, but then when I do see anything that's doing, and this I'm speaking very generally, obviously, obviously, this is not every whatever, but when I do see it, it's like it will expose itself in like love poems almost or heartbreak poems. When I think about who cis-het Black men frequently feel if they're going to have any type of interiority, who it's with, and it is with fems.

Joy Priest

It's like a separate space.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes!

Joy Priest

That felt like the latest Kendrick album to me.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Mmm, and I haven't even listened to it.

Joy Priest

It was like all this yelling, like cussing, and then there was like the one nice pretty song for ladies (laughs).

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

Another thing that I've noticed and what I bring this up too, almost right exclusively, which I'm having to check myself a little bit about, about Black men, like my father is one of my recurring topics, but also a lot of the epigraphs from the new project. And so I'm looking at some of those things. So I care deeply about Black men, but I think my (inaudible) is really directed at like the sort of white liberal curation of these things, and like which poems get picked as political over others, and like those poems are the poems the angry yelling, lack of interior, vulnerability poems is the poems that white people, white liberal readers, and editors see as Black and political poems.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah.

Joy Priest

Or Black, just Black poems.

Brittany Rogers

Listen.

Joy Priest

Just Black. That’s a Black poem! We got to take that, you know, but if it's, if it's a Black film writing about cars in Detroit, and braids down to they ass, that's not Black.

Brittany Rogers

Earlier, I want to double back to something you said earlier, because we were referencing the ways that we think about interiority, and you said something about everything being outside and I said imma come back to that (laughing). So, this is me coming back to it and thinking about the ways that your work embodies place, and wondering when you choose to write about. So for example, when you're talking about like Kentucky, there are poems that I felt like okay, this is about nature, but then there are other poems where I'm like, okay, this is very industrial. Then there are other poems, I'm like, okay, this is about people, but all of that is outside to me, like how do you read that?

Joy Priest

I was thinking about a place earlier to when Ajanaé was asking me like how the book came together. And I was thinking, well, I use this phrase in it when talking about metaphor called the “autobiography of sight”, which is just, come one. And you know, the idea behind that being like we bring the metaphor reveals the way that we see things, like the kind of metaphor we choose is like that’s from a certain background experience. In so place, so for me place is like made up mostly of image. I'm also thinking, this is just going to be kind of a medley of thoughts. I'm also thinking because you invoke in Detroit, I always say this, Louisville is the most segregated city in the country after Detroit, Milwaukee and Cleveland in that order, by the way. And all of those cities too, are like industrial cities that most of them are from a part of the Rust Belt, except for Louisville, and all of them in Louisville is the only southern city, but all of them are terminal cities from the Great Migration where Black people came up to do factory work. So industrial is an important word there. And so you were asking me, you know, do you see all of that in the outside. And so like, that goes into this sort of my interest in the ecological, like Black ecology. And that's like the new the new manuscript is not dealing with a particular place, like HORSEPOWER, did like HORSEPOWER was obviously set in Louisville, which is, as you said, it's a Southern, but it's also, its country, but it's also a city, its nature, but it's also industrial. So it's like, you know, it's it doesn't know what it is really. There's this Detroit writer, Frank D. Rashad, who came up with this term called “literary mapping”, which another writer Allison David talked about in her review of my book, she brought this up because he has this, he comes up with this concept of literary mapping where writers will write and I think, like one of the people he was thinking about was like Philip Levine, but also thinking about Afaa Michael Weaver will write and in their work, you can see a map of these places that they're writing about. And earlier you said, Black people are kind of reinventing place. And I think that's because we have different maps of these places, than the sort of the dominant narrative of a place like our maps. In one of the reviews of my book, I really love said, I think it was actually Allison's review said, like, you know, the dominant narrative of the city as a tourist city is the city that hosts the most famous horse race in the world. So Churchill Downs is the center of everything. But I bring in, I sort of move it to the periphery. This is like kind of a paraphrase of the review in HORSEPOWER, and bring like West Louisville, which is Black Louisville, and South Louisville, which is working class Louisville, immigrant Louisville, into the center, like away from the periphery, so that like it remaps the city in a way that it presents, like a new narrative of this place.

Brittany Rogers

Yeah, we actually we have one final question before we move into our break. And something that we love to ask folks is if someone wanted to understand your work will, right, they wanted to be a student, of Joy Priest, they want to know you like front to back. What three people cross the board, what three artists would they need to engage with?

Joy Priest

Oh,goodness, oh, man, three people across any genre, if they needed to know me. First of all, the poets are, can I just tell you all the first three poets that informed who I am as a poet were Sharon Olds, Patricia Smith, and Terrance Hayes.

Brittany Rogers

That's a lineup right here. Listen.

Ajanaé Dawkins

First off, I want to comment that Patricia Smith on everybody's list! And honestly, I just want to make sure she's getting her flowers forever, because the way she is informed everybody!

Joy Priest

And I think it's because well, one of the reasons that might be is because Patricia is the first one that don-dada to like, make that really honest transition from, you know, the oral context, the oral tradition to the page, and still be occupying both, you know, like, still did it both. That ain't even well said enough for her. But you know, a lot of us I think, when talking about Black people who were in rap groups in high school. We read poems at open mics, and then we started slamming and then, and then we started, we maybe, I didn't read poetry books when I was a kid. I read novels, and science books, and nature books and shit, like I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't read poetry. You know, my favorite books when I was younger was like, I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing and Beloved, you know.

Brittany Rogers

Listen, I read (inaudible) and listened to Trina.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Joy Priest

Oh, my gosh, Sister Souljah. I read The Coldest Winter Ever.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I was 12 turning the pages! I came busting out of my mama’s big what?

Joy Priest

Ajanaé said, there was no Pornhub, there was Sister Souljah.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

There was Sister Souljah, and look you couldn’t tell me nothing!

Joy Priest

The Coldest Winter Ever, I read that annually, there was an annual reading of that book, okay. But I didn't read poetry books until I was in college. And those were the first three posts that I read and like, Patricia, I heard her work. And then I found out she had books. And that led me into reading poetry books. So I think that's probably why that happens a lot because we come out of these other traditions and then we go into writing, and then we, we don't bore you at readings amen.

Brittany Rogers

Amen. (Laughing) what Angel say?

Ajanaé Dawkins

You already know that tweet is call me Hip Hop, call me whatever you want to call me to make yourself feel better about the fact that no one falls asleep when I read my poems. That is stapled in my soul.

[MUSIC CUES]

Brittany Rogers

Let's take a break.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Okay.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

So we are going to move into a game called “Fast Punch”. The way this is going to work is you're going to tell us if you want to be an optimist or pessimist. We will give you different categories and you will tell us the best or worst thing in that category. This game is meant to be fast. So let's start with do you want to be an optimist or a pessimist?

Joy Priest

An optimist.

Ajanaé Dawkins

We love that for you. Okay, best poetic form?

Joy Priest

Best poetic form is the ghazal.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Mmm.

Brittany Rogers

Best song to listen to while writing?

Joy Priest

I listen to “Blue in Green” Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best snack?

Joy Priest

Sardines, boneless and skinless.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes, love that!

Brittany Rogers

Best type of car?

Joy Priest

1998 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Best dead white poet?

Joy Priest

John Keats.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Ooooh!

Brittany Rogers

And lastly, best place in Louisville?

Joy Priest

The best place in Louisville doesn't exist anymore. It was ear X-tacy, this record store in the highlands in the 90s.

Brittany Rogers

Yes, we love that. Joy, would you do us the honor of closing us out with the poem?

Joy Priest

I would, I will the poem is called “The Black Outside”. [Recites poem].

“The Black Outside”

after Kehinde Wiley

We brought the Blues, the voices of the field

into the commemorative Big House.

We carried seeds from home in our hair

like lice. We wore blue lilies, ecosystems

above our ears. We came into this world

but were not of it: – of the refuse

but not the refined, the ritual of wormwood

but not waste. Here’s to the rot

in us, which would otherwise be abundance,

if we could be otherwise,

which would otherwise be alive if we could

otherwise be. The way

our feet hover spectral among the foliage,

the way we recognize

one another across the long centuries inside

without the right language &

names. We brought the Blues, we carried them

between our ears: – in from outside,

the voices of our dead alive in our hair

like seeds. We survive spectral.

Outside the Constitution we are otherwise

abundant. Consider the lilies

of the field, how they grow: they neither toil

nor spin. We brought the Blues

into this world bur refused to be of it.

We went missing, went marine.

Marooned in grief’s aquatic caves. Ate the dirt

and the lice. Among the foliage

there is no language of waste. There is no rot.

We commemorate the ecosystems

that would otherwise be. The centurion worm

wearing the field: –

O beloved

I hear you outside singing so clear

my ritual names.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Wow.

Joy Priest

Shout out to bernardo wade, the editor of the Indiana Review, the big homie that saved my life, and I'm glad to be in conversation with that poet so look out for that poet’s poem.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Thank you for that poem.

Brittany Rogers

Thank you so much for being here, Joy. It was such a pleasure.

[MUSIC CUES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Thank you so much. Way to wreck us on the way out.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Whew, best, talking to Joy gave me so much stuff to think about. I'm especially kind of stuck on the surrealism and the idea of the Black experience just constantly being this moment of surrealism, and is this real? And is this a joke? And the absurdity of the reality of some of the experiences that we have like that's that's about to stick with me for I don't know how long.

Brittany Rogers

For we know best we live in a completely different universe right now. It's a whole altersphere.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I'm curious, curious for you. If you were going to have a theory, any kind of theory around Blackness, around work what would it be? Like what would be the theory that's like guiding your life?

Brittany Rogers

Oh, my God. Oh, too many. I feel like right now it’s torn between hair culture and rap culture. But for today, I'm gonna say studying rap as a form of affirmation and like an official therapeutic form,

Ajanaé Dawkins

Very on brand. Love that for you.

Brittany Rogers

That's fair. I was finna sing, I am healthy I am wealthy (laughs).

Ajanaé Dawkins

I know that’s right.

Brittany Rogers

So when I think about ways that I get grounded in myself, it’s almost always through music. And I know that rap has like this, you know, negative stigma around the culture, quote unquote, whatever. But rap is I think where I turn first to feel most grounded in myself and to feel most like, okay, you a bad bitch, like you got this. And so that's what I return to when I want to feel centered, when I want to ground my kids, I quote them a line. When Justin want to make me smile, he quotes me a line. So I don't know, I just think that there's a way that rap could be studied. As I look at how Black folks make themselves feel good, and how Black folks find a way to affirm themselves even with everything happening.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I love that.

Brittany Rogers

What about you, best?

Ajanaé Dawkins

So mine would definitely be some form of thinking about what books or what writing processes would not exist without the faith practices of Black writers. And without their fervent attempts to access the spiritual realm. I was reading Bell Hooks’ Remembered Rapture, and she talks about how in spaces of academia and spaces of art, especially if you're a woman, how it's you're not taken seriously if you name faith as one of the things that like makes your work possible. And it made me think a lot about, it's not the same thing, but the way when we talk about Black writers how like, they're always like, raw and like, urgent in this urgent voice in the space, and we never talk about their craft practices. And I think for me, Faith is an element of craft. And so I think not being able to take faith seriously as something that opens the door for for work to happen, not taking it seriously as an academic, theoretical craft practice is also a reduction of the work like Alice Walker talks about how The Color Purple doesn't happen if she doesn't access the spiritual realm.

Brittany Rogers

I think that also ties back in a little bit what we were talking about earlier with Joy, right? Like, how we have to often imagine ourselves outside of ourselves.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes.

Brittany Rogers

And how much of that is just a spiritual work.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yes.

Brittany Rogers

And being able to you know, leave our grounded reality and tap into like, okay, what faith things can I imagine, what things are not here that I have to call in? Or what things are not currently possible that I have to make possible?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, and, and not just that, also thinking about what theoretical frameworks, or what craft things we have to adapt for our work, because they're not like the way you enjoy we're talking about that with the pastoral. Like, I don't know that folks are checking for the evidence of Black folks’ faith practices.

Brittany Rogers

Very on brand, best. I love that.

Ajanaé Dawkins

We do stay on brand! That's one thing about us.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) we gone keep it consistent, okay!

Ajanaé Dawkins

That’s one thing about us!

Brittany Rogers

Why don't we thank some folks and get out of here so maybe we can start working on some theory, essays?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Beautiful, let's do it.

Brittany Rogers

In the spirit of being here in Houston, I just want to thank Uber drivers in cities not for where I'm from, because I feel like they have the best conversation once they realize that you're not from their city, and they also give the best food recommendations. So shout out to Uber drivers.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Shout out to Uber drivers in the spirit of being in Houston. Shout out to our waiter whose name I don't remember. But he was so kind and he brought us the most bangin’ fries. They was like smother in some kind of brisket situation. You know what I'm talking ‘bout?

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) I do, they were dope. Y’all, it was good, it was really good.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Thank you to Kindred Stories for being a phenomenal Black owned bookstore, and indulging us as we went outside our budgets.

[BACKGROUND MUSIC CUES]

Brittany Rogers

But the books on migration my God! Listen!

Ajanaé Dawkins

Oh my gosh, to get the good stuff, to get the good work.

Brittany Rogers

And we just want to give a special shout out to Nathan and the amazing staff at Barron Studios, The Poetry Foundation, Itzel Blancas, Ydalmi Noriega, Elon Sloan, Cin Pim and Ombie Production. Like, rate, and subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Alright y’all, let’s wrap.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Until next time!

[MUSIC CONTINUES]