Transcription by: Akilah Muhammad

Ajanaé Dawkins 

Hey, co-host (says jovially).

Brittany Rogers

Hey, co-host!

[BOTH LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

Hey y’all, I'm Brittany Rodgers and I am working on nailing a perfect, slow, Detroit style backwards skate. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Truly love that for you, best (says admirably). I am Ajanaé Dawkins. And I am currently shocked that I have completed my first journal like, written in it until there are no more pages left.

Brittany Rogers

Aaaaann! An Accomplishment!

Ajanaé Dawkins

Shout out to bullet journaling!

Brittany Rogers

Listen! And we are your co-hosts of VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Oh man. So today we've got an incredible guest, but before we get to that, I am curious, Brittany, what is your earliest memory of yourself?

Brittany Rogers

Oooh, I was maybe two or three, my family like we were going somewhere in the day that winter, and my aunt dropped me in the snow. And the fit that I had was not reasonable (laughing) for the simple act of being dropped at the age that I was, and that is how we discovered that it was snow that I was in fact afraid of. What about you, best? What's your earliest memory?

Ajanaé Dawkins

Whew, I think that my earliest memory is being like, shoot maybe five, six years old, somewhere like that. And sitting at this table in my mom's little apartment and eating. My mom could not cook, cannot cook love you mom.

Brittany Rogers

(Laughing) mommy I had nothing to do with that okay. Oou I did not tell Ajanaé to say that, mommy. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen, my mom has so many phenomenal skills. And what the folks in my family would do when they couldn't cook is like, make a thing super basic, but like really gas it up with language. So my mom would just like cook ground beef and put it on a plate and squirt some mustard over it and be like “loose burger.”

[BOTH LAUGHING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

And I loved it. So I just have these memories of me like sitting at the table just shoveling ground beef into my mouth (laughing). And being like, “I want loose burger for dinner!” (laughing).

Brittany Rogers

Ahead. I wish I could get my kids to be like, this is the meal for today! I’m gonna work on that.

Ajanaé Dawkins

My dad used to make hot dog on a stick (laughing). And I used to love hotdog on a stick (laughing). So um, that’s me. 

Brittany Rogers

This is so interesting. Okay, I love talking about memory and all of the things that it unlocks. And I'm really excited to be talking to Remica Bingham-Risher today about her wonderful new collection.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, I love I love talking about memory as well. And I think it gives us such perspective. So that's why I'm super excited to talk to Remica about her new book Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions that Grew Me Up. Brittany, do you want to read her bio?

Brittany Rogers

Remica Bingham-Rischer, a native of Phoenix, Arizona. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Among other journals, her work has been published in the New York Times, the Writer’s Chronicle, New Letters, Callaloo and Essence. Her newest work, and first book of prose, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions that Grew Me Up, will be published by Beacon Press in 2022. She is currently the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University and resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Beautiful.

Brittany Rogers

Alright, let’s get into this episode.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

Remicaaa!

Remica Bingham-Risher

Hey!

Brittany Rogers

We’re so excited to be here with you today.

​

Remica Bingham-Risher

Oh gosh. You guys. You know how excited I am. I love you too.

Brittany Rogers

Not I’m already emotional and we’re just starting. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

We love you back. We were wondering before we jump into anything else, if you could start us off with a poem?

Remica Bingham-Risher

Yeah, absolutely. So let's read a poem from Soul Culture. This is “Missing You”. Do you guys know that Diana Ross song do you guys know “missing you”? 

Brittany Rogers

Mhmm

Remica Bingham-Risher

Okay. 

Everybody sings it. It can be

hollow, juked or spare. I grew up there,

in the middlearth of music.

All along they’d used it, and I was unaware

until the reel-to-reel resurfaced and my voice—

squeaking, grainy, blare—mimicking Diana, rooted

out the heart of the heart, Tell me why the road turns?

No one had the answer. We were a convoy

of melancholy or joy. Little unsaids,

before or after the final mix; this is where

the art lives, the open of the full mouth kiss.

My parents did this. Fled her and there. Loved each other.

Burdened me. Their history now—its brass and clang—

something like a crier’s flame, this burning knot I cannot name.

Brittany Rogers

Whew!

Ajanaé Dawkins

Why would you start us like that?

Remica Bingham-Risher

(Laughing).

Brittany Rogers

Wow, “the open of the full mouth kiss.”

Ajanaé Dawkins

Hey, hey.

Brittany Rogers

The “brass and clang” just

Remica Bingham-Risher

Come on. Sonnets is like where my life is right now. I'm writing like sonnets all over the place. But that one I wrote like a long time ago and tried to fit it into Starlight & Error. It didn't work. But it worked as part of the opening of the memoir, right? Like of all of these, you know, music, we always go back to music, but all of these different kinds of dichotomies between what's happening in your house and, and in the people with the people around you. And you know, how love is strained all the time. Right.

Brittany Rogers

So beautiful. And you already, you sparkin’ so many questions and so many thoughts.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

But before I get to running my mouth, we want to know what's moving you these days? What are you thinkin’ on. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Y'all, there's so much stuff. So, you know, like I said, I'm writing sonnets. I'm working on a new book of poems and I’ve been thinking about my grandmother a lot. I've been reading, you know, since the pandemic started, I've been reading like really heavy nonfiction. So kind of going back through things like Cast, Isabel Wilkerson. And then on the other hand, I'm reading like all of these Black (inaudible) romance novels. They're moving me like crazy. This book Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yessssss.

Remica Bingham-Risher

My God, my God, I love it so much. When we get to see complex Black kids like that in a book. So I, you know, so those are my two bookends right now like swinging between really heavy nonfiction and, like reading fiction that, you know, just makes me happy, like, just joy. And I need that deeply. Yeah, you know.

Brittany Rogers

We’re wondering, and especially for you, as a person who's been in the literary community for so long at this point, right? How has your concept of literary citizenship shifted over time?

Remica Bingham-Risher

Oh, that's so important. I mean, a student asked me one time we were doing like ethnographic work and like doing archival research, and they were like, you know, who owns the archives? Who's left out of the archives, right? So, so much of like, you know, this talk about memory, and then leading to this idea of literary citizenship, it comes back to the fact that like, these stories won't get told, like, the Black woman's interior, like, nobody's going into that, unless it's us, right? And then nobody understanding the importance of something like a Lucille Clifton, friggin’, you know, handing over her paycheck to a student that, you know, was desperate, in a dire situation without anybody knowing. And then she wouldn't let me turn us around to tell that story until she passed, right, like, so that's a story in SoulCulture, but for me, it was super important because her practice was just like what was in her poems? Right? So literary citizenship for me, you know, going back to people like Lucille Clifton, and Erica Hunt is like, practice what you preach. I mean, it's as simple as that, right? If I'm writing these poems that are about collecting memory, and like making sure that we're wrestling with, you know, the elders, and like, all the work that they did, and wrestling with our own flaws, like we have to let people come as they are flawed or not, and we have to, like help carry them like that, you know, it's part of like, my spiritual ethic, but it's for sure part of like, what made me as a writer. In the beginning, it was so much for me about reverence and awe, like, I was just in awe of everyone, like I just, I was deeply moved. That's why I started doing those interviews, because I was like, Oh, my God, if I could just talk to Natasha Trethewey. Like, everything would be different, you know what I mean? And it was true, her work was everything for me. So now, when people reach out and they're like, if I could just talk to you about your work, I'm like, this is the greatest gift to me, because it's coming full circle, it's coming full circle. So you can't, you can't, like deny that as part of your literacy citizenship, like giving people a hand up when people gave you a hand up, like, that's what we do. And also, we're artists, like, ain’t nobody gone care about this work unless it’s us, like, you know, the most famous writers I know, can still walk into the grocery store. They not Britney Spears, right? You know nobody is holding this work as deeply as those doing this work. And so that for me, it's just a real really important part of like, how we continue to build on this thing that we love so deeply, and that has, you know, for all intents and purposes saved many of our lives. 

Brittany Rogers

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Like, so do the work. Like take care first. And then we could talk about beauty, right? Like then we could talk about these poems. But first, like, if you hungry, we can't talk about beauty yet. Right? Like because you need the necessities first, so just, you know, take care of people because you're not thinking that deeply about the world if you're not thinking about that first, like your problems ain't that deep. Right? 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I do want to ask about when you were in the process of archiving the stories of these other folks. Because I think one of the things that struck me about Soul Culture was that it felt like a coming of age story. It felt like a Black girl poet coming of age story. I'm showing you these questions that folks asked that grew me up. But here's like, the love that grew me up, here is the the life experiences that grew me up. How did this project evolve into that hybrid text of being this like personal memoir? Like at what point were you like, yes, the story about my time with Lucille Clifton goes here? And then the story about my husband being at this family function and being like, we're about to look up Remica and find out that she's this poppin’ and writer, like at what point were you like, both of these things need to exist in the same space because, like I said, I've never seen the archive work like this.

Remica Bingham-Risher

Ahh, that makes me so happy. Like, just the question of that makes me so happy. So from the beginning, I thought this was a book of interviews that I had done, and maybe some essays about the craft of the writer that I was interviewing after. So for instance, there would be Lucille Clifton interview or the Forrest Hamer interview, and then there'd be a very kind of academic, literary journal style essay about one aspect of his craft and writing, right. So that's what I wrote a proposal for. And that's what I started shopping. After a few months in isolation, I did a lot of research, I found an agent. I was intent on finding an agent or color so that made it real, real small, and also agents who were interested in poets because I was like, screw this. I'm a poet. I got this one prose book and then we going back. I don't know if imma hold myself to that because I frickin’ wrote a novel last summer, but we'll see what happens. So I found this really, you know, like, I mean, deeply wonderful agent, Larissa Melo Pienkowski, who's over at Jill Grinberg. And she was a poet in a past life. She was like taking classes with like Reginald Dwayne Betts, and Afaa Michael Weaver. So she was like, Oh, these people that you're talking about, like, I'm losing it, like she was so excited, right? Like, so that was one thing. And when I found her, she said, listen, interviews are really notoriously hard to sell, we probably won't be able to sell it like this, I want to take you on. But can we think about infusing a little more of your personal story into these essays? And I said, that seems weird. Like, nobody wants to hear about me. Like, there's all these famous writers in this book. I'm just kind of the vessel. And I was fine with that, because this was a book about the elders. And so I sent her an essay that I had written that was a really like a personal essay. And she was like, Oh, this is the book. Now you got to rewrite it, the whole thing. And so at that point, I was still thinking, alright, I'm going to do these personal essays, we found an editor, you know, we did a full two, two or three round rewrite of the book so that it had all these personal essays, and still had all the interviews intact. Like I was just like, maybe they won't see the interviews, we just gone sneak. Throw them in there, these editors won't notice that interviews don't sell. And I ran up against, you know, the wonderful folks at Beacon Press, Haley Lynch, she was my editor there, she said, listen, this is beautiful. But what is more interesting is the Black women's interior voice because we don't ever get to hear it, particularly yours. And I told my husband that night, I said, I think they want to hear about me, like that’s the craziest thing. Like somebody's gonna pay me money to talk about me? Like that’s why I been doin’ these poems, ain’t nobody tryin' to pay me no money. And so really, like, that's what happened over the course of the next year. They wrote the Publisher’s Weekly like announcement, and I said, a hybrid memoir, cultural artifact. And I was like, y’all are lyin’! What we gone do? Now I got to write what y'all said! And that's what I did. And that's what I did for the next year and a half, we rewrote the whole thing. And it ended up being this really beautiful, like, it's a dream piece for me. I never imagined this was something I was gonna come into space with. And the way they’ve cared for it, I mean, look at the cover, you see this girl's fro big as day on this cover? Come on! You know what I mean? Like they have really cared for this thing. And for this set of voices and like this, you know, idea that Black poets work in community in more ways that I can imagine. So it was a long road, but it was never, this was never what I imagined when I say it's the book of my dreams. It's the book of my dreams. And I'm really grateful that it's here in the way that it is now. Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Whew! This Remica, this is the book of my dreams (laughing). Like

Remica Bingham-Risher

Don't start.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Listen, we already here. And I love the way you explain that so it’s interesting the way the business side shaped the thing but didn't but added to it because sometimes you hear about this side of the work, taking away from the work that really needs to be done. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

It's usuallythe opposite, like gutting it the business side, I will say, you know, and let's remember when I sold it, though, you know, Black was sexy in the middle of 2020. Black Lives Matter is happening, there's protests everywhere, right? So I come with this book called, you know, Soul Culture: Black Poets, right. And, and I will say, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers gave me that title. She pulled it out of the out of the query that I had, she was like, oh, no, your title is Soul Culture, which I just loved, right? And so, you know, it was the thing, like people kind of wanted to capitalize on Black voices, but they sure didn’t know what they were getting. They were like, oh, man, now we give you money and now I just get to do what I want?! So once they said, yeah, we want more of like this idea of how you felt in the space and how you wrestled with the work and how you have built a life just like they've built a life, then it was we were off to the races.

Brittany Rogers

So as the as the book began to shift for you, was there a space where you were worried about possible pushback for focusing on the interior kind of versus the collective? Even though we would still argue that this is ultimately about the collective, but is there has that been a concern even across your career, not just with Soul Culture, but writing about more interior subjects?

Remica Bingham-Risher

Yeah, I mean, for you know, for that bravery, I have to big up L. Lamar Wilson, who, you know, told me like Black love poems? Like when do we get to do that, like, you got to keep writing, we need them, especially now. So that gave me a little bit, you know, more freedom to do that. I have to say, this might come from me just being an only child, but pretty set in my space. Like I don't get, I don't get rattled a whole lot when I'm like, decided on an idea. My ideas are good. Let me tell you, I tell ya, I tell my husband all the time, and he be like you wrong so much.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Remica Bingham-Risher

You know what I mean? So like my ideas are good, but I do worry sometimes when the collective, like, I don't want to seem insensitive. Like, I know, we're thinking deeply about that, you know, I was writing Starlight & Error when my friend, you know, (inaudible) got killed by police in 2014. And this book was a real opportunity for me to just lay out the real dichotomy of love and fear that happens in a time like that. And as an artist, my fear is never like, going too far. My fear is making sure people know that ethics of care that we talked about earlier, like, just because I'm not saying nothing doesn't mean I don't care, like I'm trying to find a way to work it into what I'm doing. But also, I feel like Black joy is imperative (light chuckle). I mean, for me, writing Soul Culture and writing The Black Woman's Interior, you know, interjecting those stories about my husband kind of coming to me and coming back to me, you know, after me and my little eighth grade boyfriend, seventh grade boyfriend, you know, I felt like, there has to be a way for me to infuse what's happening in actual life, and still deal with the fact that, you know, there is a lot of heartache and a lot of fear when you're building a family together. Right? You got these babies, and you don't want to send them out in the world, because look at what they doin’ to our babies, right.

Brittany Rogers

So can I ask a parent question? 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Oh, of course. 

Brittany Rogers

Because you just mentioned, you know, babies and how difficult that can be trying to navigate, you know, all of the complications that be. So my favorite chapter slash essay in the book, was the one with your stepdaughter and Beyoncé.

Remica Bingham-Risher

She's gonna think she famous now; Y’all done messed up. 

Brittany Rogers

I currently have a teenager and two other little ones, ane let me tell you. Listen, but that did make me think about the decisions that we have to make around the ethics of our interior, when our interior also includes other voices or other folks, and especially for mothers because I think it's such a frowned upon thing to talk about sometimes the struggles of parenting when you’re a mom. You know, when you’re a dad you can talk as much trash as you want to talk. It's a very different conversation. So I was wondering about how you balanced like the ethics and privacy of that interior space, but also the public gaze on how we process parenting, right? So how did you stay true to yourself as a writer, but also balance that narrative?

Remica Bingham-Risher

First of all, two things. First and foremost, to not think deeply about the public gaze while you're writing, right? I've worked really hard to like not censor myself in that way. You know, one thing that I probably told you that I tell everybody is when you're writing about family, like let the family see it, you know, at a certain point, right, because I don’t want no surprises. I don't want you know, my uncle running open and talking about girl I can't believe you know, and so for the kids, for the kids, you know, they have only known me as a writer. You know, when when my husband and I got married, my daughter was 12, my son was four, he just graduated high school two weeks ago. Yeah, and so hey, Michael! Because you know, you can't say one without saying the other (laughing). So, you know, but they were four and twelve. So they’ve only known me like in the thick of my writing life, I was very sparing in the poems that I wrote about them. I tried to make sure that I was like, as honest as I could be about all of us in this situation. But I also shared their poems with them, even when they were very young. So they understood like, oh, these poems are about our family. So it would be really weird if I wasn't here, right. And so by the time I got to this and started writing that essay, “Girls Loving Beyonce and Their Names”. And what was interesting about that essay in particular, there had been a draft of it as a completely different thing that was published, I had sent it to my daughter, she was really happy with it. And my daughter notoriously, she says, all the time, I'm not really a reader, you know, I'll pick it up. You know, I've definitely read your books, you know, because I'm nosy just like you. So you know, they'll, they'll pick that stuff up. But she was actually the first person who read Soul Culture cover to cover, she had the very first galley. She was here visiting, she took it home. And I was like, yeah, you can't have a galley thinking, you know, nothing was going to come of it. Except, you know, it's gonna be cute. She could put it on a wall and show people that her name was in the book. And she read that thing cover to cover and call me crying from the plane. I mean, like, let me tell you, like, this really gives me a better idea of what you and dad were thinking during that time. And it was, it was that greatest gift to me, because now she's an adult, she got her own kids now, things are completely different. My perspective is completely different now that I'm an adult, and I have my own kids now. But that really, that was the greatest gift to me that's happened since this book came out. Because, you know, it was her really having a clear understanding of the fact that this was it was so hard cobbling this whole family together, and we work deeply at it every second of every day. I don't know if that would have come across in poems, the way it came across in prose, I think it came across very differently for her as a poem that bears her name that had been in books already, you know. This essay, really, you know, taught me kind of what you're thinking about. Also, these people are so smart that you're talking about, like, who are these people? So it did all of the things that I was hoping it would do.

Brittany Rogers

I love it. I love how there seems like a special gift of prose too, right? To offer more expansiveness. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Yes, absolutely.

Ajanaé Dawkins 

I think that also just says something about the accessibility of interiority. Because, like, I'm wondering if the original book that you would have read, if it's something that would have had her reading it and then looking at these poets like these will I wonder what their work is. And I think this book means something very particular to me as a Black girl who's been writing poems for shoot, you know, I don't know, since I was like, 14, 13, whatever. But the idea that other Black girls can access this book, and it still have a kind of significance for them because of the way it's centered. And not because I don't mean accessible and because people I think people like to use accessible in a real wild way, when they're talking about Black folks in their work, you know, they like to they like us accessible and what you mean is not scholarly, not you know, not all of these things. And so I just mean accessible in terms of your work does not exclude and it draws folks in through its into interiority. It does easy. It really cemented I think I've been thinking a lot about what the book means for me as somebody who I'm like, I'm entrenched 10 toes, down blinders on, like looking at the poetry world. But what it looks like for somebody not in that world to come in. And it just dawned on me that like, yeah, they have additional kind of access because of what you offer.

Remica Bingham-Risher

That’s a great gift, I thank you.

Brittany Rogers

We thank you. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah we do. So Remica, you mentioned a lot in this text about how music is for soothing and generating new work. And we want to know what the soundtrack of your new work sounds like? Which apparently also includes a novel random flex, we gone come back to that just the random flex like by the way, I wrote a novel.

Brittany Rogers

All the craft.

Ajanaé Dawkins

All of the things. What’s the soundtrack sounding like?

Remica Bingham-Risher

So there is a playlist for every single project, there's a playlist for Starlight & Error, there's a, there's a like 45, 50 song playlist for Soul Culture that I'm thinking of releasing when the book comes out. 

Brittany Rogers

Drop the album! 

Remica Bingham-Risher

But, you know, music comes up so much in the book like that, that it only became, you know, kind of a natural part of that writing. I will tell you, you know, the novel right now is kind of set in the 80s and early 90s. The last thing I added to the soundtrack for that novel was Tevin Campbell, “Tell Me What You Want Me to Do”. Come on. 

Brittany Rogers

Okay (laughing). 

Remica Bingham-Risher 

So that that fueled all kinds of other things. So you know, why Black romance, right. And so that's interesting. I think the stuff that you know, has continued to come together for Room Swept Home. I'm writing from like, 1859 all the way up to you know, the at least the 1980s, because I am, you know, kind of breached and born in the, in the manuscript, but I just wrote a poem the other day about and added to the soundtrack of Brooke Benton's “Rainy Night in Georgia”, because that was my grandmother's favorite song that she would play all the time. You know, there's all of these different kinds of songs that keep coming up in the history of like, family lineage, but also music just become such a huge part of my writing overall, it's an art that you know, won't let me go and I'm not trying to get free of it anyway.

Brittany Rogers

I have a follow up question because I'm really invested in music right. My whole critical research essay was on like, the way that rappers have the same foundation as poets. So I'm wondering, I'm wondering if there’s a way in which the type of music you're listening to changes based on what you're writing, or what form you're playing with?

Remica Bingham-Risher

Absolutely. That's really interesting. You know, my craft lecture at the end of my low res was about hip hop as well. We’ll have to come back and talk about that. 

Brittany Rogers

Okay!

Remica Bingham-Risher

When they walked into, you know, and I was at Bennington, like super Lillywhite program at the time, when they walked into the big to the big lecture hall, I was bumping Talib Kweli “Goodbyes”, right. Like it was it was fun. So there's all of this interesting, you know, was about the collective eye and hip hop and how it how the community blurs back over into poetry. Look at that. I've been writing about this forever. I didn't realize it. Does my music change based on what I'm writing? Yes. Because I'm usually going back to find music of the time. So if I'm writing something historical, I'm moving like back through, you know, whatever it whatever they were playing in the 60s, that's what I'm listening to. Right. You know, what, whatever I imagined might have been, you know, something that could have come across. I was listening to Charleston the other day, because that was, you know, from the 1920s. Right, because that was something that I remember my grandmother, like talking about fervently like that was a big pop moment for them. Right. And so sometimes that happens, when I'm revising, I'm listening to Beyonce, like pretty much exclusively, right, because, you know, one, it's mostly fast stuff, too. So I'm listening to Beyonce, and, and like, not revising, because it's like a fast process, but I need energy. Like, I need to be given energy. And so that is often the case, if I'm not listening to her, I'll turn on Homecoming. And I'll just be like, Black excellence, I can do it. And then I'll get myself together and keep writing. And so definitely, like kind of upbeat, like, no matter what I'm working on, I need like to be paced through it in the in the revision process. So, so yeah, the writing definitely changes whatever I have on my playlist.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Beautiful. And I'm just going to advocate because I personally feel cheated because Starlight & Error is one of my favorites and I didn't even know that there was a playlist for this. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

It will be in your inbox before the end of the day, I would never, I would never cheat you. You’re one of my friends. I will send it. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

You know how I feel about thatbook! So I think and I'm excited to ask you this. In particular, this was kind of one of our questions we have for everybody, but you're still centered in literary lineage is if you had to choose three people, across any genre, any genre dead, alive, whatever, who you are, like, these are the three people who are are my lineage, or if you want to understand my work, these are the three people who you have to look at, who with those three people be?

Remica Bingham-Risher

this answer, first of all, this answer would probably change every day, right? Like it depends on, you know, how I'm defining myself, the work that I'm thinking of in the moment. The one answer that I'm gonna give you that would probably come back as one of the three everyday is Lucille Clifton, because I'm absolutely a student of Miss Lucille’s work kind of in every way that you can imagine, right, thematically, I try, you know, with economy of language, and I'm, I'm never going to be what Miss Lucille you know, was able to do, but for sure, you know, I'm walking in the path of Miss Lucille as much as I possibly can. Today, the second person person that came to mind and I'm looking at because her picture is on a board that I have here, but Gwendolyn Brooks, and I think because so much is happening in form. I'm thinking so deeply about the the actual sonic quality, the beauty of language when you're wrestling with very difficult things. And so I mean, really, like if you go back and read when Gwendolyn Brooks aloud, like those early poems, I mean, it just blows your mind, like what she was able to craft. And so I'm really hoping that I'm like, really trying to walk in the footsteps of like Gwendolyn Brooks, and then someone else, you know, who just comes back anytime I'm thinking about prose, since I'm venturing into that space is got to be James Baldwin. I mean, there is no one who, there is no one who was writing essays the way James Baldwin, you know, you know, his his his prose sounds like poetry. I mean, there's just no no other way to like to think deeply about what's happening in this America then through the lens that Baldwin continued to shape for us. So, yeah, those are my three for today.

[PIANO PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

Okay, so we are going to play a little game called this versus that.

Brittany Rogers

A classic. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

So we're going to give you two options. And you are going to tell us which would win in a fight. And why. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Oh lord. Okay.

Ajanaé Dawkins

So we have Homecoming vs Lemonade. 

[BELL RINGS]

Remica Bingham-Risher

Oh, no. Okay, we were friends until y’all pulled this out. We could say that Homecoming, you know, it's kind of the culmination of a career and includes much of Lemonade, right, like, so there's that there's like, and then there's the live performance, not to mention, you know, the kind of homage to Black culture overall. But as a complete art work, that is a full narrative there is nothing better in her beauvoir than Lemonade, right? Like, I don't care what people say, I love Beyoncé, the album Beyonce, not just me, I say, I like 4 too. You notice I didn't say love, because Lemonade and Homecoming. I like it! I like it! But I'm not gonna say it's on the same. I'm not gonna say it's on the same plateau as Beyoncé and Lemonade because it's not! And so iit just depends on it just depends on what I need in the moment. So if I'm looking for a concise, sharp, you know, narrative that is a fantastically told complete story, it's Lemonade. If I'm looking for and homage to culture that's expansive, and huge. Then it's Homecoming. 

Brittany Rogers

So who has better hands though, is it the narrative or the homage?

Remica Bingham-Risher

Well, I thank Beyoncé for Homecoming like we friends in the back of Soul Culture. Like if you read the acknowledgements, I’m like thank you for Homecoming and your display ofBlack excellence, because it really did inspire me. I was like, that'd be rude if you don’t thank Beyoncé. What if she read it one day? And, so for me today, right now in an homage to Soul Culture I'm gonna say Homecoming has better hands. But don’t come for me, if you feel like it's Lemonade, because you see they backed me into this corner.

[GAME SHOW CROWD CHEERS]

[LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

There could only be one that wins the fight, you know? 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Yeah.

Ajanaé Dawkins

I also love the way you phrase it. So which has better hands? Homage or? 

[OVERLAPPING VOICES]

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

I love that answer, that makes me smile. 

[ALL LAUGHING]

Brittany Rogers

Okay, great. So would you like to close us out with one last poem?

Remica Bingham-Risher

Sure. Sure. I will. So from that Room Swept Home is definitely a manuscript this poem isn't published anywhere, but I love y’all

Brittany Rogers

Okay, exclusive. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

We come with the new stuff. So I mentioned my grandmother who was sent to the asylum. And so this poem kind of tells the story of that moment. 

[Recites un-released poem] 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Whew!

Brittany Rogers

Oh my god. I'm still stuck on where you talked about the baby after no blood. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Yeah, yeah,that's that's true that like true documented, I was able, after 75 years when I started doing this research, I was finally able to get my hands on the actual paperwork from the hospital, they sent me, you know, all of these pages from her admittance into the Central Lunatic Asylum. And that's what happened. She said, You know, the blood never came after I was born. No doctor checked me after the baby came. And she talked them through, as Black women often do in health crises, talk them through what was happening. I feel myself going crazy. I feel like something is happening in my body. I feel like something is going on. And she even at the end of her life was like the meekest churchmouse. Quiet, not the grandmother that ever yelled. So for her turning into a cussing, fighting, crazed, you know, person who's having an episode to me was kind of, you know, I can't imagine for my grandpa, there must have been like seeing the Spirit coming down. So that was, you know, that that's, that's part of what I've been thinking about. So you see, why I gotta do the light stuff. 

Brittany Rogers

So when are we gonna get this book? 

Remica Bingham-Risher

You know,I'll let you know. 

Brittany Rogers

Thank you so much [background music ques] for talking to today. It has been our pleasure. 

Remica Bingham-Risher

Thank you guys so much. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Brittany Rogers

Oh, wow, this conversation was such a gift. I'm just, I’m in awe at Remica’s wisdom, and how much I learned talking to her. But then also, just the opportunity to have been in conversation with those authors who informed so much of her own writing. Like, oou I should be so lucky (laughing).

Ajanaé Dawkins

Yeah, I'm wildly emotional. And I think what Soul Culture did for me, was forced me to really think about what I've inherited and what I've come into as a Black woman writer and who I'm in conversation with and also whose work transformed me. I don't know, who is that for you?

Brittany Rogers

Off top, Toni Morrison. Easy, easy answer. Song of Solomon, Pilate Dead is still without question, my favorite character. I feel like that is a character who when I think about my pedagogy and the way I want to live my life, I'm like, Oh, I don't even think about real life people. I'm like, ooh, Pilate, if I could just love like Pilate, and so that story was so transformational for me that it like literally lives in me. Also, Asha Bandele’s The Prisoner’s Wife was one of the first memoirs that I read, and it begins this is a love story. In that book. I think it was the first book that maybe hinted at abolition before I knew a language for that. It made me think about love, outside of practicality. I think Asha was my first glimpse at me rooting for somebody who had felt like I'm like, who this is, you know, this goes against all the practicalities maybe that my family taught me and it really made me think deeper about like ethics and, and who gets to have love and who gets to have romance and who doesn't. So I think that it shifted the way that I write even now that I'm thinking about it, because I think what I always want to put first in my writing is the tenderness. And I think I got that from Pilate via Toni Morrison and from Asha. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I read The Prisoner’s Wife because of you, you were like, you were like, “you want to understand me? Then read these books.” And I said, Okay, imma read these books, best, and I did. It's also Toni, but it's The Bluest Eye, I read The Bluest Eye in high school. And I say this all the time, but Pecola Breedlove character has haunted me ever since. And also how much I laugh like Toni is funny. Like, Toin Morrison is hilarious. Not to just be calling her by first name, but mama Morrison, she's hilarious. And then Alice Walker. And I think I think I only have language for what Alice Walker did for me now, but I think she gave me a language for faith and for the presence of faith and writing that wasn't what I was used to. And that was like very Black and like very reconciling with with this faith that has been for a lot of us and like heralded in strange ways. And the I don't know The Color Purple did a lot for me.

Brittany Rogers

Ay, shout out to Black women writers.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Period. 

Brittany Rogers

Shout out to walking into a cannon that's so fruitful that like, we can't help but bear fruit because of it. You got anybody want to thank, best? 

Ajanaé Dawkins

I am going to thank, okay, I'm gonna say my nana and my papa who drove me to poetry classes every week, a 45 minute drive and rush hour, each ways. Yes, you remember the vibes and nobody understood why I was so particularly fixated but they were like, girl wants to be involved. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna gang up as a village. So I likely would not be doing a lot of the things I'm doing if they did not rearrange the entirety of their schedules to make sure that they could drive me out for poetry every week.

Brittany Rogers

Aw.

Ajanaé Dawkins

Who would you like to thank, best?

Brittany Rogers

I think I'm gonna thank the English teachers at Cass Technical High School circa 2000 to 2005 or 2001 to 2005. My teachers were so Black, and so dedicated to making sure that we knew the canon. So I always feel really lucky to know that I read, my first exposure to Toni Morrison was in high school. The first time I read Song of Solomon was 11th grade. I read Beloved in 12th grade, I read The Bluest Eye in 10th grade. We just, I don't know, I didn't, I didn't realize what I had until I got to college. And there were so many people who were like, Oh, I've never read this or I've never heard of this author. So shout out to them for making sure that that wasn't my experience and that when I walked into adulthood, I already had some like ancestors behind me and writers behind me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ajanaé Dawkins

we also want to give our thank yous to the Poetry Foundation, to Itzel Blancas, to Ydalmi Noriega, to Elon Sloan, and Cin Pim in Ombie Productions, and of course, to Remica Bingham-Risher for being a phenomenal guest and wildly generous, not just in this podcast episode, but for many years at this point in me and Brittany's lives. 

Brittany Rogers

Absolutely. 

Ajanaé Dawkins

Lastly, please like, rate, and subscribe wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, and we will see you in two weeks. Bye y'all!

Brittany Rogers

Bye!

[MUSIC CONTINUES]