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Janae Pierre: This is The Takeaway. I'm Janae Pierre, sitting in for Melissa Harris-Perry. Happy BLACK History Month as we continue our series BLACK Queer Rising with Lambda Award winning and National Book Award finalist, author and poet, Danez Smith. Their work viscerally examines the intricacies of gender, recognition of BLACK family and kinship, rebirth and growing to know and learn themselves anew each day. You hear some of that in the poem waiting on you to die so I can be myself.

Danez Smith: A thousand years of daughters, then me. What else could I have learned to be? Girl after girl after giving herself to herself one long ring shout name, a monarchy of copper and coal shoulders. The body, too, is a garment. I learn this best from the snake undulating out of her pork rind dress. I crawl out of myself, into myself, take refuge where I flee.

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Janae Pierre: Recognized in Forbes as 30 under 30, Danez is the author of three poetry books, [Insert] Boy, Don't Call US Dead and Homie. Danez, welcome to The Takeaway.

Danez Smith: Thank you so much [laughs]. I almost got a little emotional listen to my poem right there.

Janae Pierre: I did too. I want to start by asking, why do you write and who do you write your poetry for?

Danez Smith: When I was 14, I was lucky enough to stumble into the local spoken word community here in Minneapolis. Before then, I had only been exposed to dead and majority white writers, and all of a sudden, poetry was alive and vibrant and it looked like me. It helped save my life and make sense of the world that I think I was awakening up to at the time. I still write because it has continued to save my life and continue to be a compass and a star that I can follow when I'm in despair, when I am in confusion, when I'm in grief. It's also become a place to hold my ecstasy and my joy and my change. Who do I write for? Oh God, [laughs] I write for anybody who will pick it up and read.

I think the most urgent people in my heart when I'm sitting down to write BLACK folks, are people of color. Our queer folks are my family. It's my lover. It's myself. I think about poetry as a tool to catalog humanness, and I think the human existence for myself really is cataloged on who we loved and how well we did it.

Janae Pierre: Prior to publishing your first book, [Insert] Boy, in 2014, you had already made a name for yourself as a slam poet. How did you approach the creation of your first book? What would you have told that younger version of yourself as you embarked on that endeavor?

Danez Smith: When I was making [Insert] Boy, I think I was coming from a spoken word background or like a slam influence, but when you move over to the larger literary world, I think the first book is a lot more precious. What comes to mind is Airea D. Matthews or Ama Codjoe, who just released a brilliant first book, Bluest Nude, or even Toni Morrison. That's always my favorite example. Tony Morrison, who didn't publish her first novel until she was 41. I think I would tell my 24 year old self to feel free to take more time. There wasn't a rush to have a book in the world. Granted, my first book came out and I was super young and it did well, so no regrets, but I really could have worked on that project for a lot longer.

Janae Pierre: If you don't mind, I'd like for you to read one of your poems. It's called The Slap.

Danez Smith: Before I read this is loosely based on Chris Rock getting slapped by Will Smith at the Academy Awards. I couldn't stop thinking about it for a couple of days until poem came.

Janae Pierre: No one could stop thinking about that.

Danez Smith: [laughs] No one could stop thinking about it. It shook America, but this is after thinking about for a couple of days, this is what I came to The Slap. There's no love there, so the words won't come or it's not my love, so I can't speak on it. My hands knew before my brain, which sent me here to capture the faulty papers flung into electric space about the hand meeting the face and how somehow this sets BLACK folks back into the fields and up the trees. I want BLACK people free from my decisions. I want my actions to be mine and useful. I wish my cruelty to wither and hopefully my karma has come.

[unintelligible 00:05:17] the things I've said about BLACK women in public, things that were overheard or deleted, things I meant to harm and things I said because I was taught to say them. I am a faulty ally. I've thrown hands to defend, yes, but I've also fired the bullet of words. I knew which insults would hit and said them. Someone has the receipts. The scar. I called Tanya, so beautiful and kind Tanya, who was good to me and who I loved. Dark in a way meant to hurt, and it did. Her disappointment haunted me for years. I was so small when I said it, so grown by the time it left my dreams, there was my proof. I, too, could hurt the people I love.

What good was me wailing on my grandfather's face to allow her off the floor if I had already begun to turn his evils into traditions. At the end of my action was a BLACK girl crying. Someone should have knocked me out. I wish I was better earlier. I wish a world where BLACK women are safe. Sweet wish. I am starward now. This is my goodbye. My apology will be distance or eat me here and let me fumble into a steward of your peace. My prayer, may the world be a BLACK girl's cake. My promise or burn it down.

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Janae Pierre: Wow. All right Danez Smith. Pause right there. That was great. I want to talk with you about that poem right after the break. Stick around, everyone. This is The Takeaway.

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This is The Takeaway. I'm Janae Pierre, sitting in for MHP. We're continuing our BLACK Queer Rising series with Lambda Literary Award winning and National Book Award finalist poet, Danez Smith. Danez, we're talking about your poem, The Slap. In it, I hear you grappling with a few things and I'm wondering how does your poetry allow you to see yourself and your mistakes fully in a way that moves you to address them? Or is it the complete opposite? Are you moved to address them and then the poetry comes?

Danez Smith: I think it happens both ways. I won't speak for all poets, but as a poet myself, I am both moved by what poetry becomes a vehicle for and to communicate, but also I delight in the communication itself. I think what I'm saying is I love what poetry holds, but then I just love the language of the poem. Sometimes with the poem, it's just sounds and words or maybe an image. I often say I'm a poet of people watching. Sometimes I see somebody do something weird on the street and just their movement, the delight on their face, that's something else. Leads me to bring some words to my mind and I try to run and write the poem. For myself, I am always interested.

I used to think I did a lot of poems that were pointing at other people. I'm more interested at this point of pointing at myself and thinking about how this thing relates to me in the world. Looking at Chris Rock and Will Smith and his defense or Will Smith's defense of his wife and Chris Rock's-

Janae Pierre: Lack of defense.

Danez Smith: -lack of defense. Chris Rock's not even that funny joke. His offense of her. Then it leaves me to think about myself. I think it would be easy to talk about how the world treats BLACK women. I've written poems about that before, but how I am worldly. I am in the world and how have I been part of that? I think it would have been easy to be the Will Smith [chuckles] in the poem. To think about being the Chris Rock, how have I harmed these women who have so protected and enlivened and inspired me?

Janae Pierre: You've long been on the rise and you have indeed arrived. I'm curious, what does "Black Queer rising" as an idea and belief, what does "Black Queer rising" mean to you?

Danez Smith: Oh, when I hear that, I hear a call to make a world where Black Queer folks, Black trans folks are able to move past surviving and into thriving. When I hear rising, I hear soaring, I hear flying. It makes me think of shows like Pose. Often times, we were seeing those characters survive and by any means necessary doing what they needed to do that. We also see how survival kills characters in that show. I don't know, spoiler alert, if you haven't watched all the way through Pose, but there's that moment where Angel's getting married and she invites all her Black trans and Latina trans sisters to wear the wedding gowns [chuckles]. That's the moment where I'm like, "Oh, that's the rising." A world where we are love, where our joy is not in despite of something else, where our survival is not magnificent or a tale against what is common. Let people marvel in the magnitude and the wonder that our gifts that are being.

Janae Pierre: Lambda Award winning and National Book Award finalist author and poet Danez Smith. Danez, thanks so much for your time.

Danez Smith: Thank you so much.

[00:11:43] [END OF AUDIO]

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