June 21, 2022 • 31 mins
This week I’m taking y’all behind the poetry with one of my newish poems! Listen in to hear the books and experience that have been a part of my becoming and how I began to rediscover my voice!
To get transcripts, links, and details from each episode, check out the show notes. To continue your support of the podcast and my work, become a member of my Patreon community where you can get access to archived episodes, bonus episodes, and behind the scenes content. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter, for podcast clips, poetry quotes and random quips. For information on how to book me to speak or perform at an event, visit amenabrown.com. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, everybody, Welcome back to Her with Amina Brown. I've
had some interviews lately, so it's been nice bringing some
people into our living room. But I'm back just me
and y'all wherever you are listening, and today I'm going
to take you behind the poetry. This is one of
(00:52):
my most recent poems that I've finished in the last
couple of years, so I'm actually really looking forward to
diving into it with you. Usually these poems are older,
so I might have live recordings or studio recordings I've done,
but this poem is a newer one. So I'm just
going to do a reading of this and then I
(01:12):
will take you sort of behind the process of how
this poem actually got written. So here is a reading
of my poem, A Garden of Me. I found my voice.
I found my voice on a page and held its
spine as if I was keeping time at my first
(01:33):
middle school dance. Studied the pages like crystal ball, like
tea leaves. I chose my own adventure, knew the song
of the Caged Bird, understood the mute of Young Maya.
How trauma can make you quiet, How quiet can read
to adults as good kid? How in trouble tries to
erase you. You never find your thrills and causing trouble again.
(01:56):
How rolls of thunder? Here the cries of a little
black girl, not sure if she has anything to say,
or if it matters that she has anything to say,
or if there's power in anything she has to say.
I found my voice in the blue eyes of the coola,
breed love in Seely's letters to God, in the rainbows
of a colored girls. How Pilot sing a song of
Solomon and gave birth to herself. How Janey told my
(02:20):
eyes to watch God, and they did. I grew, I
grew wings, I grew a voice. I planted myself. I
grew a garden of me. I came into full bloom.
I discovered my season. Winter came and I grew quiet,
But I did not die. I only deep into my roots.
I found my voice, and once upon a time is now.
(02:43):
Being a storyteller is miles better than being the princess
and someone else's story. That you can give birth and
be reborn. Don't be afraid to be reborn, to find
your soul sits in a new type of skin. Don't
be afraid to start over, to backspace, to press, to eat,
to control, alt delete, Be your own library, your own
(03:04):
treasure trove of story and page and song. Check out
the Book of You with no late fee. Do not
put yourself on a waiting list for love and care
and gentleness. Find your sanctuary in pages why You're Bound
and be unbound. Steps softly into your own known, into
everything you thought you knew that you now know isn't true.
(03:26):
Breathe gently into your uncertainty. Write a love note to yourself,
to the world, to the woman you used to be,
to the woman you are right now secretly and publicly
admire her. So I normally start off when I take
you all behind the poetry with what made me write
(03:48):
this poem? And I want to give a big, big
shout out to Mia Willis. Mia Willis is a phenomenal,
phenomenal poet that I know from being a part of
Atlanta's poetry community. And Mia was facilitating a workshop and
they were using Michelle Obama's book Becoming as a jumping
off place to help us write. And the prompt that
(04:13):
Mia put out there was for all of us to
think about what was something that we could look at
in our lives that is really responsible for the person
that we've become today. So the beginning of this poem
I actually started writing during MIA's workshop, and then I
(04:35):
got home and kind of looked at the piece, and
you know, when you're in a writing workshop, especially the
amount of time that Mia had to facilitate that with us,
I mean, we were probably there for maybe two hours,
you know, and that includes time for us to sort
of have some discussion with Mia as they were talking
(04:55):
us through the different things that were coming up for
each of us and thinking about what helped us become,
you know, who we are, and then time to write
and then time to share. Right. So it's really not
a lot of time, not for me, enough time to
finish something. But I had a pretty good start, I
would say. A lot of the beginning of what is
there in what became the poem in the end showed
(05:18):
up in the workshop, and I got home and kind
of looked at the poem and just thought, I think
I'd like to, you know, take some time to finish
this piece, you know. And it's interesting because I think
that we were having this workshop, my mind wants to say,
I feel like it was eighteen that we were having
(05:40):
this workshop may have been early nineteen, but we were
having this workshop, and I was in an interesting place
as a writer at that moment. I've talked about this
a lot on the podcast for those of you who
are regular listeners, but you know, I've talked a lot
about how I was at that time, you know, and
that sort of nineteen time, I was really in an interesting,
(06:05):
I don't know, crossroads maybe I would describe it that way,
career wise and creatively as well. You know. Career wise,
I was realizing that I was in a market, which
for me was a Christian, predominantly white market, and my
work was sort of leaning away from what was going
(06:26):
to be really acceptable in that space, and I was
processing what does that mean? You know, what to do
about that? And then I was starting to realize too.
I think it was around this time that I was
also realizing the voice of my poems was becoming very different.
When I first started doing spoken word, it was the
(06:47):
late nineties, and I was really coming out of a
very hip hop inspired space creatively. A lot of how
I write and really and truly a lot of who
I am is very fired with a lot of very
very inspired by and along with a lot of the
music and artists that were out in the late nineties,
(07:07):
a lot of that Outcast and Lauren Hill and Black Thought,
you know, a lot of the hip hop writers that
I was exposed to at that time. So I think
that put a lot of bearing on what I became
as a poet. And in particular, when you come across
a lot of spoken word poets that were writing around
that time, and we were all a lot of us
(07:30):
very inspired by hip hop wordplay and rhythms and things
like that, So my rhyme scheme was a lot tighter.
I used my rhyming dictionary a lot more when I
was writing early on, and then I sort of went
into kind of a lot of Christian and church spaces
and was writing a lot more kind of what I
(07:52):
would say as congregational work, right, writing a lot of
things that I would do in front of a church
congregation in what was supposed to be kind of a
worshipful moment, and those required a certain kind of rhythm.
And it had been a while since I had really
been writing, just because I wanted to going into this workshop,
(08:13):
so I was feeling a lot of trepidation around what
is my voice when I'm not writing a thing that
I've been commissioned to write. What is my voice when
I'm writing just what I want to write, And this
poem was one of the first newer pieces that I started,
So it was interesting to sort of be in a
writing workshop and as a writer, you know your voice
(08:36):
pretty well, you know, you know yourself, but also being
in a discovery process like taking the prompt mea gave
us and then writing and reading it back and going huh.
I wouldn't have expected myself to write about that. I
wouldn't have expected myself to want to approach that in
this particular way. So it was an interesting It was
(08:56):
an interesting crossroads to be at entering the workshop up
and then I think I put the poem down for
a while because I think my schedule traveling kind of
picked up, So I don't think I actually finished this
poem until shortly before the pandemic started, which was also
a wild thing, because before the pandemic, as I've talked
(09:20):
about here on the podcast, before, you know, I would
finish a new piece and like just take it in
my notebook or my journal or whatever and take it
out to the open mic. That's how I would work
out the piece and figure out what edits I needed
to make and how to get it ready for stage.
And so there are probably two or three pieces that
(09:40):
sort of ended up either being written or getting finished
during the pandemic that did not do that process, and
this was one of them. So it's interesting to think
about me kind of returning back to this poem. And
also I think I think it's interesting that a lot
of my poetry career, as far as what people would
(10:01):
have seen me doing on stage or on video, a
lot of my poems were big pieces. You know. They
were meant to get big belly laughs from people, or
they were meant to be these very like somber and
um kind of sobering, emotionally kind of moments. You know.
(10:21):
There was like the light was supposed to come on
and I walk out into the light and I say
this very poignant kind of peace, but still creating this
big kind of dramatic moment, you know. And it was
interesting to me that this poem kind of came in quietly,
and at first I worried about that, you know, I worried,
(10:43):
like because there's a lot of I mean, if I
can use the word sass here. You know, there's a
lot of sass and attitude that I like to have
in my poetry, especially the poetry that I write that
I would do not in a church setting. I mean,
some of my poems I still do, you know, I
would still do them in church settings, But I wasn't
thinking about church settings when I was writing them, right,
(11:05):
the poems that I would think like, I could go
into any sort of kind of concert or performance event
where people actually came there to be entertained. That's what
I mean when I'm differentiating that from church settings. People
that are in church settings typically aren't arriving there to
be entertained, you know. Uh, it is a surprise to
them if you entertain them, right. But I feel like
(11:27):
a lot of my work was really built for environments
where people came there to be entertained, whether they came
there to to think or feel or be in their emotions,
or they came to laugh. Like a lot of the
work I have been doing in the last few years
really fits into that environment. And that's what I think.
Around the time that this poem was coming out, I
was starting to really notice and become aware of that
(11:49):
about my work. That my work wanted to be entertaining,
and I was in a market that wasn't built on that, really,
you know. So I think it's interesting to think about
how this poem really arrived quietly. It is not It
is not a big, loud, boisterous poem, and I like that,
(12:11):
you know, I like that now, But I think at
the time I was like, what's this poem doing? You know,
I'm really trying to stick in there and see what
did the poem want to say? It felt very tender,
and I think I've talked about this and another Behind
the Poetry episode two, but you know, I haven't been
a very cathartic poet in the sense of being a
(12:34):
poet that it is rage or it is sadness, you know,
it is large emotions that send me to the page.
I'm probably more of a poet that's in my head
a lot, and it's things I think about and things
I wonder that sent me to the page. If something
very very emotional happens to me, I actually have to
(12:56):
really do a lot of work to write through that.
I typically talk through that instead, you know. So it
was interesting to sort of let this poem be tender
and let it let it say what it wanted to
say without trying to make it anything. I'll say a
(13:28):
couple of really, like in reading it back with you
all today and thinking about some of what is here,
I was trying to sort of do, like like if
I could do a historical deep dive into my own
reading history, and how that reading not only informed the
(13:48):
writer that I became, but really informed the woman that
I was becoming as well. Right, And I remember as
a young girl reading I Know Why the Cage Bird
Sings by Dr Maya Angelo, And I know why the
Cage Bird Sings to me. Some parts of it are
in line with the Color Purple in that you are
(14:10):
meeting a young black girl in the story, but some
very harsh things are happening in her life. And of
course the color Purple is fiction, and I know why
The Cage Bird Sings was autobiographical. But there was something
about reading about this young black girl, this young Maya Angelo,
(14:34):
who's growing up in the South, who has this very
traumatic thing happened to her at a very young age,
and it's so traumatic that it causes her to not
speak for a very long time. And it's interesting because
I remember when Oprah Winfrey talked about I Know Why
the Cage Bird Sings. She talked about the part that
(14:56):
caught her was the initial scene of the story where
I think young Maya's doing like an Easter speech in
her black church growing up. And it was interesting to
me that in this poem, it was that time that
my Angelo was mute that showed up in this poem.
And I didn't realize how much I resonated with that
(15:19):
until writing this, because I was even though I think
about myself who I am now as a woman that
i'm I'm very like you could you could almost drop
me off in front of any crowd of people, in
a room full of people I don't know, and I'm
going to find a way to like connect with most folks.
You know. That's kind of how my personality is. I
(15:41):
feel like my adult personality is a lot more outgoing
than my child personality was. My child personality was very withdrawn.
There was some experiences of Maya's trauma that I also
knew from my own experiences as well. You know, so
I do remember being especially that sort of eight nine
years old, ten years old, that era of my life.
(16:04):
I remember becoming very withdrawn and very quiet. I was
never a child that was going to ham it up.
You know, people are curious about that now because I
do so much stage work, But I was not a
performer as a child. I was a withdrawn reader. And
this line about how quiet can read too adults as
(16:26):
a good kid, I was like WHOA. I was like whoa?
That it was so accurate about how I really felt
growing up. But I just don't think I'd ever written
about it this way until this poem. And there's a
middle stanza here that I'm really really proud of because
I think this part is now we're getting into the
(16:49):
part of the piece that I was writing outside of
the workshop, and I was trying to think, you know
what were the other very specific black girl or black
woman books the really informed a lot of what I
wanted to be as a black woman or as a
black girl. And then I had this option. There are
(17:09):
a lot of authors here, you know, do I want
to shout out the author names? And I have a
couple of other poems where I do that. I shout
out some authors and God, bless mom, I shout out
some authors and writers and never tell a black a
lot of black girl. So I was like, I don't
know that I you know, the a lot of the
names are going to be the same, you know, I
know that I want to do that again. And then
(17:30):
I thought, well, almost all of these books outside of
Maya Angelo's, I know why the Cage Bird Sings were fiction,
books were fiction or poetry. And I wanted to put
more focus on the books and the characters who were there.
I actually ordered us during the pandemic. I ordered a
(17:53):
copy of Roll of Thunder Here My Cry, so that
I could have one in my library. I'm at that
point in my library right. I feel like the past
few years I was sort of decolonizing my library. I
was removing a lot of the books there that were
written by white men, finding corresponding books that were written
by black women and some by women of color on
(18:13):
some similar topics. And a lot of my like sort
of Christian spirituality books were written by white folks because
that was sort of the environment that I'd been in professionally.
But realizing just some of some of that um didn't
align with where I was spiritually, and and then once
I started like getting rid of a bunch of books,
(18:35):
then I could go, Okay, now what do I actually want,
you know, in my library, and so I'm glad to
say that I do have a copy of roll of
Thunder here my cry. But I think the other thing
about this section that was really important to me was
to say the character's name is because the characters were
in some ways equally as important as the author names
for me. But I also love in a poem and
(18:57):
I'm just going to call them easter eggs right now
because I don't know another term to use, But I
love in a poem to leave easter eggs for folks.
And when they hear the poem, there are things there
that they know, but I don't have to take time
in the poem to explain. And this is one of
those sections that I knew that there would be young
(19:18):
black girls or black women that would get to this section.
And when they see how Rolls of Thunder hear the
cries of a little black girl, right when they hear
the blue eyes of Bacola Breed love see these letters
to God. They know the books I'm talking about, they
know the authors I'm talking about, and I in particular
(19:40):
love to do that with black women in mind. I
love to have a poem that just throws all these
things out there that are visceral memories for black girls
and black women, and that they can find them as
I'm on stage or as they're listening to my work.
So that stands I was really very proud of because
I knew, if I get to the point where I'm
doing this poem on stage again, this part is going
(20:03):
to be really nice because there's gonna be some some
black women like nodding in the room. You know, They're
gonna know the names of some of these books, and
they're going to remember the authors here. Another line that
really struck me, that sort of came out of me
without me being conscious of it at the time, was
how Pilot sing a song of Solomon and gave birth
(20:24):
to herself. And I'm referencing Tony Morrison's novel Song of Solomon,
and there is a there's a woman there named Pilot
who is the sister of one of the main characters
in the book. I mean, it could be argued that
maybe Pilot is also a main character of this book,
you know, But it's interesting because she's sort of if
I'm remembering the story right in the novel um and
(20:45):
I I think I talked about this. When I had
Cole Arthur Riley on, we were talking a lot about
Tony Morrison's work and the spirituality there, and I'm just
still struck that this character that Tony Morrison writes that Pilot.
It that there's a woman, there's a black woman named Pilot,
and it's spelled like the biblical historical figure Pilot, who
(21:09):
was involved in a part of like sort of the
story we see as Jesus as headed to the crucifixion, right,
He's one of the figures that Jesus has to go
to so that they can decide what punishment they're going
to give to him. So that a black woman has
that name is fascinating that Tony Morrison writes this character
who has no belly button. And in my forties, I
(21:31):
have to say, Pilot has just become She's become a
spiritual figure to me in certain ways because I feel
very empowered by this idea that a black woman can
give birth to herself, um in certain regards. So that's
still sitting with me. All I don't know, I may
have a whole episode about it some other time. And
(21:52):
this Stanza, this I grew a voice, I planted myself.
I grew a garden of me. I'm gonna tell you
all right now. I'm not a person who's great with titles.
I have in the last three or so years of
my work tried to look at the work itself to
see if the title is there. And this is probably
one of the first poems that that happened that I
(22:14):
didn't know what it was going to be called. And
when I got down this deep into the poem, I
was like a garden of me. That's it. And as
a person who uh got into like having house plants
during the pandemic, I feel like all of us got
into something that we weren't that into, uh. And I
wasn't that into having plants, partly because we were traveling
(22:35):
a lot, so I felt like, all they're gonna do
is sit in our house and die. You know, why
should I be worried about that? But the pandemic has
brought me a lot of plants. I have quite a
few plants, some that were given to me, some that
I bought. So I just I love the idea of
a garden metaphor and just all the things that plants
(22:57):
teach you and the times of the year that it
can kind of seem like your plant is dying. I
have a local place I like to go to in
a lant. It's called the garden Hood. And I have
taken quite a few plants there and have been like,
what's wrong with it? You know, and they'll be like, Oh,
it just needs to be repotted, or it just does
this this time of year. It just does that sometimes
(23:19):
if the leaves are old, you know, and all these
things that you learn about how uh the seasons are
gonna go in a plant's life, and this idea that
I I feel like this poem was in some ways
the beginning of me going I get to grow a voice,
I plant myself. I think a lot of my professional
(23:42):
career was me, I felt like, was me sort of
saying things that people wanted me to say, or the
things that people wanted to hear, the things they expected.
And this poem was the beginning of me really growing
my own voice in a certain way. And I'm gonna
tell y'all, I've had a lot of just tough times
(24:02):
come in my life, you know. And this winter came
and I grew quiet, but I did not die. I
only deepened my roots. Is something that has come back
to me over and over, you know, this idea that
you can go through something that either feels like it's
going to break you or did break you. My therapist
been getting with me about me saying feels like blah
(24:24):
blah blah, because she'll be like, sometimes you say that
something feels like it hurts you this way. But she
was like, I want you to practice saying it hurts
you this way, not just it feels like that, Like
it's real that it hurts you, you know. So I'm
trying y'all, you know, be trying to do your work, okay.
And I also loved talking a little bit about the
(24:47):
library here because I tried to think about overall, like
if reading was such a big thing in my life,
if reading is what helped me become then I've talked
now in the poem about the books I've read, but
I could not let the poem go by without also
talking about the library and it's placed in my life
and all of the things that those of us who
(25:09):
are library heads know about, you know, going there and
checking out the books. And I know a lot of
libraries may be doing away with this now, but when
a lot of us were growing up, and you check
out your book. You had so many days, you could
keep it, so many times you could possibly renew it.
But if you didn't renew it, then you would have
a late fee. And the idea of how much the
(25:31):
library was this place where I got to learn about
so many things and places and people I got to
find out about books. Then maybe I wouldn't have found
out about if it weren't for the library. So shout
out to our local libraries. And this idea that the
same sort of attention you would give to a subject
that you wanted to know about, you know, like if
(25:52):
you wanted to learn how to cook more of this
type of food, you know, you might buy cookbooks by
these certain eads. Or if you wanted to know more
about a particular topic, you might, you know, read more
books about that. If you were traveling to a certain place,
you might want to read books about that place. Right
to give yourself that same sort of study, you know,
(26:15):
that idea of checking out the book of you with
no late fee, that you don't have to put the
book back, that you get a chance to learn about yourself,
how you're becoming, how you're healing, and it is interesting
to me that, of course I couldn't write about all
this reading and becoming without talking about writing. But here
I wasn't really talking about writing as a professional. I
(26:38):
was talking about sort of the ideas of writing that
my mom gave to me. Initially, it was really important
to my mom that I understood that a journal or
a notebook that I keep to myself, it's really important
that that is an important place to put my words
and my thoughts. And so this idea of being able
to sort of write a note to yourself, those good
(27:00):
words to yourself, all those things are really important to
me in general, and important to how the poem got written.
What is the real life story behind performing this poem
for the first time? My memory is getting hazy, y'all,
But I think the first time I ever read this
to anyone was when I did a virtual event for
(27:23):
a Yale Black Seminarians women's gathering, and it was I did.
I did quite a few virtual events over this time
of the first two years of the pandemic, and they
all had different things about them that I enjoyed, but
this was one of my favorite ones. First of all,
it is a privilege and an honor to get to
(27:45):
perform poetry in front of an audience of black women,
you know, it's amazing and and I mean obviously in
part because I'm a Black woman, and because a lot
of my work is is written thought full of Black women,
thoughtful of our stories and thoughtful of our healing journeys
and different things. So to get to do that, and
(28:07):
this is coming from someone who really, for the most part,
I don't do a lot of Christian or church or
those kind of um faith based type of events, you know,
for various reasons that probably belongs on another episode here.
But when I got this request to not only just
(28:28):
talk spiritually with an audience of black women, but specifically
to talk to black women who are going to seminary
at Yale, and it was such a communal experience, uh,
to get to be a part of it, and to
get to share this tender poem with them as they are,
(28:49):
you know, matriculating in an environment that's not easy, you know,
it's not easy, and in their particular ways that that
is not easy for black women. And it was beautiful
even virtually to look at all of their faces across
zoom and get to share this poem. So that's that's
very meaningful to me. How do I feel about the poem? Now,
(29:10):
this poem, it's still one of my favorites. It's still
it's still going to be interesting to me when I
get back to performing sets of poetry, because I haven't
yet done this poem like in front of a live
audience in a set, and I'm curious about that. Like
the other poem that I've done here and are behind,
(29:30):
the poetry is here, Breathing Here, Breathing is a very
tender piece as well, and so I really have to
craft the moment that I'm going to bring that poem
out there. And I'm curious to how Garden of Me
will play a role in my poetry sets in the future.
But that's one of the things I really love about
being a poet is that I can have moments like
(29:52):
that in my set that people are open to it,
they expected, you know, all those things. And I am
informed a lot by stand up comedy and the comedic
process that plays a role in how I write and
plays a big role and how I perform my poetry sets.
You know, I love to make people laugh, and I
love that I'm a poet. So if I want to
(30:14):
hold space for grief in the middle of my sets,
I can do it. If I want to read a
tender poem in the middle of my sets, I can
do that. So I still love this poem very much,
and I look forward to seeing how to sort of
build a story around it and how to put it
in there next to my other pieces. So thank you
(30:34):
all so much for going behind the poetry with me
on Guarden of Me. Thank you for allowing tender feelings
here in the living room, because anything you can bring
your any place, you can bring your tender feelings. You
can bring your tender feelings up in here. Anyways, It's
been so great talking with you all. I'll talk to
you next week. Her What Amina Brown is produced by
(31:09):
Matt Owen for Slo Graffiti Productions as a part of
the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
review the podcast.
Hey, everybody, Welcome back to Her with Amina Brown. I've
had some interviews lately, so it's been nice bringing some
people into our living room. But I'm back just me
and y'all wherever you are listening, and today I'm going
to take you behind the poetry. This is one of
(00:52):
my most recent poems that I've finished in the last
couple of years, so I'm actually really looking forward to
diving into it with you. Usually these poems are older,
so I might have live recordings or studio recordings I've done,
but this poem is a newer one. So I'm just
going to do a reading of this and then I
(01:12):
will take you sort of behind the process of how
this poem actually got written. So here is a reading
of my poem, A Garden of Me. I found my voice.
I found my voice on a page and held its
spine as if I was keeping time at my first
(01:33):
middle school dance. Studied the pages like crystal ball, like
tea leaves. I chose my own adventure, knew the song
of the Caged Bird, understood the mute of Young Maya.
How trauma can make you quiet, How quiet can read
to adults as good kid? How in trouble tries to
erase you. You never find your thrills and causing trouble again.
(01:56):
How rolls of thunder? Here the cries of a little
black girl, not sure if she has anything to say,
or if it matters that she has anything to say,
or if there's power in anything she has to say.
I found my voice in the blue eyes of the coola,
breed love in Seely's letters to God, in the rainbows
of a colored girls. How Pilot sing a song of
Solomon and gave birth to herself. How Janey told my
(02:20):
eyes to watch God, and they did. I grew, I
grew wings, I grew a voice. I planted myself. I
grew a garden of me. I came into full bloom.
I discovered my season. Winter came and I grew quiet,
But I did not die. I only deep into my roots.
I found my voice, and once upon a time is now.
(02:43):
Being a storyteller is miles better than being the princess
and someone else's story. That you can give birth and
be reborn. Don't be afraid to be reborn, to find
your soul sits in a new type of skin. Don't
be afraid to start over, to backspace, to press, to eat,
to control, alt delete, Be your own library, your own
(03:04):
treasure trove of story and page and song. Check out
the Book of You with no late fee. Do not
put yourself on a waiting list for love and care
and gentleness. Find your sanctuary in pages why You're Bound
and be unbound. Steps softly into your own known, into
everything you thought you knew that you now know isn't true.
(03:26):
Breathe gently into your uncertainty. Write a love note to yourself,
to the world, to the woman you used to be,
to the woman you are right now secretly and publicly
admire her. So I normally start off when I take
you all behind the poetry with what made me write
(03:48):
this poem? And I want to give a big, big
shout out to Mia Willis. Mia Willis is a phenomenal,
phenomenal poet that I know from being a part of
Atlanta's poetry community. And Mia was facilitating a workshop and
they were using Michelle Obama's book Becoming as a jumping
off place to help us write. And the prompt that
(04:13):
Mia put out there was for all of us to
think about what was something that we could look at
in our lives that is really responsible for the person
that we've become today. So the beginning of this poem
I actually started writing during MIA's workshop, and then I
(04:35):
got home and kind of looked at the piece, and
you know, when you're in a writing workshop, especially the
amount of time that Mia had to facilitate that with us,
I mean, we were probably there for maybe two hours,
you know, and that includes time for us to sort
of have some discussion with Mia as they were talking
(04:55):
us through the different things that were coming up for
each of us and thinking about what helped us become,
you know, who we are, and then time to write
and then time to share. Right. So it's really not
a lot of time, not for me, enough time to
finish something. But I had a pretty good start, I
would say. A lot of the beginning of what is
there in what became the poem in the end showed
(05:18):
up in the workshop, and I got home and kind
of looked at the poem and just thought, I think
I'd like to, you know, take some time to finish
this piece, you know. And it's interesting because I think
that we were having this workshop, my mind wants to say,
I feel like it was eighteen that we were having
(05:40):
this workshop may have been early nineteen, but we were
having this workshop, and I was in an interesting place
as a writer at that moment. I've talked about this
a lot on the podcast for those of you who
are regular listeners, but you know, I've talked a lot
about how I was at that time, you know, and
that sort of nineteen time, I was really in an interesting,
(06:05):
I don't know, crossroads maybe I would describe it that way,
career wise and creatively as well. You know. Career wise,
I was realizing that I was in a market, which
for me was a Christian, predominantly white market, and my
work was sort of leaning away from what was going
(06:26):
to be really acceptable in that space, and I was
processing what does that mean? You know, what to do
about that? And then I was starting to realize too.
I think it was around this time that I was
also realizing the voice of my poems was becoming very different.
When I first started doing spoken word, it was the
(06:47):
late nineties, and I was really coming out of a
very hip hop inspired space creatively. A lot of how
I write and really and truly a lot of who
I am is very fired with a lot of very
very inspired by and along with a lot of the
music and artists that were out in the late nineties,
(07:07):
a lot of that Outcast and Lauren Hill and Black Thought,
you know, a lot of the hip hop writers that
I was exposed to at that time. So I think
that put a lot of bearing on what I became
as a poet. And in particular, when you come across
a lot of spoken word poets that were writing around
that time, and we were all a lot of us
(07:30):
very inspired by hip hop wordplay and rhythms and things
like that, So my rhyme scheme was a lot tighter.
I used my rhyming dictionary a lot more when I
was writing early on, and then I sort of went
into kind of a lot of Christian and church spaces
and was writing a lot more kind of what I
(07:52):
would say as congregational work, right, writing a lot of
things that I would do in front of a church
congregation in what was supposed to be kind of a
worshipful moment, and those required a certain kind of rhythm.
And it had been a while since I had really
been writing, just because I wanted to going into this workshop,
(08:13):
so I was feeling a lot of trepidation around what
is my voice when I'm not writing a thing that
I've been commissioned to write. What is my voice when
I'm writing just what I want to write, And this
poem was one of the first newer pieces that I started,
So it was interesting to sort of be in a
writing workshop and as a writer, you know your voice
(08:36):
pretty well, you know, you know yourself, but also being
in a discovery process like taking the prompt mea gave
us and then writing and reading it back and going huh.
I wouldn't have expected myself to write about that. I
wouldn't have expected myself to want to approach that in
this particular way. So it was an interesting It was
(08:56):
an interesting crossroads to be at entering the workshop up
and then I think I put the poem down for
a while because I think my schedule traveling kind of
picked up, So I don't think I actually finished this
poem until shortly before the pandemic started, which was also
a wild thing, because before the pandemic, as I've talked
(09:20):
about here on the podcast, before, you know, I would
finish a new piece and like just take it in
my notebook or my journal or whatever and take it
out to the open mic. That's how I would work
out the piece and figure out what edits I needed
to make and how to get it ready for stage.
And so there are probably two or three pieces that
(09:40):
sort of ended up either being written or getting finished
during the pandemic that did not do that process, and
this was one of them. So it's interesting to think
about me kind of returning back to this poem. And
also I think I think it's interesting that a lot
of my poetry career, as far as what people would
(10:01):
have seen me doing on stage or on video, a
lot of my poems were big pieces. You know. They
were meant to get big belly laughs from people, or
they were meant to be these very like somber and
um kind of sobering, emotionally kind of moments. You know.
(10:21):
There was like the light was supposed to come on
and I walk out into the light and I say
this very poignant kind of peace, but still creating this
big kind of dramatic moment, you know. And it was
interesting to me that this poem kind of came in quietly,
and at first I worried about that, you know, I worried,
(10:43):
like because there's a lot of I mean, if I
can use the word sass here. You know, there's a
lot of sass and attitude that I like to have
in my poetry, especially the poetry that I write that
I would do not in a church setting. I mean,
some of my poems I still do, you know, I
would still do them in church settings, But I wasn't
thinking about church settings when I was writing them, right,
(11:05):
the poems that I would think like, I could go
into any sort of kind of concert or performance event
where people actually came there to be entertained. That's what
I mean when I'm differentiating that from church settings. People
that are in church settings typically aren't arriving there to
be entertained, you know. Uh, it is a surprise to
them if you entertain them, right. But I feel like
(11:27):
a lot of my work was really built for environments
where people came there to be entertained, whether they came
there to to think or feel or be in their emotions,
or they came to laugh. Like a lot of the
work I have been doing in the last few years
really fits into that environment. And that's what I think.
Around the time that this poem was coming out, I
was starting to really notice and become aware of that
(11:49):
about my work. That my work wanted to be entertaining,
and I was in a market that wasn't built on that, really,
you know. So I think it's interesting to think about
how this poem really arrived quietly. It is not It
is not a big, loud, boisterous poem, and I like that,
(12:11):
you know, I like that now, But I think at
the time I was like, what's this poem doing? You know,
I'm really trying to stick in there and see what
did the poem want to say? It felt very tender,
and I think I've talked about this and another Behind
the Poetry episode two, but you know, I haven't been
a very cathartic poet in the sense of being a
(12:34):
poet that it is rage or it is sadness, you know,
it is large emotions that send me to the page.
I'm probably more of a poet that's in my head
a lot, and it's things I think about and things
I wonder that sent me to the page. If something
very very emotional happens to me, I actually have to
(12:56):
really do a lot of work to write through that.
I typically talk through that instead, you know. So it
was interesting to sort of let this poem be tender
and let it let it say what it wanted to
say without trying to make it anything. I'll say a
(13:28):
couple of really, like in reading it back with you
all today and thinking about some of what is here,
I was trying to sort of do, like like if
I could do a historical deep dive into my own
reading history, and how that reading not only informed the
(13:48):
writer that I became, but really informed the woman that
I was becoming as well. Right, And I remember as
a young girl reading I Know Why the Cage Bird
Sings by Dr Maya Angelo, And I know why the
Cage Bird Sings to me. Some parts of it are
in line with the Color Purple in that you are
(14:10):
meeting a young black girl in the story, but some
very harsh things are happening in her life. And of
course the color Purple is fiction, and I know why
The Cage Bird Sings was autobiographical. But there was something
about reading about this young black girl, this young Maya Angelo,
(14:34):
who's growing up in the South, who has this very
traumatic thing happened to her at a very young age,
and it's so traumatic that it causes her to not
speak for a very long time. And it's interesting because
I remember when Oprah Winfrey talked about I Know Why
the Cage Bird Sings. She talked about the part that
(14:56):
caught her was the initial scene of the story where
I think young Maya's doing like an Easter speech in
her black church growing up. And it was interesting to
me that in this poem, it was that time that
my Angelo was mute that showed up in this poem.
And I didn't realize how much I resonated with that
(15:19):
until writing this, because I was even though I think
about myself who I am now as a woman that
i'm I'm very like you could you could almost drop
me off in front of any crowd of people, in
a room full of people I don't know, and I'm
going to find a way to like connect with most folks.
You know. That's kind of how my personality is. I
(15:41):
feel like my adult personality is a lot more outgoing
than my child personality was. My child personality was very withdrawn.
There was some experiences of Maya's trauma that I also
knew from my own experiences as well. You know, so
I do remember being especially that sort of eight nine
years old, ten years old, that era of my life.
(16:04):
I remember becoming very withdrawn and very quiet. I was
never a child that was going to ham it up.
You know, people are curious about that now because I
do so much stage work, But I was not a
performer as a child. I was a withdrawn reader. And
this line about how quiet can read too adults as
(16:26):
a good kid, I was like WHOA. I was like whoa?
That it was so accurate about how I really felt
growing up. But I just don't think I'd ever written
about it this way until this poem. And there's a
middle stanza here that I'm really really proud of because
I think this part is now we're getting into the
(16:49):
part of the piece that I was writing outside of
the workshop, and I was trying to think, you know
what were the other very specific black girl or black
woman books the really informed a lot of what I
wanted to be as a black woman or as a
black girl. And then I had this option. There are
(17:09):
a lot of authors here, you know, do I want
to shout out the author names? And I have a
couple of other poems where I do that. I shout
out some authors and God, bless mom, I shout out
some authors and writers and never tell a black a
lot of black girl. So I was like, I don't
know that I you know, the a lot of the
names are going to be the same, you know, I
know that I want to do that again. And then
(17:30):
I thought, well, almost all of these books outside of
Maya Angelo's, I know why the Cage Bird Sings were fiction,
books were fiction or poetry. And I wanted to put
more focus on the books and the characters who were there.
I actually ordered us during the pandemic. I ordered a
(17:53):
copy of Roll of Thunder Here My Cry, so that
I could have one in my library. I'm at that
point in my library right. I feel like the past
few years I was sort of decolonizing my library. I
was removing a lot of the books there that were
written by white men, finding corresponding books that were written
by black women and some by women of color on
(18:13):
some similar topics. And a lot of my like sort
of Christian spirituality books were written by white folks because
that was sort of the environment that I'd been in professionally.
But realizing just some of some of that um didn't
align with where I was spiritually, and and then once
I started like getting rid of a bunch of books,
(18:35):
then I could go, Okay, now what do I actually want,
you know, in my library, and so I'm glad to
say that I do have a copy of roll of
Thunder here my cry. But I think the other thing
about this section that was really important to me was
to say the character's name is because the characters were
in some ways equally as important as the author names
for me. But I also love in a poem and
(18:57):
I'm just going to call them easter eggs right now
because I don't know another term to use, But I
love in a poem to leave easter eggs for folks.
And when they hear the poem, there are things there
that they know, but I don't have to take time
in the poem to explain. And this is one of
those sections that I knew that there would be young
(19:18):
black girls or black women that would get to this section.
And when they see how Rolls of Thunder hear the
cries of a little black girl, right when they hear
the blue eyes of Bacola Breed love see these letters
to God. They know the books I'm talking about, they
know the authors I'm talking about, and I in particular
(19:40):
love to do that with black women in mind. I
love to have a poem that just throws all these
things out there that are visceral memories for black girls
and black women, and that they can find them as
I'm on stage or as they're listening to my work.
So that stands I was really very proud of because
I knew, if I get to the point where I'm
doing this poem on stage again, this part is going
(20:03):
to be really nice because there's gonna be some some
black women like nodding in the room. You know, They're
gonna know the names of some of these books, and
they're going to remember the authors here. Another line that
really struck me, that sort of came out of me
without me being conscious of it at the time, was
how Pilot sing a song of Solomon and gave birth
(20:24):
to herself. And I'm referencing Tony Morrison's novel Song of Solomon,
and there is a there's a woman there named Pilot
who is the sister of one of the main characters
in the book. I mean, it could be argued that
maybe Pilot is also a main character of this book,
you know, But it's interesting because she's sort of if
I'm remembering the story right in the novel um and
(20:45):
I I think I talked about this. When I had
Cole Arthur Riley on, we were talking a lot about
Tony Morrison's work and the spirituality there, and I'm just
still struck that this character that Tony Morrison writes that Pilot.
It that there's a woman, there's a black woman named Pilot,
and it's spelled like the biblical historical figure Pilot, who
(21:09):
was involved in a part of like sort of the
story we see as Jesus as headed to the crucifixion, right,
He's one of the figures that Jesus has to go
to so that they can decide what punishment they're going
to give to him. So that a black woman has
that name is fascinating that Tony Morrison writes this character
who has no belly button. And in my forties, I
(21:31):
have to say, Pilot has just become She's become a
spiritual figure to me in certain ways because I feel
very empowered by this idea that a black woman can
give birth to herself, um in certain regards. So that's
still sitting with me. All I don't know, I may
have a whole episode about it some other time. And
(21:52):
this Stanza, this I grew a voice, I planted myself.
I grew a garden of me. I'm gonna tell you
all right now. I'm not a person who's great with titles.
I have in the last three or so years of
my work tried to look at the work itself to
see if the title is there. And this is probably
one of the first poems that that happened that I
(22:14):
didn't know what it was going to be called. And
when I got down this deep into the poem, I
was like a garden of me. That's it. And as
a person who uh got into like having house plants
during the pandemic, I feel like all of us got
into something that we weren't that into, uh. And I
wasn't that into having plants, partly because we were traveling
(22:35):
a lot, so I felt like, all they're gonna do
is sit in our house and die. You know, why
should I be worried about that? But the pandemic has
brought me a lot of plants. I have quite a
few plants, some that were given to me, some that
I bought. So I just I love the idea of
a garden metaphor and just all the things that plants
(22:57):
teach you and the times of the year that it
can kind of seem like your plant is dying. I
have a local place I like to go to in
a lant. It's called the garden Hood. And I have
taken quite a few plants there and have been like,
what's wrong with it? You know, and they'll be like, Oh,
it just needs to be repotted, or it just does
this this time of year. It just does that sometimes
(23:19):
if the leaves are old, you know, and all these
things that you learn about how uh the seasons are
gonna go in a plant's life, and this idea that
I I feel like this poem was in some ways
the beginning of me going I get to grow a voice,
I plant myself. I think a lot of my professional
(23:42):
career was me, I felt like, was me sort of
saying things that people wanted me to say, or the
things that people wanted to hear, the things they expected.
And this poem was the beginning of me really growing
my own voice in a certain way. And I'm gonna
tell y'all, I've had a lot of just tough times
(24:02):
come in my life, you know. And this winter came
and I grew quiet, but I did not die. I
only deepened my roots. Is something that has come back
to me over and over, you know, this idea that
you can go through something that either feels like it's
going to break you or did break you. My therapist
been getting with me about me saying feels like blah
(24:24):
blah blah, because she'll be like, sometimes you say that
something feels like it hurts you this way. But she
was like, I want you to practice saying it hurts
you this way, not just it feels like that, Like
it's real that it hurts you, you know. So I'm
trying y'all, you know, be trying to do your work, okay.
And I also loved talking a little bit about the
(24:47):
library here because I tried to think about overall, like
if reading was such a big thing in my life,
if reading is what helped me become then I've talked
now in the poem about the books I've read, but
I could not let the poem go by without also
talking about the library and it's placed in my life
and all of the things that those of us who
(25:09):
are library heads know about, you know, going there and
checking out the books. And I know a lot of
libraries may be doing away with this now, but when
a lot of us were growing up, and you check
out your book. You had so many days, you could
keep it, so many times you could possibly renew it.
But if you didn't renew it, then you would have
a late fee. And the idea of how much the
(25:31):
library was this place where I got to learn about
so many things and places and people I got to
find out about books. Then maybe I wouldn't have found
out about if it weren't for the library. So shout
out to our local libraries. And this idea that the
same sort of attention you would give to a subject
that you wanted to know about, you know, like if
(25:52):
you wanted to learn how to cook more of this
type of food, you know, you might buy cookbooks by
these certain eads. Or if you wanted to know more
about a particular topic, you might, you know, read more
books about that. If you were traveling to a certain place,
you might want to read books about that place. Right
to give yourself that same sort of study, you know,
(26:15):
that idea of checking out the book of you with
no late fee, that you don't have to put the
book back, that you get a chance to learn about yourself,
how you're becoming, how you're healing, and it is interesting
to me that, of course I couldn't write about all
this reading and becoming without talking about writing. But here
I wasn't really talking about writing as a professional. I
(26:38):
was talking about sort of the ideas of writing that
my mom gave to me. Initially, it was really important
to my mom that I understood that a journal or
a notebook that I keep to myself, it's really important
that that is an important place to put my words
and my thoughts. And so this idea of being able
to sort of write a note to yourself, those good
(27:00):
words to yourself, all those things are really important to
me in general, and important to how the poem got written.
What is the real life story behind performing this poem
for the first time? My memory is getting hazy, y'all,
But I think the first time I ever read this
to anyone was when I did a virtual event for
(27:23):
a Yale Black Seminarians women's gathering, and it was I did.
I did quite a few virtual events over this time
of the first two years of the pandemic, and they
all had different things about them that I enjoyed, but
this was one of my favorite ones. First of all,
it is a privilege and an honor to get to
(27:45):
perform poetry in front of an audience of black women,
you know, it's amazing and and I mean obviously in
part because I'm a Black woman, and because a lot
of my work is is written thought full of Black women,
thoughtful of our stories and thoughtful of our healing journeys
and different things. So to get to do that, and
(28:07):
this is coming from someone who really, for the most part,
I don't do a lot of Christian or church or
those kind of um faith based type of events, you know,
for various reasons that probably belongs on another episode here.
But when I got this request to not only just
(28:28):
talk spiritually with an audience of black women, but specifically
to talk to black women who are going to seminary
at Yale, and it was such a communal experience, uh,
to get to be a part of it, and to
get to share this tender poem with them as they are,
(28:49):
you know, matriculating in an environment that's not easy, you know,
it's not easy, and in their particular ways that that
is not easy for black women. And it was beautiful
even virtually to look at all of their faces across
zoom and get to share this poem. So that's that's
very meaningful to me. How do I feel about the poem? Now,
(29:10):
this poem, it's still one of my favorites. It's still
it's still going to be interesting to me when I
get back to performing sets of poetry, because I haven't
yet done this poem like in front of a live
audience in a set, and I'm curious about that. Like
the other poem that I've done here and are behind,
(29:30):
the poetry is here, Breathing Here, Breathing is a very
tender piece as well, and so I really have to
craft the moment that I'm going to bring that poem
out there. And I'm curious to how Garden of Me
will play a role in my poetry sets in the future.
But that's one of the things I really love about
being a poet is that I can have moments like
(29:52):
that in my set that people are open to it,
they expected, you know, all those things. And I am
informed a lot by stand up comedy and the comedic
process that plays a role in how I write and
plays a big role and how I perform my poetry sets.
You know, I love to make people laugh, and I
love that I'm a poet. So if I want to
(30:14):
hold space for grief in the middle of my sets,
I can do it. If I want to read a
tender poem in the middle of my sets, I can
do that. So I still love this poem very much,
and I look forward to seeing how to sort of
build a story around it and how to put it
in there next to my other pieces. So thank you
(30:34):
all so much for going behind the poetry with me
on Guarden of Me. Thank you for allowing tender feelings
here in the living room, because anything you can bring
your any place, you can bring your tender feelings. You
can bring your tender feelings up in here. Anyways, It's
been so great talking with you all. I'll talk to
you next week. Her What Amina Brown is produced by
(31:09):
Matt Owen for Slo Graffiti Productions as a part of
the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
review the podcast.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.