KAMERYN ALEXA CARTER: Hi friends, my name is Kameryn Alexa Carter and I am one of the founding co-editors of Emergent Literary. I want to thank you for spending time with Issue Four: Beatitude, and I’m so thrilled to share this conversation with Makshya Tolbert with you all. It was so rich, and wide-ranging, and nourishing to say the least. A little bit more about Makshya: Makshya Tolbert is a black queer poet held by black memeory and ecological possibility. Her writing has appeared in For the Culture, The New Farmer’s Almanac, Gastronomica, Narrative Magazine, Emergence Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, and many other places. Makshya is a poet in the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program. In her free time, she is elsewhere, where Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. calls “that physical, or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.” Thank you again for listening and let’s jump in.

KAC: My first question is actually about reverence which is sort of in line with what we were just talking about with beatitude actually because I feel like across your work there's a very much a reverence for the natural world, there's this intimacy between your speakers and the rivers and trees and stones and this sort of communing with the natural world and so I mean—I think a lot about like Lucille Clifton’s, like, “cutting greens” or Gerard Manley Hopkins, you know, these poets that very much have this intimacy with nature, and so I wanted to know if you can talk to us a little bit about what your relationship to reverence might be, if that’s a mode that you come from when you're engaging in your mode of composition for you or is it something that you feel generally toward nature, ‘cause it seems like that's definitely a thread across your work.

MAKSHYA TOLBERT: Hmm. Mm-hmm… you know I, I grew up Roman Catholic and Mormon and so trained into a certain kind of restraint and reverence and it's taken a long time to feel like I even am invited into that language and I don't go there anymore. You know, in this moment, like, I'm just mindful that it feels important to honor what the shift has been, you know, these days when I think about reverence, I think about just the quietude. You know, there being nothing to say, but not because I'm in restraint mode, or not because I'm fighting but because that's how the trees are and I feel like they reflect me back to me and I can reflect them back to them and, recently, somebody called me a tree and I was just so amused, I was like thank you—

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: —and I thought what they were actually inviting me into you know, was just the aliveness, the presence, the steadiness and to know that the root of tree, deru, D-E R-U, literally also means steadiness and that’s kind of—I wonder if there's like a sort of living quiet, quietude that is what the reverence feels like for me. You know, when I've watched reverence or the closest I get to it really make me available to the work, you know—Lucille Clifton actually says something to Sonia Sanchez in a conversation they had where Lucille Clifton says “These poems wanted to get written and I was available”. 

It’s how I start my syllabus with my students at UVA and all semester we're asking ourselves what is it like to be available, how do I get there, and so I wonder if I can't tell if reverence is how I get there or where I'm going, you know, but it's like, it's alive and for me it's quiet and then so much wants to happen after that. 

KAC: That’s so lovely—I think sometimes we as artists start out with a target in mind when we approach creating and to me that's always something I'm sort of fighting against because I feel like what you're saying about availability assumes that the work has a sort of liveness and, you know, a sort of activity to bring itself to us and so I think that's such a lovely way of of thinking about it. Similarly to reverence, I'm thinking about, too, your bio, where you talked about ecological possibility—

MT: Uh-huh. 

KAC: And the idea of possibility always feels like an edge to me, I've been thinking about like, present participles a lot and how—like what it feels like to have this sort of, like, goingness, where you’re leaning forward in this way but there's an anxiety with that, and, you know, of course, we're in a place of ecological precarity, right, which, you know, we sort of just talked about before we started recording, and so I'm wondering what that at ecological possibility looks like for you in a moment of such precarity, and it doesn't have to be, you know, a big, huge, sort-of overarching ideology but even if it's, you know, what can you do daily or what do you feel like you incorporate daily to move toward that ecological possibility or tune into it.

MT: Yeah. It’s—on the one hand I feel like part of the question for me is about practices, you know, so maybe I'll start there. As many mornings as I can, I take the weather and I go outside and I do this practice that I learned when I first began doing controlled burn trainings in Sonoma called spinning the weather, and there's something about quite literally measuring and noticing and recording the conditions, like it's often so much tension to go about my day having tried to notice and move at the pace of the atmosphere—

KAC: Hmm. 

MT: Okay, the sky is almost at its full capacity as far as moisture in humidity, what is my pace? You know, I think about how many other things I take my pace from: the wrong people, you know, institutions—

KAC: Mm-hmm 

MT: —and being like what if my pace was at the pace of the earth? You know, at the pace of the atmosphere, and when I don't do my practices I feel that, too, you know, so I wonder what the relationship between understanding the conditions and understanding what’s possible is, you know. The other thing I was going to say—recently somebody said—also devoted to climate and livelihood—and he said “I don't want what's coming”. 

KAC: Mmm.

MT: And I've been thinking about what he said a lot, because it's not coming. It's here. It doesn’t actually matter that he doesn't want it. But I thought about how, what is an alternative to the grip of not wanting that and how can I just make and unmake work, practice and relationship that acknowledges the conditions and what's coming and still feels like life is possible? You know, and so I just been thinking like how do I practice the—the trust that something's already here and that we can look through it together. You know, when, what hap—what do I—how can I, like, soften the grief or the edge of folks who just cannot talk about what is coming, you know, who need the distance and how can I close the gap, but like, make it kind.

KAC: Mm-hmm. It's so interesting that you mention weather because I remember, um—I guess, like, when we first sort of pen pal’d—you mentioned weather and you mentioned the etymology of weather meaning, I think, to come through safely?

MT: Right?

KAC: And, you know, at first, when I read it, I was like okay, verb, right? Like to weather the storm, right, okay. 

MT: Yeah. 

KAC: But then I started thinking like how is weather as a state, or like, sort of, as a noun about coming through safely? How does it escort us through safely or how do we manage coming through what might feel like a storm or what might feel threatening to our safety in terms of ecology? Um, how do we meet storm where it's at or, you know—I’m interested in ways that you've been, sort of, coming through safely, daily, you know, as things, sort of, are coming and are here.

MT: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. You know, so I'm thirty, and I decided that,when I turned thirty, I would stop lying that I don't have asthma.

KAC: Hmm.

MT: And now that I'm willing to say what is true, and embodied, I've been able to ask for help, and also quite literally shield and protect myself from when the air is toxic.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: I lead tree walks in Charlottesville two to three times a week and a couple years ago, I would have said I don't have asthma, I don't care about the particles, let's just meet, so I can show you what I love and, you know, it's so small and so big, but the distinction between what I truly know I would have done and even this week, what it's been like to say, we won't walk today— 

KAC: Mm-hm.

MT:—like, I will stay inside, you know, like to literally choose relief and shade and shelter over what one of my doctors calls sending out a representative every day.

KAC: Wow.

MT: Yeah. I've been really honoring the idea that when I'm safe, I can actually recover,  so, as I find ways to keep my body and my breathing—breathful, to then be like, wow, look at what else is happening because I'm not wheezing. I was wheezing all fall. And then, I was also teaching you three times a week and checking in that I was doing great. So I wonder about just being truthful about what my range can be and where my breathing is at. Like, that my breath has become suddenly something—seems to really guide my capacity to weather, as verb.

KAC: That's really interesting, I also—It makes me think about creative practice, and the way that we might—because a lot of people will say, I wake up every morning and I write this amount of pages, or I write for this amount of time and that's my practice and that's how I crank things out, right? Or a lot of people will say, sort of like, it just comes at me or to me, it’s sort of a more mystical practice and, you know, I wonder, for you, sort of what camp you fall in, if either and—because it—sometimes it works for people, right? To have that sort of like schedule and, and limitation but—I mean, I've always found that that always troubles me, you know, I can never get out what I need to get out unless I just—and it goes back to availability, right—unless I just sort of, like open myself up to it coming, and that may mean that for months, nothing comes. 

MT: Yeah.

KAC: And in a world where we're expected to just like, crank things out in order to, sort of stay in people's purview or to feel like we're really practicing, I wonder how you feel when you come to the work about discipline, the idea of discipline, or is it sort of— sort of more of a like visitation, I guess.

MT:  Mm-hm, mm-hm. What's so interesting to me is that I'm pretty regimented about how I start my mornings. And, you know, I'm on my Artist’s Way—

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: —journey, you know, like others and—it's been a couple of years, of doing those morning pages and, what I’ll say is that they’re not poetry pages, just morning pages. 

KAC: Mm.

MT: You’re writing whatever is coming up, and I don't—I'm not flexible about that. I'm not flexible because I'm committed to making room everyday.

KAC: Mm. 

MT: And because, to me, not to call Julia Cameron, Toni Morrison proximate to each other, but I really feel as if those pages clear space and the clearing—a clearing comes to mind. 

KAC: Hm. 

MT: You know, and I do that and I notice that I can go to poetry, go to pottery, go to my generative social practice, go to my tree commission work, and I feel available, but the practice is not the poetry, you know, the practices are clearing that space first thing in the morning, taking my weather measurements in the morning, sometimes juggling in the morning—but there's something about all of that is literally just about circulation, you know what I mean? So I wonder about the idea that I'm most disciplined or rigorous about making space and these days I'm trying to have as little constraint in as few terms as possible on what the poetry is going to be like. I’m like, just focus on making the space and when I tell you, I'm writing all the time, like everyday, because I think—I think it's because I'm holding all of the other, life work so seriously.

KAC: Are these handwritten pages or typed?

MT: Oh, they’re handwritten and I'm in my Leuchtturm every morning and I've had help, you know, they were—the first few months I wasn't doing it alone, I had someone next to me every morning, you know, and they were doing it, too. Sometimes, I don't get to it till 4 p.m.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: Okay.

KAC: Yeah, I think the handwriting piece is so crucial because there's something about sitting down at the computer and opening a document that—that, at least, to me, feels like I need to have a final draft first—

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—there’s some sort of like austerity and pressure to opening up that document and trying to transmit what's in here *points to head* to there *points to laptop* and so, I found—and I had a teacher a long time ago that was like, you should handwrite your drafts, and I was like, oh whatever, you know, as we—as young people do, like, oh whatever—

MT: [LAUGHS]

KAC: —what is she talking about—

MT: Like, mind your business.

KAC: Right! Like, you don’t know what my practice is, whatever. And then, once I started doing it, it did feel like a clearing—I mean, it literally felt like, I couldn't keep up with my hand—you know, or like, my hand couldn’t keep up with my mind because it was this like, sort of expelling of—

MT: Yeah.

KAC:—thoughts and, I mean, I think that's such an incredible—I think you, sort of, are floating in-between discipline and having a rigorous practice, but also just being open to—

MT: Mm-hmm. 

KAC:—like you said, your pace and what your—what you need in order to, you know, get that out, but not a pressure of, okay, this is going to be a poem, or this is going to be sort of this formal—take this formal configuration. I am curious, are you a person who remembers their dreams?

MT: No, I don't do that. 

KAC: Okay.

MT: And I—

KAC: [LAUGHS] I just wanted to know because of the morning thing.

MT:—I haven't met anyone as extreme as I am about being uninterested in my dream life, actually. 

KAC: Hmm. 

MT: Last week, at a workshop, a poet I really admire asked all of us if we record our dreams and I couldn't believe how loudly I said, I don't do that. 

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: And he was like, okay. You know, and I said, I like being awake. 

KAC: Hm. 

MT: And I thought about, just, the gravity of feeling so strongly, you know, and I wonder, if one of the threats to discipline is the idea of wanting more control, over my life and I think dreams offer—discipline’s hard for someone who is, um, three degrees in and type A and a hustler and, you know, was raised by a veteran and a cop.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: You know, my grandmother and my godmother. I know discipline, like, so well. So well. And I'm about nine and a half months into an eating disorder treatment right now and discipline is the thing I am always trying to recover from.

KAC: Hm. 

MT: And so it's confusing as a writer, you know, poetry being so—can be so procedural and structural and so disciplined and so disciplinary, might I add, since I love to make poets mad—

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: —and to—[LAUGHS]—you know, and so, to want to release control when I know that, in some places, that kind of commitment can be really generative and that kind of commitment can also be really harmful.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: And I'm trying to  reconcile my relationship, you know, with practice and discipline and rigor because I think I got, if it's reasonable to say, too rigorous.

MT: You know?

KAC: Yeah. [LAUGHS]. Yeah.  I mean there's always that saying that's like, you learn the rules to break them, but I find—I find that true if I'm like, learning how to write a sonnet, I guess. [LAUGHS] Then I like, sort of—can figure out ways to, like, be inventive within these constraints and blah blah blah, but in terms of general rules, I find that there's such a delicate line between holding yourself accountable to, like, your values within practice and also, like, oppressing yourself with that need for control and that need for structure and, I do think it's very interesting about the dreams, because I think a lot of artists put a lot of premium on sort of interpreting the subconscious, but I don’t know, I’m of the mind that it might need to remain sub—[LAUGHS]—Like, it might need to remain—

MT: Yeah.

KAC:—sort of a thread underneath things, but I think—I don't know that it's a way to enter, just—to try to decode yourself, in that way, you know—

MT: Yeah.

KAC:—I don't know what it offers, but yeah—I mean, you mentioned—this is another question I had for you, too—because you mentioned disciplines and—and I know that because you have various creative practices, it seems like you are, by virtue of that—I don't really want to say troubling the idea of discipline but— 

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—but I'll say, maybe? I mean, even you saying, like, you like to make poets mad, it’s—I mean, it's so fun to make poets mad, but also—

MT: Right, right.

KAC:—I wonder if part of that is also inhabiting freely these various disciplines and I'm curious as to how you, like—I mean, you, you mentioned “The Changing Same,” too, before and Baraka says that secular and, you know, nonsecular music cross-pollinate—

MT: Hm.

KAC:—and I was so curious about that phrase, and I wonder if you feel like your various disciplines sort of cross-pollinate or feed each other or have friction or—you know, what's your relationship to working in these different media?

MT: Mm-hmm. I can't help but think about discipline, like, what comes to mind. Both humility of learning, and also—punishment. Straight up punishment. 

KAC: Hm.

MT: And that I think learning, for me, across my disciplines is always holding that entanglement, of schools and communities being carceral.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: And also of school and community being where I live, you know, I've always been a reader and a learner and someone that is concerningly coachable, so I might have to ask you to repeat the question again, but, to just start with—[LAUGHS]—the tension of everything I do, I'm always holding that, how I wield what I'm learning, how I wield my curiosity can do a lot of harm—

KAC: Hm.

MT: —or it can be really generative and curious. With that frame, can you repeat what you asked me?

KAC: Yeah! Um, that's actually an incredible frame, but I’m curious if your disciplines inform each other or maybe, they resist each other sometimes or maybe you’re uninterested in distinguishing between your pottery practice, your, your cooking and your poem making.

MT: Mm-hmm. You know, I've been working since I was maybe twenty, as an undergrad, on trying to hold that I wanted to write poems, farm, and garden and be some kind of urban designer or architect and I never wanted to choose. I wanted people to just see how much width I had and say, we have room for all of that. And so, I promised myself that I would try that and, I didn't start working with clay until I was twenty-two, after my grandmother who raised me died. But right away it was just one of many things that I knew was inextricable, you know, when—that I wanted to hold these—hold all of these things and to see my practices as irreducible. And I haven't stopped, and to have this show coming up that is as much about pottery as it is about poetry as it is about these walks—

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: —and, you know, this longing to put more shade on the ground in Charlottesville, it’s, it’s  the confirmation that nobody's actually asking me to choose, right? Like, really, nobody I have—please, no one has said to me, pick one.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT:—and so I'm just, I’m, I'm moved not only by how young I was when I decided that I was going to cook, I was going to farm, I was going to write and I'll figure it out, and that even now, I'm still holding all that, but I'm not trying to figure out—I’m not trying to figure it out, it’s just here, um. When I'm coiling, I’m quiet.

KAC: Hm.

MT: It’s the one of the only things I can do that quiets me down. And so, sometimes, this last six months, I’ll coil and maybe, I'll think of some language or a poem will start and I have this corkboard behind me and I can just stop what I'm doing and go put a little note on there and I think about just how much coiling has to happen, so that I can find my way toward these first drafts. So much of my practice is social, asking people what they need, trying to learn all these trees, trying to figure out all the different ways you measure trees and, so I need something to balance me out, cause I have very… intense energy. [LAUGHS]

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: And especially when somebody wants to receive what I have to say, you know, so…the clay is quieting me down, you know, I feel like it's really where I get to actually center and writing is just—can be so activating, for me, and I've been saying to anyone that wants to argue that writing is bad for my health and maybe yours, too, you know, depending on who I'm talking to, that I’ll add the second part, and so I've just been trying to figure out, how do I practice art in ways that are life-affirming, and I need the material, so I think clay and water literally—I think that's what's opening me up, you know, it's keeping me quiet, the potentiality of a pot, you know, I think it, just, is so humbling for me, to be able to start there and see what… I don't know, to go from there. 

KAC: Mm-hmm. You know who I'm thinking of is June Jordan—

MT: Mmm.

KAC: —for so many reasons, right? Because I'm thinking of “Skyrise for Harlem” and just the idea that…  you could somehow synthesize—or maybe not even synthesize but hold—all of these things that you're talking about poetry, urban design and urban planning—

MT: Mm-hmm. 

KAC: —ecology, you know, that… it is possible to hold all of these things together without even really interrogating the places where they, you know, are stitched together or not and, um, you know, I just think June Jordan was such an incredible example of that and that's really who I was thinking of when you were talking.

MT: When I think about June Jordan, I think about… her love poems, and the relationship between, like, intimacy and a deep tenderness and her ecological and infrastructural work. There's something about infrastructure and intimacy that I'm always thinking about. I think precarity, which came up in our conversation earlier around the climate, you know, when these questions of how do we love each other when the air is bad? You know, how do we love each other when housing is unsafe? And so, I mean, June Jordan has been such a deep compass for me and I'm mindful that even the word compass, which is part of my weather kit I think is to pace out together, etymologically. And I love all those words that are holding that C-O-M or C-O-N at the beginning. Um, the, the sort of implied beholdenness, you know, so I mean I'm—the grace of even inviting June Jordan into a conversation—{LAUGHS]—

MT: —and I was in my first job out of undergrad was in New York City, funding black and brown farmers and producers, to do their work at their pace and it was deeply intimate. They wer—they’re elders, you know, and so I'm just thinking about what you're opening up around… practicing love and practicing relationship at the scale of our neighborhoods, at the scale of the climate, at the scale of our breathing and, um, maybe I'll say when I was in grad school, before this grad school, somebody said, infrastructure is always poised on the brink of collapse.

KAC: Hm. 

MT: So I've never looked back, I'm like, oh, it’s always crumbling, it's always trying to make its way, it's like ego, like desperate, you know, and doesn't know it has steady ground and I wonder what—how can language or relation study something that is unwell?

KAC: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, thinking about intimacy and scale, I was re-reading your poems before this and you have that in line—oh, I can't remember the title of the poem right now, but the speaker is with a lover and, you know, you write giving planets—

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—that the person is giving planets to the other and there is this intimacy at the scale of, um, people loving each other, there's an intimacy at the scale of the way that we interact with our environment, but I'm also interested in…what ways, not only might you feel intimate with nature on a sort of microcosmic scale, but like, are you thinking about—not to use the word microcosmic as I'm about to ask about cosmos—[LAUGHS]—but do you feel a pull toward some sort of cosmic or mystical way of relating, whether that's to other people in your life or, you know, to the environment more largely or—

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—I mean, you mentioned spirituality before and sort of negotiating your relationship to the way you were brought up in a spirituality of restraint—

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—but I wonder, you know, if you think about giving planets in sort of a larger way. 

MT: Mm-hmm…  I'm thinking about George Washington Carver.

KAC: Hm.

MT: And…   the walks he would take everyday. And I—he said, he says somewhere that he felt like nature was God’s broadcasting station. [LAUGHS] 

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: And I, you know, I've always loved..  the land and I've always loved the radio. And so, there's just something about George Washington Carver talking about being on these walks and seeing the god in everything.

KAC: Mm-hmm. 

MT: You know, all of his attention, just holding this awe and so, I've been—you know, the last few years, I've just been feeling so held and so protective, my friend says, under the auspices of the Earth.

KAC: Hm.

MT: I, I don't, I don't have a god and I don't believe I ever did, you know, but there's something about being so met at the scale of the Earth that I don't even worry about it?

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT: You know, when—it's complicated, I find that some of the language of mysticism feels like something that white women are holding? And I've always been hesitant to call myself a mystic or to do anything or say anything that might come with isolating or distancing myself from the kind of, like, humble, black, material life and intimate life that just feels so true to me. Um.. but I feel clear, you know, on maybe awe as being the closest thing, the closest that I get to seeing the god in everything—

KAC: Hm.

MT:—you know, I can't, I can't say that I'm seeing the god but just to feel so alive, you know, in the ways that I'm, every day that I wake up, able to be… in, like, the miracle of my attention, you know, just—not even mine, just the miracle of attention, so, so you hear, even now, that sometimes the language scares me, you know, but, um… I find myself not so much seeking a kind of mystery, but all the time, just being truly… quieted by, just, what it's like to be alive and I always say that, when I am awake, everything is even greener than I can remember.

KAC: Mm.

MT: You know, and I might not be…cosmic, it might just be earthly—

KAC: Mm-hmm. 

MT: —but that’s good enough for me, you know.

KAC: Yeah, that—I love that, um, there's this poem by Christopher Gilbert and it's called “Time with Stevie Wonder in It”. 

MT: That’s my favorite poet!

KAC: Really?! That is so wild. I’m scared, what’s going on?

MT: No, literally! I could cry. 

KAC: What is happening?

MT: Whoa!

KAC: That’s amazing, I had no idea. [LAUGHS] That’s wild.

MT: I was literally holding Turning into Dwelling this morning. 

KAC: Oh god. Wow, okay! Well! And—speaking of, like, I mean, maybe Christopher Gilbert is here with us, not to be too, I mean—

MT: Wow.

KAC: Yeah. I've been reading Gilbert a lot lately and, I mean, I am so excited for you to talk more about, you know, the work, but I—the poem that I'm thinking of… I think a lot about, like, frequency and how part of it is about the music, right? And Stevie Wonder, but also part of it is about, like, traveling from down south up north and about, like, possibility but—I'm thinking a lot about, like, the way the radio, he talks about how the radio cuts out when you go through a certain spot and I'm, like, you know, what, what can I tap into in that spot where the r—the music is cutting out, but the static is there, what's inside of that static and, you know, is that a frequency that I can hear or is it something that I can accept that, like—you know, it's like how dogs can only hear—[LAUGHS]—you know—

MT: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

KAC:—only dogs can hear a certain frequency, right? Do I just accept that, like, you know, there’s no way to tune in, it just has to meet me or not, um, and so, I'm interested about frequency right now, but I also totally want to hear you talk about what his work means to you and, um, and why he's your favorite poet and all that good stuff. 

MT: You want to start with frequency or Chris Gilbert more broadly?

KAC: Mmm, it’s up to you! You choose.

MT: Mm…I remember when I first heard of Christopher Gilbert, I think Terrance Hayes was talking about his own introduction to Christopher Gilbert and this idea of writing a project where the speaker was so much like Chris Gilbert that you might as well call him Chris Gilbert—

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT:—and Chris Gilbert having, I, I believe, spoken a little bit about, just, the intimacy between him and his speaker…  and it's been making me, you know, I—the first time I read Chris Gilbert's work was in 2019? No, it was 2020.

KAC: Mmm.

MT: I know.

KAC: What a year. 

MT: Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, no, I was lower than that. [LAUGHS]

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT: Um, and I felt like I was so afraid of myself, until the idea of willfully being willing to write as close as possible and close enough that if somebody mistook you for your work that it would be okay, like—

KAC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MT:  There’s just been something about the intimacy that I can only imagine between him as a person, when he was here, and, um, the ego and the thought and the way he's thinking that translates in these poems that I've always loved and I feel like it's both a way of saying what I love about him and, also something about the frequency, you know, like I felt like he was willing to say, I… And I kept wondering why are so many ecological poets imagining that to remove the “I” from our work takes us, takes the center away from us?

KAC: Hm.

MT: And I was like, how can I get some support with being willing to be how I am, which is a human in the woods, you know, and I feel like he's been op—he’s been helping me open up to, um, being at this really ordinary frequency of my relationships and what I see and how I walk and…  I don't even want to overcomplicate it, but there's, like, just—I wonder if that's like the frequency or the register of breathing, you know I'm breathing a bit easier, too, and that I feel like my questions are changing a little bit over the years, you know, from if I'm breathing, what will open up? Again, it makes me think of this representative that my doctors have noticed me really, really having attached to my hip, see that, don't see me, you know…  And when I have brought him up, someone has said to me, how do you even know who that is? Like someone was so… surprised, you know, and I didn't know what they were talking about, but when you said his name, part of me was like, whoa, so, you know.

KAC: Only this year, I discovered his work and I was stunned. And, and that's part of it, too, right? Like, why didn't I know that this person existed before now and, you know, it’s so interesting that you talk about ego and “I” and sort of that, that intimacy or, or, you know, speaker-poet indistinguishability because—I mean, when I was a poetry student reading Berryman, I mean, at first, I was like, I literally hate this guy so much, like—[LAUGHS]—I was like so, I had such a violent reaction when I first read it, for probably obvious reasons, as a black student, but then I, as I got older, I realized I was searching for a way to write poetry where—because people always ask the question or people are sensitive around, oh, I'm not my speaker or don't call—you know, in workshop, it's very much don't call the speaker the poet, like, make that distinction—

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—and for me, as I got older, I realized I was searching for a poet who… was not interested in that distinction—

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC:—and explored many selves, but always from the positionality of, like, honestly, yeah, it's me, like—[LAUGHS]—you know, and I just got to the point, as I got older, where I was just like, it’s me, and… not everyone is like that and that's—can beautiful, too, but for a black poet to l—like, you know, like Gilbert, to take the space to say “I” and for it to not.. have to… separate itself to be taken seriously, you know, um, I think is so magnificent and that's who I was looking for. W—I mean, like, Berryman’s fine, right? Like, I me—[LAUGHS]—fine, and I’ve, I’ve grown to love him more, you know, as I’ve gotten older, but I was looking for a way as, a black poet, specifically, because I feel like it’s… sometimes I think we are deterred from being autobiographical, for fear of not being taken seriously or not being seen as rigorous in this way.

MT: Mm-hmm.

KAC: And, and I realize, I was really searching for a way to do that, um, and so a poet like him who, like, you know, name dropping Stevie Wonder and also Muriel Rukeyser, like, you know, like—[LAUGHS]—I feel like that type of breadth, right, is so exciting to me and it just shows how, you know, being a particular in a universal is just as important as… anything, right now, you know, um,… So yeah, it's really, really interesting that you say that about ego and “I” and speaker—and it's funny ‘cause when I was writing the questions for you, I was very intentional about not, you know, not making that conflation. [LAUGHS].

MT: Yeah. 

KAC: Um.

MT: It’s, um, you know, I’m looking at the poem right now, and there's a line towards the end:  “The beauty of the word, / though, is the difference between language / and the telling made through use.”

KAC: Hm.

MT: You know, I’m so drawn to the idea that there is both, like intimacy, and also, and also rupture. You know, where whether someone… feels both, I mean, at least, in my work whether someone can feel the distance between me and my speakers or can’t. That suddenly, when I think about the beauty of the word and language and the telling made through language, I don't c—I truly don't care. You know, when someone says, is that you are or not, and I'm just wondering if they can feel anything.

KAC: Right. 

MT: One way or the other, you know, when, maybe it's like me enough or not me enough, but when I want someone to get a certain thing out of it, besides feeling, that feels like the discipline and the grip that we were talking about and that we are still talking about that doesn't feel like it's about love—

KAC: Hm.

MT:—and missing you, but feels like it's about control, you know, when, again, I've been joking that I like to troll poets, but I just want to trouble our insistence on being seen a certain way, you know, and sometimes I'm like, okay, mind you business, fine—

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT:—I’ll trouble my own ways of expressing and emitting, you know, and so, there's a line, I think, where Chis Gilbert says like, I reach all the way back and even my skin fits.

KAC: Ooh.

MT:And I don't know, something about the skin fitting is, you know, I think about that line a lot and, when I was making the transition to Virginia, a couple years ago, just wondering, like, will this place that I’m from fit me? Will, wil—will I fit me? 

KAC: Mm-hm.

MT: You know, when, to be in the recovery program that I'm in, and so much of that being about… trying to reconcile who I put out and what’s actually moving in me, and I wonder about, how much I needed him to stay close to me while I do all of that, you know,.

KAC: Hm. You mentioned place, um, and… just sort of orienting oneself  in a new place and, you know, what self you bring from one place to the other and… another part of your bio is about elsewhere—

MT: Mm-hm.

KAC:—and I really wanted to know, what are some of the ways you're thinking about elsewhere and what, what it looks like for you, um… yeah, I’m, I'm really interested to know. 

MT: Yeah… I would imagine that the deepest version this last couple years of elsewhere has been in, like, changing my life and apprenticing myself to the shade. 

KAC: Hm,

MT: You know, when, that, right away, when I, I was invited and opened up into what it's like to find shade, even if only for a moment—

KAC: Hm.

MT: —in that moment I felt like being outside of what hurts, outside of what is painful, and that the relief was so moving to me that I thought, I need to start planting trees for all these… folks in Charlottesville that I don't even know—

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT:—you know, and getting here a couple years ago and wanting to invite that kind of relief and that kind of elsewhere in the spaces where nobody knew my name. So, I've been thinking about, like, not just the way that Eddie S. Glaude Jr. writes about elsewhere, you know, as either physical or metaphorical, but that there's an elsewhere that is… ecological, you know, when—an elsewhere that I can put on the ground… in all of these different ways, put myself there, invite others to be there. Um, and I wonder, also, about, like, the kind of elsewhere that both… gets to be outside of the world for a moment, knowing that you can't do that. You know, I, I—elsewhere it becomes for me to kind of phenomenon. You know, of…  having a space, sometimes, like in my show coming up, is literally a space in the same gallery as everything else, and that you just decide your elsewhere—[LAUGHS]

KAC: Hm. 

MT: —you know, and that folks can come in and out of that elsewhere and, um, be back in the world, so I wonder about, you know, both my insistence on being in the atmosphere and having these tools that help me literally spin and have a sense of the conditions, um—which in some ways are really about grounding myself where we are and then, simultaneously through the shade of these oaks, primarily, that I'm studying in Charlottesville, thinking about the kind of elsewhere for when you do need to not be…  faced with this… lethal and carceral and lonely… life that, that so many of us have. I really believe that you're either lonely or know what it is like to have been, you know, and maybe we're all cycling through that, um, but it wasn't safe to always be so attuned, you know—to the degree that I’m attuned and/or disassociated, like most people, that the elsewhere feels like it's just about… being able to breathe. Little moments. I would love to stretch those moments, you know, how long do we get? Um, but I love the idea that is as material for me as it also can be…metaphorical, you know, sometimes you’re resting your eyes… y—or my grandma is resting her eyes—

KAC: Yes! I love that—

MT: [LAUGHS]

KAC: —phrase so much, I was just—

MT: Right?

KAC:—thinking of my grandma—[LAUGHS]

MT:  I’m like,  I’m too young for that. But—

KAC: [LAUGHS]

MT:—you know you want to take that on, then—

KAC: Mm-hmm. 

MT:—it’s been on my mind so much recently, you know, all this air traffic the last few days was so intense, with all these flight cancellations. When I was making my way from Tahoe—not to mention the…particles in the air, you know, and being like, how do I go elsewhere? Is it about putting on the protective gear? Is it about closing my eyes while all the—while we're flying around Cleveland, looking for a place to refuel? And someone pointed out that I just seemed so grounded and they asked me if I would sit next to them—

KAC: Oh my god!

MT:—and they asking me if they could have some of the energy and…they caught me at a good time, it didn't feel parasitic, you know—

KAC: Right. 

MT:—it felt like they, just, could feel… the breath and were asking if I had any to offer, and that's a gift to me, to be asked to be a presence, you know, and to be next to someone, because they want to be expansive, too, you know…Yeah, I mean, thank you for asking about that and, you know, I—that comes out of Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s, you know, book about Baldwin, Begin Again, and… yeah, it's just not lost on me to have him writing about another person that is just so dear—

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT:—to, to have been able to read and learn from and to try again, but at a different pace, you know—

KAC: Yeah. 

MT: —to go back to those first takes… you know, and think about what was it that we longed for, or that we wanted, and how can I try again and also… have these elsewheres, as needed.

KAC: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s interesting that you brought up Baldwin because of the, sort of—I mean, many people talk about it as self-exile and, I mean, he fashioned himself a stranger, but there's this way that… it might look like leaving a place, but it's really—it seems like creating your own elsewhere, whether that's, like, a physical movement to somewhere else or, this, sort of, just, like creation of a place for you and, um… so, yeah, that's really something I'll be thinking about, for sure, yeah… Wow, I mean, I won't keep you much longer, this has been such a lovely conversation, I'm so…just enlightened by you and grateful that you… shared this time with us and, I'm just really looking forward to people hearing this, because I just think it's been such a rich conversation and so I'm really grateful for you, taking out the time.

MT: I don't know if folks will hear this part, but, you know, I've been wanting to connect for so long—.

KAC: Mm-hmm.

MT:—and I've always trusted the pace, and I think about even the range of back-and-forths we have had and, you know, the word that comes to mind is heatwave. [LAUGHS]

KAC: Yeah. [LAUGHS]

MT: Like, it’s, just, right there for me, right there for me, and so, yeah, I think it's been so moving… to… be in this work and to feel like you and June Jordan and just this black femme… mutual attention, you know, and mutual curiosity, is just been so loving, you know, and so… I'm like, I was so eager to talk to you, you know, and, and I'm still eager…um, and, just, even this conversation—I'm still on Chris Gilbert, I’m like—

KAC: [LAUGHS] I know! I'm like—I need to go and crack open that book right now, ‘cause I'm so like—

MT: Mm.

KAC:—I can't believe that that happened, you know? And I just, I think the way that—I'm just grateful that people show up, when they need to show up, you know, and… especially when they were underappreciated in life, um, so I’m grateful that he came to visit us. [LAUGHS] But—

MT: Um, I'll leave you with, I think, what is my favorite poem from him, might be “Horizontal Cosmology”.

KAC: Mm.

MT:  And, um, you know, we didn't talk about that in our conversation, but… we did get to Chris Gilbert by way of the cosmos. That I know—

KAC: Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

MT:  —you know, so… it's really in my heart. “I forget the magic gourd that fit my hands, /its shake my feeling of having a heart. / My face is a mask. Everyone wears it.”

KAC: Well friends, I am completely speechless after that amazing conversation, but I just wanted to take a moment to express immense gratitude to our Editorial Intern, Blu Mehari, who has been so invaluable to us over this summer, in helping putting this issue together. I also wanted to give big thanks to my co-editor, Logan Ward. And, remind you all that you can follow us on Instagram @emergentliterary on Twitter @emergentjournal, and visit our website, emergentliterary.com for more info. Thank y’all for rocking with us and we hope you enjoy Issue 4.