Transcript - "Rituals for Grief & Love: A Reading with Poets Sade LaNay & Sasha Banks"

Transcript - "Rituals for Grief & Love:  A Reading with Poets Sade LaNay & Sasha Banks"

January 28, 2021 -- Radical Kinship Series

Listen to "Rituals for Grief & Love:  A Reading with Poets Sade LaNay & Sasha Banks".

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LETI VOLPP: Okay Everybody. Good afternoon welcome to our first event of the spring semester at the Center for Race and Gender, “Rituals for Grief and Love”.

The event has live transcripts and to enable those you can click the closed caption live transcript to start viewing them.

I want to begin with a land acknowledgment.

We take a moment to recognize that Berkeley sits on the territory of the xučyun (Huichin), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Muwekma Ohlone tribe and other familial descendants of the Verona Band. We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land since the institution's founding in 1868.

My name is Leti Volpp, and I'm the director of the Center for Race and Gender here at UC Berkeley. We're thrilled that you could be with us at today's exciting event. Before Iintroduce the moderator and curator of today's event and thank our co-sponsors for today let me encourage you all to take a look at our spring event calendar which is full of amazing conversations you won't want to miss on indigeneity and migration,  on the teeter-totter installation on the border wall, on afro-latinx feminisms and much more you can find it on our website crg.berkeley.edu.

So a big thank you to our generous co-sponsors for today's event the Multicultural Community Center, the center for Research on Social Change, the Graduate Assemblies’s Women of Color Initiative, and the Graduate Women's Project. 

So let me now introduce the fabulous organizer and curator of the Radical Kinship Series um and the moderator of today's event, Alan Pelaez Lopez. Alan is an Afro-Zapotec artist and scholar from Oaxaca, Mexico. They are the author of Intergalactic Travels, Poems from a Fugitive Alien, published by The Operating System, 2020, which was a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award, as well as "To Love and Mourn in the Age of Displacement", published by Nomadic Press 2020. Thank you, and I will now turn it over to Alan. 

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Hi everybody, thank you so much for joining us at the Center for Race and Gender. I'm really excited to be moderating this reading between Sade Lanay and Sasha Banks. I first encountered their work I think exactly a year ago um Sade Lanay work was introduced to me by a good friend Jennifer Tamayo and Sasha Bank’s work was introduced to me by another good friend Ariana Brown.

And when I sat down with their work I could not get them out of my mind. Particularly because both poets call on us to not only witness um but to name that which we are afraid to name. Or to name that which we were taught um was unproper to name um.  And part of that is racialized and gendered violence but also our ability to imagine a future outside of the material reality that we inherited as a black folk across the diaspora. 

And the way today is going to work is both poets will read uh for 15 minutes or so each and after they read we'll have a discussion on rituals um for grief and um love and kind of what that looks like in their artwork and in their both collections. So the first reader today is going to be Sade Lanay and I'll be reading a short bio. 

Sade LaNay is from Houston Texas and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Pratt Institute and the BA in Studio Art and Theology from the University of Notre Dame. Their the author of “Heart” published in 2018, “Self Portrait”,  published in 2018 as well “Dream Machine” published in 2014, and “I love you and I'm not dead”,  published last year. Their writing tests the limits of language and creativity as a bond for systemic violence and generational trauma, specifically as it pertains to lives and bodies of black and queer people. Sade engages in print making, silk painting and book arts with the goal of recognizing human connection in the midst of the ongoing struggle for liberation. 

And our second reader will be Sasha Banks. And we'll also read Sasha's bio in advance. Sasha Banks received her MFA from Pratt

Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She's a pushcart nominated poet whose work appears in RHINO, the Collagist, Poor Claudia, Kinfolks Quarterly, PBS Newshour, BODY Literature, Austin IPF, Obsidian. It has been performed in twenty universities' Vagina Monologues. Sasha is a creator of Poets for Ferguson. She lives in North Carolina where she is learning to be black and spectacular. At the same damn time and sasha's debut collection “Is America Mine”,  published last year okay 

So Sade are you ready?

Oh you have to mute yourself.

SADE LANAY: Hello (laughing). So i just want to um before I start reading take a moment to thank Alan and Ariana and the other organizers at UC Berkeley. It has been one of my dreams to read with Sasha Banks since we were little babies in our MFA program. And i just was like well we have to publish our books and then we have to read together because that would be the most beautiful thing ever. So I'm really thankful and just um yeah so proud to be accomplishing that in this moment. 

And thank you for creating and holding the space for us to do that. Um, yeah so i'll go ahead and get into it.I  didn't time myself beforehand so you know do it like Oscar style and play the music to get me off the stage. 

Alice pulls death

Alice Dunbar Nelson

Cancer 

1875-1935

writer, journalist, activist

her papers are archived at the University of Delaware Library

feel like a white girl, want to cry 

at an intersection, want to cry

don't worry you, want to cry 

on lithium, want to cry

shaking my ass, want to cry 

think about jumping, i want to cry 

Think about kissing, want to cry 

raisin surfaces, want to cry

cannot read as well, want to cry 

bones feel unruly, want to cry

look at this dainty goat, want to cry 

crying, want to cry

Constipated, want to cry 

food tastes like plastic, want to cry 

food tastes like play-doh, want to cry 

food tastes like play-doh, want to cry 

mistakenly birth in a crucible, want to cry 

swaddled in silk that smells like the atlantic, want to cry 

unstable living, want to cry 

underfoot, want to cry

caring for people's precious things, want to cry 

all summer, want to cry

(singing) I put a spell on you and now your mind, want to cry 

threat aesthetic, want to cry

we're attracting dark entities lineage of bastards, want to cry

fenestrated sounds, want to cry 

the audience laughing would, want to cry 

the poem is about rape

while I'm walking back to redacted from the subway i see a grey kitten and

I want it but i do not have an apartment yet then i feel frustrated and dumb because

that makes me want to cry 

I'm not paying attention and almost step into oncoming traffic because i think the light is green 

I think about how i would tremble and could not grip while i was on lithium it was hard to read because my eyes

would not focus 

after I was raped i could not help but thinking of throwing myself from the top of the parking garage and what it would feel like to slam into the sidewalk below

it feels like my bones are vibrating inside of my skin

nikki is showing me a picture of a goat 

being constipated makes me want to cry

when I'm depressed food does not taste like anything and I starve myself from for days

when I'm depressed food does not taste like anything and I eat until i feel uncomfortable

I was born into a container where materials are subjected to high temperatures 

I was born into a severe test

I was born into a body that could create something new

I wrapped myself in the silk scarf i wore the first time i was in the ocean

it still smells like the ocean 

the ocean is an unstable house and it frightens me 

most of my life has been unstably housed

been a semi-professional house and cat sitter
redacted claimed there were dark entities following me and infesting her home 

I slept in her basement she would go for days without sleep 

both my parents were born out of wedlock

falling asleep sounds mortal with memories 

I will enchant and own the entire world

I am afraid of appearing as powerless as I feel

Lucille (inaudible)

Lucille Clifton 

Cancer 

1936 to 2010 

poet, educator, writter

her papers are at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript Archives and Rare Book Library at Emory University.

catch the bus right away 

it's hot on this bus 

my seat is in the sun 

a little girl boarding the bus with her mom 

i get frustrated when i cannot remember

it feels like i forgot what part of my brain i put the information in

i was there

when it happened it happened to me 

but i cannot remember how it happened

because i was not in my body 

or i was collapsed into my body

think about the physical sensation of repulsion

i can remember other things like how good it felt to see Sebastian when i

was getting off the sea and they were getting on it 

it was one of the best feelings i had that week 

and it felt so good 

i wanted to cry 

to be met with excitement

to feel like someone was seeing me and the wide open (inaudible) clusterfuck of the city 

i remember smiling with Adele or at Adriana from across the room 

or laughing with Sasha in the library 

or eating at a new restaurant with Christian 

or leaning on Jeff's shoulder 

or walking home together in the dark 

or hugging when you really really really need a friend to touch you 

so you feel like a real person

(softly crying)

And

(softly crying)

and and i want to fill my body with memories like that so that i can always be right here

in my body and not nowhere

riding the bus home from Williamsburg the bus is making a sound like a theremin 

I'm ready to be home

blue calcite, green calcite, green fluorite, purple fluorite

i have to liberate myself so that i don't forget the sweet spots

i don't want to die right now because i am starting to wake up

and i want to know what happens next

that feeling when you ask for something sweet

and you get it

one or two more?

Ida charges 10 selenite wands with candlelight

Ida B 

Gemini 

1862-1931

enslaved, investigative journalist, Activist

her papers those that escaped the flames are archived at the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library

Mike Brown peers into my dream like a diorama

I'm surrounded by White people 

i can hear their thoughts 

smell like sardine innards

palindromed in an oily gun barrel are maggots rotting

a suspect stench i can't clean 

out of my ghetto

when i notice him i want to ask him questions

what was your favorite thing to do when you were high

when did you learn about the holocaust 

who was your favorite celebrity

what was your favorite strain 

had you ever been to new york

what makes the wind blow 

does all our grief keep you bound here

what makes the world feel so small 

when did you know you were dying

do you know who invented bells and why 

did you ever want to travel abroad

are you alone 

did you like poetry

did time begin to be a measured thing 

did you leave any books unfinished

what would you think about during church if your mind drifted off during the sermon 

when did you learn about jim crow

what was the last thing you dreamed about 

who was your favorite musician

what accomplishment were you proudest of 

was there ever a song that would make you cry when you heard it no matter what

what star is the energy of your existence now a part of

i wake up from this dream and cry 

reminds me of never seeing big mama again 

at her funeral i know that i cried

i was two and no one could understand what i was saying

i was saying i want big mama

standing in the kitchen 

I'm high i get higher

I'm crying 

breathe 

with each breath a ghost raises my tongue

chest full pregnant with ghosts 

how am i supposed to

re-produce when i know that I'm going to die

every few hours my phone asks me 

how are you feeling

i refuse to answer 

most of my summers were spent crying in front of my computer quietly in someone else's house

billowing with my grief 

now I'm a ghost that everyone can see

do i spook you 

i cannot hear polite words anymore

i cannot compute tents of garish white paint

grandma's china 

cotton ball 

ancestral silver lining 

patriotic white 

white opulence

picket fence 

i cannot go anywhere without feeling ghosts reaching out slithering into my veins

i cannot look away i don't want to listen

i just want to run and hide 

this american life is a nightmare full through

Tony closes the circle with aragonite

Tony Morrison 

Aquarius 

1931 - 2019 

Writer, Editor, Winner 

her papers are archived in the Firestone Memorial Library at Princeton University

i get sad but what's new 

trusting myself is hard but it's something i want to do 

i pull out the voyager tarot

i question this (inaudible)

i question the inundator

i pull the child of wands 

i pull the ace of worlds

i pulled the five of crystals and suppress it with the six of worlds

i take a nap 

i keep getting higher trying to understand myself

trying to figure out where all my feelings come from

the cat throws up in my shoes 

i have some chamomile tea

i have over 900 unread emails

and sinus pain 

and and and

deleted 318 saved links on Facebook

i feel feverish 

so i've been writing for three months

blood harvest morning 

and and and 

i don't know if i would say

I'm bored but i am tired

i pull one more card because i want to know

how to master trust and growth 

accomplish success and synergy

fool child place your trust in the universe

it's okay the universe is someone i know but I'm still full cowardice

too afraid to reach for what i want

i watch rainbows spill out of a crystal on the window

i touch the long vines replicating in the sunlight 

on easter sunday i light a candle

i take an amethyst point a tiny chunk of celostite

a tumbled hematite pebble and a purple fluorite octahedral

i draw the emerging one courtney alexander in the dust to onyx tarot depicts the first card of the major arcana as a young bald person

with an amethyst eye in the center of their forehead and a white goat slung across their shoulders 

the goat wears a crown of flowers

warmth a complexity they are moving through the dark

the moon in libra full behind the navy clouds

i feel the anxiety caught in my throat

sobbing 

a satellite 

when i was 22 i tried to kill myself

i had no imagination for my ability to move through what felt like insurmountable ways of feeling 

feeling and obstacles

the way it is to walk against the tide

i worry that I'm not making enough progress against the trauma

tag troima 

when will i ever be good ganuk

my memories aren't what i am afraid of 

i am afraid of

it is hard to be near me 

if you can manage it thank you

behold i will do a new thing 

the work is arduous 

i want to do it well

i want to handle myself with care 

i want to honor my body

build structure 

conduct a ritual

make it radical 

i want to 

licking spirulina and honey off of my fingers 

a cardinal gust paints the lungs so that we can cry and cry

Thank you, guys.

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you Sade. Um. I am going to be putting a link for you all who are here to um Sade's book and to Sasha's book. All right so i just put it in the chat. (sigh) Give us a second to gather back together. Um Sasha are you ready?

SASHA BANKS:  I am ready. Thank you for sharing and also for going first. Thank you. Um it was beautiful. And I'm so glad that

I can be here with you and that our books can like exist in the same space together. And thank you, Alan. for making that happen. Thank you so much. Um so I'm going to read a few poems from my book, “American Mind”, which came out last April. Um so my my book child is almost a year old which I'm very excited about. Um so I'm going to read some poems along please feel free to also Oscar me. If you

need to just, tell me to wrap it up, I'll wrap it up. 

Okay so i have some like a handful of poems chosen. I just don't have them in any particular order. 

So this first poem I'm going to read is called, as actually the titular poem called “American Mind”.

the spit upon this country's flag is mine and i do not weep at it

consider the twisted shape of grief about the mouth upon learning the beast under the bed has always been your country 

careful citizen

this nation will name you daughter while its tongue sucks the muscle from every dark body you have loved to the edge of

this vanished second 

i let the rage be like water this time

drinking and drinking until my darkness marries my eyes to blindness and i am led by the ghosts still awake in the soil 

still thirsty from below the fear

is under my heel now 

there are multitudes in my third ribbon we are not asking anymore 

do you see us now 

this is the last kindness 

we will have your sweat and dress you in your own curses oh country 

what i mean to say is

all the living after this will be the vengeance

Um. I  have this poet. I have a poem called “Portrait of my sister's ankle tied in ribbon” for Ariana Brown and um i don't think that Ariana is here today, but that's fine because I wrote this poem for her years ago we actually started working on both of our books around the same time. Um and yeah I wanted to basically carry Ariana around everywhere that I could. So this poem is for Ariana. 

we inherit the sky somehow 

you and i have circled the alchemy of blood and magic 

time and ancestors 

anchors and flesh

but i have no good answer for how to live on the ground ariana 

not as long as my own body is a wounded kite convulsing in the wind of history 

not as long as leaving my body is the only way i know to outlive it 

when our people collapsed to small ruins

we watched our own black feet begin to lift off the ground 

black balloon bodies versed in ascension

or survival which might be the same thing 

if my love could be the ribbon that my age has woven up to this moment 

i would tie it round your ankle as you began to float above my head 

keep you inside your body tethered to this earth 

sister what spectacular weight is blackness like this that belittles all the sciences with its burden and weightlessness 

to reconcile a heaven into this earth

these bodies is an ancient dance done between cloud and soil

despite the gravity 

despite the gravity

Um this poem is called, “But if I say I hate my country”.

it could come back like a chorus or a bitch of cancer 

tumor attack of the heart 

pebble in the bloodstream 

carousel of spinning vertebrae 

sunk kidney 

strain faculties 

I heard the pastor say unforgiveness manifests in the liver 

or unforgiveness is a ghost that haunts the intestine and wears the liver loose like a new face 

or unforgiveness creeps among the innards slipping noiselessly by the blind organs to seize the liver

all this longhand meaning 

either your country will kill you or your hatred will

and what lucky paradox is this 

killing itself

what lucky paradox is this body killing itself in defense of itself

allowed to own nothing not even the malice of its own black heart

So this next poem that I'm going to read is in parts but I'll I’ll just read it all the way through. I I had the opportunity to go to Harriet Tubman's Grave in 2015. Which is a really creepy story because the thing about it was that we didn't know that it was there. We were driving to a friend was driving to a reading that she was going to do and uh they came across the highway that like had all these placards that said like

Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman's house, Harriet Tubman’s like memorial.  Um and so she's actually buried um not even half a mile from from both of her homes. 

i dressed my hair in white flowers to make myself beautiful for her because she could be anywhere 

watching another of her liquid daughters come to dissolve over her mouth and say her name without saying it at all 

she knew everything there is to weep about 

will be to weep about 

was to weep about 

and there she was a temple six feet under my shoes and the long winter

i wanted to ask her how to make a warning of your blood 

to paint the threshold of your enemy 

how to bite off the head of hatred 

how to love a country that hated you first

but i dug and dug at the soil until i thought i was touching her face 

until i thought she was doing the same

my kin took my face in her palms muddy bone 

and the orbs of her vanished eyes were small small valleys of violet that blurred bodies ran through 

crude as wind

ten thousand crows dove into the crooked river of her mouth 

now a split bone in the skull 

their myriad screams became her voice a twisted line of sound that said shake off this ancient sorrow kindred 

my back is broken for you

Um okay. So this is called “The Capital Suite”,  It's actually in two parts first part is called “Negromania” or according to the transcript Nick Romania. That's fine too. Okay.

king kong climbs the washington monument 

and the seat of the lincoln memorial is empty 

and the reflection pool is grim with crows 

and the laughter of two ghosts haunts jefferson's memorial as they swallow nickels into their veiled throats

and fanny tramples down pennsylvania avenue stopping to pull the capital steeple from her giant's foot 

a long shadow over aunt jemima and mammy sunbathing on the white house lawn

and jemima winks at jesse painting a picket fence with the blood of jesus 

And the sphinx has pissed on a rug in the oval office 

and ayanna is twirling on the roof of the pentagon shooting seeds from her mouth until she spins in a grove of watermelons 

and

and 

and god parts her hair down the middle greasing her scalp on the supreme court steps 

The second half is called “Negromancy”

god shouts at a kink snagged on her comb 

and ayanna sings black cat cross my path think every day is going to be my last, lord have mercy on this land of mine we all go and get it in due time 

and the sphinx recites the gettysburg address and jesse asks for a cup of water 

and mami leans in says to jemima that mouse gonna swallow the house cat 

and fanny howls when she finds a new earth stuck to a piece of hard candy in her front

pocket 

and two ghosts are heard calling out the names of the young and dead 

and the crows confess that they have teeth 

and lincoln's seat is still empty 

and king kong whispers the name his mother calls him

Let's see I think maybe I have uh one more. Okay. Okay. I have one more. Um this so across the book there are

lots of clusters of sister poems that are all related so I'm gonna read you the third of um one of those clusters. And this um set is called “America Post Collapse”. So this is the third one of those. 

you will remember nothing but this taste of salt 

and how it's in everything 

and how it never changes even though everything else does 

and so you will cry and cry and be fed

a woman will stand in the street and open her mouth one summer night

noiseless for hours until she wretches up a star 

hot thing covered in mucus

i want to say something like it turns out that the sun had a face which implies a mouth that knew all your names 

but the truth is there will never have been any sun

only the north star after all

it will fall down and land behind a woman's house in detroit 

it will be dark for weeks and everyone's eyes will glow

here and now will be the faded kind of memory 

like waking from a dream that loosens its grip as you become wider and wider awake 

at the grocery store you'll hear someone whistling the old anthem 

they will not be able to remember more than (singing) oh say can you 

nobody will

such is the case with ruins ancient histories 

blurry faces everywhere smeared by the fists of their conquerors 

before today ends statues will be plucked from their high places all over the country 

this should be the first sign 

but whiteness will not see itself in this sure demise

they will learn there will be no flag anymore 

many will dream of eagles eaten by crows

pecked to death by crows

a woman will tell of seeing a crow pulling all the feathers from a dead eagle 

none will remember this time but the crows will

and so they will eat the grudge for your stakes 

america will be done 

and you will know

it when the statue of liberty sits down to wash her face in the hudson

her skin will be black 

your grandmothers will weep

Thank you. 

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Ah thank you so much Sasha and Sade. Oh my. There's like all these feelings inside my body and I can't wait to talk to both of you about it 

(SPEAKER INAUDIBLE)

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Um Absolutely. Okay so you know um today's title is called “Rituals for uh Grief and Love” and I want to kind of talk a little bit about what both of your books are doing. So um Sade and in “i love you and I'm not dead” you open up um with instructions of how

to read your book. You you write slowly taking lots of breaks in one sitting amidst a grid of crystals while holding a piece of rose quartz in one hand in a piece of amorous in another, under a blanket with a box of tissues, and a cup of lavender honey tea nearby. And you continue to give us instructions of how to witness and listen to um feel uh be with and commit to your work. 

And Sasha oh my goodness you've ended your book in such an incredible way.  UmIi love to quote people (laughs)

SASHA BANKS: (laughs)

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: You finish with um essentially well the poem is titled “Sasha's waltz on the wreckage” and I'm assuming that you're the Sasha who's waltzing. Um and even that title right your your book is ending . It's um it undoes re-does and reimagines and um also kind of like rebukes america. Um and you say what joy is this never um what joy is this that never knew us. no fist looks to humble her beauty nothing barrels between her and her flesh she is finally mine.

Both of your collections although they're about the quotidian realities of black folk they're also about giving yourselves in a sense back to you. Outside of the nation you imagine a life outside of everything that's here. Can you talk a little bit more about the role of ritual in the creation of your books, but also ritual in your everyday life?

SASHA BANKS: Do you want to talk about it? 

SADE LANAY: Yeah I want to talk about it. Um my goodness. Ritual. Goodness. I mean. I suppose that uh. Well I'm not I'm not sure how to answer that necessarily. I mean I can think about creating and editing this work. And the sort of rituals that I engaged in to do that which mainly involved writing non-stop and just trying to modulate the energy that I felt around me.  You know. Um paying attention to the stars and the planets. And you know one thing in particular that i guess i think of a lot is the care of crystals and um you know crystals make a very you know strong showing in this book. And I just remember you know i don't remember a ton but I remember just periods of time marked by the sort of ritual care of these crystals. 

And in some way like feeling very strongly that that was a way to care for myself and my own energy. And to be in touch with these beautiful things extracted from the earth. You know um and it's very elemental you know like some crystals want water, some want salt, some smoke or light. You know so I guess the care of those sort of uh earthly bodies. You know to engage in this kind of care of my own earthly body and energy. Really but also like the kind of and i feel like for me that's one of my most. I don't know what the word is but it just feels like a ritual that doesn't perform or accomplish any sort of like uh thing that the world would consider productive perhaps. Because people are like it's a rock. Why are you why are you taking care of this rock? What is? Why is this rock  important you know? Why have so many of them? Like what does it mean?  What do they do? And it's just like it's hard to explain because you feel something. It's all about the feeling you know .

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Yeah

SADE LANAY: And that in a way is the thing that becomes cared for in the ritual right it's like I'm I'm caring for these crystals and bringing them into the writing you know. I think about them all the time because they make me feel. You know protected and um and connected you know. So that's one thing that i think of in terms of rituals. 

SASHA BANKS: I think for for me with this particular work that was so. Um sort of really driven by my own rage that I was so out of touch with for such a long time. Because I I grew up really afraid of anger as an emotion. And so I think really what became ritualistic about writing this work was like the ritual of like allowance or like permission. To have that to write into it. To be as malevolent as I wanted to be. To be as hostile as I wanted to be. Which outside of my writing my own book like on American soil I can't be Black and hostile at the same time.

So I could give myself these permissions. Like one poem after another, one line after another.  And I think that became like a really healing process for me because in the midst of writing this book like Darren Wilson was not indicted for Mike, Michael Brown's murder. You know there was just there was a lot going on. And there was a lot of sort of um like the beginnings of Black Lives Matter as this sort of household name and this very well like worldwide known kind of movement was just starting to sort of brew in that way. 

And I felt like even in the midst of that uh an emotion as foreign to me. Or just as like. O don't want to say foreign because it definitely wasn't foreign but like the engagement of that emotion was was foreign to me. Um was like there was all this national support from other Black people in our community who were stepping into their own rage.

Um and we were all making space for each other to do that.  So I think i was just sort of synthesizing the time for myself as somebody who'd been carrying around a rage the same rage as the rest of the community for ever and giving myself the space to even be playful with it you know. Um. To just undermine as much of the sacred things that you know historically we've been told to sort of preserve and like have reverence for and so forth I think you know. The like when I think about a ritual I think about practice. Um and so I think for me it was a practice in being angry it was a practice and like touching it and feeling it and totally allowing myself to be consumed in that. So that I could come out on the other side of it and what happens on the other side I don't know. Because I think it changes from one upsetting situation or triggering situation or traumatizing situation to another but the importance was to befriend the thing and to allow it to be like a part of myself versus this thing that i had to um negate about myself if that makes sense. 

SADE LANAY: Yeah i would i would say to the to piggyback on what you said about permission. It feels like. I mean when i first started at Pratt i was finishing “Self Portraits” and getting ready to just start writing something else and Mindy you know i remember her just kind of nudging me in the direction of well you know you engage in a lot of high craft (laughs). And being really kind of alarmed at that because i was like me no I’ve never done that um and just sort of um having her kind of challenge that and say you know what if you didn't.

SASHA BANKS: Hmm. 

SADE LANAY: polish everything before you brought it into crit. You know. 

SASHA BANKS: Yeah hard to do. 

SADE LANAY: I guess permission to. Permission to let language be messier. You know just sort of um to give space for all of those utterances that feel very unintelligible you know. Which for me is super uncomfortable.(laughs)

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ:  And I think that since both of you are talking about permission. Um I'm also wondering. I mean both of the collections. Um. I hink that one has to read them very slowly and very carefully in order to really, um, not even understand but just to um at least begin to see the foundation of the text right. Because I think that they're so um they're touching on so many levels. 

I think that Sade even here in read it sonically um there was a moment where I felt like it was hard for you to read one of the pieces. Um and I'm wondering what the role of of love is. And your relationship to love and your poetry because I think that both of you are speaking over these collections as a form of permission to yourself. Um and one does I'm assuming the one makes art because one also heals from it and one loves it. Um. But now that these collections are over. Not over but now that these collections have been published how are you um engaging in a love process? Or in a healing uh making process? Or an incubation period after all that labor?  

SADE LANAY: You just really know which questions to ask. Thank you. So rude. Um I mean to be honest it's been very difficult to love this book sometimes because it feels. Well I feel so deeply exposed and I kind of anticipated that feeling but also I didn't really know what it would mean. So there are times when I feel the opposite of loving um this book. But I I want to love it you know. There are times when I do like. 

I do love the cover. I love the i love all of the trappings of it.  You know because it feels you know beautiful to me and it feels like something that I want to pick up and just spend a little time with but often when I do (laughs) it's hard you know. It's very hard so I think that you know part of part of loving this book is also loving those parts of myself that feel really ugly and confusing and uh imperfect you know and so that in itself is part of my own journey.  And yeah I mean I can notice that there's a lot of love and tenderness for other people. And a deep sort of longing to be connected and like intimate and I think that the challenge that the book sort of presents for me in terms of love is. You know to mirror that back to myself. Lind of like not in spite of but just through and with everything that is there and isn't there. You know. 

SASHA BANK: Um I think it was. WhatI felt was like as I was writing the book I sort of have been had been given so much support from my um my cohort at Pratt. When I sort of was in the middle of writing the book where by the time I got to my MFA. But I felt so encouraged by everybody to really just like continue to um dig into what I was feeling. But then afterwards it was like oh I have to read these things, 

And I'd been at a reading in Boston actually and started reading a piece and people got up and left. They were, I mean they were upset by the things that I was saying and the things that the poem was doing. Um and I felt scared I felt really afraid especially like in the in the physical space that i was in. I was afraid to con, like to be in the space because also there weren't very many Black or Brown people in this space. 

So I'm reading these poems and afterwards I'm off stage and I feel like the energy in the room had shifted from when I arrived and everyone was very friendly. To you know people sort of feeling really hostile I mean and it was in Boston. So what are you gonna do. But I felt um unsafe to be honest but there was a point where I was reading the piece, a piece anyway from from the book. And I sort of had to make a decision to stand by the piece. And had to also really reckon with the reality that this could happen many times. This could happen multiple times. When the book is like a bound thing and it exists in the world. Like there could be people who read this book and are deeply offended. And who knows maybe they rip it up, and burn it in a fire, they throw it in the trash. I don't know but that's not any of my business. Because really what I have to also be able to stand next to is like, what it could also do for someone else who looks like me. Um and so that's the part that I'm sort of grounding myself in continuously. 

Like especially last year there were so many people who messaged me and were like you're a witch how could you know all these things were gonna happen. And I'm like it's easy you just have to be Black for a little while. And then (laughs)  I think like everything sort of gets really predictable. Um but I but I I think you know what I what I hope was people's response. What I hope it contributed to were other Black people,  other Brown people feeling that access to giving themselves the permission to say what they want about where they live, To say what they want about their experience here. And that is what protects me because I'm not the only person experiencing these things. And even if I were it wouldn't make them untrue, Um and but but I'm not and I I feel the community in this as a thing that's born in the world. Versus writing it and sort of that being very ice like very isolating just in terms of because it was about me you know allowing myself to put those permissions like I said earlier. 

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you. I think that in hearing both of you like shade you talk about how the the collection makes you feel deeply exposed. And for you Sasha having that encounter in Boston and realizing that this might happen again in a physical space. It reminds me a lot of the work of Ntozake Shange and the way she talks about like her pen being a machete right. And her her pen literally being the thing that cuts through the social imaginary um and the the connections that um people of power have amongst one another. And the pen kind of uh making all those connections finally fragment um and expose all of the the wounds they're causing. 

Um it also reminds me of Audrey Lorde’s like poetry is not a luxury, right. I think a lot a lot of people who um undermine poetry don't understand the poetry um it doesn't speak for the masses, right. But poetry um it's another story. In the same way that like you you're talking about America, Sasha. And it's like America is a story. Right and poetry kind of like counter authors the story of America in the same way that like sexual violence is a story in the US. And” i love you and I'm not dead” counters uh the narrative of sexual violence um. 

So i know we're at like 5 p.m already but I'm so thankful um and I feel really privileged to be in a digital space for the two of you and I'm excited um to continue sitting with your work and seeing how else um it will open up my world. 

The other thing I wanted to talk about was speculation. Both of you are really indebted to speculating um and hopefully I can like interview you all at some point and really uh hone in on that but again I want to say thank you from the Center for Race and Gender. 

And if there's any final remarks you want to say to each other um please feel free to do so in the next minute or so. 

SASHA BANKS: (inaudible) I love you, Alan. I love you so much. I hope that I get to meet you in real life one day. That's what I want to say and thank you also to everybody else who was a part of organizing this.  It was really great to be here. 

SADE LANAY: Yeah I'm glad that we all got well I'm glad that I got to meet Alan before we all had to be alone, forever.

(laughing) 

ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Oh absolutely. Thank you for everyone who attended. Thanks for joining us this evening. Yes. All right so I guess that closes it off. Thank you so much y'all. Enjoy the rest of your Thursday. 

SASHA BANKS: You. Bye bye. 

SADE LANAY: Good night you guys.