12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jasmine Gibson
Jasmine Gibsonis a Philly Jawn and psych worker. She is interested in the liberation from thepsychic bondages of racial capitalism.
She is the author of chapbooks Drapetomania (CommuneEditions, 2015), B.C (Belladonna, 2020), Only Shallow (MontezPress, 2020).
The full length collection Don’t Let Them See Me Like This (Nightboat,2018),and the forthcoming A Beauty Has Come (Nightboat, 2023).
Her most recent published work has appeared in Academy Of AmericanPoets “Poem Of The Day” series solicited by Jos Charles, The Segue ReadingSeries and A Perfect Vacuum.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How doesyour most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My life didn't change materially but it did change conceptually andrelationally. I began writing because I was a Case Manager working with clientswith co-morbid diagnoses in the South Bronx, doing organizing and engaged inmarxist literature. At the time, I was reading Anti-Oedipus (Delueze and Guattari) and Tales (Baraka) and it blew my mind. It was like a soundtrack for mymind. When I began writing, my own ideas about myself and others changed. Iwanted to be a part of a large community of writers and thinkers that wereengaged in the world and worked to transform it in creative ways. My thoughtson neurodiversity changed, my thoughts on how my clients used language todescribe their symptoms and lived experience had changed. I had become a moreintersubjective writer.
What feels differently now is that I was trying to illuminate theunconscious elements of writing. Trying to figure out where I began and wherethe world continued. I revel in the sea of it all now. Also I have met somereally interesting writers and artists because of my writing.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornon-fiction?
I came to poetry because radicals like Kuwasi Balagoon, AssataShakur and Claudia Jones all wrote poetry. Because members of the CombaheeRiver Collective did it. Because I saw formations like Metropolaritycome together and was like "wow, that is super cool!". When I finallydecided to give a crack at poetry, I was already writing political propagandafor an organization I was a part of and began writing long form essays for materialistfeminist journals. I always loved Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, JuneJordan and Sonia Sanchez. I thought "if they can do it, I can too". Iwanted to join the tradition in any way possible.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project?Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do firstdrafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
It depends! For a long form essay and poetry, I like to hunker downand read a lot before I begin to write. I like to stew in the juices of thework I am creating. It is a co-creative process. I am being undone, the work isbeing done, the work is being undone and I am done. Like an ouroboros.
For A Beauty Has Come, Ihad some parts of the book together prior to the pandemic, but once March 2020had come around, I was sitting with the work with the greatest writing partner(JohnRufo) and just had the best honeymoon in Berlin(Yes, I got intoBerghain). I refer to that time as "our shared womb". Or as TayannahLee McQuillar would expand on that in her Siblys Oraculum "a sigh is both a womb and agrave". And that is exactly what that time period felt like.Very generative, and equally destructive. Cosmic composting. Upheaval. A space to explore the event horizon.
I wasn't worried about a complete book or my ownproject. I was a part of history now, which meant my little life was a part ofa larger Aquarian question. The locomotive of history waits for no one. There are decadeswhere nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen, after all.
I now had all this time to figure out things that tangentially werein my view: How do I do zoom therapy for myself and others? How do I celebratea solar return in a limited and virtual capacity? How do I connect back to mybody and move? What do I really think of this album now? If this world eventhad occurred at any other point in my life would I be able to ride with it?
I went to virtual salons hosted by my friend StephanieGeorge and Willie Lee Kinard III, watched live streams ofHortenseSpillers, I started a mutual aid box in my apartment building, I hadtwo bomb gay Black therapists, I led my first Capital Vol 1 reading group thatwas informed by Black Materialist Feminism, I was reading Black Jacobins withBlack and Brown children in the LES, I was providing therapy to kids inNYC, I began martial arts, I got freshvegetables from my friend's garden, I biked the Central Park loop multipletimes, my spouse was doing their orals exam (they've since passed! Congrats, Dr.John), Idecided to apply to become a psychoanalytic student, I was rediscovering mylove of music and collecting vinyl again(this album really saved me, particularly the song 'Qadir'), and I curated my home in a way that incorporated the softness I was sorelymissing.
I allowed myself to grow, in a time of deep contraction. Which isironic because it was during my Saturn Return. Allowing myself to grow, meantthat I could allow my work to grow and allow A Beauty Has Come to transform and transcend me.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author ofshort pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working ona "book" from the very beginning?
The image of an ouroboros is my answer here too. I never know ifsomething I am writing is going to be longer or shorter. It depends on thevibe, subject matter and context. It depends if the emotions stirred from aparticular thought, feeling, theory or conversation rattles me into actionwhere I must speak in the written form.
For example, when writing ABeauty Has Come, I had discovered that I was a fan of the Beach Boys andthe Grateful Dead. Two bands I avoided with much effort. But ended up becomingreally influential on the work. Why is that??? I think I avoided them becauseof the stereotypical white supremacist fans that the two bands have. Why did myorientation change? For the Beach Boys I heard "Til I Die" and read Tom Smucker's Why The Beach Boys Matters. It totally turnedme out. The way he spoke about their alienation and the loneliness of whitenessand how the Beach Boys could be better understood as a R&B girl band, I waslike "Damn shawty, ok!". For the Dead it was "UnbrokenChain" and "Box of Rain". I was listening to the Staple Singers"Will the Circle be Unbroken?" and I listened to them in conversationwith each other. It became to me a continuum of the mid-century upheaval andnecessary change that different sets of musicians were reckoning with.
All this to say, I let the process inform the shape of things tocome.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creativeprocess? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Tongo Eisen-Martin gave me really good advice about this. He said,"Read like you are practicing your instrument". I used to be veryanxious and dreaded the reading process. After he said that to me, anddefinitely having more years under my belt with practicing therapy, I am awareof my instrument and the power it has to sway. I view readings as a practicespace. The audience is there with me, and it is time to get co-creative. I amsending energy into the room. My voice is cutting through the thoughts andcellular process of the collective. It's liminal, so might as well be expansivewhen given the chance.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? Whatkinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you eventhink the current questions are?
Yes, I have been stating that my poetic and therapeutic process is"Black Materialist Feminism", meaning I am concerned with Blacknesson an international, and historical level. I am concerned with materialismbecause of the material power relations that dictate movement and embodiment ofthe world we live in. I am concerned with feminism because I operate from theperspective of decentering cisheteropatriarchy.
How this all comes together in my poetics is illuminating,critiquing, exploiting and working to resist subjugation in effort to transformthe world and ourselves. I hope to be a part of that tradition.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
That depends on the writer. All writers are in service to somethingor an ideology. I am Foucaldian through and through. We all are in service tosocial, political, emotional and psychical reality.
A Beauty Has Come is in service to larger culture concernedwith the malleability and expansiveness of Blackness, with material conditionsthat impact the realities of the dispossessed and on the side of life,resistors and upsetters.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editordifficult or essential (or both)?
I haven't worked with an outside editor per se, but I have workedclosely with my spouse (John) whilewriting A Beauty Has Come. They werewriting their dissertation as I was writing my manuscript. We noticed that wehad a lot of overlap in the concepts we were using within our respective works.For example the overlapping of revolutionary Black Aesthetic and Black RadicalPolitical traditions and metonymy. We were both listening to Cecil Taylor andMary Lou Williams' Embrace and readingsimilar works. In many ways, I considered John an outsider editor. I also liketo share my writing with friends and get their perspective. I also consult mycards and see what they say about the direction of my writing.
I am very grateful to Lindsey Boldt and Jaye Elizabeth Elijah fortheir insightful and concise editing. They really followed me through myprocess, were very patient and generous. I consider them to be my co-writersand midwives for A Beauty Has Come.This was my second time having Lindsey as an editor and she is a great writerand thinker. She's always thinking about who writing can be in communicationwith, who needs to see the work and great recommender for books and her amazingprojects that she has in the words for herself. While I was writing A Beauty Has Come, she sent me herrecent writing There Are No Cops inAmerica & The Streets Are Paved w/ Cheese (2020) and it made megrateful to have a fellow traveler for an editor. Working with Jaye is ablessing. They are intuitive, imaginative and promising writer and editor intheir own writing. They presented a visual representation of how my book lookedand I had never heard or seen that before. It was really cool to see a visualrepresentation of my work and I'm grateful that they did that. They reallyprovided feedback for me to step totally out of myself, which was a relief.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarilygiven to you directly)?
"Know where you end and where the world begins" and"Know what is yours". These are things that I've heard in therapeuticwork and training. It is very useful to know what is something that youconsider to be yours and what is not yours and can be composted, if it does notserve you.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do youeven have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Vibes are everything! My ideal writing situation is a warm sunnyday at my desk. Music playing, vinyl or bluetooth speaker. Incense burning(preferably the incense Nag Champa) and a few books that I can pull off theshelf that I can dip in and out of. Perhaps some movement to go along with thewriting, and groove until words shake out of my bones.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or returnfor (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I return back to “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe”, “All the Things YouCould Be” (both by Spillers), Poet In NewYork by Federico Garcia Lorca, SavageDetectives by Roberto Bolano, Palmares by Gayl Jones, Jazz Fan Looks Back by Jayne Cortez, Capital Vol 1, Heart of The Congos by The Congos, Return of The Super Ape by Lee Scratch Perry, Movement In Black by Pat Parker, Loveless By My Bloody Valentine, Journey In Satchidananda by Alice Coltrane, Weapon of Theory by Amilcar Cabral, Nothing But The Music by Thulani Davis, Taste of Brown Sugar by Mireille Miller-Young, I Against I by Bad Brains, Black On Both Sides by C.RileySnorton, Sula by Morrison and so many other.
Especially over the course of writing A Beauty Has Come I was revisiting items new to me, but old to theworld. Moby Dick by Melville blew mymind in the first chapter. My public school education didn't introduce Melvilleto me but as I got older all these marxists were into Melville. When I read theBlack congregation scene where the pastor is leading a sermon on the"Blackness of Darkness", it blew my mind. I've been revisiting Black Athena by Martin Bernal and thathas blown my mind and been affirming because as a young person I was veryinterested in Greek and Egyptian mythology. Especially the story of Io, whoescapes more molestation from Zeus and the gods, and finds solace in Africa tofinally give birth. A beauty has come, indeed.
Tera Hunter's 'To Joy MyFreedom is a text Ifrequently return to as a reminder of the history of self-adornment, laborrevolt and resistance towards racist, sexist and ableist projections placedupon newly emancipated Black women in Atlanta. The book begins with a prologueof a newly emancipated Black woman stating that she is leaving her past behindto "'joy her freedom" which is so powerful to be reminded that projectof freedom(s) is an active one that is always being advocated for in the minds,the hearts and tongues of ancestor of the past and present. The first chapterbegins with an enslaved Black woman risking physical violence on behalf of hergazing upon her likeness in a mirror and adorning her body with perfume. It isa beautiful vignette to be reminded of the ways Black women even whilstenslaved are finding ways to self-adorn and are actively finding covert andovert ways to display beauty and resist white supremacist notions of beauty, atthe risk of violence. The Beautiful One Has Come in the flesh gaze at herselfwithout fear, indeed. And yet, the risk violence is not enough for thebeautiful one to reconsider the option of bucking against the demands ofservitude and fighting for bodily autonomy. The beautiful one has sought toclaim herself. This is the historical context of Black Is Beautiful in theAmerica(s). How to make one's self in an image of their own liking thattranscends the categories of race, class or ability position. It is an activecosmic position. A life giving position.
I've also been reading LaMovida By Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, revisiting Crosslight for Young Bird by Asiya Wadud (which I recently gave away toa student), A Theory of Birdsby Zaina Alsous, u know how much i hate being alone insocial situations// by Stephon Lawrence, NastyNotes by Benedict Nguyen Gossypiin by Ra Malika Imhotep (I have been repeatingtheir line from the book: "Never baby/Just Doll" because it is socunty and a praise reclamation of one's self) and This is your receipt and is not a ticket for travel by danilomachado.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Nag Champa! However, currently at home we have this burning. Amber and Vanilla will nevernot be a potent combo. I love heady, deep and warm fragrances like vetiver,sandalwood, leather, magnolia, and jasmine. I also like to wear Bohemian Reves''Desert Fleur' or Tom Ford's 'Tobacco Vanille'. My mom used to wear Gucci 'Rush' and that always reminds me ofher.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, butare there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music,science or visual art?
Of course! I was obviously quite excited by the science news of thenew photos of a black hole. As I wrote in A Beauty Has Come
"the blackness that holds space and time together
Blackness as congealed time."
Also becamevery excited that our own galaxy has a black hole at the center of it, and how it literally holds our realitytogether. The news about our galaxy not being "locally real" also really encouraged me to think cosmically. The concept ofinfinity and spooky actions at a distance all feel comforting to me. That thetime and space we exist in is infinite but we are not, is very grounding for mepersonally. That the time we have in this moment isn't even encapsulated in anexhale of our galaxy. We are part of a cosmic churn. We become cosmic compost,constantly being remade and unmade. Folding and unfolding. The only reason whyany of us are alive is because a person decided that they wanted to participatein the cosmic exhalation and usher us into this plane of existence. We don'tconsent to it. We just arrived. A sigh is both a womb and a grave, after all. AndI'm of the Klienian belief that the only thing biologically essential aboutgiving birth and being birthed is that we do come ready to relate. Whateverthat relation is, we are soaking it in our tiny, expansive bodies throughintimacy. I'm using intimacy in the Spillers way, which is very dictated by thesensual reality of flesh.
That is whyI am communist, because I think it incredibly boring,violent and unimaginativethat the so-called normative belief that we come ready to think in binaries orcommodities. To spend our lives crouched and cramped determined by our laborvalue. Ugh yawn. Imagine all the things we could become while matching thecosmic samba.
I wasraised by horticulturists and went to high school to study landscape design andhorticulture (fun fact:I ranked 4th in Pennsylvania FFA for my horticultureknowledge). I'm named after a plant and I'm a Leo, so my love of nature wascharted for me. On certain days I prefer being non-verbal and hanging out withmy plants or the cherry tree in my backyard.
Music is also a given. Visual artis also impactful. The first drafts of ABeauty Has Come had Circe byRomare Bearden and Chitra Ganesh's Shethe question, as potential cover art ideas.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
I answered this above a little but by trade I am a therapist, so Itry to stay as abreast on the field. I've been really into what Psychoanalysis & History has beenputting out. I really liked the article "The Clinical Space as Quilombo" by KwameYonatan Poli dos Santos. We could all find a way out of recreating colonialwhite supremacist psychic notions by decentering the global north and lookingtoward the Quilombo form. Daniel Jose Gaztambide's People's Historyof Psychoanalysis is a great recentering of decolonialpsychoanalysis. I like to go back andre-read Anti-Oedipus, Wilhelm Reich and a few vintage copies of anti-psychiatry journals.
This blog on libcom really was ahead of its timeand was very encouraging for me to become a social worker.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love to create a film or create a soundtrack for a film. Ilove the soundtracks to films. They can really propel the film. Examples ofthis are Yojimbo by Kurosawa, any Gregg Araki film, Pariah by Dee Rees (Echelon by Honeychild Coleman is phenomenaland should be discussed more) and Mandy by Panos Cosmatos.
I'd love to get into oil paints or be a layman astronomer.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what wouldit be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?
I'd prefer a reality where labor wasn't structured by capitalistdemands. That would be my dream :)
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Probably spiritual possession. I just feel moved to write and Idon't try to question it. I often fantasize that if I could've been born at anyother time, I'd prefer to be a part of the Griot tradition, orating story andknowledge with my tongue and learning tongues of other teachers. "A sacredchild deserving of her cronehood" in the words of Junada Petrus.Or a member of the Dogon tribe staring up at Sirius and seeing myself, andself-fashioning my drum and hair in time with the cosmos.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?
Palmaresby Gayl Jones and Andrei Rublev by Tarkovsky (but probably ) . However, my friend Van did introduce to me the joy of JunadaPetrus' Can We PleaseGive the Police Department to the Grandmothers?
19 - What are you currently working on?
I'm starting a band (ojalá), perhaps a choreopoem (ojalá) andreading and writing with friends. And being in love with my beloved and my ownself possession.
