12 or 20 (second series) questions with fahima ife

fahima ife is anAmerican poet, essayist, and editor. She writes about radical intimacy, beauty,and sensuality as it pertains to nature and metaphysics. She is author of thepoetry book, Septet for the Luminous Ones (Wesleyan University Press,2024), the hybrid book, Maroon Choreography (Duke University Press,2021), the chapbook, abalone (Albion Books, 2023), and other poems andessays appearing in The Kenyon Review, the Brooklyn Rail, Obsidian:Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Indiana Review, Air/Light,ASAP/J, liquid blackness, Interim, Poetry Daily, andmore. She has performed at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, thePoetry Foundation, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, the Museum ofthe African Diaspora, and other places. Her work has been written about in the NewYork Times, the Poetry Foundation, Fugue Journal, the PoetrySociety, Brooklyn Poets, Lateral, and other places. She isassociate professor of Black Aesthetics & Poetics in the department ofCritical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. Sheteaches creative classes on African diasporic music and performance,experimental poetry and poetics, Black Studies, Black Lesbian practices, andmore. With poet Ian U Lockaby she co-directs, co-creates, co-curates, andco-edits a chapbook series for their poetry micropress, LUCIUS . Shemakes her home on the central California coast where she practices a yogalifestyle grounded in daily rituals of love, joy, and peace. She is at work ontwo books which explore sacred feminine aging in tantric union with mature masculinity:a poetry book called, Cosmic Libido, and an essay on experimentalpoetics called, Love Scene, or dancehall on the radio. 

1 - How did your firstbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous?How does it feel different?

Wow, great question. Myfirst book, Maroon Choreography, changed my life in profound immediateways. Stephanie Burt wrote a sweet review in the New York Times Book Review,which brought significant attention and light to my previously subterraneanexistence. I moved into community with so many other great souls, became knownin a way. Financially, my entire life changed for the better. I got a new joband tenure at the University of California Santa Cruz, was able to move fromNew Orleans back to my home state of California, to live by the ocean which issomething I always wanted. Maroon continues to create such powerfulopportunities to think deeply with many people I would otherwise not have achance to study with. I receive messages all the time from people who expressgratitude for that book. It's an ongoing phenomenon. My second book, Septetfor the Luminous Ones, has brought me into deeper community withcontemporary poets, which is something I did not know how much I needed until Ibegan to experience the unmatched joy of being able to pick up my phone andtype or speak a message to some other brilliant living poet who lives hundredsof miles away from me, to momentarily feel less alone in the general vastnessof being a poet in this world-simulation that still—on a mass scale—has no ideawhat we are, or what we are for.

2 - How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I first came to poetry asa child. I began dancing when I was 3. I began reading and writing when I was4. Growing up, my family was very mystical, musical, spiritual, so at home itwas easy for me to "be" a poet, meaning I could explore and deepen myneurospicy sensibilities—I was a sleepwalker as a child, I had incredibly vividdreams that I could recall with great detail, I began astral traveling, I wasdeeply connected with spirit realms, could commune with spirits, otherentities, was incredibly sensitive (secretive), had a lot of imaginary friends,would spend hours preoccupied within the invisible realms in our backyard, oncamping trips, or just drifting around aimlessly in my own imagination, I couldeasily imitate the sounds of other people's voices, could sing lyrics to songseven if I had never heard the song before and was singing it for the firsttime, had an episodic memory that felt almost epic, for the most part all ofthis was fine in the context of my family. I went to a public, creative artsschool, I was in a magnet program, so I was involved with various creativepractices as a child. In first grade, I guess around age 7, I started recitingpoetry by Harlem Renaissance poets, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, other greatslike Emily Dickinson, because my teacher, mom, and assistant teacher—threeBlack and Brown women who were all about Black history and Black poetry—co-createda daily practice that they collectively reinforced at home, in the classroom,at recess on the playground, and in the world. My mom would have me read poetryaloud to her most nights when I was young, she taught me how to type on hertypewriter at the kitchen table, she also taught me how to sew, so poetrybecame something embedded within my daily practice of reading, studying,playing, moving, making, breathing, speaking, being. Just this very naturalthing. I finally began writing poems around age 14, which makes sense to me nowbecause that was around the time when I told my mom I wanted to beginpracticing witchcraft and I was no longer interested in going to our ChristianScience church. Fortunately for me, she listened and supported my decision.

3 - How long does it taketo start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It takes me a very longtime to start anything. Writing is no different. Sometimes I get a very clearflash of an entire project—generally a book—I see, feel, experience it as afinished product, understand exactly what it is, experience a heightenedecstasy that's unlike anything, then soon after I lose the thread and can'tseem to figure out how to get from A to B. But if I feel that flash and committo a project then I'm determined to see the thing through, no matter how longit takes or where it takes me. My first book was written in time constraints,it was my tenure project, so there was external pressure which I did not enjoy.Writing Maroon was such a painful process for my physical body, becauseI was so focused on the work itself I could not properly attend to all thesignals coming from my body, or actually release years of the accumulated painthat I was working through in the process of shaping Maroon whose formchanged dramatically from initial drafts to the published book. I was superanxious the whole time. I really had to learn how to get out of the way, tostop trying to control it, to let the book become itself and not what I wantedit to be. Septet came in a delicious flash. Suddenly, after Maroon,I was receiving invitations from poets to submit new work. I was shocked tolearn I actually had more work, a lot of it! Rae Armantrout sent me a letterasking if she could put me in touch with her editor (now our editor) SuzannaTamminen at Wesleyan. After talking with Suzanna, I ended up writing Septetin nine months, which was entirely unexpected, a beautiful surprise! A doulafriend, Laurel Gourrier, told me it was a pregnancy and to treat it as such.I've never been pregnant with a human fetus, but I really loved working in agestational way, some of those final poems look the same as they first arrived,many of them went through several revisions before the final shape. Now,because I no longer have any time constraints, I have this incredible freedomto truly listen to a project, to allow it to come in its own time, to readjustenergetically to receive the work, receiving poems is a serious energeticcommitment (it's not often easy on the body), I'm much better at listening tomy body, pausing, properly caring for myself, releasing, moving stagnantenergy, and understanding how certain things I'm working through in the poetryis connected to actual trauma I've experienced in my human life, and the deepancestral work I'm healing at the cellular levels through my mother,grandmother, and all our mother's mitochondrial DNA. Working this way feelssuper natural, healing, sacred. I'm currently writing three books, differentgenres, all at once, have never done this before, it's ongoing. The firstsensation of these three new books emerged while I was wrapping up Septet,and by post-production I was committed to bringing these new books into theworld, began making notes on what I thought they might be. They change so muchas time passes. Lovingly, I refer to them as my triplets. It's such a slow,intentional, co-creative process. Only a little comes, or sometimes these hugefloods, followed by long periods of nothing. I spend a lot of time reading inthe nothing.

4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?

I'm generally working on abook from the very beginning. The poem, or really the book, arrives with aline, a sound, a sentence, a fragrance, laughter, a texture, an image, somethingsensual. In late spring 2021, I was sitting in a little casita in a rural townin New Mexico outside of Santa Fe when the line "petrichor / a waft justnow" floated in with the breeze, and the scent of coming rain. I heard theline in the wind, could feel it in the scent, wrote it down, it was thebeginning of Septet long before I began writing it. The actual lineappears in the poem "acid west" which emerges pretty far into theactual book, I was thinking partially with my friend Joshua Wheeler's AcidWest, after spending a lot of time with his book on the beach, probablythinking about the constant interplay of beach and desert. Poems are suchintimate spaces for me. They often begin on the precipice of great love,essentially for myself, and personal things I am exploring with friends andlovers.

5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?

I love reading poems. Iwant to read more public poems. I go through shadow and light periods.Sometimes I just need to be unperceived, in the dark, left alone. Other times Ilike to be very intensely in the light, just everywhere as much as possible. I'mcoming into a bright moment. I live in a small coastal town in California,which is not at all like a city, it has a much sleepier, subdued, sensualitythat I truly adore. Like no one is rushing, no one is really trying to impressanyone, people are just grateful to be in a shared creative spirit, it feelslike a great place to start talking into some microphones. The pace is exactlymy pace. I've been slowly making plans to do public readings here in SantaCruz, where the poetry scene is microscopic but intimate. I want to get up tothe Bay Area and start hanging with those poets too.

6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?

These things have shifteddramatically for me post-tenure. Before my first book, I was basically tryingto hone a language to discuss what I care about, what I think about, what Istudy. I seem to be very obsessed with intimacy, sensuality, and beauty, theway we (as a species) can experience these heightened existential states ofbeing while still grappling with the horrors of systemic racial capitalism. That'sthe very broad thing. More specifically, at this point in my life, as a42-year-old Black woman, I am preoccupied with graceful aging, with renewing myrelationship with my uterus and hormones, with being a lunar creature, withdeepening my Tantra, with spirituality, with love and loving. It's so rare toencounter mainstream positive literary portrayals of Black women who are trulyinhabiting their power, who are loving fully and deeply, or the only spaceswhere I witness such delight is in the works and practices of Black Lesbians.Politically, in my writing and in my life, there is a very strong Black Lesbianethos, that is my main concern now. And I mean "Black Lesbian ethos"in that Cathy Cohen ("Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens") sensewhere a Black Lesbian politic is less about sex and who is sleeping with whom, andmore about intentional relating and caring for each other. I don't know exactlywhat other people's current questions are, but I am asking questions about howI can be more loving with myself and others in a time of continuous violence,precarity, scarcity, isolation, and fear.

7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?

The writer is soessential. I think people forget this, or do not realize that the objectivereality we inhabit is a narrative, something written, something reinforced.Everyone is talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI), everywhere I turn, somuch anxiety around that, and whatever current trend in the media. Everythingis written. People speak things that are written. For better or for worse. Eachwriter has a different role. My role as writer is to spread love, to try andplay my part in shifting the vibrational frequency of this planet fromfear-based to love-based frequencies. It's easier, I think, to do this withmusic. The next closest thing is poetry. As a Black woman, I've experiencedsome terribly painful shit in this life, so much core trauma, inherited legacypain, but I work hard to transmute that pain into something beautiful. I'm sodisciplined in my craft, practice, to raise the lyric to a more consciouslevel, even if it doesn't come off that way to a reader, I know what type ofenergy I channel into my work. It's all Love. I think the role of the writer,on some levels, is to become exquisitely devoted curators of our craft —whatever forms we're working through and contributing to — to make a point ofcontextualizing our work in the "traditions" and groupings (etcetera) that inform and shape our work. I read so much. Poetry. Philosophy.Fiction (both great and bullshit). Essays. I read much, much, more than I write.My practice as a writer mostly involves a lot of deep study and also communionand conversations with the friends who help keep my ideas in motion. I thinkour role is super communal. I learn so much more about my role by being incommunity with friends, both practicing and non-practicing artists,experiencing moments of life together, having conversations about what we doand don't do. There's sometimes a tendency for people to distinguish practiceas some sort of rudimentary form that one must relinquish after a particularstage of development, at which point one presumably becomes adept, orproficient enough to no longer need to practice. Writing doesn't work like thatfor me. Even though lately much of what I think of as my "best"writing arrives quite rapidly, in order to receive these glimmers, I mustpractice to keep my instrument (my bodyaura) functioning at its optimal andready to receive when it's time. The whole process is incredibly feminine. Isort of work like an improvisational experimental jazz artist, those harpistsand horn players of the 1960s and 1970s, it only seemed as if they were jammingfree, but they could only do so because they spent so much of their time indeep continuous study, practice, and play. I'm grateful I have the privilege tolive how I live. That I get to immerse myself fully in the creative process tothe point where I get to live inside my works-in-process. For folks who stillhave to deal with a 9-5 job, or who are struggling with securing basic needs,it seems the role is to remain true to their struggle, to express what needs tobe expressed, to honor the tiny snatches of time when there is a moment tocontinue practicing, to continue shaping whatever poem, story, or missive thatis their pleasure (and perhaps purpose) and to share it with the world.

8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love the process ofworking with an editor. It's essential. I'm very independent, but receptive. Idon't like being told what to do. That's a huge turn off. I love when an editortrusts me, when they step back, when they (perhaps) perceive some glitch orsticky part in the work, but they let me figure it out on my own. I like faith.A lot of space. And figuring shit out on my own.

9 - What is the best pieceof advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

June Jordan said"poems are house work" and I think that's the best advice I've everheard because it explodes into meaning and is resonant with how I live in myphysical home and physical body, what I do in these spaces, whom I invite in tothese places, the work I do.

10 - How easy has it beenfor you to move between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as theappeal?

It appears seamless, but it'shard as hell. I use entirely different sensibilities when writing an essayversus receiving and shaping poetry. I'm doing this now in the three books I'mwriting. One is poetry, the other essay, the other fiction. I think the appealfor poets to move between poetry and essays is about being known. It's essentialfor poets to place our work in the context of other poetry, throughout time andspace, and to talk about the continuity, the expansions, whatever else ishappening, through essays. We are the only ones who can do this. We cannot relyon (non-poet) literary critics or analysts, to define what is taking placewithin our poetry. Plus, the labor of writing essays helps keep the traditionof poetry alive for future generations of readers and I am so committed to thisparticular part of the practice. And for me, it's totally practice. I practiceeach day and night. Mastery is a myth peddled by racial capitalism. 

11 - What kind of writingroutine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day(for you) begin?

I'm incredibly domestic. Beingintentional with how I make home is necessary to my practice. At home, I live avery simple, ritualistic life and poetry is deeply embedded within this. Idon't like routine because it's too rigid for my lifestyle, but each day I tendto do the same things with slight variation. I move intentionally (either hike,yoga, dance, sometimes run), I breathe intentionally (in meditation), I preparenearly all of my meals, I fast sometimes, I drink a lot of water, I have ajournal I write in daily or many days a week, I eat in a seasonal Ayurvedic wayto maintain balance, I spend time on the ground outside (in the sun, in thegrey), I listen to the birds, I talk with people I know and strangers too, Iwork with plant medicines (cannabis and other herbs), sometimes I work withmagic mushrooms, I feel things very deeply, I make love to myself, I payattention to how my energy shifts throughout my menstrual cycle, I show up inthe ways I can in my communities, I read something, read a lot of thingsactually, I share the house with visitors I love, I remain in flow. Theuniversity where I teach is on a quarter system, I do not teach every quarter.If I'm in a teaching quarter, my rituals expand to allow more space to dealwith more humans than is typically the case for me, but I still dedicate timeto my creative practice. Days of the week have spiritual significance. I followthe astrological movements of the planets, the phases of the moon, I am alwaysmoving in accordance with the great invisible threads that hold us alltogether. Every day I recommit to life. Every day I practice deep gratitude forthe overall abundance in my life. When I am not in a teaching quarter, I ammuch more disciplined in my daily rituals, there's a precision, a tightness, aminimalism I cannot even articulate, but it's palpable. When I'm not teaching, becauseI live alone and do not have any children, I move into the delicious phase inmy year where I feel as if I am living in a continuous artist residency onlybroken by going out dancing with local friends which is totally part of mywriting practice.

12 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?

I remember hearing thesinger Erykah Badu say in an interview once that there's no such thing as acreative block, that when we arrive at an impasse it's actually just a momentof heightened receptivity, we enter an intensive downloading or uploading partof the process. This might be another exceptional piece of advice, it changedhow I think about creating. Sometimes it feels frustrating when the writingstalls because I love creating, but I understand it's necessary to the process,to life. Everything goes through cycles. Nothing is in full bloom all yearlong. Whenever I experience these pauses, I don't even think about it anymore,I just surrender to the experience, feel things very deeply, pick it back upwhen it's time for me to re-enter the great stream. It might sound terrible,but when the creative process slows down, I often turn to my lovers and friendsand family who I had been unconsciously ignoring while I was busy at work. Ialso return to nature, take longer, slower walks, immerse myself with theearth, go deeper into meditation, sleep longer, sometimes hop around in variousbooks or sometimes binge watch a great television series. I'm not so muchsearching for inspiration in these moments, I feel as if I'm reacclimating tothe material plane, the whole thing is super grounding. I also tend to writevery long letters to friends, to poets, to other people during lulls.

13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?

My home often smells like jasmine,sandalwood, frankincense, ganja, cedar, copal, cumin, cinnamon, coffee, rose,olive oil, lavender. These scents remind me of home.

14 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Yes, nature. I live veryclose to the ocean, it's such a delight to exist in the continuous sensation ofcoastal life, and the lifeforms that are here, various birds, flora and fauna,everything is so fertile, lively, synergistic. The way the weather fluctuateson a coast is so different from where I grew up in a desert valley in SouthernCalifornia and the landlocked experiences I had living outside the state inGeorgia, Wisconsin, and Louisiana. On the coast, there's a constant marinelayer, at dawn at dusk, interspersed by bright sun, it changes rapidly, themovement is a rhythm I'm still learning and honing in my craft. For the pastcouple years, one of the greatest influences on my work is the soundscapecreated by my friend and local dancehall DJ Selecta 7 (aka Osha B) who hosts aweekly radio show on KZSC 88.1fm and streamed online called "Reggae LoveRadio" on Saturday nights, and his monthly global bass music dance partiescalled "Outernational" here in Santa Cruz. Both surreal music spacesare great companions for all three of the books I'm currently preparing.Because Osha is super technical and precise, his shows/parties are so carefullycurated they feel like poems, or a kind of poetics that is at the exactfrequency in which I create, so his curatorial work within his scene is superinfluential.

15 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Everything by Nathaniel Mackey, Renee Gladman, Ed Roberson, akilah oliver, Alice Notley, is importantto my work. Various books on Tantra. Also, I can't stop reading JasmineGibson's A Beauty Has Come. Otherwise, lately I've been reading fictionseries in English translation. Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth,and Suggested in the Stars (look forward to the final book in theseries, Archipelago of the Sun) translated by Margaret Mitsutani. I alsolove Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume (books one and two of aseven book series, translated by Barbara J. Haveland), which is unlike anythingI've ever read. I like stories that are mundane, minimalist, serial, composedthrough the simplicity of looping a certain sequence of events over and overwith slight variation, which happens in both Tawada and Balle's work. I've alsobeen reading a lot of Clarice Lispector's work alongside work by Hélène Cixous.I've been reading More Than Two (the original and the second edition) onhealthy polyamory, because I've been polyamorous for 20 years but just barelyreading these books because I'm writing about polyamory in a way that's stillvery fresh and exciting to me, so these books are helpful. I just got DebbieUrbanski's short stories, Portalmania.

16 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?

Grow food. Go to Morocco,Spain, Thailand, Bahia, Patagonia. Make quilts. Grow roses.

17 - If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Hmm. I'd probably workwith textiles, make quilts, work on looms to make natural fiber blankets andclothing. Actually, I'd live on a farm with my partner and other people welove, some bold new age commune where we all have our own yurts, we'd all makea point of loving ourselves and each other, plus we would live with sheep whowe would carefully shear each season, lots of other animals. It would be a lotof work, a huge commitment, the whole thing would be rootsy, artsy, herbalist,based in trade, biodynamic, with plenty of time for shared walks, meals,intimate conversations. We'd host wellness retreats for people who live incities and want to reconnect with the earth. This is the dream! Fuck, I'm socottagecore. Maybe we could start some new great cult. Haha! Oh, or afilmmaker!

18 - What made you write,as opposed to doing something else?

My frequency did this tome.

19 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?

No idea.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

A poetry book called, CosmicLibido. An essay book called, Love Scene, or dancehall on the radio.A fiction book whose name cannot yet be revealed to the public. And,co-directing, co-creating, co-curating, and co-editing a juicy new poetrymicropress, LUCIUS, with my friend Ian U Lockaby. We're preparing topublish our very first chapbook this summer—Nathaniel Mackey's very beautiful SoWoke We Saw Thru Stone, which continues his double long song, ongoingstill! 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;