From the Stage to the Page with Rudy Francisco

[00:00:00] Well we're sad, we're trying to figure ourselves out. We're trying to figure a way out of the sadness, right?

[00:00:06] Whereas like I said if you're joyful, you'll just be joyful. You're not thinking about unpacking it, you're not deconstructing it, you're just living in it.

[00:00:13] And sometimes that's not as conducive to writing as sadness is.

[00:00:16] What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams and this is Black & Published.

[00:00:21] Bringing you the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights and storytellers of all kinds.

[00:00:28] Today's guest is Rudy Francisco, author of the poetry collection Excuse Me As I Kissed the Sky.

[00:00:35] A renowned spoken word artist, Rudy said taking his work from the stage to the page

[00:00:41] allowed him to grow and write about more than just one topic.

[00:00:45] I think sometimes we tend to be geared towards okay like I want to write about like political poems

[00:00:51] or I want to write love poems. I want to write a poem about sadness or break up poems, what have you, right?

[00:00:58] But the reality is that we experience all of those things at some point in time.

[00:01:02] So I think for me it's less about saying okay like I want to be balanced.

[00:01:06] It's more about saying I'd like to portray myself accurately.

[00:01:09] In his books as well as in his performances, Rudy's work runs the gamut from social commentary to excavating his interior.

[00:01:18] Why he tries to show the accuracy of his humanity instead of a balance between joy and pain, happiness or sadness.

[00:01:27] Plus the reason he believes the rift between poets who focus on writing and spoken word artists is closing.

[00:01:35] And how committing as much work to the craft of writing as he had to honing his stage presence

[00:01:41] was thanks to a few friends who turned their YouTube channel into a publishing house.

[00:01:47] That and more is next. When Black and Published continues.

[00:01:52] Rudy, when did you know that you were a writer?

[00:01:57] You know for a long time I didn't consider myself a writer per se.

[00:02:02] I got into poetry through spoken word.

[00:02:05] So I've always considered myself in the beginning more of a performer.

[00:02:09] I would write poems of course right but I wasn't really thinking about how the poems would read to somebody else.

[00:02:18] I always thought about how does it sound when I say it.

[00:02:22] So when I got my first publishing deal, I was really apprehensive about it because I was like,

[00:02:28] oh I'm going to have to leave these on the page and somebody else is going to have to read them and interpret the meaning for themselves.

[00:02:35] So it took me a long time to really consider myself a writer per se.

[00:02:40] Fortunately I had a really great editor and we took a lot of the performance poems

[00:02:45] and we asked ourselves how do we go about taking these performance poems

[00:02:50] and making them come alive on the page.

[00:02:52] And once I felt like I could start doing that, that was when I really felt like more of a writer to be honest.

[00:02:57] So in the past few years or so, I started really considering myself a writer.

[00:03:05] Okay. So then your process is really going from the stage to the page.

[00:03:10] What did you learn about yourself as a poet seeing your poems laid out in print

[00:03:17] instead of just working on them to come from your voice and using that as your instrument?

[00:03:22] What I really started to see in my own writing were some common themes about things that I typically will discuss in my work.

[00:03:32] Like once you really start to see all the poems laid out, then you start to see the common threads.

[00:03:37] I also noticed that there are certain words that I use pretty often to describe things

[00:03:41] and that really sort of like brought that to the forefront of my attention.

[00:03:46] And I was like, okay, well how do I go about using some other words to describe things as well?

[00:03:50] So yeah, like when I really start to look at my work on the page, it also made me focus a lot more on

[00:03:57] how do I give my audience something that they can sort of deconstruct on their own.

[00:04:02] What I noticed in a lot of my performance poems is that I tend to provide a lot of context to the imagery that I give people

[00:04:10] because you know, in performance you get one chance and those people are going to hear it once unless they watch it again on YouTube.

[00:04:15] So the most part they're just going to hear it once and you'd have to sort of construct your poems

[00:04:20] in a way that makes sure that the audience doesn't get lost.

[00:04:23] And what I found is that the page is a lot more forgiving.

[00:04:26] I found that I'm able to write poems that will sort of like challenge the audience to do a little bit of work on their own as well

[00:04:33] and to draw their own interpretation of certain lines.

[00:04:37] That felt like I didn't have to give my reader all of the information.

[00:04:41] I can give my reader some of the information and then allow them to sort of construct all that around them.

[00:04:47] And it sort of reminds you of like the difference between watching the movie and reading the book, right?

[00:04:53] And I think like, you know, there are a few books that I've really enjoyed as far as like watching the movie and also reading,

[00:04:59] but they're different experiences.

[00:05:01] You know, like when you're reading your imagination gets to do a lot of work around what these things look like.

[00:05:06] Whereas when you watch the movie, you know, the movie does a lot of that for you.

[00:05:10] I think of poetry, you know, performance and like the page.

[00:05:14] I think of those very similarly where, you know, performance, you're often giving them all of the information

[00:05:20] but they don't get lost.

[00:05:22] Whereas on the page, you can allow them to do a little bit of the work themselves.

[00:05:26] And leaving that ambiguity in your poems on the page, did that free you up in your work on the stage to, you know,

[00:05:37] maybe give the audience the same level of performance but make them think deeper about what it is that you're saying?

[00:05:45] Yeah, so what I noticed is that I would over explain often in my performance tone.

[00:05:52] And when I started writing more for the page, initially I was writing in a very similar fashion where I was over explaining

[00:05:59] and my editor was like, hey, you don't have to give them all of that information.

[00:06:03] You can actually let them construct that themselves.

[00:06:06] And that was something that I wasn't used to.

[00:06:07] I was like, well, what if they don't understand?

[00:06:09] He was like, well, you know, if they don't understand something that's on the page, they can actually go and look it up.

[00:06:13] And then they can re-re-evolve.

[00:06:14] And I started to adopt a little bit of that in my performance work as well where I was like, okay,

[00:06:20] maybe there's some things that I can write where the audience sort of gets to construct a little bit of that themselves

[00:06:28] similar to how I approach the page.

[00:06:30] So I did start incorporating some of that into my performance work as well.

[00:06:35] So you talk a lot about not really thinking of yourself as a writer until you actually had to start writing for a book.

[00:06:42] So let's talk about your publication process because how do you go from a spoken word poet that's doing tours

[00:06:51] and on stage all the time to putting out a book and we know it's not like what Darius Lovehall did in Love Jones?

[00:06:58] Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:01] So that whole process is very interesting.

[00:07:03] Like I said, it came to me as a spoken word artist.

[00:07:05] So I was performing and then I started doing competition.

[00:07:08] I started doing poetry slam and there used to be, unfortunately, it doesn't happen currently.

[00:07:14] There used to be a national poetry slam and that was an opportunity where about 80 teams from around the country would get together in a designated city

[00:07:23] and they would compete against each other.

[00:07:25] And what happens is you get a chance to meet all kinds of people who do poetry from a lot of different places.

[00:07:33] And I was doing well in competition.

[00:07:36] So what happens often is the people who are also like doing well, you see each other often and that you form bonds with those people.

[00:07:43] And one of the groups of people that I got really close to was the Minneapolis poetry slam team.

[00:07:49] And the Minneapolis poetry slam team later on, a few of them got together and they created button poetry.

[00:07:56] So I had known my publishing house.

[00:07:59] Like I had known a lot of them since you know the early days of me performing and getting into the slam.

[00:08:06] So after having a really good relationship with them when they created button poetry, they actually just reached out to me and they were like, hey, so have you ever thought about doing a poetry book?

[00:08:15] And I was like, not really.

[00:08:17] You know, and they said, well, we're interested in publishing you.

[00:08:21] How about you send us your manuscript?

[00:08:23] And I was like, oh, I don't have a manuscript.

[00:08:25] And they were like, okay, so we're going to sign you.

[00:08:28] We're going to get you an editor.

[00:08:30] You know, how about you put together some poems that you think would work well in a book form and then we'll walk you through the process.

[00:08:38] So to be honest, right?

[00:08:39] Like I was just really, really fortunate to be in a space where, you know, like I started to create really good relationships with the people that were just around me and those people around me and becoming a publishing house at some point in time.

[00:08:55] So when they became a publishing house, we already had that rapport.

[00:08:58] Which is why it's been such a beautiful experience to be with a button because they're not just my publishing house.

[00:09:04] They're people that I've known for a really long time.

[00:09:06] Yes, this is your third book with button.

[00:09:09] And I'm assuming that the process has gotten easier or better with every book that you've done.

[00:09:16] But can you talk about what it's like to like that first time when you were putting together your very first collection, your debut collection and working to edit yourself and leave things sparse and letting the reader construct things in their imagination.

[00:09:31] What was your working relationship like with your editor?

[00:09:34] My editor was Michael Malecaday, who was a poet that I had a tremendous amount of respect for and still do, of course.

[00:09:40] And when he was assigned to me as my editor, I was like, oh, like I've seen his work.

[00:09:45] I enjoy his work.

[00:09:47] And we were also like really cool.

[00:09:49] Like whenever we would see each other at tournaments, like talk.

[00:09:51] And I was just really fortunate that I had an editor who really, really not only cared about poetry, but also cared about me and my work.

[00:10:01] So I sent him a bunch of poems and I was like, hey, I have no idea what I'm doing.

[00:10:05] Can you sort of walk me through this?

[00:10:07] And then he gave me a lot of feedback on which poems to include.

[00:10:12] How do we go about creating line breaks?

[00:10:15] One of the conversations was do we adapt all of the performance poem to the page or do we leave some of the performance poems as they are because they kind of like already exist on YouTube.

[00:10:28] Like there was some poems that had already gone viral.

[00:10:30] And the question was, okay, since we're taking this poem and putting it on the page, do we edit this down a little bit?

[00:10:37] Do we convert it a little bit?

[00:10:39] And there were some choices that we made that were like, okay, we're going to make some edits on this and adapt it to the page.

[00:10:44] And there were some poems where we're like, no, we want this to live on the page.

[00:10:47] This is the exact same way that it lives in the world currently.

[00:10:50] That was one of the questions that we had to sort of like mull through as well.

[00:10:54] Which poems to include?

[00:10:56] And then after we put together all the performance poems, we were like, okay, so the performance poems are going to be more skeleton.

[00:11:03] And then how do we connect all of these?

[00:11:05] So what I would do is I would just write every day.

[00:11:08] I would write for at least an hour every day.

[00:11:11] And at the end of the week, I would go through all of my writings and I would go, okay, what are some things here that we can sort of turn into something that we could actually include in the book?

[00:11:23] And once I got most of the poems together, then we have to decide, okay, how do we want to arrange this?

[00:11:30] And that can be a challenging sort of undertaking as well because you're asking yourself, okay, I have all these poems.

[00:11:38] How I put them together will impact the story that the book tells.

[00:11:43] Order is so important because it changes the way in which the book is digested.

[00:11:50] We kind of went through and we're like, okay, so what are some of the themes here?

[00:11:53] And how do we want to put them all together?

[00:11:55] And that was a long conversation.

[00:11:57] And at the end of the day, they were like, okay, this feels right.

[00:12:02] What feeling were you trying to evoke when you first did your first book, when you did Believe It's Helium, right?

[00:12:09] Yeah, yeah, Helium was the first one.

[00:12:11] So most of my books, the poems that are in these books are very much grounded in my personal experience.

[00:12:18] And my goal for just my every book is to show how multifaceted the human experience is.

[00:12:25] I know sometimes as artists, we can get sort of pigeonholed into writing about one particular topic or subject matter or one particular style.

[00:12:35] But for me, my goal in all the books that I write and my overarching goal and just like my body of work is to show how multifaceted we actually are.

[00:12:46] Like I exist in the world, not only as a black man, but I exist in the world as a brother, as an uncle, as a father, as a co-parent.

[00:12:57] Like I exist in the world in so many different ways.

[00:13:01] And my goal in my poetry is to portray that as accurately as possible because I think what happens is we often find ourselves,

[00:13:10] we don't find ourselves in all of the work that an author publishes, but my goal is for everybody to find a little bit of themselves in something that I create.

[00:13:21] You talk about in your book how when you were looking at your work initially and writing that most of your work was political and then that inspired you to start trying to write love poems

[00:13:34] and making sure that the books that you write and you publish are multifaceted and show the breadth of experience of humanity.

[00:13:44] What is the balance that you're trying to strike between, I guess, the joy and the sadness? And we'll get into that in a little bit as well.

[00:13:51] Oh yeah. So it's not even sort of like trying to write in a balanced way in my opinion.

[00:14:00] I'm just trying to portray myself accurately, right? Because like there are moments where, you know, I experience sadness of course, but there are also moments where I am joyful.

[00:14:10] There are moments where I'm proud of myself. There are moments where I'm disappointed in myself, you know, for every sort of feeling there is the opposite feeling and we're experiencing all of those.

[00:14:22] So like what I really try to do with my work is include as much of myself as possible. I think sometimes we tend to sort of veer towards, okay, like I want to write about like political poems and or I want to write love poems.

[00:14:36] I want to write poems about sadness or break up poems, what have you, right? And I think sometimes we can easily just sort of like fall into writing about one of those things.

[00:14:47] So I think for me it's less about saying, okay, like I want to be balanced. It's more of a thing I'd like to portray myself accurately.

[00:14:58] So since we're here, do you have your book with you to read some poems from it from the collection?

[00:15:05] Oh yeah, I can definitely do that.

[00:15:08] Excuse me as I kiss the sky is Rudy Francisco's third poetry collection. In it, Rudy explores poetic forms such as the Contrapuntal and Golden Shovel or Olds, Obids and Free Verse to explore subjects such as love, love, and love.

[00:15:25] Here's Rudy.

[00:15:32] I'm going to read, I mean I wrote this particular poem because I was spending a lot of time just like in bed laying down and I was really struggling with my mental health and a lot of other things.

[00:15:45] I had gotten to the point where I wasn't completely sure about like what I wanted to continue doing. I had hit this roadblock where I wasn't writing as much as I usually would do.

[00:16:06] And I was just kind of like, I don't know if I'm on the right path. I was having a lot of questions about myself and I was spending a lot of time in bed.

[00:16:16] Somebody had asked me because a friend of mine had texted me and they were like, oh, what are you up to? And I was like, oh, I'm in bed.

[00:16:25] And they were like, why? And I just told them that I was tired but that wasn't the honest answer.

[00:16:34] So in the sort of vein of being honest and whatnot, I wrote this poem shortly after and the poem is called Why Are You Still In Bed?

[00:16:43] And so there's a section where the beginning of the poem is a question and the body of the poem is the answer. So this is Why Are You Still In Bed?

[00:16:53] Because it's been a rough year and it's only June. Because it's been a rough week and it's only Monday. Because it's been a rough day and it's only 10 a.m.

[00:17:03] Because lately, all of my favorite memories are here. And sometimes you have to turn the day off, turn it back on again and hope that it's fixed.

[00:17:18] The next poem that I want to read is actually the poem that I had written in a workshop and the writing prompt was actually a poem by Jeffrey McDaniel.

[00:17:34] It's called A Quiet World. And the assignment was to write a poem inspired by the poem by Jeffrey McDaniel.

[00:17:43] And I also use it as a writing prompt as well when I do workshops. And the assignment for the workshop that I often do using this poem is for the participants,

[00:17:53] pretend that it's the future and create a new law. That seems somewhat outlandish. And then I want you to use the poem to describe the ways in which people now live.

[00:18:05] So the poem is actually called After Jeffrey McDaniel.

[00:18:09] In an effort to eradicate meaningless conversation, the government has passed a new law.

[00:18:15] From now on, all greetings, hello, hi, hey, what's up, I've been replaced with the phrase, I love you.

[00:18:24] When a stranger is lost, they say, I love you before they ask for directions.

[00:18:30] The catch here at the grocery store says, I love you before paper or plastic. It's the first thing a child hears when they're born.

[00:18:38] All conversations have attended your urgency. A soft importance. I love you before anything else. There is no more small talk.

[00:18:51] So the next poem is called On Happiness.

[00:18:56] And basically, when I wrote this poem, I was thinking of all of the sort of like small things that I do that make me happy.

[00:19:06] I'm very much interested in writing poems about joy because I feel like they're not enough poems about joy.

[00:19:12] I think it's easy to write about sadness and I think it's important to write about sadness.

[00:19:16] Of course, write about plight and social justice and all of those things that I think are extremely, extremely critical and important to the craft.

[00:19:23] But I also think what's also very important is to write about the moments in which we are joyful.

[00:19:28] So this poem is called On Happiness and here it goes.

[00:19:33] I draw a stick figure. It kind of looks like a spider, but I'm okay with that.

[00:19:41] I play my daughter's ukulele and the strings want to know what they did to deserve this category of torture.

[00:19:49] It doesn't sound very good, but that's fine.

[00:19:54] I sing Whitney Houston songs and tell my voice fractures, bludgeoned the lyrics until they are unrecognizable.

[00:20:03] But I am not ashamed.

[00:20:07] I'm teaching myself about the opposite of excellence.

[00:20:11] The subtle art of stumbling, the radical act of failure and forgiveness.

[00:20:17] I'm learning that embarrassment only shows its face if by allowing it.

[00:20:25] Thank you.

[00:20:27] So reading the book, my favorite sections were the free verse section as well as a section on question and answer and on happiness is from free verse and why are you still in bed is from question and answer.

[00:20:40] I actually love the book end of why are you still in bed in that section.

[00:20:45] Oh, thank you.

[00:20:46] Thank you.

[00:20:47] I appreciate that.

[00:20:49] I like about a lot of the poems, especially some of the more introspective ones where Fourth of July comes to mind, especially the one about your mother's wedding ring comes to mind.

[00:21:06] Hide and Seek comes to mind about playing with your daughter and being a present father.

[00:21:13] What is it like to be...

[00:21:17] This is a problematic question, but I want to ask it anyway.

[00:21:21] What is it like to be one of the stereotypical black men with feelings, public, poet type of persona while also really digging through your own stuff but doing it in a very public way?

[00:21:36] I think that's one of the purposes of art is to deconstruct and unpack a lot of the things that we're thinking through and struggling with.

[00:21:50] I think some of the best art is created in this sort of like unpacking stage and I feel like that's something that I've often been a source of pride for me is that I'm not afraid to say, hey, I'm not perfect.

[00:22:08] I'm not afraid to say that, hey, like I've done things that I'm not necessarily proud of.

[00:22:14] I've been a person that I haven't been proud of and I'm still growing and I'm still learning and I hold myself accountable.

[00:22:22] And I think that is such a critical part of being an artist is saying, hey, like even though I have a large following and whatnot, I'm still imperfect and I'm still working on myself and I struggle sometimes.

[00:22:38] And I think that sort of lets us to know that we're all a lot of us are dealing with a lot of the same things.

[00:22:45] Even though we look different, even though we may have different life circumstances, a lot of us are having the same sort of struggles and a lot of us are still growing.

[00:22:57] And that's something that I try to highlight in my work is that I'm not a finished product yet.

[00:23:02] I'm still growing and I'm still learning.

[00:23:04] And who knows, like I may find out in three years that like the poems that I wrote may not be, who knows how these poems will age?

[00:23:15] And I think about that a lot.

[00:23:17] Like I know that maybe at some point in time in the distant future, like some of the poems that I've written may not age well.

[00:23:24] But what I always try to do is always try to be honest and I always try to let people know that I'm not perfect, that I'm just here and I'm just living trying to figure out how to get through the day, you know, just like everybody else.

[00:23:35] And I want to make sure that that is also included in my work.

[00:23:39] The collection starts with old poems.

[00:23:42] And before you get to those set of poems, you tell the story about being at a reading doing a Q&A and then someone coming up to you and talking about they didn't think they could write poetry because they were

[00:23:54] weren't sad enough.

[00:23:56] Yeah, we talked about the importance of having joy and not necessarily having balance for being accurate.

[00:24:06] Why do you think sadness is such a motivator for poems?

[00:24:15] Yeah, so to be honest, I think when we're happy, we're just out being happy.

[00:24:20] You know, like what I'm joyful, like typically I'm not like, oh, I need to write this down.

[00:24:25] I'm just out being joyful.

[00:24:27] And I think what happens is when we're sad or really going through it, sadness is often an isolating feeling.

[00:24:35] Right?

[00:24:36] Like when we're sad, we're typically at home.

[00:24:38] We don't really want to be around people.

[00:24:39] We don't want to go out and do things.

[00:24:41] And that's conducive to writing when you're home and you don't feel like leaving, you don't feel like doing anything.

[00:24:45] That's the time that we take to sit down and write because writing also helps us unpack those feelings.

[00:24:50] Right?

[00:24:51] When we're joyful, we often don't think about unpacking joy.

[00:24:55] Like when we're joyful, we're just like, oh, this is great.

[00:24:58] And we just sort of like live in that joy.

[00:25:00] We don't unpack.

[00:25:01] We don't think of like, oh, why am I joyful right now?

[00:25:04] What does this mean?

[00:25:05] And I think when we're sad or sad, we're trying to figure ourselves out.

[00:25:10] We're trying to figure a way out of the sadness.

[00:25:12] Right?

[00:25:13] So that requires unpacking, that requires reflection and writing lends itself to that.

[00:25:19] Whereas like I said, if you're joyful, you just, I'll be enjoyable.

[00:25:22] You're not thinking about unpacking it.

[00:25:23] You're not deconstructing it.

[00:25:24] You're just living in it.

[00:25:26] And sometimes that's not as conducive to writing as sadness is.

[00:25:30] So then, and you say this in one of your poems that when you're happy,

[00:25:33] you go back and read something to see if you can make yourself a little bit sad.

[00:25:37] Which I thought.

[00:25:38] Yeah, right?

[00:25:39] That's like one of the realest things that I've ever wrote to be honest because I

[00:25:44] have a for a long time, I had an issue figuring out ways that I can just be

[00:25:50] happy for myself without, because I have a lot of imposter syndrome.

[00:25:55] I deal with a lot of negative self-talk to be honest.

[00:25:58] Right?

[00:25:59] And I remember when we won the National Poetry Slam, that must have been 2017.

[00:26:06] San Diego, our team with Javan Johnson, Viet Mai, Kristi Krof, Natasha Hooper.

[00:26:11] We won the national tournament and like there are so many people who go their

[00:26:16] entire careers without winning a national tournament.

[00:26:18] It's eight teams, you know, it's random judges.

[00:26:21] A lot of things have to sort of like fall into place, actually win one,

[00:26:25] and I had been competing for at this point about 10 years.

[00:26:30] And you know, I hadn't been close to winning, but I had never won until that point.

[00:26:35] And we were all celebrating, you know, afterwards everybody was just like,

[00:26:40] you know, so excited.

[00:26:41] And then immediately after I was like, what took you so long?

[00:26:47] You know what I mean?

[00:26:49] How come you couldn't win this sooner?

[00:26:51] You know what I mean?

[00:26:52] So many thoughts that I had in my head that were like very anti-celebration.

[00:26:57] They were just like, you should have won this years ago.

[00:27:00] Like what took you so long?

[00:27:01] How do you go about winning another one?

[00:27:03] You know what I mean?

[00:27:04] Like I couldn't even be present enough to celebrate.

[00:27:08] And like when I wrote that poem, like when things are going great for me,

[00:27:13] you know, like there, I've had so many opportunities like where I've been

[00:27:16] about Jimmy Fallon, right?

[00:27:18] After the show, I was like so many other people deserve opportunities like this.

[00:27:23] You know what I mean?

[00:27:24] So yeah, like even when I'm entrenched in joy, like there's a moment where I

[00:27:29] were sad and it sort of creeps in with like negative self-talk or imposter syndrome.

[00:27:36] And that's something that I still struggle with today to be honest.

[00:27:40] Okay.

[00:27:41] Cause I was going to ask, have you been able to write your way out of that?

[00:27:43] And the answer is no.

[00:27:46] So I've been getting better with it.

[00:27:49] Like I've gotten to a point where I look at what I've done and the

[00:27:55] opportunities that I've had and I go, why not me?

[00:28:00] You know, like for a long time I was like, why me?

[00:28:04] And I was like, I wouldn't look around and I would go, oh, this,

[00:28:07] like this opportunity could have went to this person and this person

[00:28:10] and this person, but it went to me instead.

[00:28:13] And I felt bad about that for a long period of time.

[00:28:17] Now I say like, why not me?

[00:28:20] And also how do I go about paying this forward?

[00:28:22] Like if it's me, how do I go about contributing, you know, to the overall

[00:28:29] craft by bringing other people up and bringing other people in and not

[00:28:33] only saying, okay, these are my opportunities, but these are

[00:28:36] opportunities for the entire craft.

[00:28:39] And if I, and if I'm representing the craft in this moment, I'm going to do

[00:28:43] my best, but then I'm also going to do my best to make sure that this

[00:28:46] opportunity doesn't begin and end with me.

[00:28:49] That when I look around and I see, oh, wow, this could have went to

[00:28:52] this person, this could have went to that person.

[00:28:54] How do I go about getting that person an opportunity as well?

[00:28:58] So I think that's sort of like what's combated a lot of that

[00:29:03] self-talk is like, okay, like I'll be the representative now

[00:29:06] because this opportunity was given to me, but how do I go about creating

[00:29:10] more opportunities for more people that I feel like have really taken the

[00:29:14] time to focus on their craft and earn these opportunities as well?

[00:29:18] That's how I've combated that.

[00:29:21] Okay.

[00:29:22] And I think that shows in the text of the book as well, because

[00:29:26] you're talking about imposter syndrome, you're talking about

[00:29:29] breaking generational curses, you talk about the scale of what it

[00:29:33] means to be vulnerable, the importance of happiness, paying tribute

[00:29:37] to things that are good and not just sad and in all of these ways.

[00:29:42] With all of that ground covered, what is it that you want readers

[00:29:47] and your spoken word fans as well to get from this latest collection

[00:29:50] that you have?

[00:29:52] So for my spoken word fans, I know a lot of times the page feels

[00:29:57] intimidating.

[00:29:58] For a long time there was this huge divide in between page and

[00:30:01] stage where performance poets were like, ah, what the page

[00:30:05] poets do is boring.

[00:30:07] And then page poets would be like, performance poets are not real

[00:30:10] writers.

[00:30:11] But now there's so much crossover that a lot of that doesn't

[00:30:15] exist anymore.

[00:30:16] Of course there's still some.

[00:30:18] But for the spoken word artists who read this book, I would

[00:30:23] love for them to see this as an opportunity to engage the

[00:30:30] written word, the page world a little bit more.

[00:30:34] Because it's fun.

[00:30:35] I had a great time with using a lot of these forms and they've

[00:30:40] also challenged me in ways that spoken word just hasn't.

[00:30:45] And I also feel like it has helped me improve the way that I

[00:30:49] write free verse and the way that I do spoken word now.

[00:30:52] For the general public what I want them to get out of this

[00:30:55] book, I want them to see that poetry is so vast.

[00:31:00] I think when we think about poetry, we often imagine somebody

[00:31:04] in a turtleneck in a beret.

[00:31:06] But poetry is so multifaceted and there's so many things that

[00:31:10] you can do with it.

[00:31:12] And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to explore form

[00:31:15] and also publish with form as well.

[00:31:18] And also continue doing free verse, what I typically do

[00:31:21] because I want people to see what poetry looks like in so

[00:31:26] many different ways.

[00:31:28] Like I want them to see how multifaceted and how intricate

[00:31:31] and how approachable and inviting poetry can be.

[00:31:37] Thank you.

[00:31:38] So now I want to switch to a speed round and again before I

[00:31:41] let you go for the rest of your morning.

[00:31:44] What is your favorite book?

[00:31:46] My favorite book is the music lesson by Victor Wooten.

[00:31:49] He's a world-renowned bass guitarist and basically the

[00:31:53] entire book is he meets his mentor and his mentor gives him

[00:31:58] a bunch of different tasks to do.

[00:32:01] And some of it is very much like obviously like music

[00:32:06] related, but some of it is just kind of like life related

[00:32:10] and he does the tasks and then he reflects on them.

[00:32:14] And it's just such a great book because it completely

[00:32:17] changed the way that I looked at performance and writing

[00:32:20] and there are so many nuances that even though it's about music

[00:32:25] it applies to poetry, it applies to performance poetry,

[00:32:30] it applies to life in general.

[00:32:32] There were just so many things and I read it every couple

[00:32:35] of years because I feel like every few years when I read it

[00:32:38] I find something new.

[00:32:39] So yeah the music lesson by Victor Wooten is my absolute

[00:32:42] favorite book.

[00:32:43] Okay who was your favorite author?

[00:32:45] I'm a huge fan of Carter G. Woodson.

[00:32:47] Even though Carter G. Woodson is like super old, cool.

[00:32:50] I really enjoy a lot of the insights that he gave us very early on.

[00:32:54] He was way ahead of his time.

[00:32:56] I enjoyed Carter G. Woodson.

[00:32:57] You know I like Malcolm Gladwell.

[00:32:59] I've read quite a few of his books and I like whether he

[00:33:01] writes in such a tangible way.

[00:33:03] I enjoy Bell Hooks as well.

[00:33:05] Those are the three that come to mind the most.

[00:33:09] Who was your favorite poet?

[00:33:10] If I had to choose one right now I'm going to

[00:33:15] go with Javon Johnson.

[00:33:16] Javon Johnson was like my closest friend.

[00:33:19] But when I met him I was a fan and of course I'm still a fan.

[00:33:23] But now we're very close friends.

[00:33:26] But the ways in which he is able to talk about blackness

[00:33:30] in such a multifaceted way from so many different angles.

[00:33:33] A lot of the work that he created is just absolutely brilliant.

[00:33:37] He has this poem about his stepfather had passed away

[00:33:41] from cancer.

[00:33:42] And so he talks about that.

[00:33:44] He talks about he defines cancer.

[00:33:47] Then he also goes and this is the best definition of

[00:33:50] gentrification that I have.

[00:33:52] And then he starts talking about how he lived in Oakland

[00:33:55] and about what gentrification did to Oakland.

[00:33:59] And then he goes back and forth between what cancer does

[00:34:02] to the body and what gentrification does to cities.

[00:34:05] And he draws this really fascinating parallel that I

[00:34:08] would have never come up with.

[00:34:10] So I would go if I had to choose one right now

[00:34:13] I'm going to say Javon Johnson.

[00:34:15] OK.

[00:34:16] Name a poet you think doesn't get enough shine.

[00:34:19] I'm going to go with Imani Cezanne.

[00:34:22] Imani Cezanne she's like my little sister.

[00:34:24] And you know she's one of the women in the world

[00:34:26] to land twice and then really got into doing a lot

[00:34:29] of page work as well over the pandemic.

[00:34:31] And actually was the one who introduced me to page work

[00:34:34] as well and form.

[00:34:36] She's absolutely brilliant.

[00:34:38] And I feel like more people should know her name.

[00:34:42] Also I'm going to go with I really think more people

[00:34:47] should know Victoria Chang Victoria Chang wrote a book

[00:34:52] called Obit and it is a series of obituaries.

[00:34:56] But she takes a very unconventional approach because

[00:34:59] she doesn't talk about obituaries in terms of

[00:35:01] people shuffle obituaries as like things in her life

[00:35:05] that no longer exists.

[00:35:06] She has an obituary to her appetite.

[00:35:08] Right.

[00:35:09] And she just takes things in her life that no longer exists

[00:35:12] and writes obituaries for them.

[00:35:14] It calls them obits and even though it's not an official form

[00:35:17] personally I think it should be.

[00:35:19] So I'm going to go with Victoria Chang.

[00:35:22] All right.

[00:35:23] And name a poet who makes you want to burn your notebook.

[00:35:26] Dennis Smith.

[00:35:28] Like when I hear Dennis Smith I go am I a writer.

[00:35:32] I don't know.

[00:35:33] I don't know if I'm a writer.

[00:35:37] I don't know if I could say that them and I do the same thing

[00:35:40] because they're just absolutely brilliant.

[00:35:43] And I love their work so much that yeah, yeah.

[00:35:46] Well every time I hear them do another poem I'm like

[00:35:49] why can't I do that?

[00:35:50] All right.

[00:35:51] If money were no object where would you go?

[00:35:53] What would you do?

[00:35:54] And where would you live?

[00:35:56] Ooh.

[00:35:58] So I think all of those kind of have a very similar answer.

[00:36:04] Some of my family's from Belize, which is in Central America

[00:36:07] and if I could go anywhere like I would go there.

[00:36:12] I've only been twice and I definitely want to go more often.

[00:36:15] And to be honest, like I would just chill on the beach

[00:36:18] just because the beaches they are phenomenal.

[00:36:21] The water is super clear.

[00:36:23] The air feels real crisp.

[00:36:25] So yeah, like all of those answers I would go to Belize

[00:36:29] and just chill on the beach for a little bit

[00:36:31] and drink a piña colada.

[00:36:34] That's probably my answer right there.

[00:36:37] That feels the most accurate.

[00:36:40] Name three things on your bucket list.

[00:36:42] I would like to visit Japan just because I've always

[00:36:47] been fascinated with Japan.

[00:36:49] I would love to publish a children's book

[00:36:53] and buy my mama house.

[00:36:59] Those are the three things in my bucket list.

[00:37:01] All right.

[00:37:02] What is your favorite sound?

[00:37:04] I really like the sound of bubble wrap popping.

[00:37:08] I know that's super random.

[00:37:11] But bubble wrap popping is probably my favorite sound.

[00:37:15] What brings you joy?

[00:37:17] I think it's one of the best things that brings me the most joy.

[00:37:22] So my daughter is seven, right?

[00:37:24] So she's seen the world and is making observations.

[00:37:30] So I love to just sit down and ask her questions about the world

[00:37:35] and about like the way that people function.

[00:37:38] Like that's super fascinating to me because, you know,

[00:37:41] seeing, hearing the perspective of a seven-year-old

[00:37:43] is so fresh, you know, because like, you know,

[00:37:46] she hasn't been here that long, you know,

[00:37:48] to me, so everything is still pretty new.

[00:37:50] But like, there's a poem actually in Excuse Me As I Kiss the Sky.

[00:37:54] It's called The Photo with the Contropunto about my parents

[00:37:57] when I found a photograph of them.

[00:37:59] Because my parents, they didn't have a really good relationship

[00:38:02] most of my life.

[00:38:04] And I never really saw them like be in love, you know?

[00:38:09] And one day I was helping my father move out of his home

[00:38:13] and I was going through a box and I saw a picture of them

[00:38:16] and they're sitting down next to each other

[00:38:19] and like, they're laughing together.

[00:38:21] Right?

[00:38:22] So what I did was I took that poem and I blew it up

[00:38:25] like as large as I could and I put it on a canvas

[00:38:27] and I put it on my wall and next to it is a frame

[00:38:31] and inside the frame it's a definition of joy.

[00:38:33] And when we do sometimes, when I'm at home with my daughter,

[00:38:37] I ask her like, hey look at the picture.

[00:38:39] What do you think they're talking about?

[00:38:41] And hearing her answer the question, she was like, oh,

[00:38:46] because it's like my mom is kind of like hitting my dad

[00:38:49] on the lap a little bit and she's like kind of like

[00:38:52] blushing and my father is laughing.

[00:38:55] And the first time I asked Zoe with my daughter's name,

[00:38:58] I was like, hey what do you think is happening in this picture?

[00:39:01] And she's like, oh, I think grandpa is telling a story

[00:39:04] that he's not supposed to be telling.

[00:39:06] I was like, what makes you say that?

[00:39:11] She was like, well, grandma was like hitting him on the lap

[00:39:13] and she seems like she's like laughing

[00:39:15] but she also seems like she might be a little embarrassed.

[00:39:18] So she's like making observations about what's happening

[00:39:20] in the photo and I was like, that's so fascinating.

[00:39:22] So yeah, just like one of my favorite things

[00:39:24] is really just sitting down and asking her questions.

[00:39:27] I love that.

[00:39:29] And what brings you peace?

[00:39:31] I think one of the things that has really brought me

[00:39:34] the most peace lately is finding new music.

[00:39:40] You know, like that's been like lately,

[00:39:42] like that's been my source of like through peace

[00:39:45] and like relaxation, like finding new music

[00:39:48] that I can just like sit and just like really like vibe to

[00:39:51] like that's been probably like my biggest source

[00:39:54] of peace lately.

[00:39:56] So our game is called Rewriting the Classics.

[00:39:59] Classic is however you define it.

[00:40:01] Name one book you wish you would have written.

[00:40:04] Benna by Nate Marshall.

[00:40:07] Okay, great book.

[00:40:08] He has a series of poems where he finds somebody with his name

[00:40:13] on Facebook and looks them up and like sees like what they're doing

[00:40:17] and the person that he found like with his name

[00:40:20] is like the complete opposite of him, you know?

[00:40:22] And it's all about how like we are connected

[00:40:25] with people that we don't know who live very different lives

[00:40:28] and it's just very interesting commentary.

[00:40:30] So yeah, Benna by Nate Marshall.

[00:40:32] Name one book where you want to change the ending

[00:40:35] and how would you do it?

[00:40:36] I would love to change the ending to Malcolm's biography,

[00:40:39] you know what I mean?

[00:40:41] So the ending to the music lesson is very fascinating.

[00:40:44] I don't want to give it away but a part of me

[00:40:48] kind of wanted to, it ends very abrupt

[00:40:52] and a part of me wanted a little bit more storyline

[00:40:57] about what happens at the end of that book

[00:40:59] because it happened so abruptly and I'm like,

[00:41:01] oh this is fascinating.

[00:41:02] And it's a cliffhanger sort of dismount

[00:41:04] and then there's not a part too.

[00:41:06] So a part of me kind of wanted a little bit more

[00:41:10] of the storyline that happens with the twist

[00:41:13] at the end of the book.

[00:41:15] Okay.

[00:41:16] So I would go with that one.

[00:41:17] I would say it but I also don't want to ruin it, you know?

[00:41:19] No, it's cool.

[00:41:21] And then finally, name a book that you think

[00:41:24] is overrated or overtaught and why?

[00:41:29] Okay.

[00:41:30] So Malcolm Gladwell has a book it's called Tipping Point, right?

[00:41:34] And Tipping Point was everywhere for a good little minute.

[00:41:38] But it's very much like Outliers

[00:41:42] and I thought Outliers was the better book personally

[00:41:46] but Tipping Point was the more famous book.

[00:41:49] So I think for that reason it's overrated

[00:41:53] because if you read Outliers, then I think you would understand

[00:41:58] why Tipping Point was solid

[00:42:01] but Outliers was a much better book in my opinion.

[00:42:04] Okay.

[00:42:05] And then my final question for you today.

[00:42:08] When you are dead and gone and among the ancestors,

[00:42:11] what would you like someone to write or say

[00:42:14] about you and the legacy of words and work

[00:42:17] that you left behind?

[00:42:19] You know what?

[00:42:20] I would love for somebody to say,

[00:42:23] my favorite compliment is I didn't even like poetry

[00:42:28] and I didn't even know that I liked poetry

[00:42:30] until I was introduced to his work.

[00:42:32] That is a high compliment.

[00:42:34] Yeah.

[00:42:35] Yeah, that's my favorite compliment.

[00:42:37] People are like, man, I don't even like poetry

[00:42:40] but I rock with you.

[00:42:42] That's one of my favorite compliments

[00:42:44] because it lets me know that

[00:42:47] because it's less of a compliment for me personally.

[00:42:51] It lets me know that poetry can reach people

[00:42:56] who feel like they are out of reach of poetry.

[00:43:01] Right?

[00:43:02] That there's a poem out there for everybody.

[00:43:06] They just got to find it.

[00:43:08] Big thank you to Rudy Francisco

[00:43:10] for being here today on Black and Published.

[00:43:12] Make sure you check out Rudy's latest poetry collection.

[00:43:15] Excuse me as I kiss the sky.

[00:43:17] Out now from Button Poetry.

[00:43:20] And if you're not following Rudy,

[00:43:22] follow him on the socials.

[00:43:24] He's at Rudy Francisco on Twitter and Instagram.

[00:43:28] I'm sorry y'all, I can't call it X.

[00:43:31] That's our show for the week.

[00:43:33] If you liked this episode and want more

[00:43:36] Black and Published,

[00:43:37] head to our Instagram page.

[00:43:39] It's at blackandpublished

[00:43:41] and that's B-L-K and published.

[00:43:45] There, I've posted a bonus clip from my interview with Rudy

[00:43:49] about his main goal for other writers

[00:43:51] who come to his collection.

[00:43:53] Make sure you check it out

[00:43:54] and let me know what you think in the comments.

[00:43:57] I'll highlight y'all next week

[00:43:59] when our guest will be Shannon Sanders,

[00:44:02] author of the short story collection, Company.

[00:44:05] As a new parent,

[00:44:06] I was still very much thinking about

[00:44:08] like what it meant to be a parent

[00:44:10] and what it meant to deal with those questions

[00:44:13] in a community that places the value

[00:44:15] that it does on parenthood.

[00:44:17] And I do think that the bougie black community

[00:44:19] definitely has its viewpoints on

[00:44:21] what does it mean if you are or not a parent

[00:44:24] at this point in your life,

[00:44:26] you know, in your professional life.

[00:44:28] That point being 35.

[00:44:30] There you go, yes exactly.

[00:44:32] That's next week on Black and Published.

[00:44:34] I'll talk to you then.

[00:44:36] Peace.

[00:44:40] Bye.