Danez Smith: She’s the star of new Korean literary thriller, Paracitation, Franny Choi.

Franny Choi: And they’re the host of All Dicks Considered, Faudie Cornish, Danez Smith!

Danez Smith: And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Franny Choi: Brought to you by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Hi, Danez!

Danez Smith: Hey, Frannle.

Franny Choi: How’s it going?

Danez Smith: (IN HIGH VOICE) It’s going pretty good, going pretty good, I can’t even complain.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (IN HIGH VOICE) You know, I’m blessed, never stressed, you know, Jesus is looking out for me. You know, God is moving in my life and I just really feel like I am his [INAUDIBLE WORD].

Franny Choi: Yeah, I agree with all of that.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I would say, plus one. Ibid. Yeah.

Danez Smith: What does ibid mean? (LAUGHS) Sorry to laugh

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Oh, ibid, it’s like—speaking of citations—

Danez Smith: Yes.

Franny Choi: It’s in your footnotes, when you repeat the citation.

Danez Smith: Oh!

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Oh bitch, we smart.

Franny Choi: Look at us! On brand and everything.

Danez Smith: You know who else is smart as fuck?

Franny Choi: Um, who?

Danez Smith: Aricka Foreman.

Franny Choi: Yeah, it’s true! Good point!

Danez Smith: It’s true, it’s true. Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Our guest today is Aricka Foreman, an amazing poet uhm, who, fun fact, as a child, wanted not to be a poet, but to be a marine biologist, is something that we found out during this interview.

Danez Smith: And would’ve been a damn good one, too.

Franny Choi: Yes. For sure.

Danez Smith: Woulda like discovered a new seal or something like that.

Franny Choi: Yeah!

Danez Smith: Franny, what did you wanna be when you grew up?

Franny Choi: As a kid? Huh?

Danez Smith: No, as an adult.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) You’re a young, sprite 25, what do you wanna do?

Franny Choi: What were you trying for?

Danez Smith: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: And how did you end up—

Danez Smith: When you exited college, what were you thinking?

Franny Choi: What was your intent?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I- Well, as a kid, I mean, I think I wanted to be a writer as a kid. But I also wanted to moonlight as a horseback rider. And I also wanted to moonlight, or sunlight, as a pediatrician, and all kinds of other things.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: I don’t know, I just wanted to do all of the jobs. Like, any time I heard about a new job, I wanted to do that.

Danez Smith: Aw.

Franny Choi: Yeah! What about you? What did you wanna be?

Danez Smith: I wanted to be a pastor.

Franny Choi: Oh my god!

Danez Smith: Yes I did, yep.

Franny Choi: That’s right.

Danez Smith: Because they were the coolest people, and like my mom loved her pastor, and my grandma hated her pastor. So I knew I’d be talked about, and that’s all I cared about. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And I wanted to be the talk of the town, girl. But no, you know, pastors, I think—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) When I was a kid, I wanted to be the news.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) I wanna grow up and be discussed.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Wow, I’ve always been a Leo. No but, seriously, the church is sort of a poetry root for me. When I think about myself in performance and writing—

Franny Choi: 100 percent.

Danez Smith: —it’s definitely the pastor. But like you know, they got to wear robes and they had nice cars.

Franny Choi: Yeah!

Danez Smith: They were the first entertainer that I ever had like witnessed. And I was like, “Oh! That is cool. That dude sings a song, and my mother faints. What!”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: “This is some radical shit, I wanna be a pastor!”

Franny Choi: Yeah! That is totally in your poetry now. I totally see that in the way that you write and perform.

Danez Smith: And I see the everythingness of your childhood in your work, you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah, just an inability to focus. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. Well, no, I think it’s an inability to settle. You know?

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: On one voice, or on one particular way of being in a poem.

Franny Choi: Yeah, that’s a nicer way to put it. I like it.

Danez Smith: Yeah, use it in a blurb one day. I got it for you.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And Aricka’s ass is still a marine biologist in her work, because she’s going deep, there’s so much water in there, and there’s so much of like a wonderful and joyous unknown that we get to wade throughout her work.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: And I’m really excited for us to get to chat to her about her work. Franny, what can we look forward to in this conversation with Aricka?

Franny Choi: Um, we … (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: This has become your duty.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I started to do it, but—(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: No, I think that you did it great.

Danez Smith: Oh okay, tight.

Franny Choi: Aricka Foreman is a poet, essayist, editor and educator from Detroit, Michigan. Her poems, essays and features have appeared in The Offing, Buzzfeed, Vinyl, RHINO, The BlueshiftJournal, Day One, so many other places. She is the author of the chapbook Dream with a Glass Chamber, and her debut full-length, Salt Body Shimmer, will be released by YesYes Books in April 2020. That is this year, folks, so make sure when April hits, you are purchasing that book.

Danez Smith: Before you get the book, let’s let Aricka start us off with a poem.

Franny Choi: Poem!

(SOUND EFFECT)

Aricka Foreman:

(READS POEM)

One Blues In the Hand Good As Several In the Blood

Having not chopped but brought in the wood,

stacked the hunks into a monument for burning

Having scrubbed the mollusks to gleam,

having browned them open, seasoned a bath

that would wash away any shame to run from

Sponge the milky brine with garlic’d bread brushed

with oil: of ripe olives from the long rows of trees

I did not pluck from or grow I know what

it means to be lucky and alive to suck out the pit

Gather the clef, leap in the go-go of a good day

Harken a lineage: third descendant of Roxie Morris: of

mechanic garb smeared in crude and sweat, cranking

wrench beneath: fire crown of auburn nap and freckle:

architect of spades games, full plates and easy shade:

of cuss your children out for sawing her good dining room

chairs with the steak knives: of migration and leaving

husbands: of one blues in the hand is as good as several

in the blood: who escape novel death: the lucky and

scarred colliding like genres, genes: of those who love

too much A well Archive of my heart A wonder in winter

dirt colding over consequence Waiting, green, budding

and bursting Women of sequin tatter, sunrise’s hem

and haw—light rising as buttered cornbread

—skimming gold off the anxious water

* * *

Franny Choi: Mm.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: “Skimming gold off the anxious water.” Nigga, you better write. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)No I mean when you take it out the cast iron, you get that butter on the—

Danez Smith: I know what you sayin’, but I’m glad you said it.

Aricka Foreman: Whew!

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Gave myself a chill thinking about it.I’m hungry now.

Franny Choi and Aricka Foreman: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Lord. Oh my god, I love that poem so much. I’m even—it’s beautiful and it’s gorgeous, of course. Aricka wrote it. But even the word “having” at the beginning.

Aricka Foreman: Mm.

Danez Smith: Right? Like, having is the past tense of like, I have done this action. But it becomes about the actual having, right? You’re owning a legacy, owning a past in that poem. And I don’t know, I’m just, oof, that was delicious.

Franny Choi: Yeah. That line “archive of my heart”—is that the line?

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Also that seems like a heart of that poem as well.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Is that from the new book coming out?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, yeah!

Franny Choi: Ooo!

Danez Smith:Salt Body Shimmer?

Aricka Foreman: Yes. Yes. Coming out in April. Very excited.

Franny Choi: Yay! On YesYes?

Aricka Foreman: Yep.

Franny Choi: Hooray,

Aricka Foreman: I know

Franny Choi: Congratulations.

Aricka Foreman: Thank you.

Danez Smith: Shout-out to YesYes Books.

Aricka Foreman: I know.

Franny Choi: Seriously.

Aricka Foreman: Just like, come through. (LAUGHS) Shout-out to KMA, who has been just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful champion of poetry in general. But yeah, she hunted me down a little bit. I submitted some poems to Vinyl. And it took five years for me to actually send her a collection. But she was like, “Just checking in, seeing how your life is, what’s going on hey …”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: But that’s how you know an editor is an editor for you.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: When they’re just like, “I want your work.” (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Yeah, when there’s like a little courtship that happens.

Aricka Foreman: Yes.

Franny Choi: Love to be courted. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: “I don’t know what you’re working on, I like how you think about them poems.”

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Right, right.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, so.

Franny Choi: Right, right. Because then it’s not even about necessarily like the specific manuscript, but your vision. It’s like, “I’m into your vision.”

Aricka Foreman: Mm. Yeah, I like that.

Franny Choi: And I think that makes a difference in an editor-writer relationship, you know?

Aricka Foreman: Oh yeah, for sure. For sure.

Franny Choi: Yeah. How does this poem fit into the larger context of the book?

Aricka Foreman: One thing that was a really sort of interesting discovery for me as I was putting the manuscript together—because I have like, that poem I’ve probably written in the last two years, and then there’s a couple of poems that are over a decade old. So it was kind of interesting trying to map this trajectory of literally this accumulation of things in like a personal archive, right. I think it’s why I’m very, very interested in memory as a site of that.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: Uhm, I think that whether it’s, you know, a traumatic memory, or even if it’s an incredibly powerful memory, in some ways that is sort of embedded in our DNA, right. The poem in particular is in sort of the last section of book, where it feels like more ownership has been had.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: Whereas the first and the second are kind of like wandering and questioning, and trying to figure out which keys open which doors in the house of the memory. So yeah. And also like, I was looking at it, and I was like, “Man, Black women are amazing.”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: And I come from these—even in the acknowledgements, I dedicate it to my mom and my grandmother and my great grandmother Roxie Morris because their lives have been examples of how to defy expectations and being okay with coming into yourself on your own terms.

Danez Smith: Hm. When I think about the bright constellation of like Detroit school poets, I think of you.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: What did you say about the women in your family? They’re like- Did you say—it wasn’t architects, but something in making their own way?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. I mean, you could say architects, too, but they’re archivists as well.

Danez Smith: Archivists and architects, making their own way.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Danez Smith: That’s how I kinda think about Black femme Detroit poets as well.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: And I’m wondering who have been those models, right. Like these women in your family have also been those models for how to truly make your own way and do this poetry thing on your own terms.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm. Well obviously all credit and gratitude to Vievee Francis. The GOAT. (LAUGHS) In some way, shape, or form, we all came together or knew about one another’s work, or were in communion because in some way, shape, or form, we had all studied with her.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: There’s a woman, Christina Walker, who no longer lives in Detroit. She- I think lives on the East Coast now. She was in Cave Canem. I don’t know where she is in terms of uhm producing in the landscape, but an avid lover of language, and was the one who initially sought out Vievee and said, “You need to teach us.” And so, Vievee was like, “Okay.” (LAUGHS) You know?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That’s a bold move.

Franny Choi: Yeah, wow, wow.

Danez Smith: Like “You need to teach us”

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! Like, “We need you.” She recognized that out of all the incredible history of things like Broadside Press that definitely has shaped the poetic landscape in Detroit, I think some of us were at that apex of like, interested in performance and slam, but wanting a deeper, invested study of craft. It was really important for me to try to understand a literary lineage that I was in conversation with. Because there’s so much that I didn’t know. I just sort of serendipitously will come across things and be like, “Oh, this is delightful.” Or this is, what have you, and so, yeah, Christina started—at the time it was called Write Word WriteNow. And it was a community workshop space. And I wasn’t part of that initial collective. I just- I’ve always sort of fluttered on the periphery of things. I’m like “Oh, what’s over here, oh.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: I was doing a slam competition my first or second year, I was a baby poet. And I had stepped offstage, and Christina handed me a copy of Ai’s the Killing Floor.

Danez Smith: Oof. That’s quite the book to hand to somebody. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Wow! Right when they walk offstage.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah!

Danez Smith: Were you doing like, sinister persona poems?

Aricka Foreman: I did a pretty dark persona poem.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: It had no—I mean, now, of course, I know that she’s like, the absolute master of the persona. Do not get it twisted. Ai is that. But I was like, okay. And it’s funny, I was so hungry to read it. So I’m hanging out with everybody afterwards, and I went home, and I immediately—I was like, (WHISPERS) “What is this.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: How? I didn’t know, as a Black woman, I could be dark.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And I could be—talk about violence, and not have to apologize. And a lot of… I never wrote about-

Danez Smith: -And that you could inflict violence.

Aricka Foreman: Right!

Danez Smith: Not just be the recipient of it, right?

Aricka Foreman: Right! Exactly.

Franny Choi: What do you mean by inflict violence?

Danez Smith: I think if I’m gonna imagine sort of who the Black femme writer maybe gets stereotyped as, I think Ai goes against that, because so much of Black femme poetics and writing is about surviving violence, right?

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Not even victimhood, but what it means to live where violence is constantly coming at you. Where I think Ai subverts that and says, no, I create the violence.

Franny Choi: Mmmm.

Aricka Foreman: Well it’s interesting, too, because, you know, persona is jumping into, and then speaking of, that voice.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: On both sides. A poem about choosing to have an abortion. In the same conversation tenderly talking about a lover, and understanding the weight of that, right, the choice of that. And then jumping out of that into a poem where the speaker is a general who, their country or their home is about to be turned over by another force and decides to kill the daughter, so not to be subjected to what happens in war often with women, right?

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So it’s this very dexterous way of saying, “I own everything, because I can do anything. I can be anyone.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: And that was incredibly liberating for me. I think I was very, very afraid. I had never been awed by a poem before.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: And kind of terrified. And was like, “Oh, what is this new feeling.” So, then of course, I’m like, let me investigate.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: But yeah, it was incredible. So yeah that was sort of the beginning. And then because of that I have this beautiful literary kinship with Nandi Comer, who also has a book coming out this year that I am so excited about.

Franny Choi: Yes!

Aricka Foreman: It’s coming off of Northwestern University Press.

Danez Smith: It’s all these folks coming out with books this year that I feel like I’ve been waiting for for a while.

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Absolutely. For sure.

Aricka Foreman: I was talking to her in November, and I was like, me, you, and Tommye in the same year. And francine has a book coming out at the end of the year.

Franny Choi: Oh my goodness! That’s amazing.

Aricka Foreman: It’s gives me kind of like, chills. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: It’s really cool. Tommye Blount. francine j. harris. Kahn Davison, who is also a music writer and a photographer, who’s still based in Detroit, is fabulous. I feel like there’s just so many. So yeah, we’ve sort of been like, “Yo, we kinda got our own school.” And Vievee was really great in that she never influenced us to do the like, regional tradition of sticking with only a sort of BAM tradition. I think that there was a pocket during the spoken word time in Detroit where everybody was trying to sound like Amiri. But like, let Amiri be Amiri. Amiri is a legend.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So like she really encouraged us to like those differences that, for some of us, often—at least for me, growing up in Detroit, sometimes made me feel kind of isolated. Because I was like, proper and all of that, so.

Danez Smith: That’s a complicated thing about Amiri, because if you really wanna sound like Amiri, that means having a diverse voice, right?

Aricka Foreman: Right.

Danez Smith: We can imagine BAM Amiri—

Aricka Foreman: Yeah!

Danez Smith: —but, you know, Amiri’s work—somebody posted a poem the other day, and I was like, this is so soft and lyrical. Like not at all-

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! That first book when he was still under LeRoi Jones, honey, those poems are tender and—

Danez Smith: Oh yeah, those bottom poetics.

Aricka Foreman: Yes! Bottom poetics. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I mean, you know, Amiri had his ways, but LeRoi had some ways. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Right, yeah, it’s just very interesting to see that genesis, right?

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: So, I say all the time, I feel really, really lucky to be a poet right now, and have felt that way for- since probably 2004, 2005. And having that particular community of people definitely was life-changing.

Franny Choi: Yeah. This is a thing we’ve talked about in the past, in this room, but about the unflinching excellence of the Detroit school of poets. That has nothing to do with, yeah, like you said, an aesthetic sort of house style or something, necessarily.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: I would say, yeah, I think I can kind of read and poem and tell that somebody’s in their early 20s in Brooklyn.

Aricka Foreman: Mmm.

Franny Choi: Sure.

Danez Smith: You know? (LAUGHS) Like You just can.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm. Mhm, yeah.

Danez Smith: And you can’t do that, I think, with y’all. It’s like, everybody, you’re right, is excellent in their own way.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: I mean, look at Airea Matthews.

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: Psh! (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Breaking brains.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS) In the, you know, best philosophical, intellectually engaging, and still manages to wrought something—

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And it’s just kind of raw and open. Yeah, I’m such a fan of everybody in the Detroit school too. I’m just like, mmm, okay.

Franny Choi: 100 percent.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah! And I feel like there’s a lot of being fans of each other in that school.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm. Mhmm.

Franny Choi: That sort of mutual support and fandom, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm. It’s incredibly important. I can’t imagine—one of the things I was talking to a friend of mine about last week, was talking about Cave Canem and the differences of like, when we were going and then, for a number of different reasons, that there’re not as many people doing those retreats as there used to be then. And then also thinking about how so many people come from spaces that don’t have that kind of community. And I got to Cave with Detroit school writers.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: So it was just like, oh, the fam is just enlargening. But I wonder often what a space looks like when you don’t have that. And the work is already isolating enough, so further isolation is just like, ugh. But yeah, I was really lucky. I was really, really lucky.

Danez Smith: I’m wondering, Aricka, what does it mean for you to have Salt Body Shimmer coming out now, right? You said you’ve been a poet since 2004, 2005—

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: That’s 15 years of being happy to be a poet.

Aricka Foreman: I know, right?

Danez Smith: And then this debut, right?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Danez Smith: And I think that means something for a lot of folks. I mean, I think about so many who feel sort of rushed towards that debut.

Aricka Foreman: Yes.

Danez Smith: And sort of like, I have my 10 poems, now I gotta start thinking about like (LAUGHS) my debut or some shit like that.

Aricka Foreman: Right!

Danez Smith: I guess, yeah, what does it mean for your book to be coming out now?

Aricka Foreman: Mhm. It feels really good. I had the chapbook that came out previously with YesYes Books. Dream with a Glass Chamber.

Franny Choi: These titles! Oof.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS) Child, I have no idea sometimes. But then every once in a while, I’m like “Oooh!”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: “That makes me feel a thing, let’s go with that.” So yeah, with Dream, it was really interesting because I was working on poems in program. And I actually did most of those poems in the span of a 30-30 challenge. I was doing Ross White’s The Grind.

Franny Choi: Aha.Oof.

Aricka Foreman: The Grind. And it is a grind! (LAUGHS) But it’s a good grind, right?

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: It gets those muscles, even those things that often sometimes become latent when we don’t carry out a practice, and it makes it rigorous for a reason.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And I couldn’t, and I was grieving over the loss of David Blair, who was a beloved bardic Detroit poet and singer and artist. And not really dealing with that grief. And so, like every poem was about the grief. And I was like, “Well, girl, I guess. I’m just gonna have to lean in.” So those came very quickly. And I think I kind of wanted to get that out of me. Somatically out of my body-

Franny Choi: Totally.

Aricka Foreman: as quickly as possible.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: And after, I didn’t even really order them, I just dumped them in a Word document, and I emailed them to KMA Sullivan. And I was like, “Here, girl. Bye.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: Fully expected her to be like, “Okay … are you okay?”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: And the next morning, she emailed me and she was like, “I dropped everything that I was doing and I read it, and it’s exquisite, and I absolutely want to publish this.” And so that kind of felt like a needed pause to not—it was like, (EXHALES).

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: “I made an object, and it’s doing exactly what it needs to do. It has intention, it has purpose, it has vision. Let me sit with that for a bit.” And so now, with the full-length, like some of these poems I’ve been working on and I’ve been living with for so long.

Franny Choi: Mmm.

Aricka Foreman: But it’s also a testament to moving against the sort of capitalistic drive, the po-biz versus the actual work of poetry, right.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: I had already made a thing.

Franny Choi: Right.

Aricka Foreman: And it did pretty well.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: And people really responded to it in a way that I wasn’t expecting, in a very deeply, and intimate, and beautiful way.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: So it was sort of one thing to kind of satisfy that like, “We need product from you” thing.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Franny Choi: So you could do your own work. That makes sense.

Aricka Foreman: I needed to take that time.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: And I think with Salt Body Shimmer, even looking at it now, I’m like, wow, this is a span of over a decade of experiences.

Franny Choi: Wow, wow.

Aricka Foreman: And sitting with a lot of my experiences, some very dark, and some really liberating.

Franny Choi: Mmmm.

Aricka Foreman: That needs its own space. So it feels good. I feel like it came out at exactly the time that it was supposed to.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: That’s great. How are the older poems in this project getting along with the newer poems? How do they sit together?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, it’s funny, there are two in particular—one is called “Hindsight” and the other is called “Root Work,” and they’re both looking at my relationship with two different men, for the first time, me realizing in these poems, my sort of saying, “No, this is not acceptable, actually.” And taking some ownership of not being passive-

Danez Smith: Hm

Aricka Foreman: - to those expectations. You know, I grew up, like most Midwestern little Black girls who were taught that, you know, you get married, and it’s all about the monogamy, and then you have the 2.5 kids. And you know, I mean, the dog, yes, cute, got that.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: But like you know, I’m not monogamous. I’m poly. And I’m also queer. So, I don’t believe it has to be an “or” situation. I think it’s an “and” situation.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So yeah, those poems are the first launching pad of “No, and.” No, and. Which is really cool.

Franny Choi: Wow. No, and. I love “No, and.”

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. Nope! And.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That’s a good model for polyness.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: Exactly. Like, you don’t have to take all of it. But, and, you could have this too.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: I wanna ask about—I’ve known you so long as a poet, but you’ve been experimenting in a lot of new genres. In photography and film. What’s been going on with you and the image that’s not written down?

Aricka Foreman: I think that that’s a question I’m still exploring.

Danez Smith: How did you stumble- Did you just stumble into it, was it always a curiosity?

Aricka Foreman: It was always a curiosity. And you know, you get into that space when you’re in a new thing, and you’ve got the novice anxiety. Especially, I don’t think I’m a master of any kind of poetics, but I feel a little bit more stronger since I’ve been doing it for longer.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: Whereas, something that’s new, I’m like, am I doing it right. And then you have to deal with the negotiation of like, don’t worry about if it’s right.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: Just let it enact in the way that it’s gonna enact. And so, the little film thing I actually did in response to a friend of mine, Khary Jackson, who I’m sure you know very well.

Danez Smith: Yeah, yeah, know Khary, love Khary.

Franny Choi: Khary!

Aricka Foreman: I know! Khary is like, mind-blowingly prolific in so many things.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And one of those things is music. And he understands my very deep affection for music. So he sent me a track that he was working on. And it was just so haunting and so moving, and I literally just saw these images happening as it was going. So I took my lil iPhone and I was having at that time a pretty bad bout of depression—which is what happens when you have a mood disorder—and trying to figure out how to basically pull that dark heaviness out of my body through this thing. And so it’s like a two-minute-and-something little thing. And the production quality is not great. (LAUGHS) But uhm after I was done with it, I was like, wow I feel like I’ve exorcised a thing out of me. And I got to look at it as an extension of so many things that I find really fascinating about lyric poetry. But just in a different medium. So it’s been really interesting. And then photography, I’m not really sure if I have an intention with it as much as it just feels like a different praxis, as a way of getting me to think about something else.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So I’ll do that often. I very amateurly play guitar. And I started doing it because I needed a different way to understand and hear a music that the language didn’t necessarily arrive at.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: So yeah, my mom is a photographer. I don’t know if she’ll admit it. But she has all this camera equipment and all these beautiful photos, so she’s a photographer.

Franny Choi: But she wouldn’t admit it?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah … I think she …

Danez Smith: She would say she takes pictures.

Aricka Foreman: She’s like, “You know, I take pictures,” or she’s always like, “I need to upgrade to digital.” And I’m like, “You have a Nikon. Like, just go off. It’s fine.”

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: She’s really talented and really, really lovely, but.

Franny Choi: Amazing.

Aricka Foreman: So that was sort of my first like thinking around image, was watching her do it. And then my partner is also a photographer. So, he actually was the one that bought me my camera. And he was like, “You are dope. So here, go play.” And I was like, “Oh! Okay. That’s cute.” We’ll see what happens with it later.

Franny Choi: Is that work of you know, working in this purely image-oriented form, like is that changing the way that you’re looking at images in your poetry?

Aricka Foreman: Oh absolutely, absolutely.

Franny Choi: Yeah? How?

Aricka Foreman: If you have a particular sort of concrete image in a poem—I think in the past I’ve looked at is as like, this mug, right. I can’t see through it. It only has so many sort of viewpoints. Whereas, now, I can kind of imagine taking that and now it’s clear, and now it’s porous and it’s this, so I can like, look through the image to the other side and see.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So it’s kind of a way of picking it up to the light and turning it around for me, which is really, really fun. And different.

Franny Choi: In the poems?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. I feel like the images are doing—one thing that the book is doing obsessively is taking language and restructuring it and recycling it. I would say it’s very similar to my manic sort of turns in behavior, where I’m just like, “No, no, no,” and trying to go over and re-, “No, no, no,” and trying to go over and re-.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And so, the images that have come out of it sometimes will pop up in different poems, and it’s just like, turning it this way, and looking at it this way.

Franny Choi: Huh.

Aricka Foreman: Which has been really fascinating. I wasn’t expecting that to sort of come out of the process of writing it.

Franny Choi: Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense because it’s not, you know, as opposed to other visual arts, like painting or something, where it’s like, manipulating the image and like changing it, whereas, photography is like, perspective and angle and lighting and stuff, you know?

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: So yeah, that makes sense that like that’s the engagement with the image in the realm of poetry, too.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Shifts in vantage point, rather than—

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, even if you think of film in the actual film, where you shine the light through the back of it, which looks kind reversed, or if you put it—even with photography, in film photography, not digital, you take out the film strips, and then you can look down into it, which I feel like is a really interesting way of being able to approach.

Franny Choi: Totally.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Danez Smith: It sounds like, too, you’re talking about the porousness of the image, right? It’s almost using a lens to find other lenses. In that then the like image itself becomes a lens into everything it correlates to.

Aricka Foreman: Absolutely.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: Absolutely.

Franny Choi: Oh! Yeah, yeah. Cool.

Danez Smith: Yeah, if the cup now becomes the lens to see the laptop, right?

Aricka Foreman: Right, right, right. Exactly.

Franny Choi: Yeah!

Aricka Foreman: It’s exactly that.

Franny Choi: Whoa, whoa, whoa. You were just talking about exorcising—

Aricka Foreman: Oh yeah, I was—

Danez Smith: Exorcising a feeling, a part of the depression.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. Like the heaviness of it.

Franny Choi: Okay.

Aricka Foreman: And needing to, you know, sit on, latched at my back.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: It was like, ugh, have to get this off.

Franny Choi: Yeah. You compared putting the chapbook into the world as also a kind of exorcism.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Is that often a creative mode, or a creative motivation that takes you to that place of making stuff?

Aricka Foreman: I mean, yes. And I often don’t recognize it until it’s an object. So like during, I’m not like, “Hmm, I’m having a manic episode. Perhaps I can—”

Franny Choi: Uh-huh.

Aricka Foreman: That’s not how that works, right?

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: But I know, it’s what I love about the emotional resonancy of poetry. I’ve been reading Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. And talking about emotional resonance, emotional, intellectual modes as power. It’s where we get our old knowing from.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: In the moment, it’s usually me trying to dig at an old knowing. Like, I know it. And the only times that I’ve had—or not only times, but many of the times that I experience a rupture, and that is because a received thing is trying to get me to betray the thing that I already know.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So that’s where the doubt comes in. Where you’re like, “Am I saying this right? Am I?” Even if you go through an experience, or even if, you know, back to memory, if you look at a memory and you’re like, “I feel this way, even though the thing that my brain is remembering about it is different.” Why is that? That’s teaching me a lesson about something that I need to either tend to, if it’s a wound, or something I need to be reminded of if I’m faced with an adverse thing at the time, where I’m like, “No, no, no, no, that’s deep warrior power. You got that from Mom, and you got that from Grandma, and you got that from her.”

Franny Choi: So when you say “old knowing” you mean personal knowing, but also a historical like inherited knowing?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Franny Choi: For sure.

Aricka Foreman: And memory is such an interesting site of our first lessons. So, they’re not just the lessons of what we shouldn’t do, they’re also the lessons of what we should be doing, even if that betrays what we’ve been taught as we get older. So I’m very interested in trying to get back to that very old, old knowledge.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Do you find yourself sort of angling and exploring memory in the way that we were talking about the image too?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. Because sometimes—you know, memory is slippery. It’s often false. Or sometimes it’s false in a not false way. It tells us a truth about a thing even if it’s not true, right?

Franny Choi: For sure.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: So I’ve been really, for a long time, always, I think, have been fascinated by that because, you know, sometimes you won’t even remember that you have a memory until a thing happens, right?

Danez Smith: Oo! That happened to me the other day.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, and it sneaks up on you!

Danez Smith: I was looking through this old notebook, and I was reading a poem I wrote about a birthday, and I was like, “I had that?” (WHISPERS) “On my birthday, what the fuck happened?” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right.

Aricka Foreman: It’s crazy.

Franny Choi: Or a smell.

Danez Smith: Yeah!

Aricka Foreman: Or like a sound. Or like a song.

Franny Choi: Right, totally.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: A couple of years ago, I wrote this essay, because I had totally forgotten about some of it, because the essay was traversing around Aaliyah as the background for that year. And like you know, she was from Detroit, and she was iconic, and like there were so many things that we sort of grew up around, the same time, right?

Franny Choi: For sure.

Aricka Foreman: And then, remembering this song, I remember being in this club, where I was with my friends, and it must’ve been summer because it was hot. And we were going out to the deck to like kind of cool off. This guy tried to approach me, and I felt uncomfortable, and tried to ease up out the situation. And then, you know, he said an expletive at me across-in front of everybody. I totally forgot that part of that night. Everything else was like, I was getting my groove on, I was with my homegirls.

Franny Choi: Yeah. But engaging with that song—

Aricka Foreman: Yeah!

Franny Choi: —brought something up.

Aricka Foreman: I was like, “Yo … I totally forgot about that.”

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aricka Foreman: That trash dude in that ugly Polo, I forgot.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: So, (LAUGHS) yeah.

Danez Smith: They’re always in an ugly Polo.

Aricka Foreman: It’s always an ugly Polo. And they’re always oversized. Was that just a thing of the era, of the early 2000s?

Danez Smith: Ohh yeah.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Do you remember the double Polo?

Franny Choi: Oh my god!

Danez Smith: There are pictures of me in 2005 wearing two-layer XXX polos. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Oh I need receipts.

Danez Smith: Oh I’ll show you.

Aricka Foreman: Oh my god. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I will reactivate my Facebook to show you.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Wow.

Franny Choi: Oh my god, that image hurt my feelings.

Franny Choi and Aricka Foreman: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Oh yeah. You’ve never really lived until you had two Polo collars popped at the same time.

Aricka Foreman: Honey, we can’t all just come out being butterflies.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: The two – like the new millenia – the first seven years of the new millennium were a rough time for fashion.

Aricka Foreman: It was rough.

Danez Smith: We didn’t really figure out how to dress again good until like 2010, when we all agreed that cardigans were a good way to usher ourselves back into looking okay.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. I wore a lot of really bad jean skirts.

Danez Smith: Oof.

Franny Choi: Oh yeah.

Aricka Foreman: One of them was a trumpet shape, child. It was bad.

Danez Smith: A trumpet jean skirt?

Franny Choi: What?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah!

Danez Smith: Oh I know.

Aricka Foreman: You know which one I’m talking about.

Danez Smith: Oh yeah, I can see my homegirl Lana wearing that right now. Sorry Lana, I know you somewhere out there. You don’t wear them skirts no more, but you did.

Franny Choi and Aricka Foreman: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: Rocked them hard, rocked them hard.

Danez Smith: You did, 2007, you was known for a jean skirt.

Aricka Foreman: Yes. (LAUGHS) So many jean skirts, oh my goodness.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Oh man. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh man.

Aricka Foreman: That’s amazing.

Franny Choi: Okay, where were we?

Danez Smith: Jean skirts.

Franny Choi: Okay. Great.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Let’s stay on jean skirts for another—

Danez Smith: No we were talking about—I think the last question was just about the slipperiness of memory, right.

Aricka Foreman: Oh yeah.

Franny Choi: Yes!

Aricka Foreman: And triggers of what, like you said, smell—

Franny Choi: Yes, yes.

Aricka Foreman: Which is, you know, I think why the body is so important. Understanding it as a space in which you’re not sense-making to make sense, to understand, but sense-making.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: So I’m just really, really fascinated by that. It’s really interesting. Because memory does that, right? Sometimes you don’t even have the image of the memory yet, you just have the like – whether it’s fear or whether it’s a warm sweetness.

Franny Choi: Right.

Aricka Foreman: And then you have to sort of dive into that until the image starts to clear up for you.

Franny Choi: Right, right, yeah. Work back from the body feeling to the—to the intellectual memory thing.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Which, I think that seems like a great way to approach a poem, too, right?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: To start with the physical, concrete stuff, and then like figure out, “Oh this is actually a memory of 2003,” you know?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah!

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: Which is kind of strange, but it’s a good strange. It’s a good space to play.

Franny Choi: Can we talk about the ocean?

Aricka Foreman: Yes, I love the ocean.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: Yes!

Danez Smith: A little birdie might’ve told us.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yes! Salt Body Shimmer, the oceanic.

Aricka Foreman: Uh, yes.

Danez Smith: Or, you know, the sweaty self.

Aricka Foreman: Maybe.

Franny Choi: Or the sweaty self.

Aricka Foreman: Because there’s some dance poems in there, too, so, yeah, yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah, we were saying we would buy this body highlight, Salt Body Shimmer, right away. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Yes! Rihanna, my president, holler at me. Thank you.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Yeah, how does the ocean—your beloved ocean—figure into this project? What’s it doing in here?

Aricka Foreman: It’s doing—there’s so much water in this. The first thing I ever wanted to be was a marine biologist.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: And I don’t know, I wish I still talked to somebody who I went to elementary school with. But I remember, remember, very clearly, there was somebody from the aquarium or something that had brought in this huge tank in our gym. And had these small mammal—I don’t remember if it was a baby shark or something. But had set it up, and I was like, “Where did this come from?”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Hm. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: What’s an ocean? What else is down there?

Danez Smith: That’s true for Midwestern kids. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Yo, right! Right. Because we’re like, I know what a lake is, I know what a river is, I might know what a creek is, but what’s an ocean? Excuse me?

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: So I kind of went to the library, went to the card catalogue.

Danez Smith: C’mon Dewey Decimal.

Aricka Foreman: Yes, Dewey Decimals. And I was just obsessed with like the diversity of it as an ecosystem. And there’s so. Much. We. Still. Don’t know. And it covers so. Much. Of. This. Planet. I’m still blown away. And so that sort of was the initial starting. Up until I was probably in the 7th grade. And then I had a racist teacher who told me, was like, “Black women aren’t marine biologists.” And it like crushed me.

Franny Choi: Wait, what?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Literally?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. He was like, “You’ll never do that.”

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: Damn.

Aricka Foreman: I told my mom, and my mom came up and gave him that good work.

Danez Smith: Good mom! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: And my mom is petite, but she (LAUGHS)—

Franny Choi: Physically.

Aricka Foreman: Right. She’s physically petite. And he was like, maybe 6’3”, 6’4”, you know, tall, kind of towering over her, a white man. And she does the best kind of cuss you out, that you don’t realize you’ve been cussed out until three days later.

Franny Choi: Uh-huh.

Aricka Foreman: But she said what she said.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: So, she came in, gave him that work, and told me, “You can be whatever you wanna be.” But by then, I don’t know, I think it was a very deep wound that happened. And then what did I do, I went and wrote about it, so, that’s how I became a poet.

Franny Choi: Shout-out to the deep wounds.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS) The deep wounds.

Danez Smith: Shout-out racist teachers, creating poets all over the place.

Aricka Foreman: Right. Creating poets all over the world.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: But yeah, I never—I never lost my fascination or my curiosity about it. And I think, as I started studying, if you look at Yoruban tradition, you know, or Candomblé or Santeria you know, the big heavy hitters are the waters Yemeya or Oshun.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: At some point in there, I was looking through the deities and looking through which sort of spaces they were quote-unquote in charge—I had never heard of Olokun before.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: Never. And I was like, why!? So, Olokun, sometimes it’s presented as male, sometimes it’s presented as female, which I think is also really interesting, in terms of gender bending. And it’s also this keeper of the deep, deep, darkest waters. So it’s the deep knowledge, it’s the—

Danez Smith: I love that our people knew that.

Aricka Foreman: Right?!

Danez Smith: That there was something deeper and darker down there. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: And attempted to name it, and give it, at least a starting legacy, right? Like? That was amazing to me! So when I’m looking through this collection, I think the ocean functions as that deep, old knowledge. Back to that old knowing.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And there are still things I haven’t discovered down there yet.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: So now I have a whole career to figure it out, which is pretty cool.

Franny Choi: Oh man. Are you going into that deep-deep in this book?

Aricka Foreman: I think so.

Franny Choi: You go down there?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. The middle section of the book is … it’s tough. But it needed to be traversed. Some light needed to come.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: That’s a great structure for the book, right? To not just be in the deep the whole time, but dive in, and then to be able to come back up.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Franny Choi: That’s so important.

Aricka Foreman: It’s so important.
 

Franny Choi: Yeah, to have the part where you come back up again, you know?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Do you have any particular strategies for getting back up?

Aricka Foreman: Um …

Franny Choi: Because I feel like it can be easy to just be like, oh I just live down here now.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah. I just live here now.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Yes yes.Shoulda brought a duffel bag. (LAUGHS) You know, I look at it and now I try to create rituals for myself so that I don’t stay in the deep just with my mood disorder, right?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And I don’t necessarily know if I agree with the notion of faking it ’til you make it, because the inauthenticity of it feels gross too. But, I do think about, what are the things that bring me pleasure. Because I feel like if I can still feel pleasure for something, then there’s like that little pinprick of light that can get down in there, right.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: Mm, yeah.

Aricka Foreman: And sometimes it’s eating an amazing meal by myself at the bar with a book. Sometimes it’s calling the homies on Tuesday and being like, “Hey yo, Thursday is the ’90s John over at The Whistler, we need to fall through, we need to sweat it out, all of us.” And sometimes it’s real small. I call them uhm, Blacktellectual fieldtrips, where I’ll text Krista or avery or somebody and be like, “Oh we all going to see If Beale Street Could Talk. Like…This is a thing we’re doing.”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)
 

Aricka Foreman: And we all have things that we’re obviously working on, and we’re all busy, but that little pocket, a couple of hours of sitting in the theater with your beloveds watching this beautiful, gorgeous object, and then taking that with you, back to your respective spaces, is really important.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Yeah, right.

Aricka Foreman: So I try to figure out ways to like… mirror that in the work.

Franny Choi: Being in the deep and then like, finding the anglerfish—

Aricka Foreman: Right!

Franny Choi: —hanging out, you know?

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! Yeah, yeah.

Franny Choi: What life is still possible in those deepest reaches.

Aricka Foreman: Exactly! And how those things have adapted. The ocean is old.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: There’s a reason why we don’t know what some stuff is. Maybe it was something else, two, three, four hundred years ago, I don’t know.

Franny Choi: Right, right. Yeah.

Danez Smith: We should end this portion where we shoulda started. Aricka, what’s moving you?

Aricka Foreman: Quietude. Tenderness. I look for a daily account of tenderness. Even for myself, it’s important. In general, I think we could all stand to be a little bit more gentle and kinder to ourselves. And I think if we start there, eventually we’ll be tender and kinder to one another.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Aricka Foreman: Oh, I don’t wanna end the book. I’ve been like, taking it as snacks, and like chewing on it.

Franny Choi: Oh I love it when you get a book like that.

Aricka Foreman: Yes, I love a snacky book! And so, Geffrey Davis’s latest collection.

Danez Smith: Oh, Night Angler. No is that it? Yes it is, that is the one.

Aricka Foreman: Yes!

Danez Smith: Yeah. That nigga can write a poem. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: I just … the audacity! The audacity of beauty in that book is just so, so good so… I feel like I’m so easily moved. You know, shout-out to the double Pisces in the world.

Danez Smith: A double Pisces.

Franny Choi: Wow, double Pisces.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah …

Danez Smith: Oh wow.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, I got a lot of feelings.

Danez Smith: Yeah. Oh shit. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: So you know, what’s moving me? All the things. All the feelings, all the time.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Right, right. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: The wind this morning …

Aricka Foreman: Right. I saw a monarch butterfly, and I just stopped and stared at it, which is a true story. I feel like the eight-year-old me is like, we are living!

Franny Choi: I mean, monarch butterflies are amazing.

Aricka Foreman: They’re amazing.

Danez Smith: I feel like when a butterfly flutters past you, it calls attention.

Aricka Foreman: It does!

Danez Smith: Stop what you’re doing.

Aricka Foreman: Stop what you’re doing and pay attention.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Aricka Foreman: To the glory, yeah. So yeah, there are so many things that are incredibly moving, despite the other ways of the world moving. So I’m trying to—you know, I’m aware, and then I have to pause, and I say, “You know what, maybe I wanna listen to this Toni Morrison interview. Maybe I want to do something else that’ll give me that.”

Danez Smith: Amen.

Franny Choi: This is all straight-up 100 percent gold, by the way. (LAUGHS) This is all really, really good.

Aricka Foreman: Oh god, thank god. Half the time I’m like, (SINGS) “What are you doing, girl?” That’s how my brain works.

Franny Choi: No. (LAUGHS) Is that the voice in your head? (SINGS) “What are you doing girl?”

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, I sing everything.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: I sing everything. People at my job are like, “No.” There’s two modes if Aricka as the bartender. If you’ve pissed me off to the point that I don’t even have language, then I just start humming old negro spirituals, and you know to walk away from me.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: And then the other thing is, when I’ve said what I said, and you’re not listening, so then I start singing it, because maybe then you’ll apprehend it.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aricka Foreman: Because I said it the first three times…

Danez Smith: I dig.

Aricka Foreman: … so why are you asking me this question again?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: So if I sing it to you, maybe yeah. It’s funny though.

Franny Choi: It’s like the reprise in the musical.

Aricka Foreman: Yes! Exactly. I’m a walking diva.

Danez Smith: (SINGS) I said we are cash only.

Aricka Foreman: (SINGS) Read the menu.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: It’smy favorite one.

Franny Choi: Read the menu?

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm. It’ll be like, “Do you have c—,” “No I do not.”

Danez Smith: Read the menu. It’s the bar version of look at the syllabus. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Yes! Yes!

Danez Smith: It’s in the syllabus.

Aricka Foreman: That’s exactly it. Oh my god. That just gave me so much delight.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: So, here in Season 4 of VS, we are trying out a new game. It is either called Speedbag, because you know, we love a good boxing metaphor here at VS.

Aricka Foreman: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Or it’s called Fast Punch, which is also a boxing metaphor, but maybe for someone who’s never seen boxing.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: Oh that’s perfect for me then.

Danez Smith: Yes. It’s basically a lightning round of questions. So we’re gonna give you 10 things, and you have the choice of either telling us the worst of that thing, or the best of that thing.

Aricka Foreman: Oo, okay!

Danez Smith: So it’s your choice. Would you like to be a praiser or a hater today?

Aricka Foreman: I feel like I praise a lot. I feel like poetry’s cheerleader sometimes to the world, so let me play with the hate.

Franny Choi: Yes! Great!

Danez Smith: A hater.

Aricka Foreman: Because I don’t know how to hate, so.

Danez Smith: Okay. We’ll see what happens. Okay, so, Franny, you wanna just go back and forth?

Franny Choi: Yeah. Sure.

Danez Smith: Okay, so, 10 things.

Franny Choi: Yeah, 10 of them.

Danez Smith: We’re gonna have a little clock sound, so it feels mad real.

(CLOCK TICKING)

Franny Choi: Right.

Aricka Foreman: Oh my.

Danez Smith: Alright. Starting with the worst font.

Aricka Foreman: Helvetica.

Franny Choi: Okay, worst kind of notebook to write in?

Aricka Foreman: Spiral.

Danez Smith: The worst juice?

Aricka Foreman: Tomato.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mmm.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Worst poetic form?

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS) Worst form … oh, I don’t know! Oh, pantoums.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Worst rapper?

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS) My dad.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Oh no! Shots fired. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Worst writing prompt you’ve ever given or received?

Aricka Foreman: Oh … the worst writing prompt that I gave—I’ll put myself on blast—was the ode poem, without actually giving them an example of what an ode is. My first year teaching, it was bad. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: For sure, for sure.

Aricka Foreman: I’m sorry to them kids.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: The worst place to poop?

Aricka Foreman: Ooo, any kind of public bathroom transit situation, I assume.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Worst democratic primary candidate?

Aricka Foreman: Oh, what’s that child’s name?

Danez Smith: Biden? Beetaburg?

Franny Choi: Buttigieg? (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Buttigieg. Yeah.

Danez Smith: Yo, I don’t know.

Aricka Foreman: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. No it’s Buttigieg for sure. For sure.

Danez Smith: Ima start calling him Bootie Cheese.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Okay, worst song you know all the lyrics to?

Aricka Foreman: Ooo, that’s a tough one. Y’all gettin’ me with these.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Worst song that I know all the—I mean, it’s a classic, but it’s not a very good song, it’s the theme song to TheFresh Prince of Bel Air.

Franny Choi: Sure, sure.

Aricka Foreman: You know what I mean?

Danez Smith: Whoa, whoa, controversial opinion.

Aricka Foreman: I know, I know, controversy.

Franny Choi: Worst writing advice you ever received?

Aricka Foreman: Don’t write for feeling.

Franny Choi: Huh?

Aricka Foreman: Right. It’s like, “Clearly you’re good at emotional resonance, but you should be leaning into—” I don’t know, some white man said that to me, it was awful.

Franny Choi: Yeah, that’s terrible.

Aricka Foreman: I was like, “Psh, feelings are god, whatever.”

(BELL RINGS)

Franny Choi: Amazing! Worst of everything. Hooray!

Aricka Foreman: Did I do it?

Danez Smith: You did it!

Aricka Foreman: Oh my god, yay!

Franny Choi: You win the game!

Danez Smith: You won!

(TRIUMPHANT SOUND EFFECT PLAYS)

Danez Smith: You are now qualified for a dinner with T.S. Eliot.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: We will let you know at the end of the year—

Franny Choi: Whether he’s come back to life or not. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! That’s exciting. You never know these days, you know?

Danez Smith: We can have a séance at the Burger King.

Aricka Foreman: We sure can.

Franny Choi: Got one scheduled for Friday.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Burger séance.

Franny Choi: Burger séance. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Burger séance. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Séance King. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Franny, wanna introduce our next game?

Franny Choi: Yes. (LAUGHS) Thank you so much for playing our game Speedbag and/or Fast Punch.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah!

Danez Smith: I like this game so far.

Franny Choi: I do too.

Aricka Foreman: Y’all stopped me a couple times. It was good.

Franny Choi: I like the worst song you know all the lyrics to though.

Aricka Foreman: It’s controversial. It’s a classic, and we all know it, and it’s so memory like, “Yes! I was there when da da da da da,” but like, if you actually–(WHISPERS) the song itself is not that good.

Danez Smith: No, Will Smith had a lot of narrative rap songs—

Aricka Foreman: Right.

Danez Smith: —back in the day. And if that was released as a single, it’d be crap.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Sure, sure.

Danez Smith: It’s not “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” it’s not “Brand New Funk,” it’s (SINGS) doot, doot, doot—

Aricka Foreman: Right.

Franny Choi: But in the genre of theme song, it’s an amazing theme song.

Aricka Foreman: Yes.

Danez Smith: No. I think—

Aricka Foreman: Of theme songs?

Danez Smith: I think it’s just the first time we had heard a rap theme song, so we were all so impressed by it.

Aricka Foreman: Mmm.

Franny Choi: Hm.

Danez Smith: Like, does it actually bang like the Family Matters theme song?

Aricka Foreman andDanez Smith: (IN UNISON) No! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Interesting.

Aricka Foreman: (SINGS) Days go by ...

Franny Choi: What about that one versus the Pokérap? Do you remember the Pokérap?

Danez Smith: Wait, the one where you say all the names?

Franny Choi: Yeah. Of all the Pokémon.

Danez Smith: Oh that was better. (RAPS NONSENSICALLY) Pokemon!

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah, right!

Danez Smith: Yes.

Aricka Foreman: I could see that.

Franny Choi: Huh. So you would put the Pokérap over The Fresh Prince of Bel Air song?

Danez Smith: Or even the second season of Pokémon.

Franny Choi: (SINGS) Do you wanna be a master of Pokémon!

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (SING IN UNISON) Do you have the skills to be number one!

Danez Smith: Yep-

Aricka Foreman: I.. like..

Franny Choi: - Okay great.

Franny Choi and Aricka Foreman: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: It’s science. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Damn, damn, I’m really fucked up because I was ready to defend Fresh Prince, but—

Aricka Foreman: Right!

Danez Smith: I’m actually—

Aricka Foreman: You gotta go through the process.

Danez Smith: Yeah, now that I think about it, you’re mad true. Yeah. Damn.

Aricka Foreman: It’s alright.

Franny Choi: (SIGHS)

Aricka Foreman: We still love it. It’s a legend. We stan a legend

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: For sure.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Franny Choi: Now it is time for another game, This vs. That. So we will put two different things into a head-to-head battle, and you have to tell us which would win in a fight.

Aricka Foreman: Ooo.

Franny Choi: So for this episode, we will be putting against each other, the depths of the ocean vs. the depths of emotion.

(BELL RINGS)

Franny Choi: Oceanal depths vs. emotional depths. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Deep sea or deep me?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Ooo! That needs to go on a sweater, please.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Deep sea or deep me. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Deep me or deep sea. Uhm! You know, the ocean wins. It has to, you know. It’s the primordial original thing that teaches us, so.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: The first Africa.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! So I’m gonna go with the ocean.

Franny Choi: There’s monsters down there.

Aricka Foreman: I know! Well there’s monsters down up in here, too, so.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I feel like when you— I feel like you go through that darkness and then there’s actually a very bright city of merpeople who are like them upstairs niggas.

(ALL LAUGH)

Aricka Foreman: That is a wonderful imagination. You have to- If you’re a true warrior, you will slay whatever you need to slay to get to the merpeople.

Danez Smith: Yep.

Aricka Foreman: I wanna be with the merpeople.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: I also love the idea of the anglerfish living upstairs. (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Right.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: Oh that’s them upstairs. That’s an upstairs fish.

Danez Smith: Well the anglerfish are like birds to them.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: That’s wonderful.

Franny Choi: Wow, wow, wow.

Aricka Foreman: That’s amazing. Yeah, the ocean wins.

Franny Choi: I love this YA novel that you have just started.

Danez Smith: Actually …

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: I know! Is this my next book?

Danez Smith: If anybody steals it, I promise I will sue the shit out of you.

Aricka Foreman: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I might never write it, but I always wanna own it.

Aricka Foreman: Yes, yes copyright, copyright.

Franny Choi: If I can’t write it, nobody can write it! (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aricka Foreman: That’s awesome.

Franny Choi: Aricka, thank you so much for spending this hour with us.

Aricka Foreman: Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure to be in beautiful, beautiful, smart, wonderful, kind company.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Aww!

Franny Choi: Beautiful! Thank you, look at us.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah, your questions were amazing, so I thank you so much for taking the time to read the work, and all of that.

Franny Choi: Thank you.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Where can people find more of your work?

Aricka Foreman: You can find it in the world, at arickaforeman.com has selected pieces that I have published in a number of different journals. I currently have a poem that’s forthcoming from the book in the Furious Flower anthology.

Danez Smith: Ooo yes!

Aricka Foreman: Yeah! Which is fantastic. I was super excited and very honored to be a part of that. The book will be out in April. You can go directly to YesYes Books.

Danez Smith: Yes, directly.

Aricka Foreman: Or to you know, SPD, or any indie seller, or directly to the bookstore please. I understand the convenience of Amazon…

Danez Smith: MmMm.

Aricka Foreman: …but yeah, let’s support the—

Danez Smith: IndieBound will show you to your local bookstore.

Aricka Foreman: Absolutely. Yeah. And also, not just in terms of my work, but a thing that I think is an important practice is, if you go to your local bookstore, and there aren’t authors that you know are out slamming it—like I’ve gone to a couple of Chicago’s and been like, “I don’t know why you don’t have Ladan Osman like, what are you doing?”

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: And getting them to actually order, so that the shelves are not only diverse, but you know, a little bit more robust. They shouldn’t be tiny.

Franny Choi: Yeah, for sure.

Aricka Foreman: Poetry is cool, so.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Alright, thank you.

Aricka Foreman: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Will you do us the honor of closing us out with one last poem?

Aricka Foreman: I would be delighted.

(READS POEM)
 

Failed Reincarnation Before Olanzapine

My honeycomb illness of bees buzzing

bright in the brain, their sticky spittle

turning hours in kaleidoscope

that slow-drip, the trees’ autumnal gold…

How it latches to the shoulders of pedestrians

like the take me with you of lovers

Take me across the thresh of whichever door

might amp this song up, good needle jitter

when the station’s stuck between suffer

and c’est la vie Who in a body like this

can afford to believe in reincarnation—though

once I dreamed a river of mercurial silt and gold

bangles bridging over my opened wrists

And the sun’s radial rippling despite

rising brown water Here language in limbo,

of leveraging one evening for a hush

if you can manage A whisper taut or torch

or touch can bind you to a fever if unchecked. Let,

wound. Then Bruise renders blues inevitable

From the green porch I swing between the whir

of dissolving cars that whip and exhale Panic

pitters its baseline like a house track Begs:

dance dance dance dance Asks if you believe

in a God who demands to witness

what worship wild abandon becomes

* * *

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Franny Choi: That was Aricka Foreman!

Danez Smith: Yes!

Franny Choi: A true hero and a blessing to us all.

Danez Smith: A genius if I say so myself.

Franny Choi: Seriously.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: I loved especially that conversation about going down into the depths of feeling and memory, and then also the challenge of then coming back out if it, you know?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Especially the challenges of doing that work as a neurodivergent person, etcetera. We are both poets that like—

Danez Smith: Go down to them depths?

Franny Choi: Yeah, get down into the muck of it.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: And especially like the hard feelings of shame, etcetera.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: What do you do to pull yourself out, when you go down there?

Danez Smith: Yeah. I think the first part is really truly committing to going down there. Like I feel like a question I get asked a lot is, how do you sort of protect yourself from that depth of work, or those hard emotions, and I think the uneasy answer is that you have to allow yourself to kinda be ravaged by it first, you know?

Franny Choi: Mm.

Danez Smith: To really allow that depth to be everything that it is, in and through you. And for me, I think it is just about like, having quick self-care dates that I can go to, right? So like, for me, if I’m writing at home, let’s say, then I know that whenever I’m in a really, really dark space, there’s a walk to the art museum that’s near my house. And they have an outside gallery, and there’s this one specific sculpture that I go talk to when I’m feeling really shitty.

Franny Choi: Oh wow.

Danez Smith: Her name is Empire. I know it’s a her. But her name is Empire, and I go talk to her.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: And just walking around that, and really thinking about what this structure means to me, because for some reason I identify with this sort of shapeless mess of poles, for some reason. I go talk to Empire, you know. And that is enough. Just that walk and—

Franny Choi: That sentence is also wild!

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: When I’m feeling down in the dumps, I go talk to Empire.

Danez Smith: I go talk to Empire. (LAUGHS) Both the concept of Empire, and Cookie Lyon and them.

Franny Choi:: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: But— And I think it’s even just that walk, just having enough space from the poem to know that, you know, it takes me probably 30, 35 minutes to make that loop. It’s enough time to help clear my head.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Especially if I do it with no headphones, no phone, just really walk with my thoughts. And I’m able to come back. And also, I think diving back into art that like I know is a good space for me. When I write a really, really hard thing, sometimes, especially if it’s too cold—I’m a Midwestern nigga, sometimes you can’t take no walk. But there’s shows like Got to Be Real that I love and I’ve seen 1,000 times, and I can put that on there, and it at least gets me giggling.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: And as long as I can, after I go to that depth, remember that laughter happens, then I’m fine.

Franny Choi: For sure. Yeah, totally.

Danez Smith: How ’bout you? What gets you pullin’ from out of the depths?

Franny Choi: I mean,yeah, I think it’s also some sort of self-soothing stuff, you know? Like breathing and taking time to intentionally breathe for three minutes, rather than just like, doing it subconsciously to stay alive.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Also, part of it for me, to be honest, is sharing the poem with someone who will then look at the piece and see the darkness and the depths. But also, to watch them be moved by it, or appreciate it, I think actually helps me understand that the deep, you know, to me, dangerous parts of my work also contain within them some light for other people, you know?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: That’s part of my process, too. I know that it gets tricky to be like, oh, I’m being rewarded for my trauma, or whatever. But, I don’t know, I have to be honest and say that’s part of the healing process.

Danez Smith: Well it’s also asking somebody else to like, please tell me this exercise in taking myself to this dark space was worth it.

Franny Choi: Right.Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: So that’s fine, it doesn’t have be rewarded, but validated is always nice.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah! Or to look at it and say, “I’m now not afraid of you, because of this place that you’ve gone to in your poem.” Or “I don’t want to run from you because of it. You shared this with me, and I’m still here with you,” you know?

Danez Smith: Hm.

Franny Choi: That companionship and knowing that that won’t sever my connections to other people, that’s healing for me.

Danez Smith: That is. Aw. That’s beautiful.

Franny Choi: Anyway.

Danez Smith: Well, let’s get on outta here.

Franny Choi: Yeah, let’s do it.

Danez Smith: I wanna go be tender to myself now.

Franny Choi: I know. Let’s shout-out to everybody being tender to themselves today.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Doing one thing to take care of yourself and be tender to yourself.

Danez Smith: Yeah. And also shout-out to all of you preparing to brave the depths. You know?

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: It is worthwhile work. And you are not self-sabotaging for wanting to go there.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Just make sure you leave somebody up at the top—

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: —who can call to you if you stay down there too long.

Danez Smith: Yeah. Have bestie on speed dial.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Just text ’em and be like, “Hey, I’m getting ready to write about some hard shit. Standby.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah. Love that.

Danez Smith: Love that.

Franny Choi: Thank you also, always, to the Poetry Foundation, especially, Ydalmi Noriega and Itzel Blancas. Thank you to our producer, Daniel Kisslinger. Thank you to the Postloudness collective, of which we are a part. And thank you to you for continuing to listen to us.

Danez Smith: Yes. Wherever you listen, if it is possible, we would love you to like, rate, and subscribe, comment, let us know what you think, if it’s a good thought. If it’s not, (IN DEEP VOICE) keep it. Please follow us on social media @Vsthepodcast on Twitter. Thank you all so much for spending another hour with us. We really appreciate your time and your attention to these poets that we love bringing to y’all. Thank you for sticking with us through Season 4. We’re excited for the rest of the year. And that’s about it. Let’s get outta here, y’all.

Franny Choi: Yes.

Danez Smith: Peace.

Franny Choi: Goodbye.