Cracking Shells

Invariably, my favorite part of any workshop has been the community that gets formed throughout  the semester. The inside jokes, the unique intimacy, an understanding of peers that can only come from picking apart their writing. The vulnerability that comes with sharing your art leads, inevitably, to a sense of trust and camaraderie. So while I was stoked, this spring, to learn from a poet I greatly admire, I was disappointed that the workshop would last only a week. Too short a time, I thought, to develop that kind of bond. Of course, I was wrong.

Danez Smith came into the room, so overwhelmingly themself, so comfortable and ready to begin. There was no academic veneer, no stuffy posturing, no attempts to mute their personality. They had us laughing, and, on the first day of passing out poems--to the left--had us singing “Irreplaceable.” A chorus of “To the left’s” erupted, and the energy in the room was light, lively, accepting. Now, it takes me a while to warm up to people. I hold a lot back. (A friend has said of me that it takes a while to crack the shell, but once you do, you find “a pretty weird fucking bird.”) Point is: I’m reserved, upon first meeting people. But Danez Smith had me, on that second day, table-drumming and belting Beyonce. If that’s not a testament to their teaching ability, then the rest of this blog post better convince you.

It wasn’t just the affability or realness that Danez brought to the table. They forced us to reconsider our relationship with language, to step outside the comfortable. For one assignment, they had us list the poetic strategies we rely on, and a second list of all the topics that appear in our work, and then had us write poems in which we abandon those crutches. Writing those poems felt like stepping out expecting a stair, and tripping awkwardly down. Eventually, though, I found my footing, and was able to see language from an entirely new angle. Defamiliarizing myself with my language allowed me to enter a fresh, generative space. By the end of the week, I felt rejuvenated, closer to writing than I had in awhile.

Danez spoke passionately about language, life, community, and communication. The lack of pretense, the lack of a professorial guise, the complete absence of a fake-self, allowed them to speak directly to us, to the point. The cliche I'm about to offer you is that they taught me not just about writing, but about being. Their parting bit of advice for us writers, the last wisdom they imparted, was a small phrase that I don’t think I can hear enough. “You want to be a writer? Then write. Just write.”

Aiden Baker is a first year MFA candidate in Fiction at FAU. Originally from Chicagoland, she now lives, writes, and sweats in South Florida. You can find her work in The Ninth Letter Web Edition.

Testing the Waters

I walked into Danez Smith’s workshop with the extent of my poetry knowledge limited to Shel Silverstein and an introductory course during my undergraduate studies at Penn State. I was lucky to be prepped with a few mini-lessons on form from my fellow Graduate Teaching Assistant and friend, Renae. She is exceedingly patient and kind, explaining to me the intricacies that are line breaks and tension. As a fiction candidate, I like to stick to what I know when it comes to writing and, more specifically, what I know I can write well. In a poetry workshop, I was a Type A fish out of my neat and tidy Type A water.

I took my seat at the table where we would gather for the week, and Danez asked us to introduce ourselves with additional tidbits of information – where we were at in the MFA program, what our primary genre was, where we were from, and what our favorite fast food restaurant was. Right off the bat, I was flummoxed, misstating that I was in my third year at FAU (I am a mere first-year) and letting the rosiness on my cheeks signal my embarrassment. I turned to Renae and reiterated, “I am out of my element.”

Soon enough, however, I felt myself embraced by Danez, who was successful in explaining poetic form by comparing entities like The Powerpuff Girls to a crown of sonnets. According to Danez, much like the crime-fighting trio, this form consists of unified “sister poems,” also known as poems that are “same same, but different.” Danez was able to break down concepts to more manageable ideas, and I’m always a sucker for a solid pop culture reference. We laughed as we compared one type of poetic sequence to the 2016 collaboration between Rihanna, Paul McCartney, and Kanye West for “FourFiveSeconds.” Danez explained it as something that makes no sense at all, yet somehow, it works. Cartoons and celebrities? This was very much my speed.

As the week went on, I found myself inspired by what Danez had been talking about. Not just poetry as a form, but poetry as a way to express thought and feeling through writing. During their reading, Danez stressed that being honest in your work is something they focus on, and I felt a resonance with that statement. Maybe poetry was the outlet that would allow me to talk about my experiences and the ideas I so often tried to integrate into my fiction. I ended up walking away from this workshop with a new sense of what poetry was, and I felt inclined to thank Danez for their time working with us during the week. I shook their hand, thanked them while smiling, and felt the same nervousness I had on the first day. This time, however, it was nervousness in the form of excitement and the potential to get started. Having tested new, sometimes uncomfortable waters, I now feel confident in expanding my writing wheelhouse.

Abigail Reinhard is a first-year MFA candidate at Florida Atlantic University with a concentration in fiction. A native Jersey Girl, she received her bachelor's degree in English from Penn State University in 2016.

Dangerous Seed

Having read Don’t Call Us Dead in both my African American Literature course and my Poetry workshop, I was eager, and nervous, to meet the author behind the words. This was my first workshop hosted by an outside author at Florida Atlantic University, so I didn’t know what to expect. After meeting Danez Smith, the nerves quickly faded. They were so welcoming and motivating throughout the entire workshop, I almost felt as if I had met them before. Perhaps because their poems evoke that same, welcoming aura, and perhaps because they always seem to have a smile on their face.

            Throughout the workshop, Smith emphasized the importance of writing for specific audiences, which is something I had previously not put enough consideration into. We all belong to different communities, and can therefore write to those groups in a specific language of sorts. This doesn’t have to mean a literal different language, but by including specific insiders, one invites people in while concurrently holding others at a distance. Smith had us put this idea to practice by taking one of our poems and reworking it, keeping three separate audiences in mind as we revised. When we all shared our new pieces, the poems seemed to change form completely, solely dependent upon who the speaker was addressing. Moving forward with my own work, I will be sure to decide who exactly I am speaking to before I begin writing.   

While attending Smith’s reading at the end of the week, I found myself smiling along with them as they read. I was sitting next to fellow MFA student Abigail Reinhard, who I met through FAU’s MFA program and now consider a best friend, when Smith read their poem “acknowledgements,” specifically dedicated to friendships. Abigail and I found ourselves nudging each other whenever something applied to us (specifically the line “I text you & you say, I was bout to text you bitch”). While reading all of their poems, they had the room laughing and aching at the same time. To evoke those senses simultaneously through writing is to evoke something true. Listening to Smith read was admirable, and reminded me of the many reasons why I love to write.

At the end of the reading, I waited in line for Smith to sign my copy of Don’t Call Us Dead. When it was my turn, I made sure to ask them if they meant for the italicized lines in “summer, somewhere” to read both down and across the page, to which they said yes, they did intend this, but not initially, like a happy accident. As a writer, I lingered on these words—that feeling of doing something exciting subconsciously is a moment I, and I assume others, strive for.

I walked to the parking lot after the reading feeling full (and not as a result of the provided food, which was lovely). I opened my copy to see what was written. They crossed out their own name and wrote, “Renae! Be a dangerous seed!” I think these words capture what Danez Smith was teaching us during the week-long workshop—take risks with your writing, and know that your words mean something to someone and, most important, that they hold power.

Renae Tucker is a first-year MFA creative nonfiction candidate at Florida Atlantic University.