A Profile by Bryan Head, AWP Publications Intern

Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), a collection of poems recently slated as a finalist for the National Book Award, is a powerful example of contemporary respect for poetic form, lyric, and meter. The book maintains a sense of urgency and musicality that is striking within the page and often rises off it. The range of topics is equally impressive: the collection navigates broad themes of oppression, identity, and sexuality, but it also pointedly moves into contemporary conversations about issues of police brutality and into explorations of Smith’s personal experience living HIV positive.

Perhaps the most notable characteristic of the poems in Don’t Call Us Dead is the dynamic and intense consideration of the reader, which Smith believes stems in part from their experience in the spoken word community.

“Spoken word as a genre can’t divorce itself from audience in any way,” said Smith. “I want to be clear on what I want my audience to get from the poem, which leads to a certain type of writing.”

Some of Smith’s poems in Don’t Call Us Dead are accessible as performance pieces, such as “dear white america,” “summer, somewhere,” and “dinosaurs in the hood.” Others don’t translate as well to stage, according to Smith, but still draw from the work of spoken word. A primary similarity between the two, to Smith, is the “general sense of musicality” in the work. Smith says that while a poem like “litany with blood all over it” may not lend itself as well to being read aloud, it still holds that similar sense of “music, immediacy, and general prosody” that was honed in spoken word spaces.

Along with influencing their writing style, Smith also credits spoken word with fostering inspiration and collaboration between artists. “Slam and spoken word necessitate community. You can’t really be a spoken word artist and be divorced from community,” said Smith.

In the acknowledgements of Don’t Call Us Dead, Smith thanks Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, and Jamila Woods. These artists along with Smith make up The Dark Noise Collective: a multiracial, multigenre collective focused on art that addresses identity, intersectionality, and healing.

Individuals collectivize as a means of “institutionalizing love and respect for each other,” according to Smith, and as a means of challenging traditional systems and barriers. The rise of independent collectives in the past few years has both fostered collaboration between emerging artists and allowed them to claim spaces by creating them.

“A lot of us are wary of institutions because we see how they move throughout our world and our country. And we see the damage they have done to our lives,” they said. “I think being able to claim some of that power back from institutions is a way of saying that this too is a building and a house and a place that we can gather inside of.”

Smith feels the process of forming collectives is a natural but necessary one.

“There’s a lot of power in being able to name ourselves,” Smith said. “You already have people learning from each other, loving on each other, supporting each other in their lives and careers, and recognizing that there are links between their works. That happens naturally in literary friendships, but the movement to name it is something that is an outcome of love, appreciation and collaboration.”

Smith’s previous collection, [insert] boy, was named the Kate Tufts Discovery Award winner in 2014, the same year Smith received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry fellowship. Smith currently cohosts VS., a podcast presented by the Poetry Foundation, alongside Dark Noise member Franny Choi. After Don’t Call Us Dead, Smith has plans to expand the body of their work beyond the genre of poetry.

“I know I can write a poetry collection but I also want to write novels, plays, and scripts. Really, the biggest thing I want to do and am scared to, is stand-up comedy,” they said. “But I think poetry will always be my heart.”

The National Book Award winners will be announced this Wednesday, November 15, at a ceremony in New York. The ceremony will be streamed live on Facebook and the National Book Foundation website beginning around 7:20 p.m.

Photo Credit: Hieu Minh Nguyen