Kenneth Morrison Wernsdorfer is a national slam poet, co-founder and co-director of nonprofit organization Dew More Baltimore, a professor of Spoken Word at MICA, and father of a thirteen-year-old daughter. Kenneth was born and raised in Baltimore, MD and is still a proud Baltimorean to this day. He found his love for writing in seventh grade when he started competing in oratory competitions. After he completed high school he took an eight year hiatus from writing, rediscovering his love just two years ago. He is a very passionate individual about the change he wants to see in Baltimore and he is determined to contribute to that change. He is a creative individual who is not only a poet and activist, but also a writer of the science fiction genre when he finds the time. Kenneth is definitely a practitioner of what he preaches by competing in national slam poetry contests around the country with the “Speak Out Slammageddon/ Baltimore Adult Slam Team.” Let’s go meet him shall we?
But first, we must set the stage for our meeting. On March 25, 2016 we met with our interviewee at Red Emma's, a coffeehouse/bookstore on North Ave. At 5:30 in the afternoon the place was packed. People were typing on their computers, eating the food they purchased, having small meeting/gatherings or checking out the books in the bookstore. Once we entered Red Emma’s we had found a table to conduct the interview. We sat down and got ourselves prepared. As the time closer to 5:40pm, we signaled to Kenneth that we were ready for him as he had showed up before the scheduled meeting time and was having a conversation with someone. Once he had come to our table, we introduced ourselves, got out Isabella’s phone to record the interview and then we began our interview.
Brandi Randolph: So I wanted to know, what made you start writing?
The first time I started writing, I was in the seventh grade, and I used to do oratory competitions. My principal or the teacher, whoever was in charge of the competition, decided you could do original work. I was used to doing the “I Have a Dream” speech. So in the seventh grade, by this time, I’m an expert at this. And so I’ve mastered the “I Have a Dream” speech—I dress like him, I get it, I can do this. And there’s this one girl who was an eighth grader who did an original poem, and she went on right before me. And she was so phenomenal that I was like, What is that? I didn’t even want to do “I Have a Dream.” So, I think I came in second in my grade, or something like that, but what I left there saying to myself was, “I want to write my own poem.” And I wanted to be like that eighth grade girl I saw. So in the eighth grade oratory competition, I finally had my own poem that I could do, and I ended up winning. And I think it was the inspiration from the girl, but it was also the validation I got from my peers and from my teachers from writing something that they all thought was phenomenal. So that is what kind of made me want to write. It was kind of one of those things where I felt like I was good at something.
Isabella Bowker: So, then, have you always had a positive relationship with writing? How has your relationship with poetry changed since then?
It hasn’t changed. I took an eight-year hiatus from writing and performing because I didn’t realize it was something that adults did. So after graduating high school, I was kind of done with it. And then I rediscovered it because of a personal trauma, and I needed to write about it. That was just two years ago, and that just got me reintroduced to it again.
BR: So I guess that means the motivation for your writing is what happens to you, like certain things that happen in your life. Day-to-day stuff.
My writing now, as an adult, is a very personal process, and so I would say yes, that my art, my writing, is definitely influenced by my experiences. However, I do venture out beyond just my stories, and I tend to tell stories of other people, people I feel like whose stories need to be told.
IB: Yeah, I noticed in a lot of your poems you have a really strong balance between universal themes but that are also grounded in specific, personal moments, and I was wondering how you strike that balance, and how you know when that balance is hit right.
It really depends on the poem. It depends on the story I want to tell, and the approach to how to tell it, and how much of the story is mine and how much of it belongs to someone else. And I’m really conscious of that in my writing, that there’s never been a poem I’ve written where I wasn’t somewhere in the poem. But there’s never a poem I’ve written where so are you. And so I try to make sure that I’m mindful of my audience. My hope in my writing is to create a certain level of empathy, and so even though it’s very personal, I need it to be bigger than me if I want people to empathize. You have to be able to relate to it at some point. So for me, it’s using personal narrative to tell a story, but including other people’s experiences in it enough so that they can empathize with my story.
BR: Who artistically do you look up to, and why?
I want to say that I have local inspirations, which are often my peers, such as Slangston Hughes, Black Chakra, Lady Brion—these are all local artists in Baltimore who are also my friends. So we push and challenge each other all the time. We have to compete against each other all the time. So I know that they are probably the most influential art-makers in my life. But then I also have the abstract people, people like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin. My favorite author/writer/poet/artist is actually Robert Frost, which is really weird because I don’t think you’ll ever find Robert Frost in my work, but he’s by far my favorite. And I think there’s a certain level of jealousy that I have with his work. I’m actually writing a piece right now that’s kind of influenced by him—it’s like an anti-ode to him. But I noticed the escapism and privilege that exists in his work. I can read his work, and feel better, or think about life from a place of hope. Whereas, as an artist, I have to write from places of deeper trauma. But I also assume Robert Frost and I live—lived—in completely different worlds and different realities, where he can write about, you know, how beautiful a rose may be. I have to write about police brutality. But I wish to be able to write about walking in the woods and stuff. That’s just not where I am as an artist.
IB: Related to that question, then, do you see yourself as part of a specific literary or poetic tradition?
Yes. Well, one, I recognize storytelling from the lens of the African tradition, to be a griot of some type. But I also recognize the urban griots of today are often spoken word artists, and I feel like I’m part of that urban tradition that comes from—and I think every culture has their version of griots, so I don’t think it’s just an African thing, I think that that’s the lens that I look at it—so there’s an emerging culture, especially now, of griots, and spoken word artists are becoming to be a thing. So I definitely feel like I’m part of that emergence of modern-day urban griots.
BR: So I’m aware that you’re one of the cofounders of Dew More Baltimore, and I wanted to ask if you could describe Dew More Baltimore in three to four words, and what do those words mean to you?
So I can give adjectives. They’re “alternative,” “inspiring,” “grass-roots,” and “passionate.”
BR: What do those words mean to you?
For me, Dew More is a way of building community and addressing issues in marginalized communities, but from a different way. We’re not trying to look like another non-profit. We’re trying to create an alternative way of doing work in a marginalized community. So for me, it’s like—sorry, and I’m trying not to be over-preachy, but—Baltimore City has more non-profits than New York City. And I’ve been part of watching non-profits do work in Baltimore consistently, and I’m not seeing a change. I’m not seeing a big difference in our educational system, I’m not seeing a big difference in police and arrests—the quality of life does not seem to be improving, no matter how many non-profits are emerging. And so when I decided to add another non-profit to the big pile of non-profits, I was like, But it can’t be a traditional non-profit. It has to be an alternative way of doing this work that can really make a difference. And so my hope is that Dew More will not be just another non-profit, but we will be nuanced in a way that we can be an alternative to how we do this work.
BR: How have you seen youth grow and learn about themselves through Dew More Baltimore?
The things that I’ve noticed that our young people are able to do is to process and deal with stress that they typically are not able to deal with and process. Meaning that, there are few places in schools where, if your grandmother passed away, if your father was just murdered, that you have a space in your life to really process and wrestle and question and challenge that. So we provide young people with that space, where they typically don’t have it. And I feel like young people have a different relationship with their trauma because of that space. So an example of that is, one of my student’s brother was murdered, and she came to the program the next day. And the entire youth program wrapped around her, and we really talked about this. And we spent a month and a half with her writing about it, and editing it, and by the end of her creating this piece of art, she performed it onstage for like 500 other people, and her relationship to that trauma was different. She became an advocate about youth violence. She became—she wasn’t a victim of youth violence—she became a champion against youth violence. Whereas if, I think, you don’t have the opportunity to process that kind of stuff, then you can easily succumb to the victimhood of these experiences.
So that’s just one example, but of course, kids become better writers. Meaning her first draft was horrible, her final draft was amazing. So better writers, they can have a different relationship to the world around them. And then I think the last thing I’ve noticed as far as real growth is a deeper understanding of their relationship to the world around them, or their influence on the world around them. I don’t think young people always understand their ability to create change in the world. We help young people understand that they can. And so when all of a sudden you have a young person who finds their voice, and then they speak about an issue like child abuse or sexual violence, the amount of people who come out of the audience and thank them for changing their perspective, or changing their life, or telling that story, or how healing it was for them, now all of a sudden this fifteen-year-old who thought that this story was just hers, or just his, realizes how many other people this story impacts. And they feel empowered in a way that I don’t think you could by just taking workshops. To be in a space where your voice has had this huge impact on people’s lives in a way they relate to the world around them—this happened to my fifteen-year-old—it changes your understanding of what you can do. And then we teach them a whole bunch of stuff about social issues and social justice, and so the goal is that they become more civically engaged, that they’re more passionate about helping their community, that’s a big thing for us.
And we know that, and the last example of that would be when the Baltimore Uprising happened, how many of our young poets took to the streets. And they took to the streets not throwing rocks at police officers, but doing poems in the back of pickup trucks, and finding any microphone nearby and doing art, sharing pieces about police brutality, and really raising voices in a way that they felt passionate about, without us doing it. We didn’t create these spaces, they just took the streets on their own, and that’s really everything we ever taught—to believe in your voice, and to use your voice to create change. And when that city-wide opportunity happened, there was not one picture I saw of the Uprising where I could not play Where’s Waldo and find one of my students in the crowd.
IB: So then, what would you say your favorite part of your job is, given how multi-faceted it seems to be?
Believe it or not, I’m an institution builder. So my favorite part is when I’m sitting and developing strategic plans, when I’m in board meetings arguing with my board of directors. And the reason why that’s my favorite part is because I believe that the change I really want to see happen in the city is going to take stable, capable institutions. This work is really difficult, and it’s not about a bunch of individuals doing this work. And I don’t believe that without stable, self-sustaining institutions we’re going to be able to do this work. But I take great joy in seeing our spoken-word artists having the opportunity to work with students. I love knowing that what I’m building—I have 3,000 students currently enrolled in my program—and it’s not because of what I can do as an individual, but this institution I’m building is why all that stuff is possible. So those strategic plans, and those job description drafts, and program write-ups and board meetings is why all that stuff is possible.
BR: So between starting up institutions and helping youth to find their voice and do what they do, how much time do you find to write?
A lot of time. I’m of the philosophy that in order for this work to be most impactful, we have to be practitioners of our art. We can’t be teachers of it, we have to be doers. And my students need us to be doers. So, I compete nationally—I’m a national slam poet—and so to be able to go around the country and beat some of the best artists around the country makes my work more meaningful when I come back home to my students. My students need me to go do what I do. My students need me to publish. My students need me to be a successful writer and a successful poet because they need examples of what that looks like. So I intentionally put a lot of work into being an artist, a lot of time. I consider my writing to be a full-time job. So, yes, I have a lot of full-time jobs, and writing’s one of them.
IB: Well, I know another full-time job, I guess, is that you’re a father, as well. And in a lot of your poetry you deal very frankly with very hard-hitting topics that cause your audience to really have to engage with these tough issues. So how does working with kids and being a father impact how you talk about and address these issues?
This might sound really weird, but I believe that I’m a father to every chocolate child I see. Every one. Because I need to be, because they need me to be. And so my daughter shares me with every child I teach, every child in every school. And I mean that—it’s a lot, but this is the kind of relationship I have with the children I work with, the relationship I want the adults in my daughter’s life to have. I really believe it takes a village to raise a child. I have that—community members stepped up when my parents failed me, and that made all the difference in my life. And so I seek to be that same community member for other young people. So I expect other adults to help provide support and shape my daughter’s life the way I do with other students’ lives.
BR: How did you and Dew More Baltimore start the Youth Poet Laureate program?
We don’t recreate the wheel at Dew More Baltimore. We travel around the country, we find successful programs, and the ones that we think are the coolest, we bring back to Baltimore. So the Youth Poet Laureate was a program that started out in New York and started growing in a few other cities. I was in San Francisco when I learned about the Youth Poet Laureate program, and I met with the person who’s the founder of it, and I was like, This needs to be in Baltimore. And so after several meetings, we worked together, and we brought it to Baltimore. So I had to do the legwork, but the theory and the framing and all that was done in New York. I take no credit for that, I just made it happen here.
IB: So what sort of programs or projects do you envision in the future for Dew More?
I’m really hopeful about us getting into theater. I want social justice theater programs, and I want us in like 25 schools doing social justice theater. I want students to be able to write their stories in other mediums, not just hip hop, not just poems, but I feel like there are other ways for students to tell their stories, to embody their stories, to share their stories, and I want to be able to provide as many outlets as possible, because poetry, hip hop, and spoken word are not necessarily the most accessible art forms for our students. Often when you say “poet,” or “spoken word,” students are scratching their heads like, “What do you mean?” And so we have to often introduce this to students. I feel like theater, it’s one of those things that’s just--
IB: It’s just there.
It’s just there, right, you don’t have to explain to them what theater is. They’ve seen TV. And so I feel like we’ll be able to reach more students if we expand to theater. 3,000 students is not enough. I need to be serving 10,000 students. And so I need to be expanding our art forms.
IB: So I guess my next question would be, now that your work is taking on so many different channels, both the institutional side and the artistic side, how would you say your relationship with the city of Baltimore has changed?
I don’t feel like I have a relationship with the city of Baltimore. I feel like Baltimore is too fractured. So I have a relationship with parts of Baltimore. But in those parts of Baltimore I feel like I am respected for what I contribute to Baltimore, and I get a lot from Baltimore. So I feel like I have a great give-take relationship with the communities that I’m a part of.
IB: What do you think it would take for Baltimore to be a little more unified? What’s art’s role in that?
So that’s a big question. And I take a lot of words to answer simple questions, so I’m going to really try to figure out how to answer this question that’s not a novel. One, I want to recognize that institutional racism is a major factor in causing real divide in our city. Dissolving the institutions that uphold racism is the easy answer. Now, how to do that is a much greater challenge. And the role I think art plays in this is raising awareness, challenging people’s comfort, giving people new tools, new frameworks, new ideas of how to look at this kind of work. But I just think art—well, are you familiar with intersectionality as a concept? It’s how many different institutions are woven together that uphold institutionalized racism and oppress marginalized groups of people. So it’s like this whole big, collected mess of institutions that do bad things to individuals who don’t have access to those kinds of powers. So when I look at intersectionality at an institutional lens, I recognize that the solution has to be equally as complicated. So it’s about, where are all of the solutions—how do all of the solutions intersect? We need to create a web that’s bigger and stronger and more effective than institutions’ oppressiveness. So for me, art has a role in that, but we’re one thread in a very complicated web of solutions.
But we have a role. So something concrete is, for example, our Louder than a Bomb festival we’re having here in April. I love art’s ability to bring people from different walks of life, different perspectives, who share different truths, to come to the same place and wrestle with heavy topics and heavy subjects. And I think that’s very important for people becoming awake and aware of what’s going on. If they have different Baltimores, I think it brings them together to understand that, and having us all together to contribute to figuring out, what does one Baltimore look like? Art creates those spaces. Art creates a space for people to imagine. Art gives space for people to wrestle with difficult subjects. And the most important thing—art creates a space where it allows different people to all be in it, and vulnerable, and I love that.
BR: So rather than just encouraging students to write a lot, do you encourage students to read as much as they can?
Yes and no. And this is one of those things that’s a big debate in my organization. You have teaching artists who are really big on read, read, read, and you have teaching artists who are less big on that. And I think the reason why is that, too often, young people are forced to know everybody else’s stories, and spend too little time on their own story. So some of us who are less on the reading side feel as though you’re going to get the Shakespeare, you’re going to get the Langston Hughes, you’re going to get the stories that people have decided are important stories for you to know. And what you’re often not going to get is to be able to tell your own story. You’re not going to get to find your voice, develop your voice, and know who you are. So we have a program called Writers in Schools, and our Writers in Schools program is all about putting local authors in schools. And so we have a whole, huge literacy program in 30 schools that’s all about students reading. But when I’m talking about writers, we want our writers to be able to tell their story, and not feel like their story isn’t valid because it’s not this famous person’s story.
But when I teach, personally, what I love to do is introduce some of these more famous texts through student stories. What I mean by that is, if you shared your story with me, and I was able to get an idea of some themes, or things you were struggling with or things you were excited about, then I can say, “Oh, I know an author who has a book about this exact same theme, that shares some of these same struggles or has some of these same things that you’re excited about.” And then I will recommend a book based on your story, like, “This is what you want to tell, and I know other people who also decided to write about that.” And that’s how I get you to read those things, understanding that your story is the most important story you’ll ever read. That’s our approach.
IB: What have you been reading recently?
A lot of local authors, but the book I’m reading write now is Beloved, only because I never read it, and I don’t know how I got this far without reading Beloved. So I was in a conversation with people where everyone had read Beloved and was talking about Beloved and I was kind of shaking my head, not acknowledging that I hadn’t read it. And it’s on my bookshelf at home. I’m the kind of person who might have 500 books on my bookshelves and read like five a year. I’ll read something else before I read the books on my own bookshelf. So Beloved was on my bookshelf for at least seven years, and I just started reading it.
BR: Do you like it?
Yeah. And I love Toni Morrison everything, so this is just one of the books.
IB: What makes you hopeful? What are you looking forward to?
So I recently turned thirty, and it created a major change in my life. Because before thirty, I was convinced that I was single-handedly saving the world. When I woke up every morning to do this work, I was saving the world, I knew I was saving the world. This is why I’m doing this work—when I finish, the world is going to be better. Turned thirty, and started getting into the perspective that maybe I’m not saving the world. And that was hard, for me to swallow that pill, that somehow, I’m not single-handedly saving the world. So I started thinking, well, what am I doing, then? And this was such a heavy thing for me to swallow that everybody in my circle got hit with these questions: “I’m not saving the world! What am I doing?” and I’m depressed, and going to conferences like, “I’m not saving the world! Y’all think you’re saving the world? You’re not saving the world!” This happened for like, four, five weeks, of me just going around trying to help everybody understand that they’re not saving the world, because I realized that I’m not saving the world. So I was bitter, and angry, and sad, and frustrated with wrestling with, What am I doing professionally?
But then I came to the conclusion—and it was a high school student that said this. And this was just recently—I was in Chicago last week, so this was last week that I came to this conclusion, so this is new. This is new information, y’all, fresh off the press. Exclusive. So there was this youth panel, and I just dumped my stuff on them, because I had nothing better to do with my baggage. And so it was a whole panel of people who were all community organizers and artists, and they were all doing all these great things to make a difference in Chicago. And I was like, “Well, if you’ve noticed, ain’t nothing changed in the past 50 years. What makes you think you’re going to somehow save Chicago, and how do you deal with that if you do think about that?” And then, this young man said to me, “Too often, the narratives are told by the story of the person at the end of a change.” Meaning that you hear about Dr. King who ended segregation in certain ways. You hear about people on the very end of the change. The stories we don’t get are the people who spent 50 years contributing to that change, and never saw the change happen. And those people are heroes too, but those heroes’ stories are often not told. They’re not people we look at as successful people. And he said that he believes that he’s okay with being one of those heroes here, that he’ll do the work even if he doesn’t see the change.
And I was like, “Well that is just wise. That is just so meaningful. Well, I can be okay with that.” I can be okay with not necessarily seeing the world the way that I imagine it, but knowing I’m going to contribute towards it. And as a poet, I immediately thought of it as like a story that we’re all telling, and we all have a line to write. And I’m just writing my line. So the hopeful part is knowing that, after I write my line, there will be people to add to the story. So when I look at my young people, I know, and I’m confident, that the story will not stop with me. And that’s the hopeful, beautiful part.
IB: That is beautiful. What a smart high schooler.
I wish I could just lie and leave him out of the story.
BR: If you had one word of advice for a group of high school or Johns Hopkins students who are trying to work on their poetry and social justice, what would you tell them?
To be uncomfortable and be vulnerable as often as possible. I’m a professor of spoken word at MICA, and I spend all of my time helping students be uncomfortable and vulnerable. Because that’s the hard work. I think the most transformational moments are on the other side of that. And we can hide ourselves, and hide from each other, and we can try to be politically correct, and we can dance around the truth and dance around the moments we need to have so politely. With every smile we gracefully avoid tension, we gracefully avoid sharing out our truths, we gracefully avoid the real work. We too often gracefully avoid the real work, because the real work makes us uncomfortable, the real work is sharing more than you feel comfortable sharing with people you don’t really know. And I would be all about making sure that we are comfortable with being uncomfortable. In my art, I try to be really transparent and really uncomfortable, because those are the stories that are not told.
And the example I have is that my daughter—this is the personal traumatic thing that happened—was molested by a family member. And processing that was really hard for me as a father. I mean, by far the hardest thing I have ever done. And I could have been silent about it. But that’s what took me off my eight-year hiatus. The first poem I wrote after being on hiatus was about my daughter and about that situation. And I shared it as many places as possible, as often as possible, because I too often feel like, because it’s personal, we’re quiet about it. That act was allowed to happen because of the silence in our community, because of the shadows in our community, because we’re not talking about this, because we’re not shining lights in places lights should be shined on. One out of four women in America will report being molested or raped. This is a global issue, and I’m thinking, how did I become an adult without being made aware of how big of an issue this was? And I think the reason why I was able to do that is because people are too quiet about it, because it’s a touchy subject, a personal subject, a vulnerable subject. So it’s not talked about. And I’m thinking, we can’t afford to not talk about these kinds of things. If one out of four women are being impacted in this way, why is there a piece of paper somewhere in this country that doesn’t talk about this issue? Why can I just go five years without really understanding this? How come I didn’t know the statistic until after it happened to my daughter? That’s because too many people are quiet about it, and too many people are not brave enough to go there. So I think as far as writers who are interested in social justice, you have to go places that people are uncomfortable going.
BR: For future reference, what is that poem called?
The poem is called “Dance Again.” I have not allowed it to be recorded as of yet. And the reason why is because I have this vision of doing a vision, where it’s like the poem, a little girl dancing, and the story. And I want to do it in a really professional way, and I want to use it as a means of really raising awareness, and I don’t want video to be out from people on their cellphones two or three times. I want this particular poem captured in a really professional way, and I haven’t gotten around to finding the studio, finding all of the people I need to make this happen. So it’s a personal project for me that I want to work on that I haven’t produced yet. I perform it when I travel, but I haven’t produced the video. It’s going to come. It’s much easier when it’s just you, but I have to put together a whole bunch of different artists, a singer singing “Dance for My Father Again,” I need a videographer, a dance studio, a young girl about eight, nine, ten, who actually dances, whose family is comfortable with her being the actress in a project like this. So it’s a lot to piece together.
BR: Last year, after the Baltimore Uprising, I went to something at the University of Baltimore where authors in Baltimore spoke about their reactions to the protests. And you wrote something on the online version of a weekly paper about “Smalltimore,” and it was awesome, I loved it. But then you came to the reading, and you read something different, you read, “How to Make a Paper Airplane.” So what was your inspiration for “How to Make a Paper Airplane”?
So one, I switched because I was insecure. When I write, my spoken word pieces and my poems are different. I write my spoken word pieces to perform, and my poems are written to be read. So when I’m asked to read one of my poems, I’m like, “I’d rather perform one of my spoken words!” So “Paper Airplane” was a poem I did that was about—so I’m adopted, and I have a relationship with my biological family, and of course with my adopted family. And on both sides of my family, I have nephews who are the exact same age. So coincidentally, I was watching them both, at different times, within a two-week time period. And I asked the first one, “What do you want to do?” And he was like, eleven at the time. And he was like, “I want to make paper airplanes!” Okay, cool. So I didn’t know how to, so I started Googling how to make paper airplanes, printing out some examples, and we sat there making paper airplanes and flying them around the house.
Two weeks later, I had my other nephew, and I asked him, “So what do you want to do?” And he was like, “I want to make paper airplanes!” And I was shocked by the response. Because if you look, my one nephew comes from Park Heights, single-parent family, struggling, doesn’t have many resources whatsoever, combatting every social ailment you can think of. And my other nephew, mother’s a doctor, father’s a principal, they have a vacation home in upstate New York. So completely different worlds. And when I had them both within that two week period, and asked them what they wanted to do, they said, “I want to make paper airplanes.” So immediately I was surprised that they answered in the exact same way, like, where the hell did that come from? So what was funny was that I had a folder with all different examples of paper airplanes, like, “Here we go again.”
But it made me think about both of their lives. And it made me think about the huge differences between one household and the other, and how the one nephew who comes from Park Heights will never have the things as a child that the other nephew has. And of the challenges in his life, like, how do you still fly in spite of all that? So that’s where it came from.
IB: How does your approach to writing poetry differ from how you write spoken word?
Spoken word is meant to be performed, so I write it with performance in mind. So often, it touches the paper last. So I will have a whole piece done before I ever start writing. I write it just to capture it. The way I use metaphor, the way I use imagery, the vernaculars I use and don’t use, all of that, to me, is like, how does that piece of art look on the stage, versus what is it like on the page? I call them “physical entendres.” With “Paper Airplane,” for example, the poem talks about the steps for making a airplane. So for one step, I talk about folding: “You have to fold and press, fold and press, fold and press.” Well, on paper, all you would hear is “fold and press,” but in a spoken word piece, I’m able to say “fold and press, fold and press, fold and press” [moving his hands closer together with each repetition of “fold and press”] as a symbolism for prayer because you can see it, but on paper, that would never be able to be captured. So if I wanted to talk about that prayer is a way of enduring this, I wouldn’t use that language to do it, because you wouldn’t be able to get it from paper, but you could get it from my spoken word because of what I’m able to do with my hands to help you understand. Another line would be, “When your father asks you if you plan to use that piece of paper to get high, / tell him yes, and smile.” [mimes throwing a paper airplane pointed at the sky.] Now, on paper, you might think I just said that the little boy wants to get high. But in a spoken word piece, when I say, “Tell him yes, and smile,” [mimes tossing airplane] you get what I mean by that line, which you would not get on paper necessarily. In performance, I’m able to give you context clues, in a way that I can’t give you on paper. Unless I have little side notes.
IB: “Asterisk: not really drugs.”
[Laughs]. I mean, all of it is up to the interpretation of the audience member, but the author has some responsibility to help guide them in the right direction.
BR: Besides poetry, do you write anything else?
Yes. I’m actually a science fiction writer more than anything else. Sci-Fi is my number one preferred space as a writer, I just haven’t published science fiction. My plan is to retire and do all science fiction, science fiction forever. Often, my writing right now is out of necessity, and I look forward to not writing out of necessity.
IB: What do you mean by “necessity”?
Meaning that there’s stories that I have to tell. There’s work I have to do with my art. My art is really about raising awareness, and building social consciousness, and challenging systems, and being a voice for things I feel like don’t have a voice. And it’s part of my advocacy. Because I write these pieces—and yes, I slam and travel—but I’m also going to places where the poem needs to go. Like for my daughter’s poem, I went to conferences about sexual abuse, I went to places where healing needs to happen, and this conversation needs to happen. It’s part of my work. And I’m not saying that science fiction doesn’t somehow still, in an interesting way, point to social consciousness, because I think I will have part of that seeping into my work, but it’s not my advocacy. It’s my joy for writing, it’s my joy of story-telling. This [poetry]—this is advocacy, trying to provide purpose and make a difference in the world.
IB: When do you see that point coming, when you can start writing because you want to, and not because you feel you need to?
I don’t know. I feel like when I’ll know, I’ll know. Like, when it’s time to step back, I will embrace that moment. I’ve been writing in this state for two years, so I feel like I have at least another ten years of this left. So I always say, when I retire, I’ll write for joy, but while I’m working, I have work to do.
BR: Isn’t it good that your work is necessary, though, for change?
No, it’s horrible that a person has to live their life doing this. There is nothing good about it—it’s not novel, it’s not noble; it’s a necessary evil. The fact that the world is the way it is, and that there are people who have devoted their entire lives to try to fix it—Oscar Wilde wrote an essay called “The Soul of a Man Under Capitalism.” And the whole point of his essay was that, when you look at these kinds of social ills, there’s a big hole, and that people like myself go to this hole and just dump everything we have to offer the world into this hole. But it’s an endless hole. It’s a bottomless hole. We should be using that same energy to enjoy life, and create life, and be beautiful, and not have to put all of our energy into trying to figure out how to increase the basic quality of life for others. That shouldn’t be how we spend our entire lives, but many of us in this field do spend our entire lives trying to make the world just a little bit better. I would love to be able to write about flowers, and be able to write love poems, and just enjoy life. That would be a fantasy of mine, if I didn’t feel like there are actually people dying in these streets, and women being raped and harassed, and horrible education systems, and etc, etc, etc. But I can’t ignore those things, so I have to challenge those things and improve those things. But one day, I hope to be able to say, “I did my part, and now I can be a Robert Frost, and tell you about how beautiful the morning dew is.” As of right now, I don’t know what the hell morning dew looks like. [Laughs.]
BR: I thought that writing would be a good thing, so it’s so interesting to hear you say that.
It is a good thing! I’m doing good, but it's a bad thing that I have to this, that the need exists. So for example, building a homeless shelter is a good thing to do, but it’s horrible that you have to build a homeless shelter because there’s homelessness. So if I decided today to go build a homeless shelter, I would be doing a good thing. But no one enjoys building a homeless shelter, it’s not fun. And for me, I’ve got to spend hours upon hours every day begging for money and fundraising so I can do this. That’s not fun. That’s not what I want to do! I mean, it’s not what I want to do as a human, it’s what I want to do as a black man in Baltimore in this moment. But I feel like life is so much bigger than this. I want to be able to travel, I want to be able to not have to invest 75 hours a week, 7 days a week, into trying to figure out how to do this. I want to be like, What’s happening in Japan? What’s going on in Ghana? I would love to know, and be able to explore and live and just be more human than I have to be. Than I’m allowed to be.
BR: Do you ever write poems about that? Like, you write about what’s going on here, but do you ever write about what’s going on overseas?
No. I challenge a lot of my students to, as it relates to their subject matters. I write so much from a personal place that I may have an allusion or reference from time to time, but it’s definitely about me and Baltimore more than anything else. But I know a lot of my students do write about overseas, and I strongly encourage that. But my inspiration comes more from right here in Baltimore.
BR: Why do you encourage them to look and write about overseas when there are things going on over here?
So not everyone’s experiences are the same. So, for example, I have one of my students, who’s the Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore right now—she came here, and her father is a refugee. And so her story—she was born right here, she identifies as an African American, but her father is from Sierra Leone. And I want her to know about the stories of Sierra Leone. I want her to be able to talk about those struggles, because it’s part of her identity, part of her lineage, and I think that she should explore that. But sometimes, it might be a person talking about a sexual violence, and I may push them to understand sexual violence not just from a personal narrative, but what does that look like in Baltimore, what does that look like in the country, what does that look like globally? If you’re passionate about understanding sexual violence, then I want you to understand it from a larger perspective. So, again, whatever your themes are, I want to be able to bring some things into context and help enlighten you and increase your awareness of the thing that you’re already interested in or passionate about.
BR: So if someone wanted to be more involved with Dew More Baltimore, how would they go about doing that?
Same way y’all got this interview—just reach out and say, “Hey, I’m interested in sitting down and talking about how we can work together.”
But first, we must set the stage for our meeting. On March 25, 2016 we met with our interviewee at Red Emma's, a coffeehouse/bookstore on North Ave. At 5:30 in the afternoon the place was packed. People were typing on their computers, eating the food they purchased, having small meeting/gatherings or checking out the books in the bookstore. Once we entered Red Emma’s we had found a table to conduct the interview. We sat down and got ourselves prepared. As the time closer to 5:40pm, we signaled to Kenneth that we were ready for him as he had showed up before the scheduled meeting time and was having a conversation with someone. Once he had come to our table, we introduced ourselves, got out Isabella’s phone to record the interview and then we began our interview.
Brandi Randolph: So I wanted to know, what made you start writing?
The first time I started writing, I was in the seventh grade, and I used to do oratory competitions. My principal or the teacher, whoever was in charge of the competition, decided you could do original work. I was used to doing the “I Have a Dream” speech. So in the seventh grade, by this time, I’m an expert at this. And so I’ve mastered the “I Have a Dream” speech—I dress like him, I get it, I can do this. And there’s this one girl who was an eighth grader who did an original poem, and she went on right before me. And she was so phenomenal that I was like, What is that? I didn’t even want to do “I Have a Dream.” So, I think I came in second in my grade, or something like that, but what I left there saying to myself was, “I want to write my own poem.” And I wanted to be like that eighth grade girl I saw. So in the eighth grade oratory competition, I finally had my own poem that I could do, and I ended up winning. And I think it was the inspiration from the girl, but it was also the validation I got from my peers and from my teachers from writing something that they all thought was phenomenal. So that is what kind of made me want to write. It was kind of one of those things where I felt like I was good at something.
Isabella Bowker: So, then, have you always had a positive relationship with writing? How has your relationship with poetry changed since then?
It hasn’t changed. I took an eight-year hiatus from writing and performing because I didn’t realize it was something that adults did. So after graduating high school, I was kind of done with it. And then I rediscovered it because of a personal trauma, and I needed to write about it. That was just two years ago, and that just got me reintroduced to it again.
BR: So I guess that means the motivation for your writing is what happens to you, like certain things that happen in your life. Day-to-day stuff.
My writing now, as an adult, is a very personal process, and so I would say yes, that my art, my writing, is definitely influenced by my experiences. However, I do venture out beyond just my stories, and I tend to tell stories of other people, people I feel like whose stories need to be told.
IB: Yeah, I noticed in a lot of your poems you have a really strong balance between universal themes but that are also grounded in specific, personal moments, and I was wondering how you strike that balance, and how you know when that balance is hit right.
It really depends on the poem. It depends on the story I want to tell, and the approach to how to tell it, and how much of the story is mine and how much of it belongs to someone else. And I’m really conscious of that in my writing, that there’s never been a poem I’ve written where I wasn’t somewhere in the poem. But there’s never a poem I’ve written where so are you. And so I try to make sure that I’m mindful of my audience. My hope in my writing is to create a certain level of empathy, and so even though it’s very personal, I need it to be bigger than me if I want people to empathize. You have to be able to relate to it at some point. So for me, it’s using personal narrative to tell a story, but including other people’s experiences in it enough so that they can empathize with my story.
BR: Who artistically do you look up to, and why?
I want to say that I have local inspirations, which are often my peers, such as Slangston Hughes, Black Chakra, Lady Brion—these are all local artists in Baltimore who are also my friends. So we push and challenge each other all the time. We have to compete against each other all the time. So I know that they are probably the most influential art-makers in my life. But then I also have the abstract people, people like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin. My favorite author/writer/poet/artist is actually Robert Frost, which is really weird because I don’t think you’ll ever find Robert Frost in my work, but he’s by far my favorite. And I think there’s a certain level of jealousy that I have with his work. I’m actually writing a piece right now that’s kind of influenced by him—it’s like an anti-ode to him. But I noticed the escapism and privilege that exists in his work. I can read his work, and feel better, or think about life from a place of hope. Whereas, as an artist, I have to write from places of deeper trauma. But I also assume Robert Frost and I live—lived—in completely different worlds and different realities, where he can write about, you know, how beautiful a rose may be. I have to write about police brutality. But I wish to be able to write about walking in the woods and stuff. That’s just not where I am as an artist.
IB: Related to that question, then, do you see yourself as part of a specific literary or poetic tradition?
Yes. Well, one, I recognize storytelling from the lens of the African tradition, to be a griot of some type. But I also recognize the urban griots of today are often spoken word artists, and I feel like I’m part of that urban tradition that comes from—and I think every culture has their version of griots, so I don’t think it’s just an African thing, I think that that’s the lens that I look at it—so there’s an emerging culture, especially now, of griots, and spoken word artists are becoming to be a thing. So I definitely feel like I’m part of that emergence of modern-day urban griots.
BR: So I’m aware that you’re one of the cofounders of Dew More Baltimore, and I wanted to ask if you could describe Dew More Baltimore in three to four words, and what do those words mean to you?
So I can give adjectives. They’re “alternative,” “inspiring,” “grass-roots,” and “passionate.”
BR: What do those words mean to you?
For me, Dew More is a way of building community and addressing issues in marginalized communities, but from a different way. We’re not trying to look like another non-profit. We’re trying to create an alternative way of doing work in a marginalized community. So for me, it’s like—sorry, and I’m trying not to be over-preachy, but—Baltimore City has more non-profits than New York City. And I’ve been part of watching non-profits do work in Baltimore consistently, and I’m not seeing a change. I’m not seeing a big difference in our educational system, I’m not seeing a big difference in police and arrests—the quality of life does not seem to be improving, no matter how many non-profits are emerging. And so when I decided to add another non-profit to the big pile of non-profits, I was like, But it can’t be a traditional non-profit. It has to be an alternative way of doing this work that can really make a difference. And so my hope is that Dew More will not be just another non-profit, but we will be nuanced in a way that we can be an alternative to how we do this work.
BR: How have you seen youth grow and learn about themselves through Dew More Baltimore?
The things that I’ve noticed that our young people are able to do is to process and deal with stress that they typically are not able to deal with and process. Meaning that, there are few places in schools where, if your grandmother passed away, if your father was just murdered, that you have a space in your life to really process and wrestle and question and challenge that. So we provide young people with that space, where they typically don’t have it. And I feel like young people have a different relationship with their trauma because of that space. So an example of that is, one of my student’s brother was murdered, and she came to the program the next day. And the entire youth program wrapped around her, and we really talked about this. And we spent a month and a half with her writing about it, and editing it, and by the end of her creating this piece of art, she performed it onstage for like 500 other people, and her relationship to that trauma was different. She became an advocate about youth violence. She became—she wasn’t a victim of youth violence—she became a champion against youth violence. Whereas if, I think, you don’t have the opportunity to process that kind of stuff, then you can easily succumb to the victimhood of these experiences.
So that’s just one example, but of course, kids become better writers. Meaning her first draft was horrible, her final draft was amazing. So better writers, they can have a different relationship to the world around them. And then I think the last thing I’ve noticed as far as real growth is a deeper understanding of their relationship to the world around them, or their influence on the world around them. I don’t think young people always understand their ability to create change in the world. We help young people understand that they can. And so when all of a sudden you have a young person who finds their voice, and then they speak about an issue like child abuse or sexual violence, the amount of people who come out of the audience and thank them for changing their perspective, or changing their life, or telling that story, or how healing it was for them, now all of a sudden this fifteen-year-old who thought that this story was just hers, or just his, realizes how many other people this story impacts. And they feel empowered in a way that I don’t think you could by just taking workshops. To be in a space where your voice has had this huge impact on people’s lives in a way they relate to the world around them—this happened to my fifteen-year-old—it changes your understanding of what you can do. And then we teach them a whole bunch of stuff about social issues and social justice, and so the goal is that they become more civically engaged, that they’re more passionate about helping their community, that’s a big thing for us.
And we know that, and the last example of that would be when the Baltimore Uprising happened, how many of our young poets took to the streets. And they took to the streets not throwing rocks at police officers, but doing poems in the back of pickup trucks, and finding any microphone nearby and doing art, sharing pieces about police brutality, and really raising voices in a way that they felt passionate about, without us doing it. We didn’t create these spaces, they just took the streets on their own, and that’s really everything we ever taught—to believe in your voice, and to use your voice to create change. And when that city-wide opportunity happened, there was not one picture I saw of the Uprising where I could not play Where’s Waldo and find one of my students in the crowd.
IB: So then, what would you say your favorite part of your job is, given how multi-faceted it seems to be?
Believe it or not, I’m an institution builder. So my favorite part is when I’m sitting and developing strategic plans, when I’m in board meetings arguing with my board of directors. And the reason why that’s my favorite part is because I believe that the change I really want to see happen in the city is going to take stable, capable institutions. This work is really difficult, and it’s not about a bunch of individuals doing this work. And I don’t believe that without stable, self-sustaining institutions we’re going to be able to do this work. But I take great joy in seeing our spoken-word artists having the opportunity to work with students. I love knowing that what I’m building—I have 3,000 students currently enrolled in my program—and it’s not because of what I can do as an individual, but this institution I’m building is why all that stuff is possible. So those strategic plans, and those job description drafts, and program write-ups and board meetings is why all that stuff is possible.
BR: So between starting up institutions and helping youth to find their voice and do what they do, how much time do you find to write?
A lot of time. I’m of the philosophy that in order for this work to be most impactful, we have to be practitioners of our art. We can’t be teachers of it, we have to be doers. And my students need us to be doers. So, I compete nationally—I’m a national slam poet—and so to be able to go around the country and beat some of the best artists around the country makes my work more meaningful when I come back home to my students. My students need me to go do what I do. My students need me to publish. My students need me to be a successful writer and a successful poet because they need examples of what that looks like. So I intentionally put a lot of work into being an artist, a lot of time. I consider my writing to be a full-time job. So, yes, I have a lot of full-time jobs, and writing’s one of them.
IB: Well, I know another full-time job, I guess, is that you’re a father, as well. And in a lot of your poetry you deal very frankly with very hard-hitting topics that cause your audience to really have to engage with these tough issues. So how does working with kids and being a father impact how you talk about and address these issues?
This might sound really weird, but I believe that I’m a father to every chocolate child I see. Every one. Because I need to be, because they need me to be. And so my daughter shares me with every child I teach, every child in every school. And I mean that—it’s a lot, but this is the kind of relationship I have with the children I work with, the relationship I want the adults in my daughter’s life to have. I really believe it takes a village to raise a child. I have that—community members stepped up when my parents failed me, and that made all the difference in my life. And so I seek to be that same community member for other young people. So I expect other adults to help provide support and shape my daughter’s life the way I do with other students’ lives.
BR: How did you and Dew More Baltimore start the Youth Poet Laureate program?
We don’t recreate the wheel at Dew More Baltimore. We travel around the country, we find successful programs, and the ones that we think are the coolest, we bring back to Baltimore. So the Youth Poet Laureate was a program that started out in New York and started growing in a few other cities. I was in San Francisco when I learned about the Youth Poet Laureate program, and I met with the person who’s the founder of it, and I was like, This needs to be in Baltimore. And so after several meetings, we worked together, and we brought it to Baltimore. So I had to do the legwork, but the theory and the framing and all that was done in New York. I take no credit for that, I just made it happen here.
IB: So what sort of programs or projects do you envision in the future for Dew More?
I’m really hopeful about us getting into theater. I want social justice theater programs, and I want us in like 25 schools doing social justice theater. I want students to be able to write their stories in other mediums, not just hip hop, not just poems, but I feel like there are other ways for students to tell their stories, to embody their stories, to share their stories, and I want to be able to provide as many outlets as possible, because poetry, hip hop, and spoken word are not necessarily the most accessible art forms for our students. Often when you say “poet,” or “spoken word,” students are scratching their heads like, “What do you mean?” And so we have to often introduce this to students. I feel like theater, it’s one of those things that’s just--
IB: It’s just there.
It’s just there, right, you don’t have to explain to them what theater is. They’ve seen TV. And so I feel like we’ll be able to reach more students if we expand to theater. 3,000 students is not enough. I need to be serving 10,000 students. And so I need to be expanding our art forms.
IB: So I guess my next question would be, now that your work is taking on so many different channels, both the institutional side and the artistic side, how would you say your relationship with the city of Baltimore has changed?
I don’t feel like I have a relationship with the city of Baltimore. I feel like Baltimore is too fractured. So I have a relationship with parts of Baltimore. But in those parts of Baltimore I feel like I am respected for what I contribute to Baltimore, and I get a lot from Baltimore. So I feel like I have a great give-take relationship with the communities that I’m a part of.
IB: What do you think it would take for Baltimore to be a little more unified? What’s art’s role in that?
So that’s a big question. And I take a lot of words to answer simple questions, so I’m going to really try to figure out how to answer this question that’s not a novel. One, I want to recognize that institutional racism is a major factor in causing real divide in our city. Dissolving the institutions that uphold racism is the easy answer. Now, how to do that is a much greater challenge. And the role I think art plays in this is raising awareness, challenging people’s comfort, giving people new tools, new frameworks, new ideas of how to look at this kind of work. But I just think art—well, are you familiar with intersectionality as a concept? It’s how many different institutions are woven together that uphold institutionalized racism and oppress marginalized groups of people. So it’s like this whole big, collected mess of institutions that do bad things to individuals who don’t have access to those kinds of powers. So when I look at intersectionality at an institutional lens, I recognize that the solution has to be equally as complicated. So it’s about, where are all of the solutions—how do all of the solutions intersect? We need to create a web that’s bigger and stronger and more effective than institutions’ oppressiveness. So for me, art has a role in that, but we’re one thread in a very complicated web of solutions.
But we have a role. So something concrete is, for example, our Louder than a Bomb festival we’re having here in April. I love art’s ability to bring people from different walks of life, different perspectives, who share different truths, to come to the same place and wrestle with heavy topics and heavy subjects. And I think that’s very important for people becoming awake and aware of what’s going on. If they have different Baltimores, I think it brings them together to understand that, and having us all together to contribute to figuring out, what does one Baltimore look like? Art creates those spaces. Art creates a space for people to imagine. Art gives space for people to wrestle with difficult subjects. And the most important thing—art creates a space where it allows different people to all be in it, and vulnerable, and I love that.
BR: So rather than just encouraging students to write a lot, do you encourage students to read as much as they can?
Yes and no. And this is one of those things that’s a big debate in my organization. You have teaching artists who are really big on read, read, read, and you have teaching artists who are less big on that. And I think the reason why is that, too often, young people are forced to know everybody else’s stories, and spend too little time on their own story. So some of us who are less on the reading side feel as though you’re going to get the Shakespeare, you’re going to get the Langston Hughes, you’re going to get the stories that people have decided are important stories for you to know. And what you’re often not going to get is to be able to tell your own story. You’re not going to get to find your voice, develop your voice, and know who you are. So we have a program called Writers in Schools, and our Writers in Schools program is all about putting local authors in schools. And so we have a whole, huge literacy program in 30 schools that’s all about students reading. But when I’m talking about writers, we want our writers to be able to tell their story, and not feel like their story isn’t valid because it’s not this famous person’s story.
But when I teach, personally, what I love to do is introduce some of these more famous texts through student stories. What I mean by that is, if you shared your story with me, and I was able to get an idea of some themes, or things you were struggling with or things you were excited about, then I can say, “Oh, I know an author who has a book about this exact same theme, that shares some of these same struggles or has some of these same things that you’re excited about.” And then I will recommend a book based on your story, like, “This is what you want to tell, and I know other people who also decided to write about that.” And that’s how I get you to read those things, understanding that your story is the most important story you’ll ever read. That’s our approach.
IB: What have you been reading recently?
A lot of local authors, but the book I’m reading write now is Beloved, only because I never read it, and I don’t know how I got this far without reading Beloved. So I was in a conversation with people where everyone had read Beloved and was talking about Beloved and I was kind of shaking my head, not acknowledging that I hadn’t read it. And it’s on my bookshelf at home. I’m the kind of person who might have 500 books on my bookshelves and read like five a year. I’ll read something else before I read the books on my own bookshelf. So Beloved was on my bookshelf for at least seven years, and I just started reading it.
BR: Do you like it?
Yeah. And I love Toni Morrison everything, so this is just one of the books.
IB: What makes you hopeful? What are you looking forward to?
So I recently turned thirty, and it created a major change in my life. Because before thirty, I was convinced that I was single-handedly saving the world. When I woke up every morning to do this work, I was saving the world, I knew I was saving the world. This is why I’m doing this work—when I finish, the world is going to be better. Turned thirty, and started getting into the perspective that maybe I’m not saving the world. And that was hard, for me to swallow that pill, that somehow, I’m not single-handedly saving the world. So I started thinking, well, what am I doing, then? And this was such a heavy thing for me to swallow that everybody in my circle got hit with these questions: “I’m not saving the world! What am I doing?” and I’m depressed, and going to conferences like, “I’m not saving the world! Y’all think you’re saving the world? You’re not saving the world!” This happened for like, four, five weeks, of me just going around trying to help everybody understand that they’re not saving the world, because I realized that I’m not saving the world. So I was bitter, and angry, and sad, and frustrated with wrestling with, What am I doing professionally?
But then I came to the conclusion—and it was a high school student that said this. And this was just recently—I was in Chicago last week, so this was last week that I came to this conclusion, so this is new. This is new information, y’all, fresh off the press. Exclusive. So there was this youth panel, and I just dumped my stuff on them, because I had nothing better to do with my baggage. And so it was a whole panel of people who were all community organizers and artists, and they were all doing all these great things to make a difference in Chicago. And I was like, “Well, if you’ve noticed, ain’t nothing changed in the past 50 years. What makes you think you’re going to somehow save Chicago, and how do you deal with that if you do think about that?” And then, this young man said to me, “Too often, the narratives are told by the story of the person at the end of a change.” Meaning that you hear about Dr. King who ended segregation in certain ways. You hear about people on the very end of the change. The stories we don’t get are the people who spent 50 years contributing to that change, and never saw the change happen. And those people are heroes too, but those heroes’ stories are often not told. They’re not people we look at as successful people. And he said that he believes that he’s okay with being one of those heroes here, that he’ll do the work even if he doesn’t see the change.
And I was like, “Well that is just wise. That is just so meaningful. Well, I can be okay with that.” I can be okay with not necessarily seeing the world the way that I imagine it, but knowing I’m going to contribute towards it. And as a poet, I immediately thought of it as like a story that we’re all telling, and we all have a line to write. And I’m just writing my line. So the hopeful part is knowing that, after I write my line, there will be people to add to the story. So when I look at my young people, I know, and I’m confident, that the story will not stop with me. And that’s the hopeful, beautiful part.
IB: That is beautiful. What a smart high schooler.
I wish I could just lie and leave him out of the story.
BR: If you had one word of advice for a group of high school or Johns Hopkins students who are trying to work on their poetry and social justice, what would you tell them?
To be uncomfortable and be vulnerable as often as possible. I’m a professor of spoken word at MICA, and I spend all of my time helping students be uncomfortable and vulnerable. Because that’s the hard work. I think the most transformational moments are on the other side of that. And we can hide ourselves, and hide from each other, and we can try to be politically correct, and we can dance around the truth and dance around the moments we need to have so politely. With every smile we gracefully avoid tension, we gracefully avoid sharing out our truths, we gracefully avoid the real work. We too often gracefully avoid the real work, because the real work makes us uncomfortable, the real work is sharing more than you feel comfortable sharing with people you don’t really know. And I would be all about making sure that we are comfortable with being uncomfortable. In my art, I try to be really transparent and really uncomfortable, because those are the stories that are not told.
And the example I have is that my daughter—this is the personal traumatic thing that happened—was molested by a family member. And processing that was really hard for me as a father. I mean, by far the hardest thing I have ever done. And I could have been silent about it. But that’s what took me off my eight-year hiatus. The first poem I wrote after being on hiatus was about my daughter and about that situation. And I shared it as many places as possible, as often as possible, because I too often feel like, because it’s personal, we’re quiet about it. That act was allowed to happen because of the silence in our community, because of the shadows in our community, because we’re not talking about this, because we’re not shining lights in places lights should be shined on. One out of four women in America will report being molested or raped. This is a global issue, and I’m thinking, how did I become an adult without being made aware of how big of an issue this was? And I think the reason why I was able to do that is because people are too quiet about it, because it’s a touchy subject, a personal subject, a vulnerable subject. So it’s not talked about. And I’m thinking, we can’t afford to not talk about these kinds of things. If one out of four women are being impacted in this way, why is there a piece of paper somewhere in this country that doesn’t talk about this issue? Why can I just go five years without really understanding this? How come I didn’t know the statistic until after it happened to my daughter? That’s because too many people are quiet about it, and too many people are not brave enough to go there. So I think as far as writers who are interested in social justice, you have to go places that people are uncomfortable going.
BR: For future reference, what is that poem called?
The poem is called “Dance Again.” I have not allowed it to be recorded as of yet. And the reason why is because I have this vision of doing a vision, where it’s like the poem, a little girl dancing, and the story. And I want to do it in a really professional way, and I want to use it as a means of really raising awareness, and I don’t want video to be out from people on their cellphones two or three times. I want this particular poem captured in a really professional way, and I haven’t gotten around to finding the studio, finding all of the people I need to make this happen. So it’s a personal project for me that I want to work on that I haven’t produced yet. I perform it when I travel, but I haven’t produced the video. It’s going to come. It’s much easier when it’s just you, but I have to put together a whole bunch of different artists, a singer singing “Dance for My Father Again,” I need a videographer, a dance studio, a young girl about eight, nine, ten, who actually dances, whose family is comfortable with her being the actress in a project like this. So it’s a lot to piece together.
BR: Last year, after the Baltimore Uprising, I went to something at the University of Baltimore where authors in Baltimore spoke about their reactions to the protests. And you wrote something on the online version of a weekly paper about “Smalltimore,” and it was awesome, I loved it. But then you came to the reading, and you read something different, you read, “How to Make a Paper Airplane.” So what was your inspiration for “How to Make a Paper Airplane”?
So one, I switched because I was insecure. When I write, my spoken word pieces and my poems are different. I write my spoken word pieces to perform, and my poems are written to be read. So when I’m asked to read one of my poems, I’m like, “I’d rather perform one of my spoken words!” So “Paper Airplane” was a poem I did that was about—so I’m adopted, and I have a relationship with my biological family, and of course with my adopted family. And on both sides of my family, I have nephews who are the exact same age. So coincidentally, I was watching them both, at different times, within a two-week time period. And I asked the first one, “What do you want to do?” And he was like, eleven at the time. And he was like, “I want to make paper airplanes!” Okay, cool. So I didn’t know how to, so I started Googling how to make paper airplanes, printing out some examples, and we sat there making paper airplanes and flying them around the house.
Two weeks later, I had my other nephew, and I asked him, “So what do you want to do?” And he was like, “I want to make paper airplanes!” And I was shocked by the response. Because if you look, my one nephew comes from Park Heights, single-parent family, struggling, doesn’t have many resources whatsoever, combatting every social ailment you can think of. And my other nephew, mother’s a doctor, father’s a principal, they have a vacation home in upstate New York. So completely different worlds. And when I had them both within that two week period, and asked them what they wanted to do, they said, “I want to make paper airplanes.” So immediately I was surprised that they answered in the exact same way, like, where the hell did that come from? So what was funny was that I had a folder with all different examples of paper airplanes, like, “Here we go again.”
But it made me think about both of their lives. And it made me think about the huge differences between one household and the other, and how the one nephew who comes from Park Heights will never have the things as a child that the other nephew has. And of the challenges in his life, like, how do you still fly in spite of all that? So that’s where it came from.
IB: How does your approach to writing poetry differ from how you write spoken word?
Spoken word is meant to be performed, so I write it with performance in mind. So often, it touches the paper last. So I will have a whole piece done before I ever start writing. I write it just to capture it. The way I use metaphor, the way I use imagery, the vernaculars I use and don’t use, all of that, to me, is like, how does that piece of art look on the stage, versus what is it like on the page? I call them “physical entendres.” With “Paper Airplane,” for example, the poem talks about the steps for making a airplane. So for one step, I talk about folding: “You have to fold and press, fold and press, fold and press.” Well, on paper, all you would hear is “fold and press,” but in a spoken word piece, I’m able to say “fold and press, fold and press, fold and press” [moving his hands closer together with each repetition of “fold and press”] as a symbolism for prayer because you can see it, but on paper, that would never be able to be captured. So if I wanted to talk about that prayer is a way of enduring this, I wouldn’t use that language to do it, because you wouldn’t be able to get it from paper, but you could get it from my spoken word because of what I’m able to do with my hands to help you understand. Another line would be, “When your father asks you if you plan to use that piece of paper to get high, / tell him yes, and smile.” [mimes throwing a paper airplane pointed at the sky.] Now, on paper, you might think I just said that the little boy wants to get high. But in a spoken word piece, when I say, “Tell him yes, and smile,” [mimes tossing airplane] you get what I mean by that line, which you would not get on paper necessarily. In performance, I’m able to give you context clues, in a way that I can’t give you on paper. Unless I have little side notes.
IB: “Asterisk: not really drugs.”
[Laughs]. I mean, all of it is up to the interpretation of the audience member, but the author has some responsibility to help guide them in the right direction.
BR: Besides poetry, do you write anything else?
Yes. I’m actually a science fiction writer more than anything else. Sci-Fi is my number one preferred space as a writer, I just haven’t published science fiction. My plan is to retire and do all science fiction, science fiction forever. Often, my writing right now is out of necessity, and I look forward to not writing out of necessity.
IB: What do you mean by “necessity”?
Meaning that there’s stories that I have to tell. There’s work I have to do with my art. My art is really about raising awareness, and building social consciousness, and challenging systems, and being a voice for things I feel like don’t have a voice. And it’s part of my advocacy. Because I write these pieces—and yes, I slam and travel—but I’m also going to places where the poem needs to go. Like for my daughter’s poem, I went to conferences about sexual abuse, I went to places where healing needs to happen, and this conversation needs to happen. It’s part of my work. And I’m not saying that science fiction doesn’t somehow still, in an interesting way, point to social consciousness, because I think I will have part of that seeping into my work, but it’s not my advocacy. It’s my joy for writing, it’s my joy of story-telling. This [poetry]—this is advocacy, trying to provide purpose and make a difference in the world.
IB: When do you see that point coming, when you can start writing because you want to, and not because you feel you need to?
I don’t know. I feel like when I’ll know, I’ll know. Like, when it’s time to step back, I will embrace that moment. I’ve been writing in this state for two years, so I feel like I have at least another ten years of this left. So I always say, when I retire, I’ll write for joy, but while I’m working, I have work to do.
BR: Isn’t it good that your work is necessary, though, for change?
No, it’s horrible that a person has to live their life doing this. There is nothing good about it—it’s not novel, it’s not noble; it’s a necessary evil. The fact that the world is the way it is, and that there are people who have devoted their entire lives to try to fix it—Oscar Wilde wrote an essay called “The Soul of a Man Under Capitalism.” And the whole point of his essay was that, when you look at these kinds of social ills, there’s a big hole, and that people like myself go to this hole and just dump everything we have to offer the world into this hole. But it’s an endless hole. It’s a bottomless hole. We should be using that same energy to enjoy life, and create life, and be beautiful, and not have to put all of our energy into trying to figure out how to increase the basic quality of life for others. That shouldn’t be how we spend our entire lives, but many of us in this field do spend our entire lives trying to make the world just a little bit better. I would love to be able to write about flowers, and be able to write love poems, and just enjoy life. That would be a fantasy of mine, if I didn’t feel like there are actually people dying in these streets, and women being raped and harassed, and horrible education systems, and etc, etc, etc. But I can’t ignore those things, so I have to challenge those things and improve those things. But one day, I hope to be able to say, “I did my part, and now I can be a Robert Frost, and tell you about how beautiful the morning dew is.” As of right now, I don’t know what the hell morning dew looks like. [Laughs.]
BR: I thought that writing would be a good thing, so it’s so interesting to hear you say that.
It is a good thing! I’m doing good, but it's a bad thing that I have to this, that the need exists. So for example, building a homeless shelter is a good thing to do, but it’s horrible that you have to build a homeless shelter because there’s homelessness. So if I decided today to go build a homeless shelter, I would be doing a good thing. But no one enjoys building a homeless shelter, it’s not fun. And for me, I’ve got to spend hours upon hours every day begging for money and fundraising so I can do this. That’s not fun. That’s not what I want to do! I mean, it’s not what I want to do as a human, it’s what I want to do as a black man in Baltimore in this moment. But I feel like life is so much bigger than this. I want to be able to travel, I want to be able to not have to invest 75 hours a week, 7 days a week, into trying to figure out how to do this. I want to be like, What’s happening in Japan? What’s going on in Ghana? I would love to know, and be able to explore and live and just be more human than I have to be. Than I’m allowed to be.
BR: Do you ever write poems about that? Like, you write about what’s going on here, but do you ever write about what’s going on overseas?
No. I challenge a lot of my students to, as it relates to their subject matters. I write so much from a personal place that I may have an allusion or reference from time to time, but it’s definitely about me and Baltimore more than anything else. But I know a lot of my students do write about overseas, and I strongly encourage that. But my inspiration comes more from right here in Baltimore.
BR: Why do you encourage them to look and write about overseas when there are things going on over here?
So not everyone’s experiences are the same. So, for example, I have one of my students, who’s the Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore right now—she came here, and her father is a refugee. And so her story—she was born right here, she identifies as an African American, but her father is from Sierra Leone. And I want her to know about the stories of Sierra Leone. I want her to be able to talk about those struggles, because it’s part of her identity, part of her lineage, and I think that she should explore that. But sometimes, it might be a person talking about a sexual violence, and I may push them to understand sexual violence not just from a personal narrative, but what does that look like in Baltimore, what does that look like in the country, what does that look like globally? If you’re passionate about understanding sexual violence, then I want you to understand it from a larger perspective. So, again, whatever your themes are, I want to be able to bring some things into context and help enlighten you and increase your awareness of the thing that you’re already interested in or passionate about.
BR: So if someone wanted to be more involved with Dew More Baltimore, how would they go about doing that?
Same way y’all got this interview—just reach out and say, “Hey, I’m interested in sitting down and talking about how we can work together.”
Isabella Bowker is a sophomore in The Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University. A proud alumna of City Year, Isabella is passionate about the power of poetry to affect change in the education system, and plans on becoming an English teacher once she graduates from JHU. In her free time, she is a devoted follower of Shona Rhimes, and has aspirations to completely fill her 160GB iPod Classic with as much music as possible.
Brandi Randolph is a senior at Friends School of Baltimore. Her hobbies include writing short stories, poetry, and essays. Her favorite subject in school is English, and she would like to be a journalist or novelist in the near future. Her favorite color is red because it reminds her of love. She has stories and poems on www.wattpad.com/RomanceRules22345 and you can contact her via Facebook.
Brandi Randolph is a senior at Friends School of Baltimore. Her hobbies include writing short stories, poetry, and essays. Her favorite subject in school is English, and she would like to be a journalist or novelist in the near future. Her favorite color is red because it reminds her of love. She has stories and poems on www.wattpad.com/RomanceRules22345 and you can contact her via Facebook.
