Posted on November 16, 2022
Tramaine Suubi interviewed by Margaret Yapp. September 5, 2022 at Prompt Press in Iowa City, Iowa. This has been edited for length and clarity
M: Hi Tramaine! Thank you so much for these poems. I loved reading them, because they feel like such a direct continuation of your voice, from earlier work of yours, but they’re also starkly different. Especially in the way you’re working with form. I’d love to start by learning about what you were considering when thinking about what these poems visually look like?
Oh, my goodness, the form usually comes last. In “mental gymnastics”, for example, the form came later. First of all, it was just me realizing which words were sticking out to me, and then later figuring out why. The words I played with in “mental gymnastics” are the nouns: hoops, trapeze, applause, and tightrope. [I was thinking about] how so much of black femininity is experienced as a performance, by most people, including Black femmes. I was thinking of hoops, hoop earrings - we did that. That was called ghetto before it was called fashionable or marketable. I wanted the hoops to spread out and take up space. I very much identify with Janelle Monae’s song “tightrope” and what a balancing act blackness, femininity, queerness, class can be - a lot of marginalized identities are very much a balancing act. A tightrope has always felt resonant as a metaphor for the way I walk through the world, and crossing out the word felt like it fit with the importance of release that’s in this poem. The applause had to be really tight but still very loud, hence the bolding and all-caps and asterisks on the end.
I'm always struck when writers say, oh, I know work is finished when… because I never feel my work is finished. If it was up to me, I would edit into perpetuity. A lot of the form has come from experimentation and happy accidents. I’ve been trying to not control the poem, but let the poem take me where it’s taking me.
How do you listen to your poems?
Poems are very spiritual, and as most spiritual things, it’s very hard to explain without it being abstract or sounding like fluff. I've stopped censoring, as I write. I just write. I say to myself: this is a draft, this will forever be a draft. You don’t have to get it perfect, just write. The poem can always change, right? I listen to the poem by getting distance from it. I think oftentimes, as writers, we’re too close to our words. There’s so much to be said for taking a retreat from your work. When I’m first writing, I’m not listening beyond: what am I thinking? And then, in every draft after that first draft, I’m asking myself: what do I hear?
I want to ask you about dance and writing. I know you’ve spent a lot of time dancing and a lot of time writing, and I’m wondering if the two ever overlap for you?
In the spirit of Duke Ellington … I think poetry is a form of dance, and I think dance is a form of poetry. I just feel very privileged to have spent a lot of time on both, and really have tried to hone my craft in both. I have a unique intersection where I can bring the best and most honest of both worlds to my work.
Read "tightrope" and "mental gymnastics"