Abena Ntoso: Welcome to Backlit, a space for groundbreaking conversations with emerging authors. I'm your host, Abena Ntoso. In each episode I converse with a contemporary writer and thinker whose work inspires deep and authentic conversation around social issues. Our discussion is not just about the book, or even just about the writer's life and work. Our discussion is a shared space where minds meet to be inspired by one another, explore issues together and ultimately to generate new ideas and perspectives.

Today's thought partners are Donnelle McGee and Synnika Lofton, co-authors of the poetry collection, American Reverie, a dialogue in which the poets exchanged poems back and forth over the course of two years.

Donnelle is the author of three Poetry Collections and a hybrid novel, and has a novel forthcoming. He taught in the MFA program at Goddard College and currently teaches at Oklahoma City University and serves as a professor of English at Mission College. 

Synnika is the author of over thirty collections of poetry, three novels, and one work of nonfiction. He currently tours and performs at literary festivals, coffee shops, libraries, and schools. He teaches poetry, workshops, and has held teaching positions at Renaissance Academy, Chesapeake Bay Academy, Norfolk State University, and Virginia Wesleyan University.

Thank you both for joining me in this conversation today.

Donnelle McGee: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Absolutely, we appreciate it absolutely.

Abena Ntoso: So I wanted to open up with a poem from American Reverie, and the opening poem of the collection is titled “I Have a Lot to Learn,” and it's a poem which functions on many levels and introduces many of the themes that are threaded throughout the rest of the collection. The title itself invites us to view the speakers as human beings who are open to learning, and the poem feels like an invocation calling upon father, mother, and literary ancestors to guide and teach in ways that speak to one's spiritual existence within a physical world. So I'd like to discuss some of these ideas in depth. But first, I'd love to have you read the opening poem, if you don't mind, Donnelle.

Donnelle McGee: Oh, indeed it’s an honor.

I Have a Lot to Learn

father dear lord

show me the journey of the sephardic jew

spain to greece to los angeles 

guide me in

know i am of two ideals

mother dear lord

cover me with optimism of my people

smiles frowns

blue green sea 

cotton white fields.

let me turn to baldwin clifton langston

guide me 

mother dear lord

father dear lord

i have a lot to learn

Abena Ntoso: Beautiful. Thank you.

Donnelle McGee: Pleasure.

Abena Ntoso: So ever since I read that poem, the words “I have a lot to learn” have echoed in me, especially during times when I'm encountering a challenging or frustrating situation. The title itself actually pops into my head. It's something that I was caught by when I first read the poem, and that I come back to and remember easily, each time I'm in a situation where I feel like, you know, this might be a learning moment.

So I'm wondering how that poem embodies the collection, and what are some of the things for both of you that you feel you still have yet to learn?

Donnelle McGee: I'll begin. I'll just say, you know, I mean working with Synnika, from a personal level, the “I have a lot to learn” was also, you know, as creative individuals, as poets. I went into the project wanting to learn from Synnika, first of all, because he's a beautiful poet. He's a beautiful father, a beautiful husband, beautiful man, so I knew, like it was going to be a collaboration. So that was one point in terms of like one theme for me, just on a personal level. I want to learn from this beautiful brother, this poet, my friend, and see where that goes in terms of our relationship, and it was just beautiful moving through it. 

Universally, I think the themes in the book, and I know Seneca would chime in here, too, the themes of the book. We're really trying to explore identity. African American identity, African American male identity, mixed race identity fathers, mothers, spirituality. We didn't know where the book would go. So I think through the process of writing the book, I think we both learned a lot about ourselves, about who we are and who we’re becoming as poets.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: I definitely agree. I think when I Donnell, you know, first sent that particular poem I really started to understand the assignment. The assignment got much broader and bigger and larger, you know. At first it was, okay, let's put our heads together and put together a book. And at that time, you know, Black Lives Matter was raging, you know, the political landscape in America is always raging. There's always a conflict. There's always an issue that we're wrestling with. All right. So all of those themes are kind of fluid in my head. So when I first read that poem, I was like, okay, Donnell is serious. This is going to be a serious effort. 

And in that light I was trying to kind of like find my footing on how I wanted to, kinda you know, respond to each poem as they kind of came in. But that poem set the tone. And from that poem, you know. I started figuring out, okay, how I wanted to kind of approach everything. And so I was kind of keying off of Donnell as he was writing the other poems, and sometimes if I didn't want to explore one particular theme or I didn't want to do it exactly, I would just do it in another way, and that would take us off in another direction. But all in all it was just a great process. It's more call and response, and we had the added incentive of the technology, right. It's a Google Doc, right. Donnell's texting me when something has been completed, and so there was a type of urgency there, and once I kind of mapped out that urgency, I was able to, kind of like, fall into a rhythm where I'm responding to the poems as I see fit. But that poem definitely set the tone. Even when he read it again. I still remember my thought process when I'm like, I think I was running on the treadmill or something I was doing. But when I read it I was like, okay, I need a few minutes to figure out where I want to take this to. 

Abena Ntoso: Yeah, and that idea that you're describing of exploring what you have in mind, but not going into it with the end in mind.

I think a lot of people, and, you know, I do it also, have this idea that, oh, I'm going to sit down and write about this. And a lot of places still, you know, people will teach writing as though you know, okay, you've got this thesis, you've got this idea, now you need to explain it now you need to… But there's something to be said for, you know, going into it and seeing where it takes you.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Yeah, right? It's definitely a conversation. You know, I've always taught my students like writing is a conversation that you're just kind of finding your way into. Either you like, know a lot about the subject material, or you have to get to know the subject. Either way, you're going to find your way into that conversation. With this book it was pretty much a literal conversation. He's providing the stimulus. How do I respond? Where are some of the words or some of the themes he's exploring? Where do those things kind of take me? 

Donnelle McGee: And I didn't think about this just just until now. Like growing up, I would sit, you know on the stoop, or like in the front yard, or in the backyard, or friends homes and we would bag and cap, you know bag and cap, and it's interesting because we didn't write. The poem was like it was more like a kind of like in a way, for me like a. I get a poem from Seneca, I get a chance to respond. And how am I going to respond? I'm gonna come back at him in a beautiful way. I'm not capping or bagging, but the same kind of philosophy going back and forth the banter right and you know we had the space to take our time. But to me it was like this, this back and forth, like I was sitting with him on the porch, and we're just like having a conversation through poetry, but the same concept call and response cap and bagging. It goes back with our, you know, with our with our folks. For a long time. That was communication. I just thought about that that way. We did that. Yeah, yeah.

Abena Ntoso: Yeah. That's the thing that really inspired me after I read the collection. And it even had me thinking, Wow, you know, like this, this form of conversation in which you are dialoguing through poetry is kind of like elevating what we consider when we are in conversations. It's having a conversation and a dialogue. So it's the engagement and excitement of wondering, oh, what's this person going to say? You know? What am I gonna… what am I going to see? You know? What are they going to send me next, you know. And then, you know, what ideas is that going to give me? And where am I going to take this? But it's doing this in a form that requires you to give a lot more attention and thought to your word choice, a lot more attention and thought to things like how it's gonna look on the page, how it's gonna sound when someone reads it. So it's kind of like, you know, a conversation, but one that is just infinitely beautiful. 

And it makes me wonder, you know, we talked a little bit about the idea of also defining and redefining and exploring one's identity through these poems, and a sense of vulnerability in your poetry also, and you've both mentioned ways that your literary work has influenced and been influenced by your personal lives, and this comes through in the poems. 

So I would love to know what was your entryway into language, and how has it helped you explore and express your unique identity?

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: My entry into the literary arts, I want to say, this is twofold I think when I was moving into like Long Beach around the eighties, late eighties. I was big into hip hop. And at that point, you know, it was really the pioneers. Of hip hop, you know. KRS, Rakim, all those all those all those guys and a writer named Shel Silverstein. A lot of kids were introduced to Dr. Seuss growing up. And that's that kind of their entry into poetry. Mine was literally Shel Silverstein. So between the early hip hop songs I was listening to, you know, tapes that my father left around. They were in the suitcase. He had a nice typed up table of contents for each cassette tape, and I had all those songs, you know, with KRS and Rakim, even NWA and some of these other artists, right. That was one entry way into the literary scene. Literary arts, I guess, and the other one was through Shel Silverstein's, you know, Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, and all of those really unique books around, like the fourth grade, fourth grade and in elementary school, you know, you're really. You're just there because you have to be there. Your parents are making you go. So there wasn't. There wasn't really a hook for me in school until I started to notice what the teacher would do every day at around. Like three in the afternoon he would gather all the students in the back of the room, and he would kind of set this kind of like platform up as a stage, and he would sit in that chair that was there, and he would pull out these big, old, thick black and white books by Shel Silverstein. And they had all these crazy poems in there with crazy illustrations to go with them. I remember “The Homework Machine” and a “Little Linda May” and all these really crazy kooky kind of poems, but that there was something I connected with there, right? 

And once I started connecting with it, I started really getting into like writing and stuff like that, probably around like fifth grade, but fast forward, really into probably high school. At that point I was a basketball player, so I was doing a lot of, you know, playing a lot of basketball. I was creating the demo tapes and the reels and all that good stuff, and then I got hooked again. Poetry came back again around. I want to say junior senior year. I think it was. Tupac was a main influence, you know. I listened to Tupac all through Middle school all the way up to when he died, like I think it was in ‘96. I was a junior in school, and then my mind started to change, started to turn to a more topical, more political themes, I guess, as you get older and you start to recognize what goes on in the world. 

And so I was like, okay, basketball is cool, right? But I want to… I'm gonna pursue something in literature, right in the arts. And so I started writing more, started carrying the composition around campus more. And at this point, writing poetry wasn't seen as a masculine activity, right. So, my friends were like, you know. What are you writing in that composition? Because I'll bring the composition book to the basketball court, right. I'll bring the composition everywhere. I went just to write notes in, write fragments of poems in, and I would just say, Hey, I'm just writing rap music, right? Oh, that's cool. Man, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what it was. And then when Pac put out that book, they put out a book of Pac's poetry in ‘99, I believe ‘99 and they were like Tupac wrote poetry like they didn't know Tupac's background like, I mean, this guy went to the Baltimore School of Arts. He was into Shakespeare and acting, I mean, this guy was in everything, and at that point they were saying, okay, what you writing in your composition book now, Synnika? Oh, I'm writing poetry. Oh, that's cool now, that's cool like, at that point it was more acceptable, right? 

And then fast forward, you know, into going into college and starting to publish things in the communities that I was living in. My junior college professor, English professor, she was like, you know, you can, major in creative writing with the emphasis of poetry if you wanted to. And that's when I started turning to, I think the magazine was called Poets & Writers. It's still around, Poets & Writers. I was reading Poets and Writers, flipping through the magazine, and in the back of it is a classified section, and all through it there's pitches, like advertisements for different colleges who allow you to major and get the MFA. And so there were a ton of schools, one was in Ohio, one was in what was it? Vermont with Goddard? And I was like, okay, let me take a look at this Goddard place. Goddard was so remote. Vermont is so far north. It's like a couple of hours from Canada like it was. It was. So, yeah, I was like, Okay, I'll go out there and I'll work. I'll just work on my craft. Right? So I visited Goddard. Love Goddard, love the students that were there. You know it was very different for me, and I felt like you know, it was kind of the best spot to be. And I've kind of stayed there, stayed on the cutting edge with the indie presses, and really just kind of connect with other writers who are like minded all over the country. But yeah, so that was my entry into the literary literary thing and into poetry.

Abena Ntoso: Excellent, and you know, Shell Silverstein, A Light in the Attic. That was one of my inspirations also as a child. And I will never forget those illustrations and those poems. And I mean, it's like things like that just start the seed of, you know, wow you can do something really interesting with words!

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Right. 

Donnelle McGee: Entryway into language and literature. There's two distinctive memories, and the first one is my grandfather, Sylvester Broughton, who was born in Alabama, and made his way out West to Los Angeles, and when I was age 6 to maybe age 9 in our living room at my grandmother's house, at his home he had the old vinyls of MLK, you know, giving different speeches. He’d bring out Richard Pryor, you know, back then, the comedians, they were on vinyl, right. So through Richard Pryor, MLK, I began to learn at the time I didn't know, repetition, learn about white space, learn about how you, you know, build an image scene setting. And they were just beautiful at doing that. So I was like, wow! Granddad, how do they like these are storytellers? Right? You know. Oh, yeah, you know, we just listen to records, you know. And then from that, Ohio players, Isaac Hayes, the O’Jays, Marvin Gaye, Tammy Terrell, and—

Synnika, matter of fact, I said Seneca, we have to put Marvin Gaye in the book somewhere. So the epigraph begins with Marvin just to hold us in there, right? So those are my teachers. 

And then high school is Synnika sophomore year in high School Del Campo High School, Sacramento, California. I was an average student. I was an athlete. I was a wrestler, ran track baseball. But I took this class called journalism, and I loved it, and I wrote for the school newspaper. And this instructor said you know what, Donnell, you write really well, and I was like, Oh! Just having someone tell you that right? It meant a lot. And at the time. Then I was learning compression, how to edit, how to revise. Journalism was an entryway into poetry for me, into language. 

So those moments for me really stand out, and I go back to those all the time. But it's the musicians. It's the artists, the hip hop artists. It's the R&B, and now we even end the book with Kendrick Lamar. A little end quote there. I think the artists hold us in throughout the narrative. You know you. You find Chappelle in there you find Chris Rock. All these different artists are making contributions to the world that really are just astounding. And I think, as poets. We're part of that, too, but that's how I found poetry, through my grandfather and through journalism.

Abena Ntoso: Nice, nice, yeah, and that I love that both of you have mentioned musicians and and songwriters, and you know, hip, hop artists as people who created that entryway into poetry, right, poetry in particular, being something that is very much of a musically oriented language form. You know the rhythm, the rhyme, whatever devices you're using repetition. And I remember for me, you know, growing up. I grew up during the hip hop era also, and the beginnings of hip hop in the eighties and early nineties. And so groups like Tribe Called Quest. You know. I remember sitting down and and writing down all the words to “Scenario,” you know, rewinding the tape over and over again, so I could catch that line. And you know in the end it's a poem, right? It's formatted as a poem. And I think back now to those times and realize that even my own work as a poet is very much influenced by by hip hop, by those those earlier poets who are doing interesting things with language that were also connecting it to the soul as well, you know.

Yeah, yeah. It makes me also think a lot about just American culture in general, and these American art forms that we have grown up with or been exposed to, especially when we think about hip hop, and we think about wanting to respond to the social and political issues of the day.

And I can't help but notice also, you know, the word American in the title American Reverie. It was having me think about this idea of, you know, what is “American”? What do we see as “American”? And we talked a little bit about it earlier, and you both mentioned some really wonderful, wonderful insights into it. So, Synnika, you described it as “shape shifting,” so when we say the concept of “American” it's something that is currently in flux, right? It's “a world of contrasts” “largely undefined right now” and “possibilities are endless.” And these are all your words, your incredible insights, and Donnelle coming from a perspective of multiplicity, you know, looking at this idea, that “there's room for infinite perspectives.”

So I'd just love to have both of you talk a little bit more about that, what you see as the next step for American culture and American philosophy. Or maybe we're not thinking of it as “American” culture in particular, but we're thinking of it more as a larger, kind of, humanity-oriented way of developing the arts and developing our interactions with one another. So, Donnelle, if you want to speak to this idea of “there's room for infinite perspectives.”

Donnelle McGee: Most definitely. And you know, when we wrote the book we had no title in mind. On the revision editing process, I read the poem that Synnika wrote titled “American Reverie” and also a poem he wrote called “This American Condition,” and from that we took the title from Synnika’s poem. At the time we thought it fit, like the collection, like a daydream about—but more than a daydream—but about our thoughts about America, what it means to be in this country.

You know, I really strong opinions about this. I think we've. I think, as poets, as artists, we have to outgrow this American concept. I think you know you know I speak told you before about you know, Abena, about going back to Africa, going to Ghana, going to Cape Coast and connecting, you know, my ancestry to where I am today profound, profound. Think of the poets I admire the writers I admire.

Many live in America. I'm thinking of Chris Abani, Nigerian poet, you know. It's bigger than just this country, the arts. So I try to not box myself in. I think of myself as on the edge African, American, Sephardic Jew, human being, father, husband, poet, instructor. I happen to live in Sacramento, California. But I'm all over, I'm all over, and I think there's room enough for that to imagine and reimagine and knock down some of these boundaries we have, even in the poetic world… and I don't mean to get political. But who gets published, who's uplifted? There's so much space. And that is why, you know, there are books. The small press that published American reverie that's why that was founded to bring in more voices into the literary, you know, Canon, so to speak.

So I'm kind of done with America in terms of, like, as an idea. I think it's beautiful, but I think we've outgrown that. At least I have in my mind, and as a writer, and I'm looking at characters who are living outside of those boundaries.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You caught me on a good day last week, man, I was thinking I was thinking, after we had this conversation, you know, I started having all these really crazy ideas about, you know, trying to really define America now in this current state of its kind of existence, and I think, in order for it to survive, it has to evolve. We have to evolve past the labels and the boxes, and some of these ideas that are detrimental and harming people, you know, boxes like Conservative and Liberal and Democrat and Republican. I think all those things. They were cool back then, when the colonial elites kind of like you know, started really defining him and shaping them. But now I feel like, you know, people are evolving past this thing. 

What I did after we had this preliminary conversation about, you know, this “American” idea. I started writing. I started writing. I was like, you know, I really want to explore it kind of gave me a really cool writing, prompt. And that's kind of been the story of this summer, you know, all the indie presses are giving me these really cool writing prompts. Everybody's giving me an assignment right now. You know, I'm used to giving assignments in the spring and in the fall. In the summer I get assignments from Indie publishers podcasting which are really cool. They help me, kind of, generate right? 

I want to read something for you all. I started developing this poem like, right after, maybe like a day after. You know, we had our conversation about this topic, and this is simply called “James Baldwin's Smile.”

James Baldwin’s Smile

To be American is daddy’s bluesy

story, is hunger, is a stomach pang,

pulsing against empty creed. Freedom

is like this sometimes. To be American

is to encourage electric Black roses

to wiggle through the cracks of ash

gray pavement, like Jimi Hendrix

plucking his hungry Olympic White

Fender Stratocaster at Woodstock,

1968. Running down the Star Strangle

Banner with rage, with precision.

To be American is to dance in the

margins of liberation, sidestepping

traditional definitions, values, making

Conservatives frown, tilt chipped crowns.

Freedom is like this sometimes. To be

American is complicated. A sunset

leaning on the body of a 1984, royal

purple Chevy Impala. Doors outstretched.

Pristine. No worries. All muscle. All gas.

All grind. Even though them demons

laugh. I adjust earbuds and turn up

the volume on long drives. Interstate 64

is a snake-like beast. I ignore the fat cats,

constructing boxes, toxifying language,

and walking upright on trotters. Them

three-piece suits and power ties push

back against wild summer wind.

Sinister sunlight dips again. Dystopia

giggles. The machine operates normally.

Flawed DNA. Flawed design. Freedom

is like this sometimes. To be American

is momma’s bluesy hope, is hunger,

is a stomach pang, pulsing against

empty creed. To be American requires

skepticism and a Baldwin-like smile.

Abena Ntoso: Yes! Yes! Yes!

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: So it’s kind of that struggle, that tension, I was trying to really get into that tension and make it artistic. And so like Donnelle, I'm definitely thinking past, as far as ideas and beliefs, I'm kind of post America, like I'm in a post-America kind of place.

If you remember Nora Mitchell back in the day. She used to always say, think, you know, in the workshops, you know. Allow yourself to think out loud. Don't worry about saying the wrong thing, just worry about responding to the topic, the poem, whatever we're doing. So last week, when we talked about this, you know, it allowed me to think out loud, and I'm still thinking out loud a little bit now. But yeah, like, yeah. In order for the ideal of America to evolve it has to kinda get past all those boxes that they're being used to kind of suppress and kind of repress people, you know. Yeah. And we're all there, I think. But yeah.

Donnelle McGee: Synnika, Synnika, too, first of all, I love the poem. Thank you. And you know I got behind me. Right here is Jimi Hendrix, a little nod to Jimmy back here, this beautiful painting here. But I think you're right, man. There's enough space. I think if America can really be this ideal that it's, listen, you know, could be, it's enough spaces for everyone. 

Abena Ntoso: Yeah. You know there are a few things that you both mentioned this idea of the conversation, and I love Synnika even said, you know, the conversation actually became a writing prompt, you know, and this idea that our dialogues, our conversations, can prompt, you know, and inspire us to think about things in ways we've never thought about them before, or to think about things that we haven't necessarily given much thought. And so it allows us to have these questions pop into our mind that maybe weren't there before. And now they become questions that we're sitting down and thinking about, and even laboring over right writing a poem about.

That's the beautiful thing about the conversation. And I think what Donnelle and Synnika, oth of you have been, you know, kind of expressing is this idea that our work as poets and our conversations, even our our day-to-day conversations can open up these spaces, you know, open up these opportunities to have these ideas and thoughts considered in ways that maybe we didn't consider them before, and And I feel like that's when we think about the growth that is going to have to happen, not just for each of us as individuals, but but you know, as a collective, as a society, you know, there has to be a certain amount of growth. I feel like the conversations that we have, and our willingness to see those conversations as invitations to think deeply, or invitations to think about things that we may not have thought about before. I feel like if we can see those as invitations right. It's a really beautiful way of thinking about it, and that.

So this also makes me think about, you know, going back to the way the poem, or the way the collection was put together, the collection was a conversation that was happening, and it was a conversation where you took the poem that you received from the other person and used it as a prompt, you know not that you had to write about what they wrote about, but that you knew that in some way what you wrote about had to also incorporate some response or some inspiration from from an idea that the other person mentioned, or even the way they used language.

So I'm just curious, you know, I kind of want to, you know, brainstorm together. So for people who might be interested in trying this out—I know for me, I was like, who can I write to? Who's gonna write me a poem back? you know—so for people who might be interested in trying this out and finding a partner, or even a group, you know, and saying, you know what, I'm going to write y'all a poem, or I'm going to write you a poem. Can you respond to me, you know, and whether it's a letter or it's, you know, a poem, or it's prose, you know, can we get this dialogue going where we are now using one another's explorations and expressions in language as prompts for how we're going to respond. 

So do you have any ideas for people who are thinking about this, or suggestions or things to think about?

Donnelle McGee: Oh, oh, I I put the phone down first of all, put the phone down. Thinking about this. I know we use a Google Doc, but you know, every month I'll just like pick three random people, and I'll send a postcard to and I'm all like how you doing, poet, love you right on, you know. Correspondence right? Many of the poets that come before us. They will write letters to one another and they would just that's how you communicate it. Right? So for young individuals, anyone who wants to like begin to correspond like that and have a call and response.

Having someone you want to conversate with someone you want to get to know at a deeper level, I think, is important. Someone you feel you can be vulnerable with is going to be imperative, and letting yourself be vulnerable, too, you know. 

And then and I would say I would add, Don't be caught up on the outcome like, How am I going to respond? Let yourself respond in a natural way. Don't worry about trying to be, you know, publication. Just have the conversation and see where it takes you. I know, with Synnika and I. We were amazed where it went, and we had no idea there was no roadmap. We didn't plot this out. We just wrote and wrote and wrote, but some of my ideas I would have for individuals who would like to kind of move into something like this. It's a beautiful space to be in with someone. You can be vulnerable with.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: But yeah, it definitely starts with, yes, putting the phone down. Unless you're gonna use a Google Doc, and that's your format, you know, using a Google Doc. If you're texting each other, that's one thing, you know. But if you're just using it to like, you know, distract yourself from actually doing the work, right, that's something else. But like, yeah, Donnell said, yeah, you gotta find somebody that you're comfortable with, you're okay, like, you know, divulging information with. 

Donnelle McGee: But also I noticed, too, when we wrote this, at least for me when I wrote this in the space where I had to respond to a piece you've written, take the time, take the space, and really you learn about yourself who you are as a poet about your political beliefs, learn about who you are as a father, at least in this process with Seneca, about who you are an educator, as a teacher. And if you really go there, you're also responding to yourself in many ways. And then I would take that, and now I'm gonna look at Synnika’s piece. Let that sink in about my own, you know, realm, and then move in his mental response to the poem. It was scary at times, it was beautiful, it was fun, but it was always a learning process in terms of like, who am I? Who am I? “I have a lot to learn,” right? Going back to “have a lot to learn.” So yeah.

Abena Ntoso: I love that question, and we also talked a little bit about identity, you know what you're mentioning. This idea of coming to understand and even define and redefine your identity as you are going through this process of writing, and carefully considering what you want to say, and how you want to say it, and your word choice, and something that you said once, Donnell, you know, when we're thinking about identity and vulnerability and writing was. I have to share a part of me on the page and you explain that this is what makes writing interesting, and it's that it's what you encourage your students to do in their writing, because we want to read something interesting, right? 

So how does one make themselves show up on the page? How does that vulnerability, that presence of one's personal voice and spirit. How does that come onto the page? How does someone make that come onto the page? And how does it make someone's writing interesting and engaging?

Donnelle McGee: Yes, that's a heavy question. I go to Lydia Yuknovich. I go to Banu Kapil. I go to Chris Abani. I go to Synnika Lofton, writers who do that. Beatrice Gates. I think in a memoir you know, personal essay can be somewhat, you're writing about yourself fiction, I think it relates the same way you have to show up on the page also through your characters in some way, whether it's through experience, through their narratives.

It's just a matter of… I tell my students all the time, what would you say if you could? Not, what you think you have to say? But, what could you say if you could? And let's let's begin there. That's how I begin my first day of class. We circle up and we do it orally. What would you write about if you could? What are you afraid to write about? And you have to. I believe you have to come to the page and write about the shit that scares you. I really do, and and then the revision, you know, you can sharpen fine tune. But if you want your readers to care about what you're writing, and no matter if you want to get published or not, but even like an essay, or even like a academic work. You gotta. You gotta have a voice. You gotta have something to say. And you want to say it in a way that we know it's your voice, you know. So that's how I begin my classes. And for me as a poet, as a writer. Whenever I sit down to write and create, when I get that in my body like, I don't want to say that. Okay, I'm writing that down. I'm writing that down because it needs to be, you know. I go back and reshape that. But it's got to come out even with my young adult novel. You know the characters. I let them guide me, you know. What would they say? But really it's inside of me that we're saying these things. So write the shit that scares you.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You have to. Yeah, you have to have that, that courage and that willpower to kind of take that. Take that risk, you know. Write the write about the material that yeah, that you don't want to write about. Instead of the stuff that you're expected to kind of write about. I know for me personally, I'm always. I try to be as honest as I can with the experience. Be as honest as I can with the experience. And and while I'm going through that that honesty, that rawness, that that kind of nakedness, I'm kind of looking for places in the poem where I can really like, you know, add some really concrete details, because, like, you know, years ago, I used to always live like in the abstract of poetry because I thought poetry was supposed to be that, right? It's supposed to be this really abstract concept that's hard to get. It's difficult. It reads difficult, because, you know, the poet is wrestling with some really immense subject, you know, area. Then I started listening to other poets that could really take the extra abstract concepts and hard to to wrestle with concepts and really just break them down. 

A lot of us get kind of educated out of poetry, you know. We're introduced to these people that we were so far removed from like, you know, Shakespeare, you know the 16th century, the English Renaissance, so far from removed from that, we don't even speak in that type of way anymore. And you're asking kids to wrestle with it and, I don't know, determine if they like the poem or not, and then and sometimes a teacher might be forcing the poem on the student, and like as an example of beauty. Oh, this is what beautiful poetry is right! And then, until lo and behold! A guy named Walt Whitman comes around right. He's like, man, forget that structure, stanzas, whatever right long, rambling lines, repetition, like no, it’s really fluid. And he was thought to be crazy, right? No, he can't represent poetry. And then, like 50 years later, like the guy's a genius, right? Oh, he's a genius, you know. Free verse poetry, you know. American American style, right? 

But for me, you know. It begins with being honest with the experience and then laboring over the experience and trying to talk about that experience in a way that hasn't been talked about, you know. Just just adding, like key details to my own life, my own personality that will make it real. And so when someone reasons, I'm like man,I haven't read a poem like that before, the way he's connecting right. The dots connecting images and concepts is different. And that's kind of like what I try to go for with the poem. 

And then, once you once you've labored over it, you know, for I don't know. There's not really a time restriction, but I know, like once I get to a point where I can't add anything else to it, I can't enhance it, I know the poem is finished. I know the poem is done, and if I don't get the entire message in there, I'm gonna save that for the next poem. Maybe I'll get in the next one. I'll get what I was trying to get. 

If you labor over your writing enough, it's gonna say what you want to say, and it's going to have the effect that you want it to have just as well, because it's personal, it's yours. It's yours, you know. I think anytime you write something, you're stamping your identity on it.

Abena Ntoso: This makes me think about so many things I'm now putting together as we're having this conversation. So, you know, going back to this idea of growth and this idea of how we can use conversations as vehicles for growth through the conversations being prompts for us to think about things we may not have thought about, or think about them in ways we may not have thought about. And then, you know the kind of growth that we are going to need to have as a society.

And then I'm bringing that into the things that you have both mentioned when you were talking about the craft of writing poetry and crafting a poem. Getting it down on the page, right, you know, and Donnelle's put it really well, you know. Just write the things, even the things that you feel like you can't write, you know. Write those down. Don't worry, and you can always go back and work on it, craft it into what you want it to be. And so I'm thinking about that. 

And I'm thinking about, you know, Synnika, you use the word, you know, laboring over a poem, and it is a labor very much a labor of love, you know, to craft it into something that you are proud of, something that you feel like, okay, this is a work of literary art. 

So in putting all of those things together, you know, I'm thinking about what kinds of advice and suggestions you can offer to readers who may have been taught previously that, to write well, you've just got to write beautiful stuff and amazing stuff on the first go, you know it's going to drop from your pen like gold, you know, like diamonds. You're just gonna throw diamonds all over the page, and that's what we do as writers. And it's like, wait, wait, no, you throw everything onto the page, you know all the things that are coming into your mind, whether it's imagination, whether it's experience, whether it's observations, throw it all down on the page… and then there begins this work of looking back at what you wrote and seeing the beautiful parts of it that you want to really bring out, and seeing how you can make it into what you want it to be, what you envision. 

So are there any words of advice you can offer to people as they're thinking about this process of revising their writing and crafting it into a work of art?

Donnelle McGee: Most definitely. Yeah. I mean, even before you get to that stage, I think of the late Peter Elbow. The idea to free-write. I think it applies to creative writing, too academic writing, but also creative writing free. Write free, write free, write. That's all we're doing. You know, I try to tell my students. All we're doing is we're free writing, you know, whether it's a composition, whether it's a poem or a screenplay. You're free. You just get it out, get it out! Get it out as far as the craft elements I'm big on. When I have students go back and look at their work and myself. Also, I'm looking at word choice. I'm looking at every word. And does it move the narrative along?

So every word has to like, have some kind of impact. Even the articles, like do I need the “the” there, you know. I want to make sure it's compressed. So I'm looking at, you know, in terms of poetry I'm looking. How does the page sit on the screen or on the page? The white space? How does it convey a message. There, I'm looking at enjambment. How are my lines? How am I breaking the lineation? So if you're reading my poem, are there certain pauses there that I want you to kind of like sit with that image for a while. So enjambment. I'm looking at repetition, you know. Do I want the language. How's it flowing, you know, on the page? And then I'm looking at like a Synnika said, I'm looking at like, you know, I never want to, like, give my readers a message what to think or how to feel. I want to leave enough space where I feel like I got out what I wanted to get out, but then you could take that poem anywhere you want and go with it. So I want to leave that space within my narrative for the reader to have time to use his or her, or their imagination, particularly in fiction, too, to take it somewhere. Different, perhaps, and let's have a conversation. But I do think writers and readers who really want to move deeply into their work, craft is really important, you know. You can free write, and you can put it down. But on that revision process you want something that is gonna, you know, poetry should dance on the page. It should bounce, should be able to feel it right to feel it so, you know, and and just make it like, Come alive. And and that's hard work. That's a beautiful labor of love. And but when you know you feel like, Okay, I can let this one go. It may not be done, but I can let it go, and I know I did my best with it, with those different poetic elements I'm trying to like infuse into my narrative, but it does go back. You have to have something to say, you know. I'd rather read, you know, and I read like essays that could be really well written. But what are you? That's great. But what are you saying? Or a poem that is really well crafted. But what what? I don't. I gotta feel something. I want to feel something. So that's how I approach it in terms of you know, you know, revision in terms of craft.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, craft is a huge component, a huge part of any type of creative writing or any type of writing in general, but like with poets, you know. I think the craftsmanship, when it comes to a poem, can definitely empower a little bit, empower it a little bit more right, and get more of an effect, you know, on your reader. But that's when you start really to take it seriously, you start really delving into the craft of you know, it definitely begins with the raw data begins with the experience, you know, once you get the experience on the page. Okay, I got the experience on the page. Now, can I go in with like, you know, that that second grade teacher's, you know, editor's cap, red pen, and like make changes, you know. Can do I go in and get rid of that? Do I get rid of some of the articles? Do I get rid of? You know this that do you know? Then you start thinking of, like, you know, the the parts of poetry that deal with craft. You know the enjambing right line structure, your syntax, your word? Or do you want stanza? Do you not want stanzas? Do commas get in the way? Do they enhance? Right? You're wrestling with all that, and and that is a part of the process as well, especially when you decide you're going to take it very seriously and and really develop that. Well, what I've noticed about craft, right, Nora Mitchell. I keep going back to her, she said, listen, your best teachers are on the bookshelves, right? Read, read, and when you get tired of reading, read some more, right. Poets, poets, poets, poets, writers, writers, writers. I don't care what you read, and then you start to learn what other writers you know. Do you start to learn how they approach craft? So if you read a hundred poetry books. You might just see a hundred different ways of writing a poem, right? And then you you get to somebody like E. Cummings, and you're like, wait a minute. You can write words backwards, right? You can avoid using like where you start to look at as a visual art. Now. So now you've you've eaten at this table. You've eaten all this craft, and you approach your own poem. And now you're the whole space opens up for you right now you can go with, okay, how do I want to approach this thing? And so from that point on, you're almost like refining your craft every time you read a book, every time you put pen to pad, you're kind of refining as you go, and then, of course, like you know, you go back and you look at it. You say, Okay, is there anything I can do in this poem that can make it, you know, more powerful? You know more of an effect, you know. How do I make it dance right? Do I have a raw experience in there? You know. What am I going for I'm really a big fan of lyric poets. I like those those short, choppy lines that build the story. I love that stuff, you know, like don't tell me the whole story. Let me let me piece it together, right. I like to look at jazz. In my poems now, like it's almost like a reflection of, like all the poets I've read before. You're weaving these words, and you're weaving these ideas. You know the Jimi Hendrix picture in Donnelle’s home. That was part of the “James Baldwin” right. That picture is kind of like where I started when I started writing a poem, I started thinking, Hendrix. I started thinking of Woodstock. I started thinking of “The Star Spangled Banner,” the bluesy riffs, the guitar. So all that stuff kind of like, you know, kind of came into play. 

Abena Ntoso: This idea of, you know, taking what you have put on the page and taking the inspiration and techniques and crafts that that others have used, and learning from that, and applying that in your own work. And then, you know, just really crafting your work, you know, taking the writing that you have written freely, and and that you have let flow out without trying to stop yourself, and then, and crafting that… It brings me to this idea of growth again. I keep coming back to this because it reminds me of something that I heard Mike Posner say in a TED Radio Hour podcast not too long ago. Mike Posner is a musician who took it upon himself to walk across the United States of America. So he walked 3,000 miles, and it was the most difficult thing he had ever done, and he shared 5 life lessons that he learned from it. And one of the lessons was the idea that happiness comes from growth and growth comes from doing those difficult big things that you've always wanted to do.

So you know this idea that you know it's it's the sticking with and and wanting to accomplish something, or bring something forth that is so important to you that you are not going to give up on it, and the lessons that you learn as you are in the process of doing this is what brings that growth, which in turn brings a sense of happiness, a sense of fulfillment.

So I think about that, and I think about how conversations serve as prompts and also bring about growth.

And Synnika, your poems, many of them refer to this idea of writing as liberation. Donnelle’s poems refer to this idea of literature and reading as liberation as well. So I just would love to hear how your literary work, your reading and your writing, how that has brought a sense of freedom and liberation to you in your lives.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: It’s fundamental to writing to view it as a form of liberation and a form of self-determination, right. You don't need any local state government's input right to experience and to document the experience. It's really that simple. So every time I put pen to pad, I feel like, you know, I feel uncaged, unchained. I feel fully free to be who I want to be, you know, outside of all the labels that you know, people kind of thrust on people because they want to try to define them and kind of hold them hostage to an idea. You know, if I could paint you as a Liberal, or Conservative, or Dem, or whatever I can kind of control you. Well, in my poetry I can't be controlled. There's no, there's no control, there's no, there's no, there's nothing above. There's no authority figure I have to go to and ask permission to write a poem.

Donnelle McGee: Yeah, I mean in terms of like happiness into my life. My writing. I got to take a step back, and you know, Stephen Curry said—you know he suffers from imposter syndrome—and I'm about if he can suffer from imposter syndrome, I'm like and like you know, I do I do? And I remember early on in my, you know, writing career, writing poetry, writing fiction. I had a lot of that. I was like, I'm on the fringes. I'm on the edges. I don't even belong even teaching, you know. It's just felt that way, and, but then you learn like, and as Synnika alludes to, the most political thing you can do, the most revolutionary thing you can do is read and write, because we know our ancestors coming over from West Africa, when we got here. That wasn't even allowed right. You had to sneak a book or so reading and is revolutionary. And I carry that with me every time and through those actions, my writing it's brought so much into my life. You alluded to happiness right? Because this book here, you know, my son, took the picture in the back. You know these are artifacts to me like we can leave be able to leave the next generation with artifacts, with poetry, with art that can transcend, that is revolutionary. Writing has given me, and reading has given me a way to express myself, to connect with other soulful individuals who believe in the power of literature, believe in the power of poetry like we are today.

Abena Ntoso: I just want to say, thank y'all so much. Just lots of great ideas. I now have to go and find a partner who is going to write back and forth, find a friend, find someone who's going to write, you know poetry, or even just letters back and forth and see what comes out of it, and and see what what new and interesting ideas can be sparked and inspired from that kind of dialogue.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton: Absolutely. Definitely worth a try. If you find a partner, it’s definitely worth a try.

Donnelle McGee: Abena, thank you for having us thank you for this really powerful conversation.

Abena Ntoso: Of course, of course.

We’ve been talking today with poets Donnelle McGee and Synnika Lofton. You’ve been listening to Backlit, and I am your host, Abena Ntoso. You can find more of Donnelle’s work at donnellemcgee.com and Synnika’s work at iamsynnika.com. 

Today’s episode was produced in my home studio in Houston, Texas, in conjunction with Bricolage Lit, and features the song “Campfire” by Midnight Daydream in the intro and outro. For more information on Backlit, please visit abenantoso.com/podcast/backlit. Thank you for listening, and until next time, be well, read books, and let’s generate some new ideas together.