Poet and author of Against Heaven, Kemi Alabi, is experiencing a new disability and profound grief around the limits of care for sick Black people: ‘I’m wrestling with fear, anger; a complete reorientation to time, to my body, to the ableist world—and it’s demanding more honest language from me. I wish I could write around all this, but guided by Audre Lorde, I’ll write through.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I tore through anything I could find—children’s poetry, young adult fiction, and adult novels I could barely comprehend. I loved reading, perhaps more for the thrill of language than the story itself. That translates to my adult love of a delightful line or sentence over narrative.
If your life so far was a series of texts, which text (fiction or non-fiction) represents you at this moment?
Maybe Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals. I’m experiencing a new disability and profound grief around the limits of care for sick Black people. I’m wrestling with fear, anger; a complete reorientation to time, to my body, to the ableist world—and it’s demanding more honest language from me. I wish I could write around all this, but guided by Lorde, I’ll write through.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
I don’t know if my mind is ever fixed, but The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse edited by Kaveh Akbar just opened me further to the mystery of things.
I loved reading, perhaps more for the thrill of language than the story itself. That translates to my adult love of a delightful line or sentence over narrative.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
For me, the only way to keep the creative channel open is to keep the processes separate.
What was your process for writing your award-winning poetry collection, Against Heaven?
It wasn’t a project book, meaning I didn’t conceive of the whole before I began—it emerged from a practice-based poetics. I played. I wrote one line at a time, never quite knowing what might come after. I experimented with forms, followed obsessions. Over the years, I started to hear the ways my poems spoke to one another, and then I loosely wrote into the gaps in conversation. Once I was ready to move my practice elsewhere, I knew it was time to let go of the collection. Sending it out for publication was mostly a way to make room for a new kind of play. Paul Gardner once said, ‘A painting is never finished—it simply stops in interesting places,’ and that’s certainly true of Against Heaven.
What’s the inspiration behind your book/Why did you decide to write this book?
I love writing poems. Writing is a way of being, a mode of inquiry, a compulsion, a pleasure. In the process of writing Against Heaven, I resisted, then surrendered, to my obsessions: formally, sound and structure; subject-matter wise, ways to survive the estrangements and annihilations of empire through re-embodiment. This made me confront the origins of my disembodiment—Christian hegemony, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy—and write a wild path back to my fully feeling body.
What do you hope readers take away from reading your book?
The manuscript came together fully during the 2020 American uprisings as many were growing into consciousness around the abolition of prisons and policing. I encountered the words of the filmmaker Tourmaline: ‘When we say abolish police, we also mean the cop in your head and in your heart.’ And who is that cop? Where does the shame and surveillance begin? If the book has a mission, it’s to bridge the personal and political by answering those questions and committing to abolition. Ruth Wilson Gilmore says, ‘Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.’ Another world, another way of being, is possible—right here, right now. It requires your disobedience. It requires an embodied understanding of what truly affirms your life. Can you feel it? Are you ready?
What books did you read while you were working on Against Heaven?
There are ten years between the oldest and newest poems in Against Heaven, so it covered much of my adult reading life. When I was working with my editor at Graywolf to finalize the collection, I reread work by some of my favorite contemporary poets that approach sound and form in ways I admire—all of Patricia Smith and Danez Smith’s work, to name two big influences. I reread Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. I read texts on abolition. I reread so many of my favorite poems—I must admit, individual poems are far more significant to me.
Over the years, I started to hear the ways my poems spoke to one another, and then I loosely wrote into the gaps in conversation.
Do you have a personal favourite from the collection? If yes, which is it and why?
I love and thank all my poems for what they taught me—what they continue to teach me—but the two I’m most grateful for are ‘A Wedding, or What We Unlearned from Descartes’ and ‘The Lonely Sleep Through Winter’. Their arrivals saved my life and reciting them keeps me steady.
You also co-edited the book, The Echoing Ida Collection. What’s the most important contribution an editor makes to a piece?
An editor identifies and protects the heart of a piece. From there, they can see what’s missing and what’s in the way.
What’s a common misconception about poetry or poets?
Some people think poets are evasive, flowery—making unnecessary detours when they can just be direct. But poems are ‘magic ceremonies of language,’ as philosopher Byung-Cul Han says. ‘The poetic principle returns pleasure to language through a radical break with the economy of the production of meaning. The poetic does not produce… in poems we enjoy language itself.’ While some find clarity and communication to be the main objectives of language, my favorite poets understand sensation and pleasure as their aims. As Ilya Kaminsky says, ‘The purpose of the state is to numb the senses. The purpose of a lyric poet is to wake them up.’
What’s a book you enjoyed that remains largely unknown to others?
Sasha Banks’ debut poetry collection america, MINE.
What’s a book on your bookshelf that might catch people by surprise?
Maybe the nonfiction ones about witchcraft? But that wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me.
What’s your favourite piece of poetry/what’s the most memorable poem you’ve ever read?
This answer changes weekly—and that’s a beautiful thing, I think. My favorite poems this week are June Jordan’s ‘I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies’, and Ari Banias’ ‘The Feeling’.
What is the most meaningful piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Various iterations of ‘flow, don’t force’. And then the words of Amelia Earhart via Toni Cade Bambara: ‘The most effective way to do it is to do it.’
Which Nigerian/Black writers working today would you recommend to readers?
I have an early copy of Omotara James’ forthcoming debut poetry collection Song of My Softening. It drops April 2024—don’t miss this one.
What’s one word, line or quote that captures how this year has gone for you?
The opening of Toni Cade Bambara’s novel The Salt Eaters comes to mind:
‘Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?… Just so you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.’
An editor identifies and protects the heart of a piece. From there, they can see what’s missing and what’s in the way.
What are you currently working on?
Secrets!
Question from Dami Ajayi: What five songs are on your playlist of songs that you could listen to for the rest of your life?
Just five? Oh no! Okay… Robert Glasper and Phonte’s ‘Violets’, Saba’s ‘Heaven All Around Me’, Erykah Badu and Georgia Anne Muldrow’s ‘Master Teacher Medley’, Bill Evans’ ‘We Will Meet Again (For Harry)’, and Karen Clark Sheard’s ‘Balm in Gilead’.
Bonus: Please suggest a question for a future author’s First Draft
How do you know a work is complete?⎈
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