If You're Asking Questions Then You're on the Right Path: In Conversation with Justin Rovillos Monson alongside Patrick De Leon, Saretta Morgan and Ayling Dominguez
Justin Rovillos Monson is a Filipino American poet and the author of American Inmate: The Album (Haymarket Books, 2024). He is the 2018 PEN America Writing For Justice Fellow and the inaugural winner of the 2017 Kundiman/Asian American Literary Review/Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Poetry Mentorship. Monson is currently incarcerated in St. Louis, Michigan, from which he hopes to be released in 2027.
American Inmate: The Album (Haymarket Books, 2024) is available to purchase here
From Saretta Morgan: Weeks before the release of his first poetry collection, AMERICAN INMATE (Haymarket Press, 2024), Justin Rovillos Monson met with ASU Graduate Students, Patrick De Leon, and Ayling Dominguez, along with then-teaching fellow, Saretta Morgan, to speak about his forthcoming book for Hayden's Ferry Review. This conversation with Justin, who is currently serving a sentence in the Michigan Department of Corrections, was disrupted regularly due to the prison's limitations on communication between people on the inside and out. Thus, the interview below—which touches themes of influences, poetic form, philosophical positions on language, and Filipino-American masculinity—consolidates several 15 minute conversations dispersed across more than 2 hours.
Saretta: Hi, Justin.
Justin: Hi Saretta. How are you doing?
S: I’m good. And I have Patrick and Ayling here on Zoom.
Patrick: Hi Justin, nice to meet you. My name is Patrick DeLeon and I’m a second year MFA student at ASU in poetry. I also practice in screen printing and filmmaking.
Ayling: Hi, I’m Ayling and am also in my second year of the MFA program. I do a bunch of mixed media stuff, but also work in abolition and community care. I’m really excited to talk with to you and loved your collection, too.
J: Oh, so you guys are the future is what you’re telling me? With the multimedia and all that!
S: They are. Okay, first I want to say I got an email from Haymarket today. They sent out a free ebook with a collection of Palestinian writers. That was dope, so congratulations again for being with a really great press.
J: Haymarket is dope.
I love Haymarket because they really are about the movements and the cause. I’m really happy with Haymarket so far.
S: So I’m going to dive into the questions. Patrick and Ayling is there anything else you all wanted to say before we get started?
P: Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for taking time to meet with us. I read your collection and really enjoyed it. So again, congratulations on the collection.
J: Nice to meet you guys. I’m honored.
S: I’ll go ahead and ask the first question to get us started. As poets, we know that first books represent a long journey of reading, writing, and creative practice. Can you tell us how that journey began for you and your first book of poems, American Inmate? What are some of the ways that poetry has changed for you since first beginning to write poems?
J: First and foremost I'm not one to try and harp on my uniqueness, but if you want to talk about a long journey I've been in prison for about 12 years now and started writing seriously, give or take, 10 years ago. It has been a long journey you know. I came to poetry in the first place through hip hop when I was young. And if you want to generalize it hip hop is what brought me to poems because of its lyricism. Tupac, Big, and Wu-Tang gave me a vibe and style for the possibilities of language.
In poetry more specifically, about 10 years ago I was in a creative writing workshop through the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project that’s run in certain prisons in Michigan Department of Corrections. I happened to be in this poetry workshop at a facility when I was like 20 or 21 at the time and I just found that I could write a little bit.
I also low key had a little crush on a girl in the class so in a way I was trying to impress her. But I also started to recognize that I could funnel my experience through spoken word. That was where I really found myself in the beginning of poetry.
At the time I happened to be teaching classes, and was the public relations director for this organization where we were able to put together workshops and things like that, so all of those things coalesced at once. It was a kind of home and I became known as the poetry guy, you know what I mean? That really gave me a boost like, “Oh, man, you that dude who does spoken word!”
Then over time I developed this relationship with a woman who was also a poet – it didn't work out in the long run, but felt love – and through that I found my niche.
I don't know if this sounds crazy as hell to say to you guys but to me it's all just language. For me poetry is a means to an end. I found poetry to be something I enjoyed that could affect people's lives for those who are open to listening. I don't think that my relationship to poetry has changed so much, but my relationship to language has. I think this may also sound kind of funny to say but: words aren't real. Over this time I’ve found it's actually about people. We're all looking at this thing in front of us at different angles and poetry is just a way for us to do that using all the linguistic tools available to us.
S: Can you say more about “words aren’t real”? How did you come to that position and what does it mean for you as a poet?
J: I took a philosophy class and correspondence course and got really into Wittgenstein. His Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations have this growth between them where for one there’s a solid and very mathematical perspective, like a Boolean logic that exists over the Platonic ideal, but then later he shifts in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein learns to approximate according to the experiences we have with one another and linguistic concepts – which is a more liquid and amorphous philosophy.
I’m a Buddhist so when these approaches come together I can look at language as solid and mathematical, or could choose the relationships between people around me; how their dialogue affects things. Independent from us words don’t really mean anything. So when I say that language isn’t real I don’t mean to step on words or anything like that. But we’re the ones that give the power to language.
S: This reminds me of Cristina Rivera Garza who does a lot of writing on violence and femicide along the US – Mexico border and in Mexico. Something she says about language is that even if you’re writing about yourself, we’re still reliant upon others, because language only arrives to us in this way. You’re drawing upon things we’ve learned inherently from other people.
J: Yeah, that’s dope! It’s a referential thing.
Full disclosure is I just went through a really dark night of the soul type thing. I guess you could call it addiction, but I don’t really consider it that. I was going through some shit and got hit with the AA and NA 12 steps. I don’t agree with a lot of the ideas, especially because it’s very poorly written. But if it helps somebody, it helps them!
Going through that I found language is just an external expression of what we have going on internally. So as soon as we decide that we want to vocalize something we are exposed to this web of references and that’s how we relate to each other. Maybe that’s why I gravitate to hip-hop, which is entirely built on referential samples and ideas. I guess all music is referential but other art forms try and hide it.
S: Yeah, we’d been talking about how American Inmate continually points to all the voices that have gone into its making.
P: I do have one really quick other question before we move on from the topic of your beginnings. I'm curious what formal poet was the first that you felt connected to? I know you mentioned hip hop and the lyrics is something that brought you to it, but was there a formal poet that you thought “oh this is my jam right here?”
J: Reginald Dwayne Betts and Patrick Rosal. I mean for obvious reasons is both of them are the big homies. Anybody who has been in the joint and has been able to turn that around and leverage their experience. To process it, whether in the mind and the pocket. If there’s anybody I owe my successes to, or even my confidence to—because I feel like I'm the realist in the game right now, you know (laughs). If you're able to express these things man, like Dwayne did, that's so real to me.
S: I feel like I can see Patrick Rosal in your work, Justin. There’s a similar sensual masculinity.
J: Yeah, I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere. I grew up in metro Detroit where half my friends were black and half were white, and that experience gave me a language that speaks to masculinity and vulnerability, which we can talk about next call, but I think that also speaks a lot to…
I hadn’t really thought about this until bringing up Dwayne and Patrick. Those guys gave me an idea of what was possible on the page as far as being a man in prison. Grappling with the ins and outs of prison life, but also that Patrick’s a Filipino man. Growing up in similar cultures and to see him being cool with who you are. There’s this poem he has of rocking a dress and I just thought that was so dope.
For better and worse in American culture, hip-hop, and especially prison culture, there’s this level of macho behavior that goes on. We forget about the flip side which is that it’s a show, a masquerade. For people that are so focused on being real – myself included – it’s really refreshing to do something and then be like Yeah, I said that. What’s up?
From a poetic perspective, those guys really gave me a language and model to be able to expand on myself without feeling like I had to adhere to some sort of specific set of language, or ideas of masculinity – like being tough and being hard. They expanded the idea of those things: Yeah, that's what it is being hard and being tough. It’s about being you. I stand on that. That's what it is.
But just from a general perspective growing up I listened to Pac. When I heard the spectrum of music from “Changes” to “Hit Em Up” there’s also a spectrum there of who a person can be. He really let me know that I don't just have to be one way. As I mentioned, I felt like I could never really fit in, and he gave me a language to translate my experiences.
I grew up in the white suburbs outside of Detroit, so there was a lot of me trying to figure it out like, damn, I don't really fit in with these people. I don't look like these dudes. So I never really fully fit in but I was always able to move in a way that allowed me to be who I needed to be at that time.
P: I think that was very poignant and clearly stated from your perspective. I appreciated it, especially the part about the masquerade of masculinity as a way to cover up the “real” or act of perceived realness. I think you might have just inspired a new a poem title. I'll credit you, though.
J: I don't know if you guys are into basketball at all. You see what happened with Draymond yesterday?
S: (laughs) No, I didn’t see any games this weekend.
J: Draymond Green did what Draymond does and he spun around, effectively hitting a dude. That's what he's known for, wilding out. A lot of people have been telling him about this, and I mention the masquerade of masculinity as persona because it's really easy to take that and run with it and spit on them. I’m in a place where that’s necessary, which is also about where we grew up. So there’s a level of it they’ve learned as necessary to survival.
You know in seeing this dude who is a multi-millionaire basketball player and out here doing this I'm like, man, whatever he's going through – whether it's pain or just plain tripping – we find ourselves in these situations where we act out in certain ways. So even if I don’t condone these acts, I do think it's important we look at them and try to understand where that's coming from. You know what I mean?
I think it's really easy these days to look at forms of masculinity as expressions of aggression and violence and say how wrong it is, rather than recognize where it's coming from. And Draymond Green is from Michigan, he's from that way, so I understand him for expressing that in this way. It’s not on Draymond, everyone’s trying to make it.
S: What you're saying reminds me of the experimental theater director, Kaneza Schall, who has done theater work with performers on the inside. She talks about making space for everyone to bring in their many languages of performance to the stage. Including those languages of survival and necessity.
So when seemingly anti-social behavior comes out—behavior that is also a kind of performance learned in another situation—the thing she takes from the situation is basically, I haven’t seen this before, which means I’m not doing my job in making space for someone to productively bring all of the languages that are obviously in their body.
J: Absolutely, and that's the realest thing for somebody to say. I consider myself a liberal, you know. I'm a Democrat but I also think that there's levels within this because of my experiences here in prison. I've been here and I've been judged based on my worst decisions in life, you know what I mean? From the crimes I committed when I was a teenager to even recently. I mean there's a fine line between making excuses and giving reasons, or analyzing something, and I think it's just all a matter of philosophical perspectives.
Sometimes people express themselves in a way that can’t be controlled at the time. But those responses had to be learned. I think it's very easy for people to take a victim stance or to look at his behavior and be scared and say, well that's wrong in today’s society. By the same token a lot of people haven't had to go through that crucible.
In here if there's certain things that I do… if I leave right now to the track and go spinning laps with one of my homeboys and somebody walks between us, that's a problem. If I allow that to happen – I'm not saying it's going to be this crazy thing because I don't want to present this one end of the prison writing spectrum that’s like oh, this is so hard, but at that same time if that happens – that's disrespect. If I allow that to happen and continue to, then I'm going to be prey.
So I'm either gonna have to lay down a demonstration or stop it and say hey, man this ain’t that.
In a lot of situations people might look at this like I'm doing something wrong, but I'm doing what I need to do to survive here. Nobody can tell me that’s wrong. I have to do what’s best for me to get up out of here. That’s what it is.
S: Right, you’re acting within the expectations of the culture. So someone who is outside of that can't really judge.
P: Yeah, I think it's easy for people to judge from the outside and put their own personal biases on something. But acting within the culture, like you're saying, you don't know what masquerade is required to survive. So I think that's a really good point you made there. You can't let certain things slide when you don't want to set yourself up for something in the future that would be devastating – if you didn't do what you know you needed to do in that moment.
J: Acting is still lived experience. You know what I mean? I'm gonna tell you this right here, right now. I've never told anybody this, or really verbalized it, but I've been in prison for a dozen years and I haven't had any real serious physical altercation. It's not because I've been hiding, or because I've been a coward, and it’s not because I've been running away from problems – I've done everything you can do in here other than kill a guy or gang bang – it's because I've been able to maneuver and present myself in a way through the politics of this place that I have a lot of respect and built goodwill. At the same time I know how to deal with cosplay. I know who to speak to and I've never told on anybody.
Full disclosure again, they tried to give me a case because I allegedly had a cell phone at some point. I said, “you're in level four max.”
A friend of mine named Mandy read my book and told me man, I just wanted to let you know that's one of the realest things I’ve read. I respect it because most people whose stuff we read in here are guys who say they've been in prison, but we can't respect it because we know they were in PC (protective custody). They were out here telling or they were doing all this stuff. They’re lying.
He said, you’re one of the only dudes I met who was really on that. Doing all the things we know to do on how to survive in here, truthfully, and not lying about it.
That was probably the deepest compliment I could have received from a person. He let me know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, representing my people.
S: Yeah, it's so good when your work is affirmed by the people who know.
J: I feel like I'm talking a little bit too much about myself, even though that's kind of like what we're doing here. So.
S: Yeah, it is.
J: Well, you know, I'm not trying to give myself big ups or anything because that's not for me to do. I've been living out my karma, you know.
A: I have a question that builds off what you’re saying, but it’s also informed by a conversation you had with the Poetry Project a little while ago around poetry and prison abolition. You were saying that prison is less a singular entity and more an active intersection, and you shared how poetry can flesh out what prison often hides from the world. So we’re wondering how poetry has influenced the way that you're able to talk and think about abolition. And perhaps not just in terms of a world without carceral systems or prisons, but in terms of collective care — the ways we care and show up for each other. How has poetry influenced or informed any of that for you? And how does that appear in American Inmate?
J: First and foremost, I feel like all of that appears in American Inmate because how can it not? It’s coming from the joint and for the joint. That’s what it is. When you ask about collective care I’m a little bit confused. Can you tell me a little bit about that before we move forward. What do you mean by collective care?
A: Yeah, so I know abolition is similar to how prison is understood as this at once ambiguous, but also very meaning-heavy thing. I know there's been different advocates who speak about abolition as not just undoing and abolishing all of these systems, but also what will stand in its place afterward – what we nurture in place of these punitive systems. A lot of this is often care and love based. So that's a little bit about what I mean, but I'm happy to speak more if that's not clear.
J: No, I feel you. I'll speak on the collective care portion first cause that abolition thing…we about to get into it. So collective care and what I said earlier about words aren’t real, we're all just trying to make it and everybody’s suffering. I guess that’s the Buddhist in me talking but hey, everybody's hurt. When it comes to collective care I feel a lot of trauma and a lot of pain. Poetry can offer us a language for looking at certain things like emotional textures that allow us to relate to one another in a way nonfiction or academic writing, and other uses of language don't allow.
How do I put this, all the guys around me are here because of the things we did or didn’t do. A lot of this has to do with the uses of language created by legal constructs and systems we find ourselves in. I feel poetry can act as a counterbalance to these institutional uses of language, or it can at least add to it in a way that gives people room to explore those emotional textures, without it just being about language solely to lay out rules.
This is kind of a peripheral thing but I just recently got a ticket. A misconduct is what we call it. The officer that wrote it really just lied on me because they were mad. They said the yard was open and that was a mistake. So as I tried to go into the yard and do something another guard said “you can’t go outside” then I asked the other officer “didn’t you say the yard was open?” And he replied “where are you walking at? Now you’re loitering.” I got a ticket for that.
This weekend I’m not allowed to use the phone, leave my cube, and I can’t do anything other than go eat and shower because I caught a dude on a bad day. When I went to have my hearing on it – because right is right – I had a whole conversation with the counselor and he came up with the fact that it’s politics at this point.
We get caught up in these systems of language. I went back and forth with him about what it means that an officer saw me in the lobby. Was I loitering? Was I really in violation of this rule that was written? The essence of it was wrong, but what I’m saying is we use language for a lot of things and poetry can really open up the possibility for expression of these emotional textures that we all feel. It can help us look at whatever trauma that we’re dealing with in a way that expands on the possibilities of healing. That’s a lot of abstract language, but poetry can help people level with each other, rather than fight through language.
When it comes to abolition that's a weird topic for me. I don't consider myself an abolitionist. I don’t really know what that means to different people. I consider myself more of a reformer and I think I made that clear with my Poetry Project stuff. I think a lot of people speak on this topic, and most have some sort of relationship with the carceral system, but then get surprised when they come in here and they’re around that guy or that person from every neighborhood. It can mess with you a little bit.
I think it’s easy to lean on the saying that “everybody’s good” or “everybody has good intentions” which is true but on the same token you have to have a mechanism for, I don’t want to say punishment, but for growth. I’m not saying prison’s aren’t bad, I’m not saying carceral systems aren’t bad, but if we imagine a world with the absence of carceral systems we would just replace it with other systems with different language – until we find a way of how to improve that system, because there’s always room for improvement.
I’m also skeptical of anytime people say “this is the problem, yet I haven’t experienced it personally, but we need to eliminate it because it’s wrong.” Firstly, it’s not a nuanced perspective and doesn’t really play out that way. But I also do think we need people to say all this though because there’s a place for everything.
S: Yeah, it's making me think about a well-known poet, who was himself incarcerated, saying that with regard to the person who harmed his mother, I will fight for that man not to receive parole every time. Every time.
J: That’s real. That’s real.
S: I think people who are the most affected by it have these very complicated relationships to what abolition means. In terms of the abolishment of carceral systems.
J: Yeah, it's easy to talk about things in absolute terms when we’re passionate about it. There’s nothing wrong with that, and like I said, there’s room for all that. My partner’s a poet, Janice Sapigao and we talk a lot about the more liberal ideas carried out in the real world. Sometimes I’m like “nah man, that’s not going to work” and I don't say that to be an asshole or that I have all the answers, but if somebody hurts her I’m willing to lay them down for that. I’ve never killed anybody and I’m not even a violent person. If it comes down to it then that's what it is. When you’re in the mud it’s hard not to say that somebody doesn’t deserve to get dirty.
S: Thank you for that. That's real. Thank you.
A: Yeah, thank you so much Justin. I'm sitting with what you were saying about poetry having room to challenge different linguistic norms. Especially rules and who sets them.
S: Maybe the best thing poetry can do for abolition is help people continue to question what they mean by those terms.
J: If you're asking questions then you're on the right path. I think that’s the biggest thing poetry and these conversations can offer. Like where can I find more nuance at? Where can I find more questions at? When it comes to real life action you really need to have people out there who say “fuck all the nuance. Forget about looking at all sides of it.” When it comes down to it what am I voting for, what am I taking acting for, what am I willing to die for? You’ve got to make that choice. It comes down to that decision and that’s where you have this difference between the metaphysical, the physical, the philosophical, the moral, the ethical, and all of that. Ultimately, you gotta make choices in how to exist in our lives. Sometimes it’s illegal and I don’t fault anybody for that.
When we’re having these discussions about the ideologies of the prison system, I can’t get with the scenario in which I feel like I’ve figured it all out. If that were the case and we all had the answer – like there was some sort of platonic ideal of what right in this situation is – history would dictate that we’d be leading toward that progress anyway. Obviously, we’re not at that point. There’s different values that we’ve got to contend with and that’s where it comes down to voting. We need people who are abolitionists to vote for that. We need people who advocate for these different things to be the ones who fall on the sword, to make sure that other people don’t have to deal with that.
S: Maybe this is a good time for us to talk about a term you keep using, emotional texture. I’m thinking about the different ways I find texture in American Inmate and it reminds me of this question I know Ayling has.
A: American Inmate begins with a notice that this book “isn't for the shook ones.” Even without the preemptive note one picks up on the particular breath infused in the poems, one that is intentional with its spacing and pauses, not to mention the musicality that honors rappers and poets of past and present. The patterns and systems feel subversive and freeing. What informs your decisions of spacing, line breaks, and blank space in poems? Also when and how do you weave in musicality through direct lyric references versus rhythm mirroring?
J: I’ve got a lot to say about that. That’s hip hop! When it comes to the breath, spacing, and musicality. I think it’s cadence. The decisions that I make in terms of cadence and breath are just based on how it sounds in my mind. I want people to read my poems and have a rhythm. (Just as a final note on this call) I have this line that I've been thinking about for months, years really, it’s “listening to Griselda, thinking about all the men I could have been.” I can't make it work in terms of spacing and breath, but it’s the dopest line to me. I can’t figure out a way to make it fit into the timing. It’s those kinds of things where I think: how can I make this pop?
It's twofold. I think for a long time in my writing I've been conflicted with how it exists on the page in terms of line breaks and syllables, as well as how it's similar to spoken word. I started verbalizing it there and with hip-hop.
So I told you one of the lines that I've been messing with for a year is “listening to Griselda, thinking about all the men I could have been.” It just doesn't fit yet for me. It's supposed to be the title of something – Griselda is a hip hop group that are like the realest dudes out. When it comes to breath and the actual verbalizing and reading of my work, I try to find that groove. I try and use certain words and spacing that have to do with my reflection of how the breath is taken, and I also want the phonics to be there.
If I'm trying to convey something that's serious or hard I might throw in hard sonics like B’s and V’s that bop, bop, bop. That carries the meaning I'm trying to convey which exists on the page in content also. Jay Z has this book called Decoded where he breaks down his lyrics and something that's always been interesting to me that he uses are double entendre, triple entendre. These layers and layers of meaning is what I try to do in my work.
My word choice and the way I try to structure my syntax is always going to reflect a scenario where I want people to experience these Easter eggs. I want to put in references to other artists to create situations where people may be like “oh, what does he mean by that? Let me go look that up.” And I’ve been told before this isn't really clear, “maybe you should explain it?” I'm like no I don't want to explain it. I want people to go figure it out; if my work causes others to listen or look up certain artists then I'm doing my job.
I don't want to have a self-contained world with a poem in a vacuum. I want poems to be referential. I want people to continue to think and move forward by looking at all these other references because that's how I grew up.
Listening to Kanye beats where I would say oh, that sample is from like an old OJ song, or wait that Snoop Dog sample is George Clinton. This led me to many other things of rich texture whether in music or in poetry. This is extremely important because they’re paying homage to an art form and pushing it forward. If you have some sort of self-contained art then you're really not doing anything.
I'm not with the self-contained answers. I want you to think and go out and hold things up, because as an artist that’s my duty. So as far as line breaks and caesuras and all that I want people to leave thinking, “oh did he intentionally mean that?” The line in and of itself means one thing, the sentence means another thing, then in the context of the whole poem it means something else.
I need that to happen because as a poet it means I'm doing my job. It leads to wanting more and feeling like you need to go and look at this next.
S: I have a question about something you just said. When you have a line that you want to be in a poem, but cannot figure out how to break the lines or have them fit with the musicality. What would the stakes need to be for you to use it anyway?
J: Deadlines. I'm a perfectionist to an extent but this goes back to the whole metaphysical versus physical. Shit, I got deadlines I gotta meet. I got money I gotta make. I got things I gotta do and sometimes I know it can’t be perfect so I put it out there.
S: I’m thinking about the poet Solmaz Sharif who has spoken publicly about a moment within a political altercation that felt very important, but she left it out of a poem because she couldn’t make it fit the lyrical mode. She later says she regretted it and that it was one of the worst things a poem ever made her do. I'm just wondering what might allow you to break the music that you're trying to make?
J: I don't think people should have regrets in poetry. Every poem I want to put the whole world in that shit. For me it's never gonna be complete. That’s one thing I love about Zuhitsu, it’s a form where you can put anything in there. If you have a regret about not using a line, then shit, you should have just put that in there (laughs)! Ultimately, people are going to interpret it how they're going to interpret it – there ain't no such thing as a perfect poem.
I think Solmaz also said at some point the sonnet is oppression or something like that, basically the sonnet is this thing that can hold us down. I mean, I guess structurally, but that is what you want to make it. I use it when I use it. At some point or another you’re going to feel like damn I really want to put this in there.
Sometimes if I'm stuck on a poem and can't decide how I want to move forward, I'll just put random shit in there, then I'll decide what the rest of the poem will be afterwards. Maybe I'll edit it out later or maybe I won't. Sometimes you just gotta go! You have to be a little reckless with poems because nobody's going to remember all of the process and journey that you went through while writing it. They're going to remember the final outcome. You never know what somebody’s going to hear.
They may wonder why the poet made a particular decision but that's kind of the point too; “I wonder why they put that in there? It doesn't really fit. Is that a decision being made?” As a poet, if you’re doing that, you’re already winning by making the reader think.
S: Yeah, and we do want to hear you talk about Zuhitsu also. I know it can take on a million forms, but when I saw yours with subheadings I realized I had never seen one done in this way. I'm wondering if you can talk about how you came about these particular Zuhitsus?
J: Well, I will say this: I don’t consider those parts of the book Zuhitsus, I consider them something called the wavy tape form that my dog JSTLKMVMT came up with. It’s the blend of a Zuhitsu and a poetic sequence. Although to focus on this specific form is to kind of miss the point, right? This kind of gets into the difference, in my mind, between poetics and poetry.
Poetry is what exists in front of us as a poem, right? But the poetics of the Zuhitsu is what's important to me. For me it’s the perfect form because it involves Eastern and Western philosophy. The issue is – because now that you're leaving space for everything including found texts – you are allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. To look at all of these found things and recognize that everything fits.
To me that's just perfect. It makes people think we might arrive at completely different conclusions and is the closest to real life. It doesn't adhere to a Platonic ideal of what it's supposed to be, as far as meter or count. Those things are cool I guess but are also bullshit. It's cool to work within them but that’s so I can identify them then break those rules. If I got to work within these rules then what am I?
The other day a dude was trying to tell me “hey, you know what the house rules are here?” and I thought of the ticket I was just telling you about and made a joke. I said, “man, I don't follow house rules. I do what I want and deal with the consequences later” (laughs). I feel like that’s what I want to do with poetry. I want to establish a form then break it.
When people read my poems it's not about the form but an essence of where they’re able to draw their own conclusions. You mentioned the development of my personal style with this wavy type form and I want to break that too. I'm just trying to make something where people can find themselves in, or find other people. To keep that questioning which holds space.
S: You keep returning to an emphasis on questions to keep a reader moving beyond the moment of reading the poem.
J: Where is the music, right? Somebody once told me that the poet Major Jackson focuses on this idea of the singular poet and the rules that’re working for his craft. For me that symbolizes an emphasis on the lyricist. Which is all good and important – I do focus on that and try to do it well – but I also think it's important to recognize the different angles of our craft. To recognize where the DJ might have been. Where the craft choices and the mixing of things around are.
That's why a lot of poems in my book are made out of remixes. I gave it to my man and said how do we make this work by having people ask more questions? I'm the lyricist and the one writing all this stuff down but I want people to look at it and say this is the work of many. I think it's important for folks to call attention to that rather than act as if we're these singular entities producing work. This is the point, you know?
So I think it's important to recognize where the DJ is. Looking at it from the perspective of using different samples to call attention and not to try and pretend it’s this perfect thing. Like “oh, look at how great this one poet is!” which is missing the point. I'm trying to present something that makes you ask questions.
It’s like when you hear a song and say “damn, that sample is hard!” There's a Joe Budden song that I can't remember the name of that samples the song Let’s Get Closer by Atlantic Starr [Justin singing], “closer, closer than most...” I heard the Button song first and was like “man, what is this song? I gotta get this!” So I went and got it.
Well we only got a few minutes left. If you guys have questions let's run them. But I'm also wondering if I can say something.
S: Yeah, of course.
J: You had asked who do I want to be held by my book American Inmate. So the other night as I was waiting for the phone in the day room the Grammys salute to 50 years of hip hop was on TV. At one point they did the international hip hop section and played Akon. It started off with the song “Locked Up” from back in the day, if you remember that, with Styles P.
There’s a bunch of people in the day room from different sets. Black, white, Latino dudes, Gangster Disciples, Crips, Bloods, all that. But as soon as Styles P came on and started rapping his verse about being locked up, everybody got up and started rapping. It was like a music video. We were kind of tripping off that because we felt it for our souls. If there's anything I want for the book, other than winning awards and a couple dollars, I want to represent for my dogs.
I want people to read this and think you can’t feel it until you've been through it, to understand a little bit more.
S: Thank you for sharing that. You spoke a little bit to that in talking about Reginald Dwayne Betts and Patrick and when you mentioned the feedback somebody gave you about the book. But I'm really glad you circled back around and shared that.
P: Justin, I just wanted to say thank you for taking time with us and sharing your work. I’ve enjoyed this a lot – I'm not just saying this because you're on the phone with us. Congratulations again on the collection.
A: Yeah, likewise. One of my favorite things is getting inside the brain of a poet and just hearing your voice and helping uplift that. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing all that you did.
J: Absolutely. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you guys.
All right, guys I have to get going. I gotta go get counted by the man so I'm gonna have to cut short this time – I have less than one minute remaining. I appreciate you guys’ time and I hope we run into each other one day and we can kick i
Saretta Morgan is the author of Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), and the chapbooks Feeling Upon Arrival (Ugly Duckling, 2018), and room for a counter interior (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2017).
Her work engages ecologies and forms of connectivity that develop alongside processes of U.S. militarization. Over the past decade she has participated in veteran-led organizing with Veterans for Peace (NYC) and About Face: Veterans Against the War, as well as the humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths Phoenix, which provides direct support to address the death and suffering of migrants in the Sonoran Desert. Additionally, she has been fortunate to participate in and learn from Indigenous-led water protection and food sovereignty work, Black-led community healing initiatives, and trans-led support for detained migrants. She believes in a Free Palestine as part of the broader inevitability of LAND BACK for Indigenous peoples across the earth.
Born in Appalachia and raised on military installations, she currently lives on Mvskoke lands in Atlanta, GA where she trains in capoeira and wild bird rehabilitation.
Ayling Zulema Dominguez is a poet, mixed media artist, and youth arts educator with roots in Puebla, México (Nahua) and República Dominicana. Grounded in a poetics of anticolonialism, their art and writing ask who we are at our most free, and explore the subversions and imaginings needed in order to arrive there. Their collages juxtapose images of the body with that of structural injustice to prompt critical interrogation of our current systems of punishment disguised as justice. Ancestral veneration, Indigenous Futurisms, and communing with the archive are major themes in Ayling’s writing. What can language do for our rebellions and resistance efforts? How can we use it to birth new worlds and weave our ancestors into the fabric of them? What to do with all this rage and sorrow and joy, all this inheritance? Ayling’s writing has recently been supported by Tin House, We Need Diverse Books, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Ayling continues to nurture creative expression among community by hosting free monthly writing workshops online, installing interactive public artworks, and hyping up fellow poets and artists at local open mic joints. Ultimately, they believe in poetry as a tool for liberation.
Patrick De León is a First Generation Mexican & Guatemalan multidisciplinary artist, writer & educator whose work explores familial lineage and queer identities within the confines of the self and societal pressures of expectations, desires, and shame. He has worked for youth and cultural institutions in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan area. He is working on his MFA in poetry at Arizona State University, where he serves as art and web editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review. He has received fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.