In reading KB Brookins’ poetry collection Freedom House from Deep Vellum Press, I found myself constantly whisked away to new worlds, where I was allowed to exist with every version of myself — the one that wants to break down, the one that wants to embrace anger and rage, the one that simply wants to exist against everything that challenges that existence.
Freedom House is a collection that permits its reader time to wrestle with the many emotions swelled and swirling inside themselves, but it also allows them to come out whole and hopeful for a world in which we are all free. From KB’s poetry, we learn all the ways in which we can build the home of freedom for ourselves and the people we love. We can build something to keep us going, even when the world around us wants our necks. They write, “I had the urge to write lived but my heart is beating present-tense.”
In our conversation, we speak about what it takes to build a world in which you are free, the intersection of non-binary transness and Black masculinity, and positioning hope in a world that sucks so much of it from us.
James O’Bannon: First off, I really wanted to say thank you for this collection. It’s beautiful, it’s intimate, it’s funny at times, and you have all of these emotions working alongside each other. I was so interested in the concept of building the house of the self and, while not monolithic, building a house of the Black experience. How did that concept come to you?
KB Brookins: Yeah, for sure! So, the concept of Freedom House came to me not really as in, I was seeking it out necessarily. I was leading a workshop with a group of community-based writers. All of us writers of color back in 2018, and it was one of my first workshops; and I was really at the time (and still am) interested in the overlap between poetry and social justice. I come from an organizing background. I did a lot of organizing in college, and post-college I was like, “what am I doing?” or, “how can I do both of these things at the same time?” moreso.
One of the things we had to do in this workshop was everybody had a turn leading it for different months; and it was my turn to lead it, and I asked, “Okay, if freedom was a house, what tools would we need to build it?” And also, “How could poetry be one of those tools?” And that seemed to really resonate and get some wheels turning for other people in the class.
Poetry to me is a verb. It comes from the term poiesis, which is “to make.” So, how do we make our poems be more than just words on the page, and how do we talk about our experiences in ways that reach the people we’re trying to reach in a way that’s useful to social movements? Because that resonated with other people I was like, “Dang, maybe I need to think about that more deeply,” and I just started writing about what freedom is to me. What does freedom mean in community with others, interpersonally? What does freedom mean on a systemic level? And really trying to write about those things, but also trying to be about those things.
I feel like this book is a lot me being like, “Okay, I have to undo a lot of my problematic tendencies and question the way I show up,” but I also have to self-define – because we live in a world so devoid of freedom – what freedom is and what freedom has felt like to me.
O’Bannon: I love that; it definitely feels like you are searching for ways to promote that freedom in these poems. I love the urgency of emotion here too, how you are embracing rage while also positioning hope. Could you talk about how you were able to see hope as tied to the concept of the “freedom house”?
Brookins: I feel like the freedom house can’t be built if you let yourself slip into apathy. And it’s super easy to get to that place of pessimism (and I understand why people get to that place) because so many people throughout history – Black history, LGBTQ+ history, transness right now – at all ends, or at least in the political space and within the cultural space, the opposition is so loud. So, I understand why people get that way, but Black people are a people that have been resilient over time, and we’ve been able to do that through humor and through – somehow – keeping hope. I really wanted that to shine through in this collection.
It could’ve been all “doom and gloom” because I wanted to be really honest about where we are and where I’ve been, but I also want to retain hope because despite how bad things get, I really do believe – and I’ve had to have ancestors that believe the same thing – I know that my circumstances and the circumstances of people I love can be better. And, in general, when something messed up happens in my life, I have to make a joke about it, or I have to be like “This is not new…”
There was a world in which people thought that slavery was always going to exist. There was a world in which people thought integration would never happen. There was a world in which people thought that being queer or trans publicly, in the streets, would always be met with antagonism. And those things have changed, despite all of the opposition wanting it not to be so; despite people in the present day wanting to bring those times back, it has changed. The representation has changed. So, I have to be like, “These things can change.” And I want that to come through in the book because the last thing I want to do is to feed into that apathy and feed into that pessimism.
O’Bannon: Almost like hope as a sense of survival.
Brookins: Yep!
O’Bannon: And that also speaks to the idea of Afrofuturism that is built in the book from the opening poem, “Black Life circa 2029,” that you are always pushing toward in the collection. What made you want to pursue the idea of Afrofuturism so overtly in this collection?
Brookins: I didn’t even know I was making a book until I wrote that first poem back in 2019. I thought “Black Life circa 2029, what realistically can happen in the next ten years?” And I even want to axe “realistically” from what I just said, because I have to be very boundaryless with my thinking in order for it to feel hopeful.
Sometimes we lock ourselves into what other people have told us is realistic, which makes us feel content with the way things are. But with that poem, I don't know, it really was just me trying to manifest. And on the heels of something negative happening – in 2019, I had this really negative interaction with a police officer, which wasn’t the first time that that happened, but it was the first time where I was like, “this feels very overtly about me being Black.” So, I could, right now, just be in that place of “What is everything?” Everyone always thinks it will never be them until it’s them. Right? So, with that poem, it was my first kind of waking up to consciousness of, “Oh, I could continue to talk about these themes because these themes are going to be things that are constant in my life.”
As long as I’m Black, I’m going to be in these situations, and as long as the people I love are Black and trans, we’re going to have to continue to grapple with these issues. So how can I continue to look forward? I think once you name something or say that it's possible, then all of a sudden, it becomes real. Right? So many years ago, it had to take someone really believing in the fact that the circumstances of slavery were going to change in order for them to change. And I think protest culture really is about manifesting. I was exposed to a lot of that in undergrad with the feeling of “we want our circumstances to change, and we believe that they're going to change, and we believe that they can change, therefore, we're going to come together, in order to show and compel other people to also believe what we believe for our future.”
O’Bannon: Yeah. Black folks have always seen themselves in the future, right? So, building a world in which you can hope to get to that future. I love that. I was also really interested in the aspects of rage and how you birth rage into the book in “Sonic Symbolism” as something physical? That last moment “the always-crowning & bloody birth / of rage.”
Brookins: Mm-hmm.
O’Bannon: How did you decide to position the – I don't want to say conflict, because the emotions are never conflicting in the book – but just that difference between wanting hope but also embracing the rage that comes with it?
Brookins: Right. I can’t actually hope unless I acknowledge that something is wrong. I can’t want a better future if I don’t even realize that the current future is bad. And that poem in particular is a very late addition to the book. This book was written somewhere between 2019 and 2021 – 90% of these poems. There were a couple of poems in the editing process last year where I was like, “Hmm, I feel like there needs to be some connective tissue added in.” That was one of those poems. And it was just me being like, “Okay, what do I think this section is doing? And “What do I feel like would be a good primer for that work?”
I think that this second section in the book is thinking a lot and really sitting in rage, and it may be possible that readers come across this section and are uncomfortable at times, or feel – indicted is not the right word, but I don’t know. There’s another poem that comes after, “Bare Minimum or To-Do List for White America,” and it’s like, “I’m just going to tell you exactly how I feel,” because way too often, poets and people of my experiences feel like they have to redact their emotions.
I do feel rage is a thing that has to be birthed, because we do so much course correction – or at least my experience has felt like at multiple times someone has done something anti-Black to me, someone has done something racist, homophobic, transphobic, and I feel, in that moment, I can’t react the way that I want to. Because, if you react in the workplace after someone has done you wrong X amount of way, you’re risking your job, right? If you react X amount of way, then X, Y, and Z can happen. But the poem in the book is a place where I can actually sit in those emotions, where I’m like, “Worst comes to worst, you don’t buy the book.” I don’t care. I’m just saying exactly how I feel in this moment, and unless you are just blessed to be around people that just get it all the time, it’s a thing that you really have to learn, because you have to unlearn listening to your emotions so often. That poem at least is me trying to say, I am – in this section of this book and in life – allowing myself to be mad about that which I should be mad about.
O’Bannon: Yeah! And there’s a poem even later in that section literally titled “I’m Not Writing Anything Else Where White People are the Assumed Audience.”
Brookins: Yeah.
O’Bannon: And I love how you talked about kind of getting to that point just allowing yourself to sit with that rage. I feel like that is something, especially newer writers, working in the same spaces, find it difficult to embrace.
Brookins: Mm-hmm. Right.
O’Bannon: Was there a mentor you had that really opened your eyes to seeing rage as a useful tool in your writing?
Brookins: Not a mentor per se, not something where we talk regularly. For this book, I do try to show my work. If I’m thinking about a particular poet when I’m writing a book or writing a poem, I quote them. During “Sonic Symbolism” I was listening to a Björk podcast. Also, one of my favorite poems by the poet Britney Rogers, “Pantoum for Postpartum.” And in that poem, she’s talking about, specifically, the experience of having postpartum depression, et cetera, but it felt so applicable to the kind of death and birth that I was thinking about. So, I try to pay homage to them, and I think that me encountering those artists in the way that they moved through grief and things that really helped me even be able to think about these things in this poem. So, in a way, they’re mentors, right?
There are other mentors that I named throughout moments in the book. Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead feels like a book that had to exist before I wrote this book, for instance. Their ability to really sit in rage and be daring enough to say things that I feel are almost unsaid – unthinkable thoughts, which is a lot of what I'm thinking about throughout different poems in this book as well. I feel like that book was kind of a north star for me and mentored me in order to be able to write this book.
Other people that I name in the book are Jericho Brown, when I’m talking especially about interpersonal freedom whether it be through sex, whether it be through the ways that we speak to each other. I think that books like The Tradition had to exist before this book, in order for me to be able to write it. I feel mentored by the people that I read and the people that I consume. I very much feel like a poet is just a distillation of the things that have happened to them and the things that they have been influenced by.
You know, of course I’ve had people that have along the way encouraged me to continue writing. Dr. Stacie McCormick, who’s one of my undergrad teachers; Alex Lemon, who was an intro to creative writing teacher in undergrad; Ms. Elaine Duran, my after-school Poetry Society teacher; Ms. B Williams, a seventh-grade English teacher. Those kinds of people that, through time, either exposed me to what poetry could do, or encouraged me to do my own kinds of writing or encouraged me to continue in moments where I really was like, “I could just quit and go do something else.” I have the writing that I’ve done. I have the reading that I've done. I have the podcasts and music that I’ve listened to that I think also have mentored me through the writing process for this book.
O’Bannon: I love that you talked about music too, because this book definitely feels album-esque; influenced by the composition of music and also the way that some of the artists that you mentioned have put their albums together. I also know in, How to Identify Yourself with a Wound you also have the Frank Ocean poem, “Self-Portrait as a Frank Ocean song about drugs,” and I was wondering if any musical influences seeped their way into the book?
Brookins: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely Frank Ocean. I riff off of this line that’s in a Frank Ocean song in the book, “ice Cold Baby, I told you I’m Ice Cold.” I just feel like Channel Orange in particular, I just think about it a lot. And it shows up in the last book as well as this book. In my last book I also quoted a song that is in Blonde. I think Frank Ocean is this very elusive character that does really interesting writing and I find music and poetry in their history to be very intertwined, right? Poems used to be sung way, way, way back, right? So, I'm always influenced by music, and I feel like before I encountered poetry, I was really enamored with music and continue to be in this book.
I was listening to a lot of Janelle Monáe at stretches of time where I was reading poems or writing this book. And even if it's not overtly mentioned, I was in that thought space of The ArchAndroid and Dirty Computer. So, even some of those motifs that she explores in those albums show up in this book – Electric Lady also. I'm just a fan of Janelle Monáe. I think she's cool. I made a playlist of things that I was listening to at the time that I wrote the book.
Also, I'm thinking about Saba. I was listening to some of his stuff during the time I was writing. So, a number of musicians where I'm like, okay, even if it’s not after [fill-in-the-blank musician], they definitely have remnants of stuff within the book. Whether it be like I'm trying to personify the voice or the confidence that they have in their voice, or even the way that I'm moving rhythmically through this poem may be reminiscent of something like a chorus and a Janelle Monáe song. And the way that Saba uses rhyme is really interesting to me.
Oh, and Noname, also who's my favorite rapper. And the way that she intertwines jokes and stuff into her music as well. I love that. I love an aside, right? I like when someone's telling a story and then they veer off of the story for a second. And I think she does that a lot in her raps. She raps the way that I think, and the way that people in my life have thought. Like, “Oh, I'm telling you a story about this thing, but now I'm going to tell you about what I was doing at A, B, or C, or the grocery store earlier,” et cetera. I love that stuff. Yeah, I do a bit of – I don't know – maybe people would call it rambling in some poems, but I want you to think and see everything that I'm thinking.
O’Bannon: I love the Noname mention, especially with the comedy. The humor in the book, especially in poems like “Fuck Me, Jeff Bezos” — somebody might read that title and be like, okay, I'm about to read a funny poem, right? But the poem itself is heart-wrenching. How you were able to still use that comedy even though you're writing from a place that has to wrestle with the heartbreak of these moments?
Brookins: Right. In a way it just comes naturally. You see a tragedy happen in the news or something, and then on Twitter people are making jokes. I remember when Roe v. Wade was overturned, on Twitter someone made some kind of joke that was like, “oh, is Loving v. Virginia going to come next,” and making all of these jokes. And this is a moment where people are feeling like the weight of the times and people are still finding ways to laugh, and I just love comedy as a form.
Because poetry and comedy are forms of storytelling, and at the end of the story or at some point throughout the story, you're going to laugh. The comedians that I'm most interested in explore social issues and super heavy stuff, but still manage to make you laugh. I'm thinking about Jerrod Carmichael; he had a special more recently called Rothaniel, and it was like a therapy session for real. Super heavy stuff and talking about Blackness and queerness, but still being able to – I want to say make light of it, but it's not really making light of it. It's just accepting it for what it is and finding the humor throughout the experience. And I mean, capitalism sucks. But if I can make this little funny poem about Jeff Bezos and get someone to be thinking about it, then I'm going to do that. It's almost a reeling-in kind of thing that I'm really interested in as a poet. Even in a way “Black Life circa 2029” starts kind of deceptively easy and then moves into a more serious space.
I like poetry that does that. I like comedians who can always manage to do that. I like music that even does that. Where, at the beginning, it feels like the hook is going this way and then the verse and then it distills into – almost chaos or something much more complex than you could have imagined it to be. I like the journey that music goes on. One of my favorite songs ever is the song called “Pills” by St. Vincent, because it just sounds so nursery rhymey based on the chorus. Then, by the end of it, you’ve been through a journey, you know? It feels almost like a car has crashed in the middle of this song, but you go on the journey because you're interested in where it goes. I want someone to feel that way when they read my poems. I want you to feel like you can laugh, but also be like, “Dang, that really hit me in a way,” or “I've learned something from this experience.”
O’Bannon: You can definitely feel that in the book. You can feel several acts of transformation. Which again, when we come back to Afrofuturism, the goal is to transform into something unkillable, something unending. Right? And I specifically see that in the “T-Shot poems” as well; positioning yourself as a Black trans person in America where you are target number one, while also seeking to transform and seeking to evolve into something undying. Can you speak on just a little bit, um, maybe how, how that process of layering those T-Shot poems came to you in the book?
Brookins: A number of these poems, I feel, just started as journal entries of me trying to chronicle the experience of transness. A lot of people do that through videos. So, you may see videos if you search the hashtag trends or something on YouTube or Twitter or various social media, and it'll be like, “Hey, this is me, this is my voice, one day on T.” And then, you see their transformation; the voice getting deeper, of them getting hairier. I just wanted to do something like that through words. So, I was like, “Ooh, how am I feeling with my first T-shot?” I'm feeling super excited, you know?
I'm also feeling the things that are maybe not as broadcast or those complexities that come with the experience. So, my transness comes with Blackness and the overarching kind of trans education, trans narrative is that of a white trans person, especially as it pertains to trans masculinity. I couldn't have really prepared for what it meant to be perceived by any various strangers as a Black girl versus a Black man and how different that experience is. I'm thinking a lot more about things like masculinity and how when I do have rage, it is received in a totally different way because of the stereotypes that people have in their heads about Black men and them being aggressive. It is also a complication of the fact that I don't actually identify as either of those things. So, I'm having to deal with the fact that regardless of what I do on a trans level, some people are just not going to get it. So, I was exploring all of the emotions that came up.
I think it's one through ten or something like that in the book, or it's a different number, but whatever. I was just trying to chronicle or extract different journal entries that I was having. I can't change who I am even with this outside medical intervention. So, what happens for me next, and also, I'm now having access to conversations that I didn't used to have access to. It's really confirming everything that I thought I knew about misogyny, where I'm like, “oh, people definitely feel more comfortable saying things around me.” Men in particular feel more comfortable saying things around me that they wouldn't have said around me X amount of months prior. What does that mean? And also thinking a lot about how I've shown up in the world pre-transition and now post, and even how I show up as an ally to women and femmes, how that changes. So, there's a lot of thoughts, you know, that happened throughout the transitioning process.
I feel like that is a kind of freedom, I think that my transition on a social and medical kind of standpoint – because I talk about both of those things – I think the T-shot series is more talking about the medical part of it, but I also talk about, the social implications of transitioning and family and changing your name, et cetera. But with that series in particular, I'm really just trying to expose all of the things that happened to a person – especially a Black, trans-masculine person as they transition. Because you have to think a lot more about what masculinity is for you. You have to think about how your Blackness now comes with “manness” in a way that it did not used to. It's just those blissful moments – and I do talk about those blissful moments. I will talk about how I've even been able to go through this process with friends and how that's changed our friendship, I believe, for the better.
I’m just trying to bring in all of the experiences and trying to be as reflective as possible of my experience in hopes that somebody else can see that experience reflected in a way that they wouldn't otherwise see it. Because of mass media representation of trans people being so skewed to whiteness, I’m trying to get other people who have experiences of Black manhood, Black masculinity to think more about how they show up in the world as well.
O’Bannon: It's also working with the concept of the “Freedom House” too, right? That evolution towards the eventual hope of “free.” I love how that moves within the book as well; especially in “T-Shot #7.” I was heartbroken when I read that poem, with the thought of the trauma of rape and assault that you have experienced, versus how you're now considering other folks seeing you as masculine when all in truth, it's not that for someone who's non-binary, right, or working outside of the social gender binary. And that poem is positioned in the middle of the book, where it feels that there is a lot of growth that is happening – even just in that poem itself. Can you talk about the ordering process of that particular poem and maybe some of the other T-Shot poems as well?
Brookins: Yeah, yeah. Ordering poetry. Ordering is so weird. Ordering the book in general, I feel like this book in particular probably was ordered ten different times before we landed on what is currently the ordering. That poem in particular – I knew whatever section it went in, I wanted it to be at the end or close to the end because it felt like no matter what arc I am creating in any given section, I definitely want there to be an ending that acknowledges my failures – the failures of the systems that we live in, the failures of gender in general. I wanted to make sure that – and I put it close to the beginning because I don't want to create a book where I'm the victim. I am not, I am very much not just a perfect person and I want that to be clear earlier in the book is what I was kind of thinking. I was wanting the complexities that I'm feeling around gender. That kind of came a bit at the midpoint. That poem is kind of like the midpoint in that series, or at least close to it. Maybe closer to the end, but still very much middle with where I am with transitioning. I feel at the midpoint of where I am now, of course it's a lifelong process.
I started to think more deeply about these particular things that happen because of this Blackness mixed with girlhood and these particular things that are happening now because of Blackness mixed with manhood. And how do I define myself and define my experiences due to this socialization of gender and how do I move forward really? And by the end of that series, I am talking about moving forward – but how do I even continue to move forward now? I have to think more about what I asked for from people and what I expect from others around me.
I think that, you know, the best way that I can show up for women and femmes in my life is by saying, I know if I don't say anything when I'm in conversations that you will never have access to or won't have access to at the moment because we still are very much living in a patriarchal masculine society – well I need to say something because I know how it felt when others didn't say something. And then people continue to act on what they think and what they thought they had access to and what they thought was their right. So, that particular poem, I was just like, yeah, I want to put it maybe around the midpoint. Because I feel like this is kind of the midpoint of my narrative.
And with the other T-Shot poems, they’re kind of interspersed. I wanted to fit into whatever arc the narrative is; creating the first section, I was thinking of the book in a very beginning, middle end kind of thing. And then it was suggested to me, “Hmm, maybe you need four sections instead of three,” and I said, “All right, I'm going to revisit this and think more about it.” Then I said, “What if there was a beginning, middle end in every section versus throughout the whole book?” I think it's the comfortable thing to do to try to show that this is where I was at the beginning, this is where I am now, but I'm not writing a novel. I don't have to do that, right? So, then let me think more about these many narratives that I want to place throughout the book.
I was thinking at one point, oh, maybe all of the poems that are about the same thing need to be next to each other, and that does happen in individual sections, but that's not necessarily the knowledge of every section. All the T-Shot poems could have been in their own section, right? I kind of instead said, “No, I feel like they fit into each individual narrative in their own way,” and I wanted them to be more spread out so people can be exposed to that narrative in spurts versus all at the same time. So, maybe someone on Goodreads would say, “this was terrible,” but right now, this is what I was wanting for this book; for it to have almost four individual things that are all still very much connected.
O’Bannon: That's beautiful and feels very true to how the book works; especially in, in those last two sections, in which there's a move almost towards self-acceptance; or, at least, acceptance of the new self. With all the evolution and transformation that's happened while also accepting all the rage, all the joy, all of those other moments that come in the beginning of the book as well. And, then there's this stellar move towards a physical and active looking for this new world, especially in poems like “Traveling to a New Star,” “T-Shot #8,” and “ManifestManifestManifest,” as you mentioned and I wondered if you consciously had to get to that point of self-acceptance before you – actually in the book – started actively reaching for that new world.
Brookins: Yeah, absolutely. I think the book starts with a kind of “well, I hope this happens,” and ends with more a, “I know this will happen.” I feel like manifestation is – so many times in my life I thought my world was ending, and then now, in the present day, I'm able to say things like “what is for me is going to be for me.” Because I had to say, okay, I have to think more about gender. I have to think more about Blackness. I have to think more about all of these other things that culminate into that last section, and, in a way, I feel that the last section is saying that I'm still thinking through some things.
Nothing is perfect, right? But I now can be at this place because I have a definition of what freedom means to me personally; a definition of what freedom has meant to me and my friends and X, Y, and Z. Because, I was almost worried like, oh man, am I being too quiet in this last part? But no, I think there's a kind of peace that comes along with figuring out the things that had to be figured out earlier to get to that place. And those poems have their own complications, and those poems have their own things that still need to be worked out, that are not up to me, that are up to the world to figure out.
I just wanted to end with joy. I wanted to end with something that's like, I'm saying it, therefore it can happen because I did that earlier. Now I'm doing it, I guess, more overtly. So, that's kind of what I was thinking through in those poems.
O’Bannon: It's the move from the global to the personal back to the global; using everything you've been through to create the world that you want to see, right? I love how you end on that refrain, that repetition of “And live” because that's the goal. That's what all Black folks are kind of looking towards. I think that works beautifully within the book. And it's a poem that does leave you in a place of joy and it does leave you in a place where you say, “Wow, we can actually get here. Thank you for that.
Are you working on any future projects at the moment?
Brookins: Presently, I'm in the world of this book and trying to make sure this book gets to the people that it needs to get to. So, the more immediate future is going on tour. I'll be in some places in April and May and then in June and July and then August and September. I'll be very involved in going to whatever city that wants to have me and every bookstore and university and boxing ring. I'll read poems anywhere. As long as they're hitting the people getting to the people that they need to get to.
I feel like this is a kind of “got it out the mud” kind of book because that's kind of the person that I am. So, I'm like, I'll go anywhere it needs to be. I've read poems just randomly on the street before, I'll do it again. You know? So, that's the more immediate future of me going on tour. Come see me if I'm ever in your city to anybody reading this. I'll also have some virtual components because we're still in a pandemic, right? So, there’ll be workshops, readings, and things that I'll do virtually as well.
I also have a memoir coming out next year with Knopf on Black trans masculinity. So, if someone likes some of the themes that I explore in this book, it'll be more like prose or, I would call it hybrid prose. A little weird prose in a memoir next year. I can't say too, too much about that, but it is coming out next year and I'll post about it on the socials. Freedom House is going to be turned into an exhibit that'll be at a museum in Austin, Texas. So that'll happen next year from March to April, but it's actually creating the rooms that I talk about in the book. So, I'm really excited about that. What else do I got going on? I don't know. I'm just trying to survive.
O’Bannon: Everything!
Brookins: Right! Be here and be a person.
O’Bannon: Lastly, do you have any advice for writers working in some of the same spaces, and doing similar work as you?
Brookins: I mean, just manifest the future that you want. Whatever that is, on the page or the stage or in the world. Because there have been so many people throughout this poet thing. This is my first full-length poetry book, but I've been writing poems on and off since I was fifteen. I'm twenty-seven now, so it's been a long road coming to get to the point where I am, and there's this idea that you just “blow up” overnight, but no. For some of us, it's very much a slow burn. And especially for some of us who are underrepresented in literature on a lot of fronts, Black lit, trans lit, and literature from people from the South, people historically have not checked for that.
And I'm all of those things, and I've been able to do what I've done because I've put in the work on the page. I've also had so many people along the way that have encouraged me, that have said, “please get a library card,” “we can go to the library together and check some stuff out.” I've also had community spaces like the one where I first did a Freedom House workshop and that spurred the idea of me writing a book. I've had so many people along the way and organizations that have supported me. So, the best advice I can say is to continue to write, read vigorously, connect with people who get it, and do the writing and reading and living thing with those people. Because nobody is self-made, that's a lie. Those people have a team of people behind them no matter what music and, and rap is saying, nobody is self-made.
Also just continue to believe in yourself because poetry is also just a field of rejections. Sometimes there have been years because I've been continuously submitting stuff probably since 2019 – I did it a whole lot in 2019. In 2020, I was like, please leave me alone – and again in 2021 and in 2022. Those have been my most consistent years with submissions. But man, 2019 was just a whole bunch of rejections, you know? And I had to get an email from Submittable and be like, “all right, I'm good.” I can't take this personally.
The work of writing is very subjective in nature and sometimes people won't see it for you in 2019, but they'll see it for you in 2023, which is literally what I'm seeing now. Luckily, along the way I was able to get my feet wet with people who were making spaces for me, who got what I was trying to do. So, maybe your first poem won't hit the New Yorker or something, but it'll be in Shade Literary Arts, which is literally for queer people of color, right? It'll be in, you know, Homology Lit, which is for queer and trans people, Foglifter. Find the people who get it. That's really important, and don't define yourself by what your submittable looks like. Keep doing your thing and eventually, you'll get along with people who get it and then all of a sudden others will get it who didn't get it earlier.
KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They authored the chapbook How to Identify Yourself with a Wound, winner of the Saguaro Poetry Prize and American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in Literature. KB’s writing is published in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, HuffPost, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Their honors include a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, PEN America’s Emerging Voices fellowship, and a Lambda Literary fellowship among others. KB has two full-length books – Freedom House (Deep Vellum, 2023) and Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf, forthcoming 2024). Follow them on Twitter and Instagram.
James O’Bannon (He/Him) is a Black writer, born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He holds a BA in English from Northern Kentucky University, an MFA in poetry from Fresno State, and is a Tin House Winter Workshop alumnus. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Waxwing, Mid-American Review, Triquarterly, and elsewhere. His work argues with itself about grief and the ways we sit with it.
Author Photo: Diana Driver