The Intro

Kirwyn Sutherland: This is the first installment of the Text Back interview series and I wanted to start with interviewing me. I felt like the best person to interview me was somebody besides my family who knew me the best and that's Harold Fields, or Dr. Harold Fields. We've known each other since high school (ninth grade), which is like years and years and years and years. So, I'm glad that you could take the time to do this on your day off.

Dr. Harold Fields: No problem.

Sutherland: And I'm working, I'm technically working to get this done so… (laughter) [but] it’s a great occasion. So how we are going to do this, and how I want to do these interviews in the future, [is to have] informal conversation about writing practice, our sources of how we came to be writers and influences, current, past, all those things. I didn't know if you had any introductory remarks you wanted to say before we dig into it?

Fields: I think given the intro you just provided, it sets us up to jump right in. Because when I think about our origin story, clearly I think about the the best public magnet school in the city of Philadelphia, George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science.

Sutherland: Absolutely!

Fields: And us meeting back in ninth grade in biology class with Miss Brooks and how everybody was eager to pick teams for basketball during gym.

Sutherland: Absolutely, absolutely!

Fields: But, as much as I think about biology, I also think about senior year and wrapping up in AP English with Ms. Aguilera. And even before you or I could have recognized how our relationship would grow or where life would take us. The sciences and literature were central to our origin and coming together. And then we were fortunate enough to take our friendship to Clarion [University], where it grew and blossomed into something that I don't think either of us expected.

Sutherland: For sure.

Fields: But as we sit down and talk about your journey as a writer, and as you exercise and strengthen your craft and share with others, when you think back to high school in those early days, was there a specific moment or a feeling that may have accumulated along the way that told you writing wasn't just something that you did, but a part of who you are?

Sutherland: I mean, we were attending an engineering and science school, so I think at first, the focus was biology, all the sciences. But, I found myself really gravitating towards English, foreign languages. And I think at the time, I didn't really take it as something that I was going to have a career in. It just was like these are subjects that I do good in. And it came easy to me when it came to those subjects. Whereas science, I really, really had to work hard at it and become better at it. It didn't come as natural. So I think it started with Ms. Aguilera and just doing good in her classes. And then as we got to 11th and 12th grade [and I was] lingering behind [after class] and in class asking her more things about the work. And then actually helping her pick the AP class. I was there because I had her for English 3 Star, which is essentially like English 3 Honors. And we were talking about AP English and she was asking me who do I think would be good? And so I was telling her who I thought would be good for this AP English class. We always had this running joke when we would talk after AP English. [She would say] “Kirwyn, you picked this class! So whatever happens is, you know [your fault]”. So I think from reading the books, from doing the writings, from how rigorous her classes were, it really kind of opened me up to English as something that [has] more to explore, [instead of it just being] a regular class. And then when we got to college, I felt like I was aware already that that gate was open, and I just needed something to ignite it.

Fields: Absolutely. And that is a great segue to thinking a little bit about that journey to Clarion [University], that transition from, you know, this is something that you're doing well in and exploring more in high school…Clarion is different than Philly, and as you mentioned at the the end of a book we're going to talk about a little bit later, very different than Germantown. What was the environment like that drew you to write seriously at Clarion of all places? There are so many different directions you could have gone but you threw yourself into writing there.

Sutherland: So I think it was great to have [you] there, Josh, my step brother, was there … people I already knew [were] there, but I think the university was definitely an insulator, and so it was a good amount of Black folks in the University, especially in our residence hall… A lot. But when you go outside of town, it definitely was not like that, you know.

Fields: Not at all.

Sutherland: It was totally, totally different. It was like if you saw one black person in the town on Main Street, it was like whoa. I remember one of the first times I went for a walk around the football stadium, there was a car coming up, and then a little kid just yelled out "nigger,” and I had like several emotions. I think surprise, shock. I think anger was the first one. And we knew racism existed, you know. But I think in Philadelphia, we have our specific enclaves, our neighborhoods that we stay in. So it's like we're largely insulated from that type of thing. So I think that was really the first time that I really was faced with that. And then I think around the same time, or maybe like some time after, I was introduced to spoken word through Def Poetry Jam. And I think those confluence of things like seeing how dealing with things like race could be transformed into something else other than me being angry at everything. And I did go through a period of just being really angry at a lot of different things because of that one incident.

Fields: Absolutely. Absolutely. Given that, who do you think you were writing for at Clarion? Were you writing for yourself? Were you writing for a different audience? Did you not know then? Is the answer different now than maybe it would have been if I'd asked this question as we start[ed]our second year and you were getting into spoken word more?

Sutherland: That's a good question. At that time, I feel like I was writing for people who experience racism greater than I did. And at that point the posture was I'm going to write these poems to like get it out of me, and it was like a connection with ancestors in a lot of ways. It was weird because when I performed, it was mostly in front of white people. And their reactions were kind of like congratulatory, which is also a weird thing [because you are] saying these poems about racism and they're like congratulating you for doing them. But it I think I was writing for who I felt like was the aggrieved racist party, and at that time I felt like it was me, but more so folks who came before me. So a lot of my poems were historically based, like the one that was hanging up in the English hall. [It was called] Strange Fruit. That hearkens back to the poem that was originally written by Lewis Allan, but then you know Billie Holiday sang the version that we all know. So that that was one of the poems that I first had published. And so I feel like the first poems were really, really like historically-based, and [they reached] back to that that time.

Fields: After Clarion, [you came] back home. As we've already established, Philly and Clarion are polar opposites in so many ways, and there's a particular energy in the poetry community in Philly and a legacy. How did you first step into it, and what did it feel like to be a newcomer trying to find your place?

Sutherland: Yeah, when I finally graduated in 2009, it was probably about two to three years before I got on the [poetry] scene. I think I was afraid because of what I just said about performing in front of all white people. I was afraid, like did [my poems] work specifically because [the audience] was white people, like was there something in my voice that curry favor with them and then would not curry favor with Black folks. I really went through that whole thing, and it took me about two or three years to actually do a poem in Philly. And so, when I did, it was actually my across-the-street-neighbor who I grew up with…she was going to open mics, and she told me about this open mic in Germantown that was close to where I lived. One day, I just decided to go. I was like, "All right, let me just go, let me see how it is, and then let me perform”. And so, I just performed a poem. I can't remember the poem I performed. I think it was a poem about me growing up in Philly and being on my specific block. I think it was one of those poems, and the response was crazy. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to be embraced as much as I was. And after that, the host was like, "do you want to do a spotlight?”. Well, I didn't know what none of this was. I [was] like, “I guess so,” and he was like, "you just do a couple poems,” and then I was like, "all right, cool”. So I went back the next week. I did a spotlight, and then he was like, “you want to do a feature?” and I was like, "Okay”. So then that kind of started my path. But at first, I just was very hesitant because I didn't know if my voice would fit in Philly. And I think because Clarion is so monoracial, I think something happens in the brain where if you spend more time in that place than you do in this place, it's like you kind of forget what your fabric and your DNA is from. You know what I mean?

Fields: Absolutely. So, given that first open mic experience, and then coming back to the spotlight and the feature, did any of those moments feel like the first time you'd arrived — maybe not as a finished poet, but as someone who belonged in the poetry scene, someone who belonged on the stage and [who was] contributing to other people's experiences?

Sutherland: I feel like there are different moments, and so I feel like when I had the feature, I decided to do a book, a small book with the feature. So I did self-publish this small book. I think it was just called X. So I published this small chapbook called X …

Fields:X: The Mixtape!

Sutherland:X: The Mixtape, yes! X: The Mixtape! And I sold it, and I decided to make all the proceeds go to a scholarship that was in my mom's name. [At the time, I was working with an organization that was founded by Kanisha Forbes, [who I went to high school with]. It was her organization. And so when they gave the scholarship to a student, I feel like that was one of the moments when I arrived. This art that I was doing could go out into these other worlds and affect some kind of change. I think that was one of the points where I was like, oh, I'm doing these poems in this specific room, but these poems can [have] affect outside of this room too. And so I think I've had separate moments where [felt like] I arrived at different places, and and I've been like, oh wow, this is [beyond] what I ever thought would happen. But I think that was the first one.

Fields: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. What did the Philly poetry scene teach you that the classroom and Clarion couldn't, and what did it demand of you?

Sutherland: Yeah, that's a good question. I think the classroom and Clarion [were] challenging because I always felt like I was doing it for my race and doing it for the people that weren't here, like my my family. I was doing it just for more people than myself. And being a molecular biology major, especially when we got to upper classes, it was like me and maybe one other black person, and so that was always in the back of my head. It was always in the back of my head while doing doing the work. I was also battling myself and like the forces around me that were kind of latently and not so latently racist and that was a particular kind of thing to overcome. The Philly poetry scene has evolved, obviously, over the years. But when I first stepped into it, it was almost like Philly itself… like different neighborhoods, you know. So you have your open mics, which I first started out in. You have your readings, which are mostly white, and then you have your slams, which is kind of like a mixture of both when it comes to audience, so I just started out doing open mics and then did slams and then did readings. You know the readings, which are largely mediated by another one of our Philly folks, Warren C. Longmire, who went to[high school] with us. But I was navigating these different worlds, and in some ways, some of the lessons I learned from navigating the classroom helped, like with readings. And in some ways [it was] not really a hindrance, but it I did have to check myself when it came to how I was operating, especially with this exceptionalism thing, which rears its head when you strive to be the only person [in the room]. When you're the only person in the room, sometimes that can be something that you strive for, and I had to undo that mentality. [Now] when I go to readings, I want to invite everybody from all the other places that I'm in. If I go to a reading, I want to invite folks to the open mic, not try to be the one person there. And so I think I had to undo some things to navigate the Philly poetry scene and have it be as fruitful as I wanted.

Fields: That's an interesting observation that you intentionally wanted to bring people in, and I wonder how you think your experiences impacted those decisions to bring people in, but also your decisions to give back in the poetry community, both as an adjunct instructor, as a mentor, as a coach for other poets, as a judge for poetry competitions. Are all those things related? Because there's a giving of time and a selflessness that comes with supporting other people's art and not just working on your own.

Sutherland: Right. And I think it is probably from that initial thing of pulling back from history and understanding that when I sit down to write, I'm channeling a lot of things, not just myself. I always say [that] being a vessel is very important to me, which means that I’m taking messages from a lot of different places, and so to me, the poetry is coming from me, but it never was a singular art form. Because [poetry is] so collaborative, I am happy when I see a poet that I feel like whoa, like the talent is out of this world. And maybe they're not on a poetry scene. Maybe they're not doing open mics. Or they just need this little push to be able to unlock something else. Maybe the writer that I expose them to could unlock something else in them. So I think that's always a primary driver for me when it comes to the the poetry scene in general, and I felt like when I came on, there were some folks that did that for me. It's funny because I won't mention names, but when I first got into the lab at Clarion, there were two heads of the lab. There was a man and a woman, and the woman was everything. I will mention her name: Kristen Kaylee. Everything that she did. She would be like, “hey, do you want me to show you how to do this, that or the other?”. It was very much like I was just getting started out in the lab, trying to learn how to do cell culture, trying to learn how to mix media, all these different things. And everywhere I turned, she was always helping me. And then there was somebody else who just was like, I'm just doing my thing. So I think I learned that there's these two different styles that you could adopt when you get to a certain stature in the scene. You can either just be for yourself, and or you can actually reach back. And so I think I made that a point when I got to a point where people would listen that I would be like what does a workshop look like? Like, how can we do a workshop for Black poets? Or like [University of the Arts] reached out and asked me to do this spoken word class, and at first I was kind of like challenged by it because it [was] my first university position. [I ended up] teaching students from all backgrounds, from music business to illustration, and seeing how they brought their backgrounds into poetry was amazing. So I think I also get so much from the other poets who I work with. It's definitely an exchange.

Fields: Absolutely, absolutely. When you think about the poets and poems that have influenced and changed you, which ones have genuinely altered what you thought the ceiling for poetry could be, or what poetry could do?

Sutherland: I'll say the very first one was from Def Poetry Jam, which was muMs — you know, Craig ‘muMs’ Grant, muMs the Schemer. Arnold from Oz. He was one of those poets when he performed, it was almost like he was opening up a new dimension through his movement. I'd never seen that before, where somebody was climbing inside the poem. It wasn't like I have this poem and I'm reciting it, and then I'm doing movement to it. It was like they actually embodied the poem, and then their movements took on the movements of the poem. That was the first time I had seen somebody do that so vividly. So I think that was the first time where I [realized] there's this other dimension to not just learning the poem, but being inside it, and you know communicating to the audience what it means to be inside the poem. And so I think I always strive for that when I'm performing, and you know, I'm getting there. I’m not quite there, but I'm getting there. So I think that was the first person. The second person was Yusef Komunyakaa, and it was his images and his metaphors that kind of taught me I could bring together anything and have it make sense. I think before, it was like when you sit down and you write a line, you're trying to make sense of what the idea is in your head, but I think sometimes we can limit ourselves when it comes to how [to] make sense. And I think Komunyakaa's writing — specifically his book Dien Cai Dau which was a book about his time in Vietnam as a Vietnam War veteran — that really opened me up to [how] I could bring any type of image together to make something wholly new. I think those are like the two bookends that really opened my mind to what I could do with poetry.

Fields: Is there a poet whose influence you've had to consciously work against in order to make sure you're staying true to your own voice and not that influence? And if so, how do you navigate that?

Sutherland: That's a really good question. I think I would say it's not so much a poet, but a industry that I have to work against. Because when you start in spoken word, and you're in slam, and people say you should publish your poems, there's a way that people think you have to translate your poems from the stage to publishing to make them palatable. I remember watching the documentary Slam Nation.Slam Nation was a documentary with Saul Williams, muMs is in it, Jessica Care Moore, a lot of these poets that a lot of us slammers and open mic-ers look up to. And there was this specific scene with Jessica Care Moore about how she was trying to get her poetry published, and the publisher was saying [that] slam is this specific thing, and it is not really for publishing. And so there's a way that you're almost encouraged to form your poems in these classical forms, like the sonnet or the villanelle and all these different forms. And so when I sit down to write, sometimes I would think maybe it shouldn’t be so wild, or maybe I have to lean more linearly. That is the biggest fight for me, [that being] the making sense part. I remember I sent my poems to a writer, Joel Diaz Porter, who's my press-mate on Thread Makes Blanket Press, and I asked him about the sense making, and he was like, “never write to the lowest common denominator. Don't worry about making sense and don't change your poetry to make it make sense to whatever audience you think it's trying to reach”. That really freed me up to not worrying about [my poems needing] to be in this specific form for [them] to live in different spaces. But that's an inclination that I have to constantly check myself on because [usually] when you see published poems, they are in certain formats, they lean towards the academic, which is more form-heavy. I have to beat against that all the time.

Fields: Yeah, absolutely. That is a great transition. Brings us to this work right here. Tell me, how did Jump Ship come to be? And was there a moment that you knew you had a manuscript, a coherent collection, and not just a bunch of poems?

Sutherland: I'll try to condense this long, long story. I wasn't thinking about a book after the chapbook I came out with, X: The Mixtape, and then X: The Mixtape remaster. I was just writing, and a publisher came to me, Marissa Johnson Valenzuela from Thread Makes Blanket Press, and asked if I had poems for a book to be published. At the time, I didn't. I wasn't thinking about a book, so I was like I think I can bring together some poems and see how it goes. So I did. I put together some poems that I thought could work together for a book, and that process probably started in 2016 or 2017. That same year, I was able to get a couple of editors — Andrea Walls and Hanif Abdurraqib who I still work with in various capacities — and they gave me some great feedback. There were probably 27 poems in that first iteration. I may have kept half or a little less for the actual book, and then I wrote around those poems that were left. So probably by late 2017, I had what I thought was a manuscript. But you know, there's obviously the cover. There's obviously the copy. There's so many steps to publishing, which I've learned. And the cover took me a long time because I had covers made [and] I didn't like them and I had to rework the cover. The cover came about [when] I was just talking in Uncle Bobby's [Bookstore] to Femi, who's the cover designer, and I was like, “listen, I don't have a cover,” and he was like, “well, you know, I could do the cover,” and I was like, "for real?”. He was like, "yeah, I can do the cover and you know some images if you want,” and I was like, "Oh wow!”. I wasn't thinking about asking him, but when he said it, it made sense because our collaboration was mostly “I love your work, I love your work,” all the time, and then talking about our work intently. That collaboration just made sense. So once that came together, things sort of progressed, and finally by 2019, we had a product that we thought was good to put out. We had the standing room only book release at the Paul Robeson House and another release at the African American Museum [in Philadelphia], which also was great, and I sold a lot of books. Then, the pandemic happened. I didn't get to do all the touring that I wanted to do, but having that book out there was really good.

Fields: I think some of your previous responses show up in the physical products, as you talked about fighting the form and thinking about muMs’ influence on embodying the poem, and [making] decisions about different formats and styles in this work, and also even how you put the words on the page and interspersed the images that are not necessarily textbook. And so I think it's definitely an authentic representation of the things that you say are important to you as an artist, which is commendable. Is there a poem in that collection that surprised you? One that arrived differently than the others, or maybe one that you've almost left out that you've gotten positive feedback from folks about since the book's release?

Sutherland: I think I would probably say the last poem in the book. That came very very late, and it was one where I was really, really reckoning with my time at Clarion, and just how to approach my voice. [I was thinking about] the factors that came together to produce where [I was] at. That took me the book to write it. That took me the rest of the poems to write that poem. When people ask me about the book, I always say it's more like an experiment than a book, and I say that because [the experience of writing it was] like trying to find a specific voice through all of these different poems or experiments. And I feel like the last poem was a landing spot. I used a quote from Saidiya Hartman because her book Scenes of Subjection was probably what kind of moved my poems to a more grounded reality when it came to talking about race. I felt like when I read her words, it changed my poetry to think more about the everyday sort of struggles that we go through as Black folks more so than the headlines. You know what I mean? So I think that poem was definitely thinking about how to ground myself into some sort of reality where I talk about Black folks in a very mundane way, and just try to get at the regular more so than ambulance-chasing.

Fields: Absolutely. So given that the Pandemic disrupted some of the plans that you had for how you wanted to fully introduce this work to the world, as you look at the collection now, post-pandemic — we are well removed from that time and that space — what do you see when you look at Jump Ship now that you couldn't see then?

Sutherland: I think it it went through stages. I think in the beginning, I was just happy to have a book out. Because of how long it had been that I was working on it within the pandemic and a couple years after, I grew kind of frustrated with it because of how close some of the poems flew to the pain of being within the frame of the Black Lives Matter movement. At the time, in 2020, 2021, a lot of those poems [were] about police brutality, political violence, and so for a time I think I rebuked it. I didn't want to do poems from it because it just was a reminder of everything that was happening. Now, I kind of look at it [as] something I always want to stay with me. [Now], I'll do a couple of poems from that book. I look at it not [as] an artifact, but just [as] a reminder of a place and time, just a reminder of where I was. And I think I'm satisfied with that because I think that's what I wanted it to do. I definitely wanted to document where my mind was, and that's all I could really ask for a book, because these things are never finished. There [are] some poems in that book that I perform differently. The words are different now when I perform them, but I love that I can go back and see that point in time that could be captured in one collection.

Fields: We are wrapping up, and so the the last section is really about this conversation, this conversation series, and as you think about some of your influences and projects like Callaloo, what do you think an interview can do that a critique or the poem itself cannot?

Sutherland: That's a really good question. Well, I wanted to begin an interview series because of Charles H. Rowe, who started Callaloo — a journal for Black poets, poets from the diaspora. I think what I saw in those interviews were just an expansive conversation, a conversation that went between what were you like as a child to what is this poem doing … [the interviews were] almost like a biography/autobiography as he was speaking with Fred Moten, Michael S. Harper, all these different poets who I really loved. That gave me a new appreciation for their work. And Rowe also would talk about how poetry is in the world, and when I say that, I mean how do [writers] see poetry now? And so that was also like a gateway to understanding because some of [the writers were] like “I see the spoken word poets going, and I really love that”. And so that that gives me like wow, like these poets who I admire see what the next generation is doing and they appreciate it. So it's also a forward-looking thing, and I feel like the interview is just more personal, and you can really really get down to the nitty gritty of why somebody writes the way they do. I think that's what I want to do is to really understand what makes somebody tick so that readers or [viewers] of the interview can then understand their work better and communicate their work better. [I feel like] I know a lot of poets, and I get genuinely excited when I talk to other poets about their work. So I [think] this is a great way to talk to other poets about their work and share that with everybody. That's … the genesis of the series.

Fields: Well, I hope that this conversation checks all the boxes and kicks this series off on the right foot as you engage in these conversations with your poet colleagues, friends, mentors, mentees, and other folks that you look up to and continue to want to be in community with.

Sutherland: No, 100% And again, thank you for doing this. I wanted [this interview to feel like] a baseline of what [listeners and viewers] can expect, and to [feel like] two friends talking, so thank you again for doing that.

Fields: No problem. Honored to do it.

Sutherland: Appreciate it.