What are you working on?
My forthcoming book Armature searches for the beauty in day-to-day living, but it also touches on my ancestry and family conflict, so my current writing projects go there. My ancestors on both sides of my family owned slaves, so my poems speak to my unease, confusion, and disgust toward their accepted superiority, and how this idea of “being better than others” got passed down through the generations. When I reviewed J. Chester Johnson’s book Damaged Heritage for Big City Lit, I realized that my family’s damaged heritage basically reflected white supremacy, which most likely led to mental illness, arguments, and unhappiness my nuclear family suffered.
I discovered these ancestors while researching over 15 patriots that fought in the Revolutionary War, so the Daughters of the American Revolution could preserve their stories. Writing from historical documents is rich for poetry, but it takes me a while to figure out how to enliven people from past centuries. I discovered a slave named Cesar, who was owned by my patriot ancestors Abijah and Enoch Comstock in Connecticut. Books like Rita Dove’s Thomas and Beulah, Natasha Tretheway’s Monument, Descent by Lauren Russell, and The Anatomical Venus by Helen Ivory have given me examples of how to animate historical figures. I really don’t know how this collection will turn out, but my sense is that Cesar will be a guiding force on my father’s Connecticut side, and the slave owner, James Rollins, will anchor my mother’s Alabama side.
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