Quraysh Ali Lansana on Gwendolyn Brooks: The Interview
Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of over twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. Read his full bio here. On Wednesday, November 20th, Lansana will present “A Deep & Human Look: Annie Allen at 75″ at the South Dallas Cultural Center, featuring a presentation on the content and context of the work–the first collection of poetry by a Black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, followed by selected readings from the text. RSVP to attend
The Writer’s Garret: How did you first discover Gwendolyn Brooks’ writing? What drew you to it and studying with her?
Lansana: I was first introduced to Miss Brooks’ work in eighth grade at Longfellow Junior High School in Enid, OK in 1977. At that time I was deeply immersed in Frank Herbert’s Dune book series, Beowulf and a then fairly new form of poetry called Rap. Like many of us, “We Real Cool” was my entry to her work. The musicality of the poem, the lineation, and the message of the poem really resonated with me. I was by no means a cool kid at school, but was surrounded by young men who were, or at least thought they were. The close of the poem spoke to me, as a naive, AME church raised teen, that being cool could lead to bad outcomes. I grew up surrounded by many men who upheld that narrative.
I returned to Miss Brooks’ work in a serious manner in 1988, four years after I started writing poetry as an undergraduate journalism student at the University of Oklahoma, and a few months prior to moving to Chicago. I wanted to live in a city that possessed a significant history of Black literature, an infrastructure for poetry and the arts, and a place where folks who looked like me were engaged in all aspects of civic life.
In 1993, while serving as Artistic Director for the Guild Complex Literary Center, I helped plan the inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards, a poetry reading judged by the audience. At the time, the award, which would become annual, featured a $500 cash prize paid by Brooks from her own pocket.
As part of the job, I had the honor of picking her up and driving her to the Old Hothouse on Milwaukee Avenue, and of course escorting her home. On those drives we began to talk about the things I was interested in and what I was doing.
Those conversations led to Brooks hiring me to help run some of her Illinois Poet Laureate programs — and to a lasting friendship between the two of us. When I decided to finish college in the late 1990s, I enrolled at Chicago State University, where Third World Press publisher Haki Madhubuti had founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing. Brooks taught one poetry workshop there each year, and I was one of 11 students enrolled in her final class before retirement. I still have a folder of poems dripping with red ink.
Miss Brooks was an exacting editor, but also a dynamic teacher with an array of exercises. She liked to ignite what I refer to in an elegy to her as “mind riots.” She would throw ideas out on the table and watch us wrestle for ideas. She introduced writing in form. She assigned sonnets, she assigned sestinas, as well as allowing us to write in free verse. One of the exercises that I still borrow today: Ms. Brooks was not a fan of profanity. She considered profanity a poverty of imagination. She assigned us to develop creative insults without using profanity.
Of the many assignments in the class, perhaps the most influential to me is her “verse journalism” construct. She saved rubber-banded stacks of newspaper clippings and brought them to class as fodder. “Verse Journalism” reflects Brooks’ commitment to writing about important moments in Black lives and Black history, which was and remains central to my own work. As a trained journalist, it also appeals to my sense of storytelling, in terms of narrative over speaker. I published poems for a decade before employing the pronoun “I” in my work.
Directing the Brooks Center was my dream ever since attending my first Brooks Black Writers Conference in the early 1990’s. I was honored to direct the Center from 2002-2012.
The Writer’s Garret: Do you have a favorite poem from her body of work? If so, which one and what about it makes it your favorite? If not, are there a few you especially like or think are memorable (and what are they)?
Lansana: It’s difficult to say I have a favorite poem by Miss Brooks, as I am a student and admirer of her entire oeuvre. I return to the work regularly. But, I will state that two of the poems I read, study and teach consistently are “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” and “the boy died in my alley.” Both, in my opinion, are timeless examples of her concept of “poet as observer,” which greatly informs how my poems “see,” as she would say. I could also mention “the mother,” “when you have forgotten sundays: the love story,” “kitchenette building,” Negro Hero,” and so many others–and this list is just from her first book!
The Writer’s Garret: Why do you think Annie Allen, or Gwendolyn Brooks’ work as a whole, is relevant today?
Lansana: In our current moment in this country, where the assault on a woman’s right to control her body is brutal and pervasive, where the attack on freedom of expression is relentless, and where attacks on the teaching of histories of non-White people is widespread, what Miss Brooks was writing in the late 1940’s to early 1950’s and beyond is remarkable and still poignant, maybe more so. Annie Allen is an exquisite spotlight on a Black woman’s life from birth to death in a period where Black women characters in literature were maids, nannies or women of ill-repute. Miss Brooks, from her first book, A Street in Bronzeville, to the posthumously published In Montgomery centered the voices of Black women in real and revolutionary ways. Additionally, her attention to Black life in the U.S. and throughout the diaspora, actually binds our shared experiences closer together than maybe we are in reality at this moment.
To hear more on Miss Brooks’ work from Lansana, join us Wednesday, November 20th at 6:30pm for “A Deep & Human Look: Annie Allen at 75.” RSVP here
This interview has been lightly edited for content.