New Girl, Cool Girl: An Interview with Poet Kyndall Flowers

When I first met Kyndall, she was still wearing the blue jacket from her previous high school in West Orange, New Jersey, having moved to Michigan in 10th grade, two years after I did. I was privileged enough to witness her in her element – a creative writing class. To some, creative writing might seem like a blow-off class, but Kyndall brought a kind of experience and understanding of the art that was infectious. Even the slackers had notable things to say about Kyndall’s work. I had never met anyone who could so succinctly explain her thoughts, and so easily decimate the ideas behind bigotry. I was, and still am, starstruck by her poetry. I was lucky enough to sit down and get into the specifics of her art, her activism and herself. Kyndall Flowers is entering her first year at Howard University, after taking a gap year to work with the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan. She is a two-time winner of the Ann Arbor Poetry Slam.

HC: Where do you consider home?

Flowers: What a rude goddamn question.

HC: That’s why I asked it, I knew you’d be mad at me

Flowers: I think it’s easiest for me to say Michigan because that’s where I met most of my friends, and really got into poetry, and my parents have a nice lovely home there, that’s where my parents are. But it’s also like,I lived in New Jersey for a very very long time. If I say Jersey, I’m just like you dumb liar bitch, you’re wearing birkenstocks RIGHT NOW. The easiest answer to that question right now is, home is my literal dorm room. In our freshman seminar, our question for this year is actually “what is home?” So they asked, “Do you consider your dorm room home?” and I was like, ‘Yea,’ while everyone around me was saying “noooo,” but I think that comes from a place of actually having a hometown where you’ve lived your whole life.  

—

At a protest in North Lawndale

West side Chicago

I meet a girl named

Ralicious.

i ask her

what she wants to be when she grows up

and she says alive

…

me and ralicious ain’t so different

we both rock unsteady in our fear

both go to the protest

both act like we don’t hear each others’ heart beat quick

when the cops start picking people off and pushing them

into police cars

it’s november 9th

my country is not my country

and it is all too my country

for i built it but

its always had my hand between its teeth

An excerpt from Sing About Me

HC: What do you think were some activist turning points for you?

Flowers: That protest I talk about in one of my poems in “Chicago.” It was the first protest I went to that wasn’t super white, it didn’t have a permit, it was the first place where I saw people get arrested. This police van shows up and they have tear gas and chalk and rifles, and I was like, ‘Oh I’m in some deep shit right now. What do you mean it’s not always fun and with your friends?’ Since then I’ve been really critical of white liberal protesting. I’m not expecting 40-year-old white women to set stuff on fire, and I love funny signs, but that can’t be it.

HC: What was your relationship with art before poetry?

Flowers: There was always music in my home, but I feel like poetry was my first big in. It was like art was like this cool thing that I knew I liked and wanted to get into, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

HC: How did you discover poetry?

Flowers: I discovered poetry multiple times—my dad really loves Robert Frost, he had this huge book, the collected poems of Robert Frost. I remember this one time we sat at the kitchen table in West Orange, and he made me read and try to understand Robert Frost at like 6am. I don’t remember when I started getting into button poetry, but my freshman year of high school my teacher showed Sarah Kay’s video “If I had a daughter”, and I was like ‘Oh I think I wanna do that with my life. That’s my career.’ And then I found Tonya Ingram, and she was the first Black button poet I found, ‘Oh now someone who looks like me is doing it, so now I can really do it.’ There wasn’t really a literary arts community in West Orange, and then junior year, creative writing with Jeff Kass. He punched me in the gut with literary arts, and he was like your kinda good at this! Make a slam team!”

I talked to Jeff Kass a little bit on what it was like to have Kyndall in his class.

Kass: I learned to check my own ego from Kyndall and to think really carefully about what I say to students. Kyndall shared a poem one time that I thought could be more overtly political and I suggested that in our feedback session. She took offense to that thought and rightly believed her poem was already quite political. She then went on to write a poem describing why what I’d said was so offensive, and indeed hurtful, to her. It took a lot of courage for her to stand up to her teacher like that and she was right and I was wrong. The whole experience made me understand how I need to pay more attention to how my students might react to what I say and it made me a much better teacher. We already know she’s going to be a well-known and influential writer. I hope she continues to educate a whole slew of generations of writers (and teachers) to come.

HC: How do you think attending an HBCU (Historically Black College/University) will influence your upcoming work?

Flowers: “I wanna learn more, I want more context for the shit I’m going through, and for what Black people are going through. I’m constantly trying to avoid HBCU and PWI (Predominantly White Institution) beef because I feel like it’s fake and not a real thing.”

—

i spent all of last week crying. the week before that

everyone was in love and i was very nice to talk to very

nice to talk to very nice but on thursday on state street

lorde said “you’re a little much for me” and i had to run

up the escalator in walgreens and try not to throw up in their

Bathroom

An excerpt from Ode To The Kind Blood Moon

HC: I love that you quote Lorde in your poem “Ode To The Kind Blood Moon” Do you ever think you’d write lyrics?

Flowers: Yes! Because I already have! In terms of my songwriting, which I barely ever do, it just always rhymes. I think I’m gonna take a songwriting course. I think it’s fun! I’m annoyed I don’t have my guitar here, cause I miss just singing to myself and making up shitty little songs. I miss my guitar! I want her here. For sure I’d write song lyrics, that’s like my dream job, to be a ghost writer. It’s my deep seeded, quiet dream.

HC: Well I’m gonna publish it, so it’s not quiet anymore. I’ll get you out there!

Flowers: There are so many rappers out there that could be better if they knew what to say, and I just think I’m that person! One day, Drake will call me and be like, “Yo, Kyndall, I heard some of your shit, I need you here.” We’re both scorpios, we intrinsically get each other. He’s why I applied to Howard – I saw him in a Howard sweatshirt, and I applied, I got in, and here my ass is.

HC: What do people misinterpret about your poetry? Or poetry in general? Why do you think that is?

Flowers: There’s probably stuff that people misinterpret, but don’t voice. One of my baby poets was like “you have this cool girl aura”. And I was like that’s not a real thing, whoever I am on stage, while I may sound like I have the answers and that I’m really confident, which is just the opposite of true. I think for most Poets of Color if someone isn’t getting it, they’re stopping themselves before they can, like ‘I get it all the way up to here, this is where I’m gonna insert myself.’ I think it comes from whiteness and its ability to make anything and everything about itself. I think that can happen with all art, or literally anything. I think there’s this weird white visor, that people who just watch button poetry videos have about poetry. Slam poetry is not a white art form. White people do not have a monopoly on slam poetry. There are tons of poets of color, there’s so much more to poetry and slam than what gets a ton of views on Youtube. And what comes from that is like, trauma pimping for points. You get a lot of kids just starting out with slam, and they think the first thing they have to talk about is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them because that’s what you see. And you think because they are saying it out loud that they are past it, or that this is their healing and maybe it is! But don’t do that if you’re not ready for it, and you probably aren’t. Poetry is not therapy, therapy is not poetry.

Left to Right: Dylan Gilbert, Kyndall Flowers, and Zaphra Stupple holding their book Joy, Despite

HC: I’d like to talk about the title of your book, “Joy, Despite” What do these words mean for you specifically?

Flowers: I’m reading Barracoon, and the intro by Alice Walker talks about being Black and Sad, and this eternal depression. But there are still moments of happiness, and since life is moments, there are still good things. And I think that’s the ‘Joy, Despite’. What exists despite everything telling you, you shouldn’t have a good time. And that could be my mental illnesses, my insecurities, or the president.

One of the two co-authors of Kyndall’s book, Dylan Gilbert, talked about the many subjects in which Kyndall has helped her grow.

Dylan: Even though she’s my peer and one of my very best friends I think she is one of the most important teachers I’ve ever had. She constantly is challenging me to see the world from other points of views and be just more kind. She has taught me how to take time for myself yet still be a selfless person, if that makes sense? And she’s taught me just how to have fun and dance hard and sing loudly and just be goofy. It’s such an honor to have my work in a book with one of the best writers of our generation.

HC: Some of the art by Black artists that’s coming out right now wrestles with the theme of split identity, feeling the need to choose between two conflicting parts of the Black experience, both of the films I’m referring to BlackkKlansman and Sorry to Bother You focus on men. Do you feel that Black women also experience this? How does it differ from the male centric narratives we see on screen?

Flowers: FOR SURE, women have to deal with it, and on top of it we have to deal with sexism. Also, historically we are more on our shit about activism. Like I can’t see a Black woman going that far with a white voice, I don’t think a Black woman would ever sell slaves for a white person, it’s also funny because we would never even be given the chance. And you see in Sorry To Bother You, you can see how not great Tessa Thompson’s character is, she’s so one dimensional. She’s poised to be this activist shawty and that’s not unintentional. It’s like the token Black girl activist. Blackkklansman was fun, but fuck 12 though. Spike Lee’s never actually been anti-police. There’s always a deep necessity for the stories of Black women.

HC: Do you think Black women’s voices in activism are also glossed over as they are in the art surrounding the activism?

Flowers: Black women are at the forefront, but no one takes us seriously. As women, we’re supposed to be activists, but not too much.

Protest in Chicago

HC: Tell me about leading the youth poetry group.

Flowers: The literal babies that I birthed from this here womb? I started off my gap year very lost, we got a new literary arts director at the Neutral Zone, and I helped redo poetry night and I got to meet ten lovely poet youth writers, me, Dylan, Zapphra had little teams of writers. We’d edit and workshop their poems, and I just love them all so much. They gave me so much hope – they’re kind, and trying their best and learning to take accountability. I was always in awe of how much they cared about poetry and the work that they were producing and how much they just wanted to make good art. It was wonderful just watching them come into their own and be proud and nervous about their work, and watch them polish it and break it sometimes and put it back together.

HC: What is on the mind of the generation following ours?

Flowers: What’s kinda sad is it’s like the same exact thing, we had a death in Pioneer (high school) last year, and I was listening to the girl read this poem, and it hurt so much because I had written that exact poem. It reminded me that high school keeps going after you leave it.

HC: What art are you reading/watching/listening to right now?

Flowers: I’m reading Barracoon, I’m watching Sharp Objects, I’ve seen To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before at least 5 times. It’s supremely kind. Yesterday I went to see Romeo and Juliet, and I remembered why people like Shakespeare, it’s so good. Nothing I’m saying right now is new, but I’m just remembering why people like Shakespeare, and it’s because he’s a damn good writer. I know there’s a school of thought that – who cares about Shakespeare. He’s old and dead. But like – I care about Shakespeare. “A PLAGUE UPON BOTH YOUR HOUSES” NAME A BETTER DRAG IN THE PAST MILLENNIA. I WISH I HAD SAID ANYTHING AS COOL AS THAT. That’s the most exciting piece of media I’ve seen recently. Support theater and if you don’t like Shakespeare that’s because you had a bad teacher.

HC: Is there anything you’d like to add?

Flowers: Read more poems, even if you’re not a poet.

• activism
• poetry