55: Poetry as resistance

A conversation with Tamiko Beyer. ‘Poetry is this moment where you can actually start to shift reality through language.’

From Birds of America (1827) by John James Audubon (1785 – 1851 ).

Tamiko Beyer is a poet, writer, activist, and communications strategist. Her 2013 poetry collection We Come Elemental is a beautiful meditation on humanity’s relationship with our environment, and boundaries between the self and our surroundings that are not as sharp as we may think. The recipient of several awards, fellowships, and residencies for her creative writing, Tamiko was also deputy communications director for Corporate Accountability for years, before moving to a part-time role to devote more time to her writing.

In April, Tamiko will publish a new collection, Last Days, from Alice James Books. Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance says of Last Days, “To those who have been in the fight a long time, who are tired, who want to rest, and who want to win, these are vital, nourishing, life-giving words.”

As she began to prepare for the book’s release, Tamiko says she was getting increasingly uneasy about taking part in the usual sales-focused dog and pony show that is the author book tour. She and her partner Patti Lynn, who is executive director of Corporate Accountability, hatched a plan to instead raise money to buy hundreds of copies of the book from her publisher and, along with copies of poet Gabrielle Civil’s forthcoming chapbook, give them away to organizers and activists. The campaign will happen in conjunction with a series of events she’s currently planning with peers from the arts and social justice work.

I’m also proud to call Tamiko a friend, so I was excited to get on the phone recently to talk about her unusual, anti-capitalist book launch, the relationship between art and social change, and whether poetry can change the world. It was a great conversation I think you will enjoy it.

You can preorder Last Days here, and subscribe to Tamiko’s newsletter Starlight & Strategy. The donation page for the book launch is not yet live, but if you want to get on board early, her venmo is @Tamiko-Beyer, or you can get in touch through her website.

Here is the interview!

You know, we’ve obviously talked many times, and I’ve read your poetry, but we’ve never really talked very much about your poetry, so I’m excited to learn more about your work. But first, what has your life has been like lately? What’s giving you comfort or joy? And how are you coping?

Being outside has really been a huge source of comfort and inspiration. I live very close to the Neponset River, so I try to go out for a walk almost every day. When the pandemic first started, people talked about paying attention to nature and the changes, so I feel like it’s kind of a cliche, but it’s really true. Since March I’ve been so much more aware of the whole cycle now from spring through autumn. Developing that kind of relationship with my very immediate surroundings has been really beautiful. So that’s been a huge thing.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I did a lot of mutual aid stuff and making food for people. And that felt like, okay, I’m doing something, you know. And then it got to be a little too much and not sustainable. So I’ve scaled back on that. But I feel more connected to my community. Dorchester Community Care was the mutual aid network that came up out of that, and it’s run by people at the Asian American Resource Workshop and the Dorchester Not for Sale folks. So now I’m kind of hooked into that and also hooked into the BIJAN network.

I also started an anti-racism accountability group through RadComms, a network of radical communicators, which was started after the 2016 election by Shanelle Matthews, who’s involved in the Movement for Black Lives. Some of the people in the network are organizing others in the network to be in these accountability circles. That’s just starting, but I’m excited about it.

So that has been, not necessarily a source of comfort, but I derive meaning from doing that kind of work. And then I have my projects that I am focused on, which also, I feel like I get a lot of fulfillment and meaning from.

I thought we might talk about some sort of big picture stuff, like how you think of your poetry in the context of your activism. I know only a little bit about this history of poetry and social change, but I was reading about how during the Iranian Revolution, there were these nightly poetry readings that were very sharply political and the Shah eventually shut them down. I wonder if you see yourself as part of this tradition of using poetry for social change?

Yeah, I definitely do. That’s interesting. I didn’t know about the Iranian poetry readings, but I can see that happening. I feel like in so many histories of oppressive governments, poetry has often been used as subversion and to communicate things that are dangerous to communicate in prose. I’m thinking about how there’s this organization called Kundiman, which is for Asian American readers and writers, but it’s based on this Filipino word that means love poem. And during the colonial occupation of the Philippines, they would write love poems, but everybody would know that the lover was the country under occupation, rather than a person. And I think about that a lot.

And just here in the US, there’s just been such a long tradition of, especially poets of color, using poetry or writing poetry as resistance. I think about simply writing as a person of color, and there’s a lot of things I could say about that, but in terms of your question, yeah, it’s definitely how I came into poetry. Some of my earliest influences were Adrienne Rich and Audre Lord and Joy Harjo, and then this Japanese American poet Mitsuye Yamada, who was imprisoned during World War Two, and she published a whole book of poems that she wrote there and afterwards. And so that’s really how I came to understand myself as a poet, as writing in this tradition.

I suspect for a lot of people, they might feel like that tradition isn’t very prominent in the United States, maybe they are not exposed to poetry very often. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about how it does exist here, and any other examples of poets who have had a big impact on American culture or American social movements.

I’m thinking about American social movements, and in the 1960s in the Civil Rights Movement, there were many Black poets. When you were asking me the question, the person who came to mind immediately is Nikki Giovanni.

But I guess I’m kind of grappling with two different things. I think poetry has been marginalized in American culture for a long time. I think within the poetry world there has been a tendency towards being insular. And there’s this whole messed up system where really the only way you can make a living as a poet is if you’re in academia, and that comes with a whole set of things. So I think there’s been this trend of poetry being not relevant. But I actually think of that as mostly white poetry. [Laughs] I think in many communities of color, poetry has always been an important thing.

Language shapes so much of our reality, and usually, we don’t have much of a say in how that happens. But poetry is this moment where you can actually start to shift reality, just through the materiality of the language.

So I think about Saul Williams, who was like the first person who made slam poetry famous. That oral storytelling and using language, speaking language out loud to community. It’s like the cyphers, you know, the hip hop tradition. So that’s in the Black community. And then I think Asian American poetry was very marginalized for a long time, but now there’s this kind of Renaissance, actually a Renaissance of many poets of color.

I think that it just hasn’t been mainstream. It hasn’t been like part of the academy or the literary world. And all of the poets who win prizes and all that, it has always been a struggle for poets of color to be recognized and valued. But I think that’s really changing. There are signs of that changing now.

This is kind of a weird comparison, but I think a lot about the tradition of science fiction and fantasy, and how in the past people always thought it was this thing for white teenage boys, but at the same time, there were all these women and people of color who were writing this extremely subversive science fiction, that even right now is becoming very popular, you know? It seems a little bit similar.

Yeah, for sure. And now there’s speculative poetry, so the worlds are coming together.

And then the other thing that I was thinking about is that people do turn to poetry in specific moments. Like when somebody gets married, or when there’s a funeral, or at protests. I do think there are moments when people want to mark the occasion, that often they go to poetry, or they look for poems. And so, there’s obviously the famous poets and poems that people go to, but I think that community poets have also played an important role in those moments, even if they’re not published poets, like the cousin who writes a poem for their uncle’s funeral or something. I do think that tradition also exists in American culture.

Right, that’s true. In the past 5-10 years or so it’s been a much bigger part of my reading, but for a long time I was admittedly kind of scared of poetry, probably due to a lot of the dynamics that you described earlier. But the way I sort of think about it is that, even if mainstream America may not read a lot of poetry, it has a big impact when we do read it, if that makes sense. Especially when poetry breaks through, I’m thinking of like Citizen by Claudia Rankine, it’s a big deal for the culture.

Yeah, totally. I think that’s exactly right.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what poetry can do that maybe other forms of art, or a news article, or a book can’t do. What’s the power in it that maybe other mediums don’t have?

So I think that one of the things that I’ve thought a lot about with poetry is how you use language differently than you do in almost any other form of communication. And you make the language work really hard, or strangely. You know, a poem works based on associations and surprise, and I think that those are the two things that often make a very successful poem, is when images or associations are evoked from the language that you wouldn’t necessarily have made, just because of the tightness of the language or the juxtaposition of ideas or images.

I don’t think that poetry can change the world. But I do think that it can play a role in it by forcing people to pay attention.

And so I think that poetry requires a different relationship to language, and forces the reader or the listener to have a different relationship with language. And then I think about how language shapes so much of our reality, and how, usually, we don’t have much of a say in how that happens. But poetry is this moment where you can actually start to shift reality, just through the materiality of the language, if that makes sense.

You know, I don’t think that poetry can change the world. But I do think that it can play a role in it by forcing people to pay attention, forcing the poet and then also their readers or listeners to pay attention to how the world is being created around us through language, and imagining different ways of being through the playing with language.

I’m reading Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings right now. It’s really good. And she’s a poet, but this is a book of essays on race, and specifically her perspective as an Asian American person in the US. And there’s a whole chapter called “Bad English.” And she talks about how she subverts English as a form of both resistance and survival, growing up as a first generation Korean American whose parents were basically looked down upon because they couldn’t speak English well. So I think that is one of the things that poetry does that I don’t think any other form really does.

Yeah, you know, the connections thing really resonates with me, because I was listening to someone talking recently about this idea of deep reading [Narrator voice: It was Ezra Klein], where you kind of go into this almost trance-like state and start making vivid connections to things in your life and other things you’re reading. It takes time to get there with prose, but it strikes me that with poetry, that’s almost inherently a part of the way that you read it.

Right. Yeah, I mean, I think about how when poetry is taught in school, that’s not really how it’s taught. In school, you have to, like, figure out what it means and decode what the poet is trying to say. But I really think a more useful way to teach poetry is to teach people that they have to just change the way they’re used to reading. And you’re not reading for meaning or content, necessarily, but you’re reading to dive into the language, and then meaning and associations will emerge, you know?

Yeah, I was an English major, and they taught poetry in the same way that they taught literary analysis of a novel. You are sort of taught that the goal when you’re sitting down to read a poem is to solve a puzzle. So if you read a poem, and you’re like, I don’t understand this, then you feel like, oh, I’m a bad reader of poetry, and you put it down and move on.

Right. And it’s not that interesting, you know, I mean, maybe to some people it’s interesting, but it’s far more interesting to be like, what does this poem have to tell me about my life in this moment right now? Or the context I’m living in right now, even if it was written 100 years ago? I think that’s been a real disservice to poetry in US education.

Yeah, totally. I really like what you were saying about how language can shape the world without our knowing or without our permission. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that idea?

Well, I was thinking about all of the received language that we have, in terms of thinking about how to decolonize myself and how to write in an anti-racist way. Like, I’m always coming across phrases and ideas that I’m like, where does that come from and then looking it up and being like oh that’s not that great. You know, like, the rule of thumb. And so I think all of the ways that capitalism and patriarchy and white supremacy have shaped our language as a way of shaping our world.

Writers and artists and poets are helping to imagine what things could look like outside of the ways that things are now. And I do think that that is a pivotal role for all artists. I kind of feel like if you’re making art, and you’re not doing that, like, what are you doing?

So there’s that. And then I also think about how in English, the noun and the verb are the central component of how to craft the sentence. And in Japanese, often the noun or the personal pronoun is missing. You hardly ever say me or I in Japanese. It’s implied. And so I think about that, too, the very structure of how in English, the individual is always first and foremost. And in Japanese culture, it’s not. That’s also, I think, one of the ways that language shapes how we see the world.

Sometimes I think I became a poet because I was bilingual as a kid. I mean, obviously, there are plenty of poets who weren’t. But I do think the experience of understanding that there’s not one fixed way to say something or to understand something through language was central to my development as a human being.

I noticed that you have a Favianna Rodriguez quote in the materials from your book launch. And it made me think of this concept that she wrote about once where activists sometimes think of art as a tool to inspire action. But it can also operate more in the idea space, the formative part as opposed to the execution part. And I wonder if you think of your poems as trying to get somebody to act? Or to what extent are you trying to inform ideas about the world? Or both?

Well, I guess I would say that I don’t think about what I want the poem to do. When I sit down to write a poem, I don’t think, I want this poem to move people to do X. I write poetry as a way of helping myself understand the world and my place in it and the future that I want. And then obviously, when I go back and revise and work on it, I do hope that it moves people in these more big picture ways that we’ve been talking about, rather than, like, hoping my poem will move somebody to sign a petition. Although, you know, that would be great if that happened!

But when I think about my poetry as a whole, and when I think about what I’ve done with my poems, especially recently, it is really kind of speculative. It is more in the realm of imagining the future that we want, imagining that kinds of relationships between people and the earth and plants and creatures that is actually the kind of world that I would like to live in or I would like people in the future to live in. And being part of that movement that I think is really blossoming right now, of writers and artists and poets helping to imagine what things could look like outside of the ways that things are now. And I do think that that is a pivotal role for all artists. I kind of feel like if you’re making art, and you’re not doing that, like, what are you doing? In this moment, you know? [Laughs] That’s my opinion.

I recently read We Come Elemental, and I really loved it. And it made me think a lot about how we’re very closely connected to the rest of the earth, but that it is also so much more than us. Remembering what we’re a part of something is one of the things I really took away from it. You have this great phrase, “It’s easy to forget that we live on an island…” which I think applies to so many things. And I don’t really have a question with that.

But, um, I guess I wonder how much do you feel like you organize your poetry around certain themes. Are there concepts that you tend to come back to?

Yeah. I mean, when I wrote We Come Elemental, I kept being drawn to write about water over and over and over again. And I couldn’t even really say why, but I was thinking about the ocean and bodies of water as a way that this earth kind of demonstrates what it means to live on it. The constant motion and constant change and depth and all of the mysteries within it. And how humans need it, living creatures need it to survive. So I feel like there are all these lessons in water that I just kept getting drawn back into. And then, I learned about the Great Pacific Gyre while I was writing it, and was just horrified and had to figure out—like I was saying, it’s really about me figuring out how to deal with the world around me as it is sometimes.

What does it mean not to necessarily claim queerness as natural but to claim nature as queer?

And then also, using the plural pronoun, which I do a lot in We Come Elemental—and also in this latest book—was like, what does it mean to be a we? Who is we? What does it mean to be part of a we? There was a lot that I was kind of thinking through in terms of being part of a collective, or being part of humanity, that I’m still really interested in and working through. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the responsibility of claiming the voice of a collective, and how I can do it more responsibly. And what does that look like given that I actually am only one person, and I have a singular perspective?

Yeah that definitely comes through. Another concept I kept thinking about when I was reading is this idea of permeability, or a fuzziness between what we think of as inside of us and outside of us.

Well, I think that idea of permeability—and in this book, “the slip of boundaries” is a line in one of the poems—is something that I’m really interested in. I think it’s kind of a resistance to capitalism and individualism. The idea that the individual is self-contained, and the most primary unit of importance, and I just don’t think that. How to embody that through poetry is something that I come back to often.

I feel like a lot of times when people write about nature, it can be kind of corny, like nature is on a pedestal that they want admire. And I always think of Neil Young’s environmentalist songs, which, I love Neil Young, and I don’t know if you’ve heard them, but they are just so corny. But your approach is the total opposite of that. And I wonder what your secret is to writing about nature in a way that isn’t goofy or like, oh, gee whiz, you know?

It’s a good question. Nobody’s asked me about that, exactly. But when you first started asking me the question, I was thinking about how, in the early 2000s, I wrote this Manifesto, queer::eco::poetics, thinking about how queerness has been seen as unnatural, right? And what does it mean not to necessarily claim queerness as natural but to claim nature as queer? What does it mean to be fully queer and know that I am part of nature, and so then that means that I think nature isn’t this like beautiful, warm, fuzzy, idealistic thing. It’s messy and weird and dangerous, and you know, bizarre at points [laughs]—and also beautiful and magnificent and glorious. And I think that’s always how I’ve approached writing about nature, from that interest in the queerness of nature, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Like, it has all of the complexities of us, and we have all the complexities of it, because we’re the same thing.

Exactly. Right.

OK let’s talk about the new book! Can you tell me about the writing of this book? Over what period of time are the poems from this new collection covering?

Yeah, a long period of time. So there’s actually a poem in there from the early 2000s, but most of the poems are written between 2011 and now. I wrote a few after my manuscript had been accepted, but most of them were written over a seven, eight year period. And they were the exactly the years that I worked at Corporate Accountability full time. That’s kind of why it took so long to write another book, because I was working 45 hours a week, right. And that’s partly why I decided to leave. I was like, I have all of these poems that I’ve written over these years. For me, writing is easy. Generating words and images is an easy part of writing poems, but what is a lot harder has been looking at these really messy, raggedy drafts and figuring out what to do with them.

Well, you mentioned that with We Come Elemental, you kept coming back to the idea of water and I wonder if in the new book if there are any themes that you picked up on or if there’s anything that people can expect to read about in this collection.

There’s a lot about climate change. And the last quarter of the book is imagining a future many centuries from now, where people fly, people and birds have somehow merged together. And they’re these bird creatures. [Laughs] Yeah, so there’s that. And then the title is from a sequence of poems that kind of imagines this ragtag group of revolutionaries who are bringing down the corporate empire. So there’s a lot of prose poetry throughout, but that sequence is mostly prose with poems from the ancestors woven in.

Wow, is that speculative aspect pretty different than anything you’ve written in the past?

Yeah, I feel like this manuscript is pretty different. It’s also less experimental than We Come Elemental. It’s less difficult. And I did that on purpose. Because I am interested in playing with language and pushing language and seeing where language can go, and We Come Elemental kind of went down that path. That book’s earlier draft was my thesis for my MFA, and I feel like that kind of environment encouraged that kind of writing. As I was working at Corporate Accountability, and just being more out in the world, I felt like, I want anybody to be able to pick up this book and not feel like it’s not speaking to them, you know, not feel like it’s alienating them. It might not be their favorite book, but at least they’ll have some sense of it. And I feel like sometimes with We Come Elemental, I’m like, I don’t know if I want to send you my book, because I don’t know if you’ll like it. [Laughs] I don’t know if you’ll feel welcomed by it.

So I do feel like with the poems that I was writing during this period, I was purposely being a little less about pushing language. I mean, there’s still plenty of experimental poems in there. But there are large sections where I was more interested in telling a story in a more accessible way. So that is the speculative part.

You mentioned this new book is maybe more inviting for different audiences. I wonder who you want to read this book? And that may not be like a demographic or something. But what would a person be looking for that they might find in Last Days?

Yeah, I realized as I was finishing it up, it was 2017, 2018, I wanted this book to speak to and to inspire, and to bring solace to activists and organizers. I feel like that is who I’m hoping this book will resonate with. I mean, I hope it resonates with lots of different people. But I am really interested in all of the ways that the arts and organizing can be more integrated than they are now.

And so yeah, I don’t know that this book will move anybody to action, but I’m hoping that it will be a source of joy for the people who are doing really hard work on the ground right now, in this really difficult time. And then I hope it speaks to other people who also want a different kind of world than the one we have right now, they might not have found themselves in the world of organizing and activism, but think about these issues and think about the world as it is and the world as they want it to be. And that this might resonate with those people too.

Tell me about the book launch plan and how you got to the idea and what you’re hoping will come out of it?

So I guess some context is that like, with poets, especially, but I think maybe a lot of authors now, when we have a book come out, you have to do a lot of legwork. The press doesn’t do a lot in terms of setting up events, although it depends on the publisher. So after it was accepted in 2019, I was facing a publication date in 2021. So I had a lot a lot of lead time, but it was mostly making me anxious to think about how am I going to get this book out into the world?

I don’t know that this book will move anybody to action, but I’m hoping that it will be a source of joy for the people who are doing really hard work on the ground right now, in this really difficult time.

It was through conversations with Patti, and just thinking about, what would be the ideal vision of how I get this book into the world? And all the work that I’m going to do to do it? Is it just to like, set up some readings in bookstores, where there’s a handful of people and I sell 20 books? Or is it something else? And through those conversations, I clearly identified that the people I want to get this book into the hands of are organizers and activists. And it was just so helpful to talk with Patti who, you know, obviously has 20 years of organizing, and she was like, why don’t we just figure out a way to actually send hundreds of organizers this book? And I was like, okay, how do we do that?

We came up with a plan that we’re still developing, but I’m trying to raise about $15,000 to buy between 250 and 500 copies of my book from the press. And then, there’s another poet, Gabrielle Civil, who has a chapbook coming out around the same time. She’s a Black poet who’s also a performance artist, and just really brilliant and amazing. And so we’re also going to buy her book, her chapbook, and then figure out a way to send the book to people who want it who are doing organizing and activism. And then we’ll also do some events and that sort of thing, too. But that was really the kind of breakthrough that we had. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

That’s such the opposite of what you might think of a book promotion tour being.

Right, that’s why I feel like it was such a paradigm shift of like, I don’t want to be out there selling myself and selling my book. Like, I totally get that that’s how it works in this moment. But what if it didn’t have to work like that? You know, what if I ask people to chip in to this project? And then I could just buy the book and send it to people who want it? Why not make something like that work? And that just seems so much more fun and interesting to me than like, figuring out how to sell my book.

Well, it’s interesting, it’s similar to what you’ve done with your newsletter, where you donate all the subscription fees. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about how you manage this struggle between creating a product to sell versus creating something you can share with people?

I guess first I have to say that I’m really lucky and privileged that I have a steady gig with Corporate Accountability, and in a partnership with Patti, where we’re not struggling to pay the bills. And so obviously, if I didn’t have that, I think I would be in a very different position. And I think that’s just important to note.

But given that, it’s not like we have a very lavish lifestyle or anything, like I have always lived pretty simply and I just don’t buy a lot of stuff. So, since I don’t need more money than what I already have, I’m interested in how to live within capitalism and recognizing money as the way that people that make things are valued, that people show their appreciation for something. That’s just the way it is in this moment. And I’m interested in shifting that, but also, if that’s the way that it’s happening, how can I work within that system to actually create change?

So with the newsletter, I’ve been really interested in this idea of subscriptions, and what that means. What does that mean for the people subscribing? I subscribe to Ann Friedman’s newsletter, and I always feel so good doing it, you know? Because she’s just so brilliant and if I can help support her, then that’s great. So given that Substack has this whole system, what would that be like to offer people the opportunity to support it if they really like it, but I don’t need the money. So that’s where the idea of just donating it all came from, but then, not having the different tiers of getting something special if you pay.

That’s my favorite part. That you can subscribe, but it’s just the same thing. It really subverts what Substack wants people to do with premium content, which is kind of a gross idea.

I’m pretty sure if they ever figure out what, I mean my list is so small, and the people who subscribe is just like a handful. But I think if they actually caught on to what I was doing, they’d probably kick me off. [Laughs]

Well that is so cool and I’m excited to see how the book launch unfolds. Tamiko, I know I took a lot of your time, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

Me too. Yeah. Thank you for all your great questions. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Okay talk to you soon.

Call It

by Tamiko Beyer

We steer the car straight.
Behind the day, stars shine steady

as lighthouse signals: stay away, stay way, stay
away. Weather refuses linear

progression—icecaps drifting
from out of the blue to where the hell.

The hurricane’s eye was a slow-mo
turn and now the sun’s a bright

squint. The rich nestle in their linens.
The rest of us scratch out syllabic

posts, our rheumy screens laden
with desire. Maybe we’re the aliens.

Invasive species burning up bones
of our interplanetary ancestors.

What lousy shipwrecked guests.
And now, is a graceful exit even possible?

An easy slip off the highway
before the pileup, another grisly crash?

The car stalls. We look under
the hood, read the oil stains.

They say: not for long, humans. Not long
for this breakneck break speed world.

Originally published in The Common

Listening

This is a long one so I’ll keep the landing nice and tight. But I did want to say that last night I asked Jamie how much money it would take for her to eat a can of our cat’s prescription cat food. The answer: there is no amount of money. For me, the answer is $50,000.

Then I thought about it and how in 20 years I might regret saying that, because I may be willing to pay to eat a can of cat food if things have gone full Cormac McCarthy. Then Jamie told me I should not say things like that because I am supposed to be the optimistic one. So this week reader, I am wishing you a future in which nobody has to eat cat food, unless it is for a large hypothetical sum of money. And also we can all fly.

Yip yip

Tate