Unknown: The Glimpse.
Omotara James: It's important to subvert tropes. It's really
interesting. During this time of social media, body positivity, fat
liberation, I feel that times couldn't really be more polarizing.
The more space that is created socially, for people who are fat,
super fat infini-fat, the more visceral and vitriol there is
around our bodies.
Camille Rankine: Welcome to The Glimpse. I'm your host Camille
Rankine poet, Omotara James is skilled at subversion. She's the
author of the poetry collection Song of My Softening and her work
has been featured in NPR's Morning Edition, the Paris Review
and the Believer. She has received support from the African Poetry
Book Fund, the Poetry Foundation, Lambda Literary and Cave Canem
Foundation. Omotara is our guest today on The Glimpse. In her debut
poetry collection Song of my Softening, Omotara James carves
out a hard earned way of knowing a way of seeing through the language
we've been given to a clear understanding of self, of body, of
being. Her voice and these poems moves with a surefooted and sensual
grace through pain and shame toward abundance and a tender-truth
telling. Hers is an eye that doesn't shy away, she lifts what
the world has hidden in shadow up to the light, and lets it shimmer.
Welcome Omotara, thanks for being here.
Omotara James: Thank you, I'm so happy to be here with you.
Camille Rankine: Yeah, I'm really happy to be talking to you. I want
to start off just by asking about your poems in general, as I was
reading your book, I was thinking about this balance that they strike
between vulnerability and confidence, and they can be really
intimate at the same time unbowed and unbossed. channel, Shirley
Chisholm. And I just wondered, like, how do you arrive at that
space as a poet or as a person?
Omotara James: You know, I feel like I'm always trying to navigate
a kind of balance and generosity in my life. So whatever is happening,
within my interiority, I tried to bring that to the work. And so I'm
very focused on my process, which means I'm focused on what it feels
like, as I'm perceiving the world, entering into the actual writing
phase, I try to have a ritual, that book ends the process when I write,
so that when I walk into the poem, I know that there's going to be a
beginning, a middle and an end, There's a finite amount of time.
And that gives me some kind of surety and confidence in my
process, knowing that, okay, I get to decide how it ends. And even
though I don't know how it's going to end, I still get to decide. So
it makes me feel some sort of power and control. That's so
Camille Rankine: Interesting. I feel like I see that in your work
like that sense of power and control is so present in the poems
and it's interesting, because that comes through even when what the
poems are talking about might lack that control, like the actual
scenario or subject your narrative, there might be talking about a lack
of control, but the poems themselves feel in control of their
of their matter if that makes sense. You know, I think that's
really interesting how that power comes through.
Omotara James: It does that creates that delicious sort of tension, you
know, between helplessness and control. And that's how I'm always
trying to strike a balance, what I'm always navigating. And I
remember when I was I think it was a Breadloaf with Vievee Francis,
one of my favorite American poets, and she told us that we should have
a beginning and end to the writing process when we are writing about
something traumatic, problematic, you know, because that grace that
we give ourselves, we'll find it again, in the work.
Camille Rankine: Right? Do you feel like that process, that beginning,
middle and end that process? Is that consistent for you? Or does it
change depending on the poem and the work you're working on?
Omotara James: Hmm. It changes Yeah, it also changes depending on
the time of day that I'm working, because when I work in the
evenings, that's when I'm my least guarded self, my most open my most
vulnerable and everything becomes a little blurry. Right? The
boundary between being awake and being asleep, the boundary between
what I remember and what I can't forget. So I'm trying to, on the
one hand blur the boundary, and channel some kind of spiritual,
psychic energy. But also my intellect is also thinking along
certain themes that I am certain concerns that I'm exploring.
Camille Rankine: Yeah, that's so interesting. That tension, that
balance is so present in all these different ways. I think that's a
lot of what makes poetry kind of electric, you know? Yeah,
absolutely. All right. Well, let's hear a poem if we can. I'd love to
hear you read the poem that you're going to share today.
Omotara James: Okay, absolutely. So I'll be reading from my debut
collection, After the Last Calorie of the Apocalypse, or Prayer for
the Clinically Obese. On the last day, let there be a fat inhalation
of delight between the lap of our sunrise. As the tongue separates the
doubt from the cream, let pleasure sift through the metal strainer of
time. Only hours now, waiting for the thin people in my life to die.
I read a magazine, have sex, smoke a cigarette, and ride the elevator
down to the lobby. We've only minutes now. Having nothing against
them personally, unlike art, they don't improve much upon the
original form. Why was I ever only awake to the past, my past selves
asleep to what was plentiful. Exiting the lobby for the corner
store, I pass an absurdity of them. Only seconds now, staunchly
insisting their last instance be tailored to fit. Their paper lips
fanning the tulle hem of my dress, red, for the rest of us, mere
moments away from freedom, from this fine tyranny. If only for a short
while, as they begin to shrivel and wilt. Oh, mercy of the thin breeze.
On this day, lovelies, we will be free when the food runs out.
Camille Rankine: Thank you. I'm obsessed with that poem a little
bit.
Omotara James: Oh my gosh!
Camille Rankine: I love it. I love the way that you read it.
Omotara James: Thank you.
Camille Rankine: Yeah, it's so gorgeous. And I'm just thinking
about like, the language of pleasure, especially that like
immediately draws us in breath, sunrise, tongue, cream, sex
cigarette. Like it feels so warm and languid in its opening. Can
You talk about the choices that you made an image and language
to create that feeling.
Omotara James: Yeah, you know, I wanted to begin the poem with a
feeling of exultation of almost climax. And I was very aware that I
wanted to begin probably in a higher register than I wanted to
end. So I was thinking like, a gorgeous sunrise, a deep pastel,
creamy, abstract, a Renoir sunrise, something that you just couldn't
help but be drawn to, and compelled by something delicious. And I
wanted to begin with pleasure. And I wanted there to be slippage
between the deliciousness that you see, and the deliciousness that you
taste, right, and then we get into the body. So that's the tongue
separating the doubt from the cream, which is like, Okay, what
does that mean? We don't know entirely, but it's very lyric. It's
very evocative. And certainly, as the poem continues, there's this
element, this thread of cruelty, right? And that's kind of
underpinning the poem and I didn't want to point too overtly, to the
what was happening outside of the speaker, like the exposition. I
didn't feel that we needed a lot of exposition in an apocalypse poem.
Yeah, we get it. There's a dissonance there. There's a
dissonance between this excessive pleasure to all of a sudden, we're
smoking a cigarette, and we're having a sex and we're reading a
magazine, which is really pedestrian. And then as we
continue, the eye of the poem kind of opens out to everything that the
speaker is just kind of walking through. And the cameras just kind
of like following her. And she's the only one who's in focus,
walking through this apocalyptic state, where thin people are just
falling to the ground. And she saying, Yes, that's right. That's
right. And with every, with every single person that is obliterated,
she is occupying more space, she's becoming more confident, she's
feeling more liberated. And so there's this relationship between
occupying space and a fat body and being liberated, and just being
left alone, you know, not having anyone critique you too closely.
And so that was how I began the poem. Yeah.
Camille Rankine: I love that. You've mentioned this idea, this
element of cruelty, which one of the things that I really find
myself drawn to is the voice of the poem in moments like that, with
like, having done nothing against them personally, unlike art, they
don't improve much upon original form. I just love that "eye" that just
like, they're fine, I suppose.
Omotara James: I mean, it's funny. I thought that was funny. Yes,
Camille Rankine: Yes I think it's hilarious.I love that.
Omotara James: Thank you I'm a funny poet. People don't get
that there's humor there.
Camille Rankine: I mean, I'm over here cracking up.
Omotara James: You know, life is so absurd. You have to laugh. And also
to I did write this before the pandemic. So it felt just a little
bit more fun to speak about an apocalypse before COVID-19. Right.
Yeah. But it was this idea. You know, it was at a time where there
are all these like zombie movies. Yeah, there's all of this, you
know, all of these fantastic apocalypses that were showing, but
I wanted to reclaim that because depending on the life that you
lead, and and how you're living and how you're in community, you might
be facing the apocalypse every day, right? Yes,
Camille Rankine: absolutely. Yeah. Like there apocalypse happening for
people all the time. Yeah, all the
Omotara James: time, all the time, and in ways that are more obvious
and, and ways that are just smaller and more innocuous. So I just
wanted to take it from high to low from, you know, grand, to mundane.
Yes,
Camille Rankine: I think there is so much grandeur, that even the
mundane elements of the poem, like magazines, cigarette sex, they're
cast in this light, like this romantic light, you know, I just
feel like this poem is doing a lot with reframing of language of image
of body. And I, one of the things I love about that kind of casual
cruelty of the voice is how it works to reposition the newness
into something sort of withering and sad, you know?
Omotara James: It's important to subvert tropes. Yeah, um, and it's
really interesting. During this time of social media, body
positivity, fat liberation, I feel that times couldn't really be more
polarizing, the more space that is created socially, for people who
are fat, super fat, infini-fat, the more visceral and vitriol there is
around our bodies. So there are these extremities and the idea of
seeing a speaker, just walk through them just cut through them with
such, you know, poise and sense of self and being so casual about it.
Yeah, that was very attractive to me to see a speaker, a fat speaker,
framing the narrative, and not just solely being the subject of the
narrative. Felt very important. Yeah,
Camille Rankine: yeah, I think that comes across. And another thing
that I really enjoy thinking about that turn of power, and grace is
that last line, the entrance of the word, lovelies, can you talk about
that? Like how you arrived at that moment of address?
Omotara James: So while I was writing this poem, I was also
thinking a lot about how I could condense, like the last few minutes
of someone's entire life, and how to create that heightened sense of
time. And in doing so, I thought, you know, when no one knows how
they're going to go out, right, no one knows when their last day is
going to be. And so I just thought the poem began in beauty and is
ending in death. And also through that death. There is another beauty
being born. So we're beginning in beauty, and we're ending in beauty,
but not in the same place. Right? Yeah. So it just felt really
important to make sure that there are some love for those who are
left last at the end of the poem.
Camille Rankine: And there's also something really hopeful, I think,
when we think about, like, how many apocalypses we live through and a
lot of people live through of taking that moment and spinning it
around a little bit and thinking about what can we build? What can
we gain? What how can we be freer? Yeah, I think there's something
hopeful about it, even though it's about the end of the world.
Omotara James: Yeah. And that's why I wrote it in couplets.
Camille Rankine: I was gonna ask about that. I love a couplet talk
to me about that.
Omotara James: couplet. You know, it feels like when you're writing a
couplet, you're beginning somewhere and you're ending somewhere. It's
like two hands holding. Yeah.
Camille Rankine: I always say that. It's like hand in hand skipping
down the street. You know, I was just about to say that,
Omotara James: Oh, my goodness, Camille, you get me.
Here. We're here together in this. Yes. Oh, my goodness. Never felt so
seen. Yes. The Sisterhood. So yes. So there's this feeling of when I
see couplets together, it's like, oh, okay, we're merely going along
this poem. Right. So there's that lightness and that levity in terms
of how it looks so kind of unassuming. But also, what this
poem is saying is, death is coming, death is coming, death is coming,
death is coming. And we're going to be okay, for like, a few minutes.
After all the thin people perish. It's gonna be good for a few minutes.
And that's gonna be good. And also, you know, when you go back to the
title of the poem, The first part is after The Last Calorie of the
Apocalypse, right. But the second part is Prayer for the Clinically
Obese, and that word obese and obesity, especially in the within
the culture and context of fat liberation. That is, you know, very
much a slur because it is a word that is highly loaded, that's
always used really pejoratively. There's there's no place where it's
not used pejoratively. It's built into the word, especially when it's
used clinically and those clinical spaces, those medical spaces,
people who are fat are most vulnerable. And also the least
seen. We're not taken seriously. And that's why we don't enter those
spaces. As much as thinner people, people living in thinner bodies
would enter those spaces. Because there's more freedom there.
Camille Rankine: I was thinking about that inclusion of the
Prayer for the Clinically Obese in the title. Just the coldness of that
word, the accusation of it, and how the whole poem seems to sort of
just laugh in its face almost sort of just it pushes right back
against that. And seems to me, like just take the control away from
that designation and control that story and that narrative. It just
creates such an interesting tension to me, that really informs the way
that I understand and feel the impact of the poem itself.
Omotara James: I mean, certainly, this is a fuck you poem. Oh, yeah.
I mean, there's there's no way around that. It's a poem that says my
personhood is going to be asserted, whether you like it or not, and I
actually prefer that you don't like that would bring me pleasure.
Camille Rankine: You don't need to like, yeah, yeah,
right. I think that's what is so delicious about the poem that, you
know, that sense of facing that title and pushing back and laughing
at that title and saying, I'm I'm actually not, I'm not going about
to take that on myself. Good luck. Good luck to you. No, I yeah, I
think that's, that's glorious.
Omotara James: Thank you.
Camille Rankine: Thank you. And I think this is a good time to take a
little break. Okay.
Cathy & Peter Halstead: We hope you're enjoying The Glimpse. It's
just one small part of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.
Unknown: We're the founders Peter and Cathy Halstead. Our
Cathy & Peter Halstead: goal is to make poetry more accessible to
everyone. And we do that in a variety of ways. Through
partnerships, our film series, this podcast, and our website
Brinkerhoff poetry.org.
Unknown: We hope these works will lure you into a parallel universe.
The way a Möbius strip brings you into another dimension without
leaving the page you're on. Thanks for listening. Okay,
Camille Rankine: welcome back. So we are going to hear a poem that
has inspired you.
Omotara James: The name of the poem is Tiara by Mark Doty from his
collection, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight. Tiara. Peter died in a
paper tiara cut from a book of princess paper dolls. He loved
royalty, sashes and jewels. I don't know. He said, when he woke in
the hospice. I was watching the Betty Davis Film Festival on
channel 57 and then— At the wake, the tension broke when someone
guessed the casket closed because he was in there and a big wig and
heels, and someone said, you know he's always late. He probably isn't
here yet. He's still fixing his makeup. And someone said he asked
for it. asked for it. When all he did was go down into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted, giving himself over so drunk or
stoned. It almost didn't matter who, though they were beautiful,
stampeding into him in the simple lavishing music of their hurry. I
think heaven is perfect stasis poised over the realms of desire.
Where dreaming and waking men lie on the grass, while wet horses
roam among them huge fragments of the music we die into in the body's
paradise. Sometimes we wake not knowing how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary precious stones. And
given the world's perfectly turned shoulders, the deep hollows blued
by longing, given the irreplaceable silk of horses, rippling in
orchards, fruit thundering and chiming down, given the ordinary
marvels of form and gravity. What could he do? What could any of us
ever do? But ask for it?
Camille Rankine: Talk about a fuck You poem. You know?
I love this. I think I just want to wrap myself in this poem. But
before I do that, what what about this poem draws you to it.
Omotara James: You know, this was one of the first poems I read in a
college class of contemporary poets. And at the time, I was
really struggling to find my own voice. I knew I had things I wanted
to say, things that were simmering things that I couldn't articulate,
but I didn't know how to say them. I didn't know anything about
registers in poetry, tone shifts, any of that. And when I came
across this poem, for the first time, I just completely lost it. I
just, it was a release. It felt like a godsend. It felt like this
poem was a complete whole and holy rebuke, of being too much. And what
I loved about this poem was its tenderness. Its tenderness, and the
fact that the speaker had so much love For the subject. Yes, yes, I
also felt like I knew Peter, a little bit, even though that's
ridiculous. But, you know, in some ways, we all have a Peter or are the
Peter, you know, in our own lives. Flamboyant, fun,
carefree, deeply connected to pleasure, to appetite, to beauty. And
so those through lines of connecting appetite, pleasure
experience to beauty to the sublime that I felt was a restoration, it
gave me back something that I felt I was losing on a daily basis.
Camille Rankine: I love that all he did was go down and have a salt
tight of wanting as much as he wanted." And now that that we just
tumbled from that. I feel like we're falling and we fall into
heaven in that moment. And yes,
Omotara James: you do tumble into heaven. And what is taking us there
is Peter's love of life. Yeah, you know. So in many ways, the subject
is being reanimated through our connection to that beautiful,
ravishing music to these luscious images to these gorgeous fragments.
Yes. And Doty is so good at also making us complicit in Peter's
pleasure. Absolutely. Because we're feeling the pleasure, oh, we don't
want it to stop. We don't want these tercets to end and by the time
I got to the end, I was upset that it was ending, I wanted to reread
it again. And again. And again. And so it's creating that desire
for for excess, and pleasure. And the craft is so well and
intentional.
Camille Rankine: He takes us so deep into it, that you completely
are in a position of embodying that like experience that Peter was
having where you're like, I want more, I don't want this to end I want
to be in this space. And you feel like you are, like you said
complicit in that in that desire,
Omotara James: and also complicit in the love that the speaker has
for the subject, the love that the speaker has for Peter, that you
couldn't but adore him. And whereas this poem kind of opens up, you
know, into heaven, I wanted like my apocalypse poem, to kind of begin
in a heaven, and then zoom out and come back down to earth.
Camille Rankine: And I think each poem is saying, you know, hold on,
and also, it's showing us like, you're saying, like, we make a
heaven of hell, we make a hell of heaven. It's showing us in a way
that this doesn't have to be the way that we see it, there is
something else, there's another way of understanding and entering into
the reality of this person to think differently, and see differently
and understand our role, our control our you know, what power we
have, and how we understand each other, right do to each other.
Omotara James: I mean, because ultimately, you know, as far as I'm
concerned, that's the role of the poem. It's not just to, you know,
virtue signal or whatever, but it's to really try to interrogate what
it is that the reader believes, and what their position and
positionality is, to the content, right? And what I try to do in all
of my poems, and what I love about this Doty poem is that even though
the speakers of both poems are speaking back to the spectacle of
an the specter of hatred, they're also both not performing. No, my
poem is not performing fatness Tiara is not performing gayness,
okay. What it is doing is it's defying, okay, these are defiant
poems. So they're defying what your relationship to gayness is, you
know, not saying, oh, you know, this is our gayness, please accept
it. You know, please accept our queerness No, it's saying, Listen,
this is how we live. This is how we love. And wouldn't you be so lucky?
Camille Rankine: Yeah, absolutely. So, thank you for talking to me
about this poem. But I also want to ask you, yeah, what are you up to?
What are you working on right now? I mean, I know you just gave us
this book. So no rush.
Omotara James: Well, yeah, I gave the book and the book is still
giving. It's still giving. It's still giving because I
am working on the audio book. I'm very excited to be recording.
That's great.
Camille Rankine: That's good. I'm happy for people. get to listen to
you read this book, because it's great to listen to hear it read
your poems.
Omotara James: I mean, not to toot my own horn, but when you hear a
poem in the voice of the speaker, that's another kind of experience
and, and translation. And so the intimacy is just heightened. So
that's what I love about the audiobook. And of course, I'm
always writing poems, and I'm working on a children's book.
Camille Rankine: Ah, oh my gosh, for the children. Everybody's
lucky. I'm excited about that.
Omotara James: Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I'm really excited. What age
group like 10 Eight and under, you know? Yeah, it's
Camille Rankine: exciting. It is
Omotara James: exciting.
Camille Rankine: It's so great to talk to you about these poems.
Thank you so much. It's been a joy.
Omotara James: Thank you, Camille.
Camille Rankine: Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host Camille
Rankine. Omatara's poem After the Last Calorie of the Apocalypse
Prayer for the Clinically Obese appears in her debut poetry
collection Song of my Softening, published in 2024, and aired with
permission from Alice James books. Mark Doty's poem Tiara is from the
book Paragon Park, Turtle Swan, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight and
Early Poems, copyright 2012. It was used with permission from Yhe
Permissions Company LLC on behalf of David R. Godine Publisher Inc.
And that's it for this season of The Glimpse. It's been a pleasure
to be in conversation with these writers and their words, and to
share the conversation with you. I hope you'll keep going keep reading
poems and join us for the next season of The Glimpse which will
focus on Irish poets. Make sure to like and subscribe to The Glimpse
wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find episodes on our
website Brinkerhoff poetry.org. If you have any questions or comments,
please drop us an email at The Glimpse poetry podcast@gmail.com.
The Glimpse is a production of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry
Foundation. I'm your host Camille Rankine. Our senior producer is
Jennifer Wolfe Kat Yore is our technical director and mixing
engineer. Editorial Director Amanda Glassman is our curator and
production coordinator. Amy Holmes is the foundation's Executive
Director and our co founders are Cathy and Peter Halstead. Thanks
for listening