Yasmin Bailey is a Vincentian Queer Woman. She is a poet and she knows it. Yasmin is passionate about creating systemic change and creating spaces for marginalized communities. In the Fall, Yasmin will begin an Organizational Psychology masters program at Adler University in Vancouver. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @YayForMe_
"If it wasn’t for writing those letters, or writing in my journal every time someone made me cry, if it wasn’t for pulling out my phone and writing in the notes section every time some white man said something real weird, I really wouldn’t be who I am."
A Dream
by: Yasmin Bailey
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for mmmmhmm ohmygod ALL?! But my brother and sisters are still being judged by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. ALL?! But my brothers and sisters are still being murdered in the streets I am scared and I am angry. I am unsafe in a place I am supposed to be the opposite. in a country I am supposed to call my home Because home no longer means being free Home means Horrible obstreperous maximum eradication So yeah I guess this is home Where the color of my skin is the threat that I pose Black is not synonymous with ratchet or Ghetto Black is not synonymous with danger or violent Black Culture is not a wig or costume one can put on or take off when convenient. Black is synonymous with Power Black is synonymous with Excellence Black is synonymous with Enriching It is Perfection, Gold, Resilience, Strength, Smart, Beautiful Black is synonymous with Standard, Greatness, Originality, Kings and Queens. In 2018 I celebrate my Melanin in a way to show that I cannot and will not be taught otherwise It is my right to unapologetically live and shine in the light. Same story every time The color of my skin is not a crime Martin Luther King Jr had a dream, and so do I Let’s join together to see the unjust acts and this systemic oppression And let it fuel our revolution! Spread these revelations! And let the sequel be better than the story and the prequel! Because I will hold these truths to be self evident that all men AND WOMEN are created equal WE ARE THE CHANGE YOU ARE THE CHANGE And it's not a day late or a dollar short
TS: Tell me about your first exposure to poetry.
YB: I was in 3rd grade and my white teacher told us to write a poem that was similar to “roses are red, violets are blue” and I was the only one in the class who wrote a full page, rhyme scheme ass poem. Ever since then, I was like “yeah I like this”.
TS: Tell me about your journey through poetry, what content did you deal with, what forms have you explored?
YB: I was very skeptical about trying traditional Shakespearean, iambic pentameter kind of poetry. I still don’t do it anyway but when I started writing I did want all my poems to rhyme. Then I moved into trying to be a lil rapper/songwriter, I had big dreams. I started to write based on my feelings, focusing on alliteration. My senior year of high school I wrote my college essay as a poem, because I was like “fuck the rules”. If in college I could write all my essays as poems, it would be great. And most of my essays do sound like poems, but just look like essays.
Content wise, I’ve always used poetry as a form of expression. When I couldn’t put my feelings into complete sentences, I just wrote poetry. I think its always been a political activist kind of deal, writing about my black experience and this greater societal issue with blackness. It’s all been very personal content about how I see the world. I have dabbled on being a woman, being queer but it’s always been in that general are.
TS: What have been your influences?
YB: In terms of other writers, I want to say Maya Angelou. She’s super intimidating! Like really inspiring but also intimidating. You so fancy, oh my goodness. My day-to-day experiences have always been my inspirations.
TS: How has your poetry changed from before to after coming out?
YB: That’s so funny because I was just looking at poetry I wrote before coming out to my mom, so around 8th grade. There were always hidden things, in between the lines about how I clearly like girls. Afterwards, it became very blatant. In high school, my mom knew I was bi and I wrote a whole poem about being with a girl. I had never been with a girl yet but this poem made it seem like I was a full on expert. So there was a really big difference. At first it happened really subtly in my poetry, but then it became very clear that I was not straight. Not at all.
TS: What challenges have you faced as a queer POC writer?
YB: I took “The Art of Poetry”, it was a second year seminar class and I never really responded to the prompts because “fuck a prompt”. The feedback I received was always to write more in line with whatever we were talking about. I understood that she wanted us to write in different styles but lady? It was clear that she didn’t like what I was writing in terms of content. And all the content was like “I’m black”, “I’m queer”, “haha”. That was my biggest challenge, being taken seriously. She was like “you’re just writing for fun and that’s not what this is about it”, I was like “actually it took me some time to write this, fuck you”.
TS: Can you talk about the power of reclaiming space, and how you do that with your writing?
YB: I’m very not confrontational, I hate confrontation. I would define myself as a punk ass bitch, like my soul can’t take it. I really expel all of that energy that would come from confrontation into my writing. Whenever I’m in a space where I feel uncomfortable, most people would say “she’s pulling out her phone cause she doesn’t want to interact with people”, but no I’m taking out my phone to write because I don’t want to say the wrong thing so I write it out. People say things, and I’m like “that’s racist!” and I don’t want to be lynched today so I’ll just write it down. I don’t want those problems.
TS: Do you consider yourself an activist, how does this shine through in your writing?
YB: I definitely do consider myself an activist. I think that everybody who is a person of color that doesn’t assimilate or bash other people of color and isn’t anti-black is an activist. Because you’re actively going against these societal norms and these fucked up ways of the world. I think it shows up in my writing especially now. If I’m not writing about myself, I’m writing about a dark-skin black woman, or not a cis person because I feel like you don’t see a lot of that in people’s writing. For so long I thought poetry was only Shakespeare and I was like “whoa I can do it too?”
TS: How have you healed through writing?
YB: My mom is from the Caribbean, she’s from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She came here when she was well into her 20’s, about to be 30, and had me five years after she had been here. There’s this huge cultural barrier between my mom and I, and I’m the last kid at that, so it’s so hard to understand when she’s trying to convey concepts to me. When she would punish me, I didn’t know why I was being punished. So I started writing letters to her. She would get mad, or I would do something wrong and I’d write a full on letter, they were really poems. I would tell her that I didn’t know what I did wrong, that I was just trying to understand and that I loved her. Through writing poetry and letters to my mom, I’ve been able to grow up and heal from these torn relationships with my mother, with my siblings and myself. If it wasn’t for writing those letters, or writing in my journal every time someone made me cry, if it wasn’t for pulling out my phone and writing in the notes section every time some white man said something real weird, I really wouldn’t be who I am.
TS: Name the poet that impacts you the most. Why?
YB: Porsha O. "Angry Black Woman". When I watched the video, the way she read that poem, I said “this is it”, it was magical. I think about how she delivered it, from the mannerisms and the inflections of her voice and for doing spoken word pieces that was great. But just thinking about how she conveyed those words, I take that and apply it to my writing. It was just beautiful.
TS: Tell me a little about the poem you sent me, your writing process?
YB: That poem started off as an MLK Day poem, which is why there’s that random line that goes “Martin Luther King had a dream and so did I!” I had to write it for an MLK Day event at Goodwill, for the mentoring program. That was one of the first poems I wrote where I asked other people for feedback. I kept tinkering with it and I workshopped it for the CUPSI 2017 (College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational) competition two years ago. It felt very cathartic performing the poem after it was workshopped because that was after I added “black is not synonymous with, black is synonymous with”, which wasn’t there originally.
TS: What are you doing with capitalization in that stanza where you talk about what black is or isn’t synonymous with? You capitalize “ghetto” but also “excellence” “power” and “enriching”.
YB: For those moments, I remember capitalizing to give it more power. The ghetto is a real place, ratchetness is a real thing, so fight me on it but it’s real. Black culture wouldn’t be what it is without the ratchets. They’re more than just passive things that you say, they can give and take away value from blackness.
Review + Analysis of "A Dream"
by: Tanairi Sorrentini
I have had the pleasure of watching Yasmin perform this piece a couple of times at open mics, including one that I hosted. Yasmin is a presence, you can tell off the bat that she is a seasoned performer and captivates the audience with her infectious humor and wit. My favorite thing about this poem is all of it, to be honest, but more specifically the third stanza, where she goes through a list of things that Black is and isn’t synonymous with. She mentioned during the interview that she has capitalized certain terms to bring them power, instead of using them in the passive way that people might in order to remove power from things that are synonymous with blackness. This is a beautiful piece that is very blatant about the beauty of blackness and does not shy away from calling out the bullshit that Black people in America face on a daily basis.