In case you missed the first part of our interview with Bianca Spriggs (in which she discussed being nomadic, Affrilachian, and pluck! The Journal of Afrilachian Arts & Culture), click here to check it out!
Your blog’s tagline is “author, artist, activist”. I’m going to ask about the activism in a second, but I’m curious what kind of art do you make besides poetry?
A little bit of everything. Poetry is my first genre love, but I’ve actually always suspected I’m a speculative fiction writer at heart, and was adamantly told so by novelist Sarah Micklem when I read at The New School this past Spring. I keep a tight lid on my prose mostly because I feel like a foreign exchange student when I try and tackle it, but occasionally things will leak out. I’d written a poem about a dragon in a bathroom and Sarah was like, “We need you on our team.” I’m cracking up right now because we both got really excited during the conversation and it meant a lot to hear such an accomplished author call me out like that. So, I have to now confess, I write fiction and creative non-fiction too.
I am also an actor, a multimedia visual artist, and have directed a few short films. I say I’m a writer primarily because, as you can see, I’m a bit long-winded, but I love being able to tell stories in any medium. I don’t like the idea of restricting myself because stagnation terrifies me. I know I’m on the right track with something when I feel nervous and anxious and sort of like, “Can I really pull this off?” I feel very grateful to have been gifted the ability to adapt my stories to different outlets, whether it’s a painting, or a sculpture, or a short film, or collage. For me, the vehicle is less important than the content. The content dictates the form. I’d never made resin casts of skulls before The Thirteen but I figured it out because I knew it had to be thirteen skulls which were a little scary but also beautiful to behold. There was no other way for me to get my point across with that aspect of the narrative. Working in other media actually bolsters my writing because I can now think about a poem like a filmmaker, or like a painter, or a collage artist, or a performer, but I can think about all those things like a poet. It’s all one and the same for me because I believe hybridity and fluency in other media are crucial to the next evolutionary phase of artists and writers.
What goes on in your studio at the Bread Box?
I’m laughing right now because I’m thinking of my collaborator, Angel Clark, saying something to the effect of “a whole bunch of crazy.” My studio is sort of like my mad-scientist laboratory/evil genius lair. I’m responding to you now from the studio and I’m looking around at shelves of books, a bird skeleton in a gold-leaf cage, a painting of a gazelle-skull woman, a few unicorns and vintage cameras, reams of poetry manuscripts, skeins of yarn, waaaaaay too much glitter, twenty bouquets of silk flowers, cans of neon spray paint, a wall full of pen & inks, and, like, a sewing machine. It’s controlled chaos in here. I call it my womb room. My little galaxy. It basically looks like my imagination exploded. I come in, immediately burn some cedar or sandalwood incense, I may read, write, spray paint and gold leaf a plastic pigeon, have a few friends over to clink mason jars and turn up the music. A better question might be what doesn’t go on in here? I typically hang around on Gallery Hop nights for folks who’d like to stop by and say hello and see for themselves.
You host the Wild Women of Poetry Slam at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. The first time I saw you read was in 2009 during the Gypsy Poetry Slam. Is that the same poetry slam? If so, why did the name change?
It is the same slam. This year, we decided to change the name because we are aware, that even while the term “gypsy poet” is something that is used regularly to refer to slam and spoken word poets who travel quite a bit, we are also aware that the fact that the term “gypsy” is commonly used to refer to an ethnic group and we wanted to reflect our sensitivity to the cultural identity of the group in our title. So, overhauling a several-year old brand takes a little time, obviously, but better late than never! This year’s line-up is going to be crazy including a few home-team women spoken word artists as well as decorated poets from around the country. We’re featuring Sonya Renee Taylor with Saul Williams as our special guest. This will all go down at Transy’s Carrick Theater on September 20, 6:30 PM. Sisters of the Sacred Drum will be the opening act. It’s a free show but parents may want to leave underage ears at home or be prepared to explain a few terms and material. Slam poetry is…well…it’s slam poetry.
To what extent do you work with the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association?
We started working together in the winter of 2011. I was invited by LeTonia Jones, who was an Advocate for them at the time, to start creative writing workshops for women in Kentucky jails and prisons. So, in partnership with KDVA and again, with the generosity of KFW, I started, The SwallowTale Project: creative writing for incarcerated women.
Can you tell me a little about the SwallowTale Project?
SwallowTale is essentially a straightforward writing workshop model geared towards the specific needs and interests of incarcerated women. We saw some major correlations between women’s histories of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and incarceration, and the writing workshops serve the purpose of allowing the women to voice their narratives through specific writing prompts and a supportive workshop environment. Once a week we offer the workshop for around seventy-five minutes in FCDC. When we can, we travel to other facilities like KCIW or the Federal Medical Camp. We hold a book drive a couple of times of year for books to donate to the women, and I invite Kentucky authors to give readings which have included Nikky Finney, Leatha Kendrick, Jeremy Paden, Donna Ison, and Frank X Walker. We also brought on Angel Clark, a photographer, to document the workshops and readings.
In the summer of 2011, we compiled our most successful writing exercises and samples from the women along with Angel’s photos and produced a book so that the women could work on their own throughout the week when we aren’t there. We donate several copies of the book to every facility we visit and there are even copies on sale at Morris Books with all proceeds going back toward the project.
Currently, we are in the process of training up a new team of writers to continue the workshop at FCDC while I am working on The SwallowTale Project play, a version of which debuted in a formal reading at the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh in Spring 2011, and will be produced sometime in the 2014-2015 season with the progressive theater group in Lexington, Project SEETheatre. It is our hope that the play will tour to some of these facilities as well. This is a sorely neglected demographic of burgeoning writers, so we’re always looking for interested writers of any genre to join us!
You recently jumpstarted a conversation following the George Zimmerman verdict that created a healthy conversation for the community. Along with the SwallowTale project, in what other ways do you see yourself as an activist?
I grew up in an activist tradition. My mother always paired her faith with helping those less fortunate than us. Often, and usually not even formally part of a church, she took my sister and I into nursing homes and sometimes hospitals or homeless shelters to lend a hand towards uplifting the spirits and situations of people who needed it, so I grew up with activism as part of my moral vocabulary. And honestly, I don’t know that as a Black woman in America I have any choice but to be an activist. For instance, the distance between me and the incarcerated women I work with is very, very slim, for all of my accomplishments. The women I work with have everything from terminal degrees to terminal illnesses. So, just by staying alive as a Black person, as a woman, as a Black woman, as an artist who identifies as such, and keeping my head above water in this country and doing as much as I can with the gifts I was given while I can is the definition of activism to me.
As to how that plays out specifically as an artist and poet, I see myself mostly as someone who champions the voiceless. In my poetry, and other artwork and in my community involvement. I know what it’s like to feel like I don’t have a voice and how empowering it can be for a) a person to know someone’s listening and b) to activate change based on knowledge. Every activist should be aware of their strengths and mine happens to be the ability to bring disparate communities together in one room to talk and more importantly, to make something happen. To that end, I try to create spaces, similar to the town-hall meeting where a given cause can hold the spotlight and people can become more informed about their rights and options.
In addition to the SwallowTale work, I have been known to host fundraisers for victims of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the earthquakes in Haiti, as well as for local organizations such as KFTC. I speak regularly at women’s rights rallies, talk openly about the ramifications of gentrification, and pound the pavement to combat the environmental atrocities caused by MTR.
At the moment, Joy Priest and I, as a result of the town-hall meeting following the Zimmerman verdict, are in the process of creating a directory of organizations and policy-makers in Lexington and surrounding areas that contribute to community-based activism and empowerment. We realized during the meeting how many amazing organizations are committed to improving peoples’ quality of life and how vital it is for people to stay informed and active so the directory, DIRECT LEX, will also eventually be a web and print resource, home to a community calendar, and further town-hall meetings.
What’s your most recent work? Do you have anything coming out you’d like to publicize?
I’m basically doing a lot of work wrapping up previous projects at the moment and am not taking on anything new, particularly while at a sensitive point in getting my degree. But I can tell you a little bit about what I’ve been working on.
I have two poetry manuscripts in the works, one Potiphar’s Wife which revolves primarily around some seriously wild women who just started showing up one day and haven’t left me the same since. And then another called, The Galaxy is a Dance Floor which is sort of me interrogating matters of the heart through the lens of the cosmos. It’s a bit science-y and space-y which is a departure for me since I love the mythological stuff, but it’s also a lot darker and the most experimental work I’ve ever done in terms of form and content.
I’m still working on elements of The Thirteen which is a multimedia narrative revolving around thirteen women and girls who were lynched in Kentucky during the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Angel Clark and I debuted the show at Transy this past January and it featured a visual art exhibition with resin skulls and photography, a short film, and also a live performance poetry set backed by fourteen Kentucky musicians. I hope to continue working with Duane Lundy over at Shangri La to create a complete album version of the performance and to put the visual work and the poetry from the show into a publication.
I mentioned The SwallowTale Project, the play version which will be coming up, and then there are still events related to my participation with the Lexington Tattoo Project which, of course, is spearheaded by Kremena Todorova and Kurt Gohde, two Transy professors who convinced over 250 people to get parts of a poem I wrote tattooed on their bodies, including my mother-in-law! That publication comes out this coming winter, I believe early in 2014.
And finally I have a really fun straight visual art exhibition coming up probably late Spring at the Bread Box Studios with Angel called, “The Gatekeepers” which is going to be absolutely wild but pretty much a secret for now. But it’s never too early to put something like that on everyone’s radar.
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