Amena Brown:
Hey y'all. Welcome back to the HER living room. I'm your host, Amena Brown, and this is HER with Amena Brown. I hope y'all are enjoying a little bit of springtime, and if you are able to, I hope you are on your way to getting vaccinated. By the time you hear this episode, I will be fully vaccinated, which basically means I will be hugging all over my mom, grandma, and sister.
Amena Brown:
I experienced such a sense of relief when the vaccine was available to me, and I realized there's still a lot about the past year that I'm recovering from in a lot of ways. Many of us have experienced grief in various ways over this past year. Some of us have lost loved ones, some of us lost jobs, lost relationships, experienced the collective grief of the hard things that were happening in our country and in the world.
Amena Brown:
My therapist told me that grief has to be processed. Grief is best not stuffed down or ignored. Grief may pop up at what seem like some of the most inopportune times, but if we take time to let grief sit with us, we can process it and walk through it at whatever pace we can.
Amena Brown:
In this week's episode from the HER archives, which was recorded in the before times, I'm talking with author, educator, Poetry Slam Champion, and one of my favorite poets, Theresa Davis. Listen in as Theresa shares with me how we can use writing to process grief and the helpful ways we can walk alongside someone who is grieving. Check it out.
Amena Brown:
Welcome back. I am so excited. We are having author, poet, educator, Poetry Slam Champion. She has written two books of poetry, After This We Go Dark and Drowned: A Mermaid's Manifesto, both published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Welcome, Theresa Davis.
Amena Brown:
Oh my gosh, y'all. First of all, I have literally 17,000 things that I could be talking to Theresa about, so I'm going to try and not do that and just pick at least 15,000 of them and save the other 2,000 for later. But I just want y'all to know, first of all, I've lived here in Atlanta 20 years and Theresa Davis has been a pillar of our poetry community. I feel like here in Atlanta, but I think in general, you are a pillar in the poetry community nationwide, because this is how I get poetry street cred. When I go places and they'll be like, "Oh, you live in Atlanta? What other poets you know there?" I'll be like, "I know Theresa." They'll be like, "Oh, okay." Then they accept me.
Amena Brown:
So not only is Theresa just an amazing performance poet herself, she's also a fabulous host. I actually hosted a couple of bouts with Theresa at the National Poetry Slam competition when it was here in Decatur, and I always tell this story in front of her. She's rolling her eyes, tired of hearing it probably. But she's hosting and I was supposed to be keeping track of some numbers or some something on the side, and I'm taking notes like, "Okay, after introduce this poet, then says these things," I mean, it was just ... She is just a master of her craft.
Theresa Davis:
Thank you.
Amena Brown:
So Theresa, thank you for being here. I always start out wanting to ask an origin story question. You became someone who works with words, who helps other people find their words too. When you look at young Theresa, would you say you would expect this is what you were going to become? Or when you look at your young self, was your young self on a totally different road or path?
Theresa Davis:
Well, my young self was raised by two poets, and being raised by creatives it's always interesting times when there's not enough money or the contracts are not coming. You take a mysterious camping trip that lasts a week because they don't want you to ask why the light's not working right now, or, "Do we have water?" So they got real creative of hiding the fact that we were living on poets' salaries, which you can hear the word po' in that word, poetry. You can hear it loud sometimes-
Amena Brown:
Thank you for making that connection.
Theresa Davis:
Sometimes it's loud. So I definitely did not see myself being a poet. I avoided it at all costs. And when you're the daughter of artists who do a lot of community organizing and are part of a lot of festivals and activist-type things, you sometimes find yourself being the kid who has to memorize a poem to perform at said rally or wherever they're doing. So I was that kid a lot. I didn't resent it as much as I was just like, "Again?" So when I found myself as an adult actually doing poetry after my dad died and being introduced for the first year and a half that I performed at open mics or whatever event would invite me, and being introduced as Alice Lovelace's daughter, I felt like I really came into myself. The first time she was introduced as Theresa Davis's mother, I was like, "Pop a collar, you have arrived."
Amena Brown:
Come on, pop a collar.
Theresa Davis:
"Now you can be you. You've earned your voice." So yeah, I definitely did not see myself being a poet. I did want to do journalism real hard for a while there. I wanted to be an investigative reporter, a mix between Daphne of Scooby-Doo and April from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, just be all up in people's grills and finding out the stuff, the dirt, the lowdown. When I got into college, I was like, "Okay, no. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to do something else, but I don't know what it is." And then I stumbled into, "Oh wait, you're a writer. Who knew? Your parents probably did." But it's okay. We're all on the same page now.
Amena Brown:
That's right. I love it. I wanted to have Theresa to come on and be a guest and just share some things with us because one of the things that I love about your work is that it's very visceral for me of an experience. It's visceral for a lot of us, all of us who are sitting in the audience, when you share these stories from your life. And sometimes it's visceral because I'm just laughing my head off about it, and sometimes it's visceral because you write about being in love so well, and sometimes it's visceral because it just makes us cry. I think there have been times the crowd has cried with you, that the piece also even though you may have shared it many times before that it's still is a visceral experience to you.
Amena Brown:
And I think that is such a credit to you as a performing artist, because I think sometimes there can be this thing where you're going on stage, you're hitting the autopilot, you've done the thing, but there's something else to really be present in the work and precedent how the work may still affect you or may affect you differently even than it did when you were originally writing the thing.
Amena Brown:
And so part of what I wanted Theresa to share with us, is how we process grief. And that's not all of your work, but that's something that has come up in quite a few of your pieces, how we can take all the grief that gets stuck inside and the page is a place where we can put it that.
Theresa Davis:
Grief is not always about physically losing somebody or a person. It can also be losing an idea or having something shift so completely that what you believe is no longer a real thing. That's something also that I think comes out in some of my work, like you have these ideas of what a thing is supposed to be. I could write about being in love probably because I'm so bad at it, but that wanting to be a part of something that's not for you. I know for me it's one of my super bad habits is trying to fix something that I didn't break and they getting so caught up in like, "I know this can work if I could fix this one thing, but I didn't break it and this gorilla glue ain't doing nothing." I had a thing that happened to me and we went to this competition in Dallas called DIPS, the Dallas Invitation Poetry Slam, where the prize was a giant bowl of guacamole in this beautiful silver bowl, and it was the best damn guacamole I've ever had in my life.
Amena Brown:
I was about to say, where does one go to do this?
Theresa Davis:
I know, it doesn't happen anymore. But it was one of those things where I went and we did this workshop. Back then I held back a lot because I didn't want to be the poet who burst into tears every time she opens her mouth or write about sad stuff all the time, and the workshop we did, I decided that I was going to allow myself to be as vulnerable as I could stand. I could be very vulnerable in my work when I talked about my job, because I love my job. I was teacher, I love being a teacher, my kids, I love being a mom, I have not damaged them in any serious way that hopefully they will have great jobs later and could pay for that. I try really hard to like be present in their lives. If I'm telling you to show up for opportunities then you have to show up for yourself. You know what I mean?
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Theresa Davis:
I wrote Breathing Lessons in that workshop, and this is a poem that is quite old, but it still resonates with me and it hits me differently depending on when I do it. Sometimes I'm not terribly emotional at all, but I'm still connected to the work, and then other times it floors me from out of nowhere. And I think it's because I realized I still have that loss of innocence, that wanting to be with a person but not understanding how to do that in a way where you're still yourself. Losing yourself inside somebody else's never a good thing. Sometimes we don't understand that it's not a good thing until we actually done it and have to climb back into our own skins and be like, "Oh, that was icky. Let me get it out of my body." I think that being able to be present in the work is still me processing it out of my body, but actually understanding that this was a part of who I am.
Theresa Davis:
I come across a lot of people who are ashamed of earlier work and they'll say things like, "Well, I've grown and I don't write like that anymore." I'm like, "But you can't deny that that wasn't who you were." To do that I think does a disservice to yourself. If you can't look at what you've done in the past and where you are now and see the growth in it, you become in danger of disconnecting from your work. I value words, I value other people's time. If you're going to take the time to come and hear me say words, I feel like it's my job as an artist and someone who is proud of their work and someone who enjoy sharing, because I believe sharing our stories connects us. We get past our differences in like, "This is...", or whatever. We figure out where we connect, where we overlap and when my story bumps up against your story and I want to have a conversation about that.
Theresa Davis:
So this poem, Breathing Lessons, is about me being in love with a woman and not understanding what this meant. I did this poem at a showcase at nationals in Boston, and it was a very first poem and the finals two hour show, at the end of the show this couple walks up to me, this man and this woman, white man and white woman, I am not white. I don't know if you know me? And the man comes to me and he says, "I need you to talk to my wife." And I say, "Why?" And he says, "She was in a relationship with a woman when she was in college, and she never had closure with that relationship. And I really feel like she needs to get that closure because I feel like it's holding up our relationship. I love her and I know she loves me, but I just wanted her to hug you or talk to you or whatever." And his wife is still in tears. She's been crying through the entire show from that one poem.
Theresa Davis:
For me, that's connecting. I am in Boston and a random white dude connects with my story and is so secure in his marriage that he wants his wife to have the closure that she never got, because the whole problem was about closure, about wanting that closure and understanding who you are now, I suppose who you were when you were 19 and star eyes and all these other things. The fact that the poem can be as old as the poem is, and still resonate with people as strongly as it still does, I think a lot of that has to do with allowing myself to be vulnerable, allowing myself to tell that story and feel safe in my words, even if the room may not be safe.
Theresa Davis:
I feel like authenticity and genuineness comes across through the voice. The voice is the most powerful instrument in the world. As an educator, I learned real early that the BS in your voice can be heard louder than the authenticity or genuineness of it. So I try to be as authentic and safe in myself as I can. But I think it's really important to take care of yourself. When I work in workshops, we get into prompts or things that may go places you're not ready to go. Writers who are listening, I'm sure we've all written that thing where we started going down that road, we were like, "Oh-oh, oh-oh, wait, wait. That's scab. That's a scab. You pick it, you pick it, you pick it a scab. Oh no. Now blood, okay. Okay. You got to be fine." You go there and you're like, "Oh my God, I can't stop. But this hurts." But that's part of the healing I also believe.
Theresa Davis:
I always tell people when I'm working at workshops, I'm like, "Don't go as deep or be as shallow as you want, protect yourself first." Sometimes this will take you places you may not be ready to go yet, "Don't go in that deep, if you can't swim very well." Feel free to step back from it. Take it in another direction if you can or change the topic and maybe come back to that later, when you're ready to actually say what your heart is pushing your pen to say. So it's always interesting and I love it. I love it, I work with a lot of young people now and it makes me feel empowered to help empower them to share their words and share their work.
Amena Brown:
How did you learn how to process this in your words, even the places where you may have written things that didn't show up on stage? I know we all have those pieces that you like, "I have to write this and maybe no one's ever going to see this." And then sometimes you do write it and get to a point where you're like, "Oh, okay. It would help me and help some other people for me to share this." But was that something being a child of two poets that you feel like you learned that way? Or how did you learn that process for yourself?
Theresa Davis:
So I come from a family that was very close. We always sat down and had dinner together. Saturday night was family night, game night, whatever, we had songs that dictated how that Saturday was going to go, you wake up and you're listening to Elton John screaming real loud, you know you are cleaning the entire house all the way down to the baseboards. You hear Stevie Wonder playing, you might be going to the drive in later, we don't even know.
Theresa Davis:
So a lot of those things dictated our days and our moving through, but we also talked a lot. Being able to say, "Okay, how was school this week?" Or, "What's going on with you?" And knowing that the person who's asking the question genuinely wants to hear the answer and wants to have a conversation with you, not necessarily parade about, You should not that," but not make you feel shame about it, even if it's silly, not to belittle you or make you feel like your voices is not a part of the conversation. And I think as we grow and as technology and all these things that happen that distract us from actual social interactions, as far as we social media it. I think the art of conversation and talking to somebody is becoming this weird space where people don't know how to talk to people, they don't know how to ask questions, they don't know how to ask for help even sometimes, because we think things are bigger than us in that, "Oh, my thing is so little, nobody's going to care about this."
Theresa Davis:
I never felt that in my household, I never felt like I couldn't tell my mom something. There were definitely some stuff I did not tell my mom-
Amena Brown:
But that's different from feeling like you couldn't tell her.
Theresa Davis:
Right. That's totally different. When I write, I try to get it out of my body first and then organize it in a way that makes sense. I believe that all poets are storytellers and if I'm going to tell my story and be authentically true to myself, the challenge for me then becomes, "What is the metaphor that's going to help me connect to other people? Have other people relate to what I'm saying."
Theresa Davis:
Some of my poem is seriously queer, some of my poem is super Black. Some of my poetry is like, "Oh my God, I'm a mom and I love my kids. Don't you wish you was my kid?" It's that tricky space. I have poems that while the subject matter may be like, "I don't agree with that," but the premise you can't deny. I think one of the poems that I wrote that, other than Breathing Lessons, that definitely bridge that divide was like like, because everybody in the world has like liked somebody. And you may have an issue with me like liking a girl, but you have like liked somebody before and you can't deny that. We've all had, even if it was us or our children or a child of a friend, we've all seen that person who thought they was in love with somebody and then it did not go well, and then they're sad, because they thought they was in love and they was in like like or whatever.
Theresa Davis:
So we've all seen that, we've all experienced that on some level. That became the connector of me being able to connect with people who may not be able to connect directly with the first part of my story, but they could definitely get into the concept of what I'm saying. Sometimes it happens by accident, but there's sometimes I really work on crafting the poem so that it is definitely doing what I want it to do, it is truthful to my feelings or my experience and it's relatable.
Theresa Davis:
I think the poem that I worked on the hardest to get the metaphor right was Copse, knowing that the play on words are there C-O-P-S-E, which is a small group of trees and C-O-P-S, which is cops, as a persona poem where the poem was actually being told from the perspective of a wooden floor, and it's about murdering Black boys. And that's how connected when you connect with... Yeah. I feel like I love what I do, I love fleshing out my own stories, I love figuring out where our stories meet, be your friend or a perfect stranger, and I think that as a writer and as an artist, I'm always growing. So I'm always trying new things and sometimes they don't work so well, but that doesn't stop me from trying them. Hopefully I'm fostering that in my own kids and the young people that I interact with and some of the older people that I interact with.
Amena Brown:
I love the both end of your approach, that the first part of it is to honor your own story and to protect yourself first. But that is the advice you would give to a student writing or anybody writing. I think that's so powerful because I think sometimes there can be this idea that as artists, or as creative people, it's our job to believe for everyone, it's our job to take our vulnerabilities and just-
Theresa Davis:
Some of the scabs need to just stay on. Yeah.
Amena Brown:
Right. It might not be healthy for me to share some of that, and then I may not be in the right space either to be that vulnerable. And so I think sometimes we can lean that way as artists to feel like, "Man, I got to get out here and share this thing that may not be ready instead of letting it be what it's going to be on the page, whether that was meant for public consumption or not, and almost having to let the piece tell you," that's been my experience. The piece has to tell me, "I want people to hear this," then I have to go through like, "Am I really ready to take this out here?"
Amena Brown:
(music interlude)
Theresa Davis:
When I lost my dad, a lot of things changed. Our last conversation where he yelled at me and is a man who did not yell. We would have conversations and the police would show up because we were all very excited about what we were saying. It's a Black household, everybody got to be heard, so we talk loud, everything's louder. And he was furious with me, I didn't know I was clinically depressed back then, but I was super depressed. I was over 300 pounds, I was basically working and then sequestering myself in the house and dealing with the kids, but they could see that I was sad. Everybody saw I was sad. And he yelled at me and he said, "Stop trying to disappear, I can see your ass." That's how he said it, I know I'm not supposed to cuss, but that's what he said.
Amena Brown:
Sometimes you got to get a cuss word out and we welcome them.
Theresa Davis:
So he had that conversation with me and he had a similar conversation with each of my siblings during that week, and then he had a massive stroke and I had to take him off life support. So it was one of those things to where I was like, "Oh, wait a minute. He accused me of disappearing," and I had to toss that in my head about what does that mean and understand eventually that you could show up in your life every day and still not be there, every day and not be there. And I was doing that. I was killing the teaching game. My students love me, I had a waiting list for my class. My children were thriving, but I was so deeply not happy.
Theresa Davis:
We had a memorial service for him and I decided like in that moment, what am I teaching my kids for real, for real, even though I'm awesome teaching in classroom, can they also see all this other weight that I'm holding on to? And that my teaching my daughters, that complacency in a relationship is okay, what am I teaching them? We did our memorial service for my dad, I took a couple of days off work, I asked for a divorce and I moved. And within a couple of months I lost 150 pounds. I didn't do anything different, I still ate because I like food, I still did my jobs, I didn't add no exercise regimen in there because I have very particular ways I like to exercise and most of them are explicit.
Theresa Davis:
But I lost 150 pounds like nothing. Even that realizing how much weight I was holding onto that wasn't mine. And I started going to Java Monkey, I shared my first poem at Java Monkey and realized that that was a space where I felt like, "Oh, I can share this stuff and they're not going to blow smoke at me and be like, "Oh, that was amazing." Somebody will be like, "Oh wait, I was confused," and get honest feedback." And so that became my ritual, to go every Sunday and to have a new piece to share every Sunday. And I did that for about a year, steadily I was there every Sunday. And then of course life gets in the way, your kids are like, "I got a birthday party I want to go to," you're like, "But poems. Okay child, I'll take you to the birthday party. Do I have to chaperone? Dang it."
Theresa Davis:
Okay. Things started happening and I was there, but not every single Sunday. My first poem I read there and my loyalty and my believing in what that space does, the person who started it felt comfortable and safe handing me this baby that he has had for 15 years. I'm grateful for this community. This community has done a lot for me. I try and I don't always succeed, but I try to uplift and be present as much as I can. I do realize that everybody in my scene is considerably younger than me. Sometimes my old 53 year old brain wants to say, "Really? That's ridiculous, and can we be a grownup?" And that's not always the right thing to say, so I shut up. I don't say anything. I just make me look confused. I don't know. I can't see my face.
Theresa Davis:
I realized the last time I was on the team, I was like, "I have children older than everybody on my team." That's crazy to me. So some things are like, "I can't relate to that." You know why? Because I'm way older. It's a really interesting space I find myself in because I can't relate to a lot of things. My friends will say things and conversations and I'd be like, "Okay. Note to self don't do it right now. But you need to... what does that mean? IRL? Oh, in real life. Okay. We shortening everything now. All right. I don't know all of them. Someone told me I was a WCW and I was like, "I don't even know what this means." "Woman Crush Wednesday." "Oh, okay." Now I feel ridiculously old and a little less stupider because now I know what it means, until y'all change it to something else then I'm like, "I just now learned what that was now. Now I got to learn another thing?"
Amena Brown:
I finally learn, on fleek and then somebody turned that around. [crosstalk 00:26:12]. I don't know. What's going on? And I think too when you were talking about the transition from becoming a person that attended the open mic and then becomes a person who reads, performs at the open mic and now being a host, that's one of the things. I don't remember asking anybody because how could I have asked to know, but it does take a lot of holding space hosting an open mic, because you have this really mixed list of people. You've got some people walking up who think they're amazing and they're not, so you have to hold space for how they're going to feel when they finish that poem they thought was so awesome and only two people clapped, because it was very strange and weird. And then you have people who are fresh off a breakup, crying, and there they are at that mic sharing their story and you have to hold this space for them, as well as you've had to also be like, "What we not going to hold space for, is this ignorance."
Theresa Davis:
Right. Yeah. Keep your misogyny to yourself and your sexism and all. And so every once in a while, Sunday was interesting. I've never had to clap somebody off the stage.
Amena Brown:
What?
Theresa Davis:
Yeah. "I thought I was real clear you got three to five minutes. This is not a TED Talk, this is not an infomercial, this is,"-
Amena Brown:
And you're not the feature.
Theresa Davis:
"And you're not the feature. I got a full list and I want everybody to get in." The guy, we started off and I thought he was going to stop, but then he didn't. And there were a couple of times where I was like... When he started creeping towards eight minutes, I was like, "I don't want to clap him." Somebody who send the tape I was like, "I don't want to have to clap. I have to clap him off. It's my first time doing this, I've never had to do this. Okay." And I stood up and started clapping, looked at the audience threatening me like, "Y'all better clap too."
Amena Brown:
Clap right now.
Theresa Davis:
So they all got in there, started clapping and he was cool about it. But always my fear is that that person who's not cool about it, and now we have a whole nother thing-
Amena Brown:
To have to deal with.
Theresa Davis:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
It is this tender balance of always wanting people to feel welcome, but having to hold that space in a certain way, for respect for people's time and respect for the space and all sorts of those things. So let me ask you about this, you also are still in spaces where you're teaching students?
Theresa Davis:
I am. Yeah.
Amena Brown:
And there's one poem you have and I know I don't remember the title of it right now, but always there's this moment in the middle of the piece where you're describing to us, how you are helping the students write and there's a couple of phrases and questions that they throw back at you as they're writing, that every time I hear you do the piece, it almost sounded like one of those terrible knock-knock jokes, like whoever said, how many bullets does it take-
Theresa Davis:
Take to kill a Black body.
Amena Brown:
Every time you get to that part and I'm sitting down watching Theresa tell this story. I was not in the room with the students having to answer that question. And then a lot of ways, I think what's beautiful about your work is yes, you have your work that you write that you perform and you also have this part of the work you do that you're helping other people find their voice and find their process. What are the things you say when you're going into this room of students, getting them to start processing ideas and thoughts and feelings and current events through writing? How do you get students started on this and to your point, a whole different generation of students from what it was like for you or for me growing up?
Theresa Davis:
Yes. Whenever I go into classrooms, I always start with the bio poem. I get them to do a poem about them so that they understand that there is no wrong or right, that your story is your story. You know you better than I know you. Maybe you have something in common with some of the kids in this room that you didn't know. Every time I've done this, there's at least four or five kids who are like, "I didn't know that I liked that too." So now you have the potential to make friends. I work primarily with middle school aged kids.
Amena Brown:
Wow. I didn't realize that.
Theresa Davis:
Yeah. Middle school is that area where it gets... I have a couple more high schools this year, and I like working with high schoolers too, but then it's a whole different challenge because it's like, "Okay, language for the sake of language, there are better words. This is not just a forum for you to say all the swear words in front of a teacher and not get in trouble this time. That's not what this is, and we're actually going to do some work." But when the young people, we start off with a bio poem and a lot of them are afraid to talk in front of people. They aren't asked questions directly a lot of the times, a lot of things are assumed about them or answers are assumed. So I have these kids they'll start talking and they interrupt themselves like they're waiting for me to... Because this is the part when I started saying this, that my teacher goes, "Boy, sit down," and I don't, and then am like, "I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm actually interested in what you want to say."
Theresa Davis:
And so I think that that helps a lot. A lot of times where they share that first poem about themselves and I asked real questions like, "Tell me three things that you fear. What do you fear?" Sometimes I get weird answers like, "I fear old people. The wrinkles make me feel like they going to suck me in." I'm like, okay, that's funny. Write it down." "I needed to know that. I'm going to be old people one day. I do not want to terrify you. "I have a fear of sharks." And I'm like, "Oh, you swim in the ocean a lot?" They're like, "I've never been in the ocean." Okay. Doesn't have to be irrational fear, but that's your truth. They share that first piece and then they're pretty generally open to like, "Okay, what are we doing next?" Because they do like talking about themselves and they don't get a lot of opportunities to do that.
Theresa Davis:
Of course as I go through my sessions, I usually do 10 sessions and then we do a culminating event and I always tell them like, "These tools that I'm giving you can actually apply to other parts of your education. As you matriculate, you're going to be expected to speak in front of people. This is one of these things that I'm teaching you. And this format right here, this can be used to open a book report, this could be used to open any science report, any report in school that you're going to have to do. You could do a bio poem for that person. You do a report about Rosa Parks, write Rosa Parks bio poem, and get some extra credit."
Theresa Davis:
And also I have the joy of being the new person in the room. I don't know if you know me, but I'm pretty shiny most of the time, with the rings and the hair and the kids are like, "Oh my God," I have the most fun in the classrooms where I walk in and the teacher's like, "We know they're really particular, it's going to take them a minute to warm up to you," and I'm like, "Oh, okay, I'm good. Just fine." And then 10 minutes later, I got some 11 year old telling me they entire life story. And I'm like, "Whoa, you've warmed up quickly." The adults are probably more weary of me than the kids. Kids are like, "Who is that? I want to talk to her."
Amena Brown:
Right. I want to tell her everything.
Theresa Davis:
"I want to tell her everything my whole life." I did a workshop with fourth graders and they want me back this year.
Amena Brown:
Fourth grade, wow.
Theresa Davis:
Yeah. It was fun. And one of the teachers wanted to buy my book. So I brought her a copy of my book and a fourth grader was like, "I want to buy your book." And I was like, "Well, unfortunately my book is not appropriate for your age." She was like, "But should be working with kids though." I was like, "Well yeah, I do be working with kids though." And she was like, "So you don't have a book of poems for kids?" And I was like, "No." She was like, "If you did Ms. Theresa, you would have all my allowance."
Amena Brown:
Come on, first of all with the allowance and the claps.
Theresa Davis:
She clapped me down. I'd never been clapped down by 11 old. She wasn't even 11, she was fourth grade, she's like nine. She said, But you don't want my allowance money?" I was like, "No, I do. And I'm going to write that book. I expect all. You want to know how much allowance you get?"
Amena Brown:
Every dollar of your allowance.
Theresa Davis:
"That's how much my book is going to cost. How much is your allowance?" And she's like, "I get five." So yeah, I'm feeling five. "I'm going to write a book and it's going to cost five dollars and you're going to bring me your allowance. It's great. And working with the kids also sets me up in my heart, so I can work and process adults a little bit better. I think working with that age group is what really helped me have a healthy attitude about competition. When you talking to a room full of people who are excellent at side eye and ignoring you, it makes you work for it. They're random, some days they love you, some days they can't stand the air you're breathing right now, wish you would stop, but it's always a good time.
Theresa Davis:
I've had very few bad experiences and if I do usually comes from the administrator or the school itself. But I always have a great time with the kids, that's one of the things that brings me joy.
Amena Brown:
I love it. And I love how there's almost this ecosystem in your work where there are these very communal aspects to it, but that also feeds back into the things that you write and how you process everything. So I love that for people who might be walking alongside someone who is grieving and you and I talked about before we started recording, just how, and I think you've mentioned this too, since we've been talking, grief shows up in a lot of ways for a lot of reasons, and sometimes it is a loss of a place where we thought we had our identity built on that, now we're like, "Okay, if am not that, who am I now?"
Amena Brown:
And sometimes it can be loss of a job or a position, something in our career, it can be a relationship, it could be losing someone who's passed on, there's all these different ways we can experience the grief, the crisis of faith, so to speak. I'm thinking specifically about that because I remember that being a place of grief for me in my twenties like, "It is some things, y'all had told me that's not right and I'm upset," and I was having that. There could be some grief involved in that too.
Amena Brown:
So I want to ask you, what would be the stuff you'd say to people who maybe they're not in the grief themselves, but they're watching a person that they love, that they work with, walk through this? And I think a lot of times, I don't know if that's American, we don't have like something for how we handle grief.
Theresa Davis:
Yeah. I think we do a lot of things to distract ourselves from grief. I know I have been guilty of it and I'm pretty sure everybody has been guilty of some form of it, where distract by getting into these situations that you know are not going to work well, just so that you have that in the arsenal or you distract yourself by avoiding it.
Amena Brown:
Right. That's one of my favorites.
Theresa Davis:
Be it in some other vice or some other person or some other thing. I've been grieving my dad, he's been gone for 14 years now. And I don't know if there's a look that I get on my face when I think about him, and I think about all the things that he is missing out on and all the things that my kids are missing out on, and every once in a while my son he'll see it and he'll say, "Tell me a cheeky story." Because he was four when my dad passed, so he has no memory of his grandfather, whereas my daughters have all these stories and he's grieving also, he doesn't have those stories, he doesn't have those moments.
Amena Brown:
That has to be it's own grief.
Theresa Davis:
So that's a different grief and I think what we send to do humans, is we try to make it all about one thing. So the loss of my father, it's not just me grieving that he is no longer here, it is that, but it's not only that. It's also knowing that my son won't have those stories, that my nephews don't have this legacy that my daughters have. And that my daughters feel the same way that you didn't get this. So these are layers of grief, and they're not all the same thing that we tend to try to make it the same thing.
Theresa Davis:
I know losing my dad has created other things that I've lost, I lost some trust. Survivor's guilt is real and being the oldest is real, and when your family is in turmoil and you are present and you're trying to be there for them and your mom makes a decision but can't utter it out of her mouth, when you have this man that you love and you have to say, "Take them off life support," and know you cannot harvest his organs, he's in Rastafarian, and if he's not all together, he can't get Zion.
Theresa Davis:
Not realizing down the line how that decision was going to affect me in different ways. So my abandonment issues are way layered and weird. I don't know how to fix it exactly, I know I'm not intentionally doing these things, but in the back of my head it's like, "Mm-hmm (affirmative), people leave in different ways." So I think when you're walking with somebody who is dealing with grief, I think you have to sometimes walk with them and not say anything. Just being there, listen, you don't necessarily have to comment. Sometimes people just want to say a thing and not necessarily have a discussion about it. What you don't do is say things like, "That was 14 years ago, and I can't believe you're still dealing with that," that kind of stuff. Because that'll get a poem written about you that you will not like-
Amena Brown:
Listen, that is one of the powers of being a poet right there.
Theresa Davis:
Hello, you want to clap back with words? I got ya. That's what you have to make sure that you don't do. And asking people if they're okay and being prepared for the answers. I did a human experiment about a year ago, where I caught myself and I think we all do it, say about, "How you doing?" And you're like, "Oh, I'm good," and you're really not.
Theresa Davis:
So I said for a week, I'm going to be brutally honest in how I feel. And I scared a lot of people and that made me feel uncomfortable. I didn't like making them feel that way. I think my most brutal answer was I had a really rough week. A person I dated was killed in a car accident coming back from a festival and I was not in a good head space.
Theresa Davis:
And one of my friends was like, "Are you okay?" I was like, "Actually no. I think about at a four. I only thought briefly about driving into oncoming traffic, just briefly, was just a minute. I think I'm better now." And they were like, "What the hell did you just say to me? Do I need to call it?" "No, no." My thing is, if I'm saying it, I'm not doing it, so we good, but that's where I am right now. And if I burst into tears at any random moment, don't be afraid. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not fine, but I will be fine. I think that that honesty is terrifying, but I only did it for a week. I literally made somebody burst into tears on the spot, and I was like, "That was not my goal." I think I was secretly doing research for this poem that I was going to write and Nate wrote it before me.
Amena Brown:
Dang it Nate.
Theresa Davis:
I know asking people how they do it and tell them the real answer and then freaking out. But some things we don't want to know, we think we want to know, but we don't want to know. And us as human beings, especially those of us who are nurturers, you don't want to make your stuff, other people's stuff, you don't want to take them through it. So, "How you doing?" "I'm great."
Amena Brown:
You don't want to impose.
Theresa Davis:
Yeah. And I think me and Karen have a thing, I just say, "Everything's great. Everything's wonderful." But in this tone that is clearly not.
Amena Brown:
I think my ends up being, "Everything's fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine." It's a repeat of that. I think I have some people in my life that are like, "Oh no. If she said everything is fine that many times, ain't nothing fine."
Theresa Davis:
Right. That's cold. Not quite an SOS, but it's like pay attention.
Amena Brown:
Totally that. I'm sure one day one of us or a bunch of us will sit down and write more about the things that the poetry community has taught us about life. And I feel like being in the poetry community has taught me better how to hold space with people, and that sometimes that does mean asking how they're doing and looking them in the eyes and waiting there to see what they say. And it might mean I got to put my hand on a shoulder or just stand there if they don't want to be touched in that moment.
Theresa Davis:
Or take a seat because it's going to go a minute.
Amena Brown:
Yes. But it has taught me more to hold that space, and that that's okay for us to hold that space for each other and we need to. Y'all, thank Theresa Davis. This is the part where normally Matt puts some applause right here for me, because this is the part where am like, "Y'all give it up for Theresa," but I always forget nobody here but me and her. So I'm giving it up for Theresa Davis. Thank you for joining the podcast, for sharing your story and your work process with us. You know I love me some you, and I'm just so excited to be able to share you with the podcast community. So thank you.
Theresa Davis:
Yay. Thank you. Thank you.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, I love me some Theresa Davis. In the before times, Theresa was the host of one of Atlanta's most thriving open mic poetry events, Java Speaks. During the pandemic, Theresa has continued to host Java Speaks as a virtual open mic held every Sunday. She is also the literary events director at the ArtsXchange and art space that empowers artists, social justice activists, and creative entrepreneurs to engage communities with innovative artistic learning experiences and cultural exchange. You can follow Theresa on Instagram @shepiratpoet, and you can follow Java Speaks on Instagram @javaspeaks. To learn more about the ArtsXchange, you can visit artsxchange.org, that's A-R-T-S-X-C-H-A-N-G-E.org.
Amena Brown:
For this week's edition of Give Her A Crown, I want to shout out Lakota writer, actor, and comedian, Jana Schmieding. I am knee deep in watching Jana's new sitcom, Rutherford Falls, on Peacock, and if you haven't watched it, you need to. Jana is also the host of the Woman of Size podcast, where she interviews people about weight stigma, marginalization and speaks about the ills of the beauty industrial complex. Jana, thank you for the ways you use your platform to speak about your own journey and invite others to share their journey toward fat acceptance and the ways you uplift native women in your creative work. Jana Schmieding, Give Her A Crown.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.