“I Think of ‘original kink’ as an Exercise in Unmaking Masculinity”: A Conversation With Jubi Arriola-Headley

Jubi Arriola-Headley is a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, holds an MFA from the University of Miami, & his poems have been published with Ambit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Literary Hub, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, The Nervous Breakdown, & elsewhere. Jubi’s debut collection of poems, original kink, is out now from Sibling Rivalry Press.

Thea: In an interview for PEN America, you gave great homage to Gwendolyn Brooks. How have Brooks and other poets influenced you? 

Jubi: Yes, Gwendolyn Brooks is a beacon for me; another is Lucille Clifton. Recently I was reading an essay by the poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, “Go Back and Fetch It.” In one section of the essay, Jeffers is talking with another poet about Lucille Clifton and they both express their amazement at what Lucille Clifton can say, so concisely, cuttingly, astonishingly, and in so few words. That is something that I strive for in my own poetry.

There’s a short poem in original kink, “Metaphysical,” that references two of my major influences—Lucille Clifton, and Prince. As a teenager, I was very affected by Prince’s sexual freedom and his refusal to accept prescribed roles, particularly in terms of gender queerness. “If I Was Your Girlfriend” opened up what it meant or could mean to be a man for me. I know Prince isn’t a poet, per se, except of course he is, right? 

In my mind, I write in conversation with you, and Lucille Clifton, and Ross Gay, and Joy Priest, and Dawn Lundy Martin, and so, so many Black poets, because we are all world building. I don’t know that I would call myself an Afropessimist, but I recognize that this world we’re in has no vested interest in making a place for us and we have to build our own place. I can only do what I can to contribute to that building. That’s what my poetry is for me, helping to try to build that future, that possibility, that beyond.

Thea: Would you consider yourself an Afrofuturist?

Jubi: I feel comfortable with that label. But I don’t know whether I live up to the label. I’m constantly questioning—am I Afrofuturist enough? That might sound silly but these are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night.

Like, recently I watched this YouTube video, a fifteen-minute craft talk the poet Roger Reeves gave a few years back on writing about violence. Because we are who we are and we live in the world we live in, violence is consistently, relentlessly practiced against our bodies. I have been consumed with this question — how do we write about violence? — since Ferguson, really, since Michael Brown’s murder, when a white man, a poet, decided to read the autopsy of Michael Brown as an ostensibly poetic performance; not long after, a white woman, a painter, decided to render that photo of Emmett Till in his casket (do I even need to be more specific, it’s so burned into our consciousness) as a painting. 

I’m not interested in re-enacting moments of violence. I’m interested in reaching beyond or through those moments towards something that’s flesh and blood, aspirational, capacious, and full of life. 

Thea: How did you arrive at poetry?

Jubi: I’m a very late bloomer. I’m 51. Back in my senior year in college as an English major, I applied to a competitive senior seminar in creative writing and didn’t get in. I took that to mean I probably wasn’t meant to be “a writer” and so I didn’t write creatively, for twenty-odd years. Then one day about seven years ago, I woke up and felt consumed by this need to write a book about my father. It felt like it came out of nowhere but it was inescapable. The book turned out to be about much more than my father but that’s how I began this journey. 

I should frame all this by saying, I am married, have zero kids, and a generous, accommodating, easygoing husband, and a decent income from a relatively stable job that allows me to work from home (since well before the pandemic). All of which affords me certain privileges. My journey was very much made possible by my circumstances and the generosity of people around me. 

I shared this book-writing fantasy, that’s all it was at the time, a fantasy, with my husband and he encouraged me to start writing. So I started taking writing classes. I originally thought I was going to write the book as a memoir but when I tried to do so, it didn’t sing. There was no spark. I was talking to another writer about this problem and she suggested I take a poetry class.

So I did, a poetry workshop that was offered by a local organization called Reading Queer in South Florida, where I live. The class entailed reading poems and using writing prompts to free-write. I’m certain those first few poems I wrote were trash but I was lucky because everyone I shared them with encouraged me to keep going, to continue with poetry, and, because I had the opportunity and privilege to do so, I did. 

I know I say “privilege” but I did max out a few credit cards on poetry classes and workshops around the country. As I travelled along the poetic route and engaged with more poets, in workshops and outside, I realized that the book needed to be about more than my father. I wanted to unpack the definitions of masculinity I’d inherited, how problematic they can be, not only in the world-at-large, but specifically among Black folks.

Thea: Yeah, I was going to mention Black masculinity. 

Jubi: Yeah, yeah. I’m a Black queer man. That’s how I identify. Much of this conversation is me speaking about how we define Black masculinity among my people, Black people. That’s who I think my first audience is. In my poems I’m always trying to reach across the constraints of form, to say, maybe this form is not working. Maybe I, we, need to unmake this form and build something different for ourselves. That’s kind of how I’ve come to think about masculinity, as it’s practiced and/or imagined in a contemporary context.

A form with constraints that need to be exceeded or broken. And once I realized I was writing a collection of poems, every poem I wrote from the beginning of 2017 until May of 2020 was evaluated in terms of whether or not it fit the narrative arc of this book.

Thea: How would you describe the narrative arc of original kink and the process of defining it?

Jubi: I think of original kink as an exercise in unmaking masculinity, that takes the form of a memoir-in-verse. Each of the three sections of the collection is a retelling of the story by a different “I” in time and space. These three retellings, though, are not about fixed stages in my life, but about how I make meaning out of moments and experiences on a continuum or across a spectrum of gender and race. In my mind, the first section of the book is very focused on me trying to iterate or process what the world told me “I” ought to be. And my consistently failing to be that.

The middle of the book is focused on me owning my own failures, revisiting moments in my life and looking at them differently, from a parallax view. That begins with the poem “Daddy.” Part of what opened up for me when I started to write original kink was my relationship with my father—which while was troubled, at least from my perspective. He was a villain in my head. When I accepted that I had failed when he was alive (he died when I was 18) to see him as a whole flesh and blood human being, and when I began to recognize what motivated, drove, fascinated, and excited him, that’s when the poem spoke to me. Much of this middle section is me reconsidering sometimes personal, sometimes historical events where I initially positioned myself in a way that didn’t implicate me. I wanted to acknowledge what I did, to accept responsibility. You have to name your failures, I think, say them out loud. 

In the third part of the book, I try to engage with an Afrofuturistic sensibility and envisage a different world. The opening poem of that section is called “Superhero Origin Story.” To me, the poem positions my eye in relation to how I see the world and where I can find my sources of strength and sustenance and liberation. 

“Superhero Origin Story” was born, as many of my poems are, from a moment in which there is something I can't let go of. I was sitting on my front porch on Easter Sunday last year, during the height of COVID. I was talking to a friend, and we were both a little down, because COVID, and he sent me a link to a YouTube video of Andrea Bocelli performing Verdi’s Requiem, if I remember correctly. It was beautiful. I was moved. 

Then I clicked on the next suggested video which was five young Black girls, teenagers, singing “Ride on King Jesus.” As the young women sang, I felt myself rising out of my chair. I was transported. It was sublime. I was undone. I was crying. I played that video I can’t tell you how many times that morning. Over and over and over. The sky was getting cloudy, and soon it started raining. All of this gave me the poem “Superhero Origin Story.” 

From that point, I looked beyond, as I saw it. The third section of original kink is about moving beyond this here and now and imagining a world grounded in relentless, unabashed Blackness, and a masculinity that lets me be me and celebrates the you in all of y’all. There must be a better way to say that but that’s what I’ve got right now.

Thea: Thank you for providing a breakdown of the book. I wanted to ask—as a Black, queer, and highly political poet—how do you define the role of the Black poet in today’s society?

Jubi: We are exposed to so much information and misinformation. The conversations we are exposed to, particularly through social media, can feel so flattened out, sometimes lacking in dimension. I think and I hope our role as Black poets is to imagine a world that hasn’t been manifested yet. That’s why I’m excited every time I pick up a poetry book. Who am I being introduced to? What do they have to say about the world that I’ve never thought of before? What is it that they imagine “better” looks like? 

I get excited by the idea that we make meaning in different ways. I think every poem has to be founded in some kind of truth but there are different kinds of truth; “Is this a fact?”; “Is this how you see the world?”; “Is this how we make meaning?”; “Is this how you treat me?” I’m trying to let my poetry weave into and connect with a vast and growing body of Black poetry that I’m hoping will provide some kind of hammock for us to swing and rest in.

I’ve become very consumed with the notion of rest. Physical rest, yes, but emotional, psychic, and intellectual rest; rest as liberation; rest as a political statement. We get so assaulted with all the ways in which the world tries to end and erase us. It’s exhausting. It’s going back to that Toni Morrison line, “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.” I can’t spend so much time with that anymore. We as Black folk need to find ways to rejuvenate and for me, part of that is writing poetry. 

We can think of rest expansively. I get to engage my “I” and our “we” in different ways when I write poetry. That immersion, in poetry, that escape, whatever you want to call it, is an act that puts me in a very different place and makes me feel like I am not alone. 

Thea: What are your rituals for writing poetry today? What’s your approach? Do you have any routines?

Jubi: I don’t really, and I constantly wonder if I’m doing myself a disservice by not having them. I will say that I can write anywhere and have written anywhere, on a train, a plane, outside. I don’t write on a schedule. 

I often engage my poetic self through walking. I love long walks. Several of my poems have been born on long walks. Walking through the world and noticing what’s going on around me is helpful to jog my creativity.

I don’t have a lot of rituals. My ritual might be refusing to engage in any specific ritual. Although I’ve thought a lot about CA Conrad’s (soma)tic poetry rituals and Lilliam-Yvonne Bertram has introduced me to the wonders of open-source coding and the “travesty generator.” I like to keep it loose, keep my options open. 

Thea: Can you talk about your PEN fellowship? 

Jubi: Absolutely, it was pivotal to my writerly journey. Once I was driven to write a book, I became driven to transform my life in ways that would support my writing that book. For me, that began with the PEN Fellowship. The PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship is a months-long program based in Los Angeles, or it was when I did it, I believe it’s going national this year. You get to spend those months in craft conversations and classes and you get to meet practicing, professional poets. You also get a mentor who helps you envision and build a writing life, and my fellowship mentor was the poet Douglas Manuel. Wonderful human being, great mentor. The fellowship helped me create a writing life and see myself as someone who was even capable of scaling this mountain folks call writing a book. 

That was right before the MFA. I applied for the fellowship and grad school simultaneously. While I was doing the fellowship, I was accepted into several MFA programs. So, I decided to go to the University of Miami, and two years later, here I am. I graduated from the MFA program in May of 2020.

Thea: Talk to me about the MFA program, in particular your advisor and your thesis as the seed for original kink.

Jubi: Going into the program, I knew what my intentions were. People I’m sure undertake an MFA for various reasons but for me it was funded, structured time to continue writing what would become original kink. My advisor was a poet and essayist named Jaswinder Bolina who is also a very good editor. “Very good” being an understatement because I don’t want you to think I’m prone to hyperbole. He gave me some excellent feedback. original kink actually includes several poems that didn’t make it into my thesis. I cut some sections from my thesis because there were poems I needed more time to work on that later ended up in the book. 

I got my contract with Sibling Rivalry Press at the beginning of the second year of my MFA. That wonderful moment presented me with what could, in another circumstance, have been a challenge. At the time, I was supposed to start working with Bryan Borland, the publisher, on editing my book. I was also supposed to be working on my thesis. 

I thought to myself, “It doesn’t make sense to have two separate, parallel processes,” so I brought this up with my publisher, Bryan, who is exceedingly generous, and basically said, “If your thesis is going to be like the book, work on your thesis. Go through that process. If your editor is anything like I think he is, we won’t need to do much from there.” It turned out to be true. It worked out well for me. 

Thea: How did you find your publisher, Sibling Rivalry Press? 

Jubi: Like all of us, I use social media to connect with poets and writers I don’t know or might not know otherwise. I came across Sibling Rivalry Press several years ago, when I saw a video of them announcing the collections they’d be publishing that year. That year they had Ocean Vuong make the announcement, using index cards on which were written the names of the poets and their soon-to-be-born collections, accompanied by some ethereal soundtrack. I thought right then and there, “I want this.” I wanted that name on that index card to be mine, someday. I didn’t think at the time I’d meant it literally, back then I’d have been happy to be published by anybody, but when Brian told me he was going to publish me, well. 

I thought a lot before I got the offer from Sibling Rivalry Press about the kind of publisher with which I might find a home. Over the course of a year, beginning in October 2018, I submitted my manuscript to maybe twenty publishers in total, via open calls and contests. I made it to a second reading according to a few of them, was even a finalist once, but didn’t get accepted. Then, in September 2019, Sibling Rivalry came through. 

Thea: I’m curious about the use of the expression “United Statesian” in your bio and in some of your poems. I haven’t come across it before. 

Jubi: My husband is from Guatemala. He always makes the point that people in the United States use “America” to refer specifically to the United States, like they’re claiming the word, but there are dozens of countries you leave out, on and between two continents, when you use the word. You don’t get to claim just that piece of it, it's not just you. It’s US. So, that’s how “United Statesian” was born. 

But it’s become more than that. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve recognized that “America” the way it’s used in this country is a very performative, coded word that is meant to symbolize this lofty myth. I’m trying to extricate the country I need to hold accountable from that myth. In terms of “America,” the myth is framed in terms of songs we sing like “O beautiful for spacious skies” and “America Of Thee I Sing.” I find saying “United States” democratizes this. 

I’m tired, as many of us are, of this idea that we’re better than this. “This is not who we are.” Implying, this is not “America.” Well, like Childish Gambino says, this is “America.” We’re not better than this, we are this. That has been reiterated so many times since George Floyd and since the insurrection. I feel like calling myself United Statesian helps hold this nation accountable and deconstruct the myth which is old, outdated, and untrue. I’m always put in an idealized, mythologized frame of mind when I think “America.” That’s where the poems “America” and “We” in original kink came from. Part of my project is to undo all that.

Thea: Wow. Breaking and shattering myths. Deromanticizing America. Deromanticizing and deconstructing the notions of masculinity/Black masculinity. Interweaving race and sexuality. I must say, I get a strong sense of Essex Hemphill from your work. I assume you’ve heard of him.

Jubi: Yes, yes! I feel so seen. For months I didn’t know what the cover of original kink was going to be, but as soon as I saw the photo we ended up using, my first thought was, “This is gorgeous and sublime.” My second thought was, I get to continue the legacy of Essex Hemphill. The cover of Essex Hemphill’s poetry collection Ceremonies is a nude Black man in celebration. I was overwhelmed, excited, and undone by that idea. 

I don’t know how we can bring poets like Essex, Assotto Saint, and other poets from a generation we’ve lost back into the popular conversation. One of the poems in original kink is titled “Every God is A Slowly Dying Sun” and is dedicated to Craig G. Harris. He is of that same generation. He was good friends with Essex. He was a friend and a mentor, among other things, to me. He was a god to me, like I say in the poem. He introduced me to so much beauty I would not otherwise have known. I feel I owe a great debt to Craig’s and Essex’s generation. I came of age, I hit puberty in the early- to mid-1980’s, right at the onset of the AIDS pandemic. So I feel like I had this moment where my mentors were accessible to me even as they were battling to stay alive. Then, one by one, in what felt like seconds, they were snatched away from me. I’m always trying to reach back and include them in my legacy. 

The book cover is specifically an homage to Essex Hemphill. I want to be in conversation with him. I want to honor him. In the future, I want people to be able to access his brilliance, his poetry, in a way they can’t at the moment. But for now, this is what I can do. 

Thea: I’m getting chills. You’re like a modern-day Essex, that same velocity and passion. It’s amazing to see. In light of his spirit and his legacy, what further intentions do you have for original kink? Who or what do you hope to speak to afterwards?

Jubi: First, thank you, I might cry. To your question: in this space, right now, I want original kink to start conversations within the Black community. I want Black folks, particularly those who are queer, trans and non-binary, to think about how we world-build and consider our impediments to that world-building. There’s so much Black trans violence that goes on every day. How can people like me, a Black cisgender man, walk through the world and break the cycle of perpetuating that violence? How can we celebrate transness?

I want original kink to present a model of masculinity that makes men rethink how they can and should walk through the world, but also one that gives Black people who are not cisgender men hope that cisgender men are capable of rethinking how they can and should walk through the world. A few years back I was having coffee with a friend, a Black woman, and she said to me something to the effect of “I don’t know if Black men, based on what I’ve seen, based on they’ve had to go through, are capable of love in the way I would hope to find a man that’s capable of love.” That really stunned me. And, it turns out, motivated me.