On Facilitating Poetry and Writing Black Trans Histories: An Interview With Cai Rodrigues-Sherley

Cai Rodrigues-Sherley (they/he) is a Black, queer, trans-masculine poet-songwriter, teaching artist, and lover of 1970s youth poetry. They are left-handed, a Sagittarius and a bullet journal enthusiast. At Smith College, they majored in Africana studies, was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow and received the 2019 Elizabeth Babcock Poetry Prize. They are also a 2020 Pushcart Prize Nominee and a 2020 The Watering Hole Winter Fellow. Their work can be found in Cosmonauts Avenue, Brooklyn Poets, and Volume Poetry.

WSR: Please introduce yourself. 

Cai: I’m Cai. I use they/them or he/him pronouns. I am originally from Boston, Massachusetts, but now I’m based in Queens. I love poetry and working with young people. 

WSR: How have you grown with the MFA program so far?

Cai:  Before this program, I didn’t feel like it was okay to have a direction with my poetry. I felt that I wasn’t at a place where I could say I was committed to a topic or a form. So, I was writing whatever I thought people might expect of me. I was writing a lot about my identity, my transness, and my Blackness. Those are still things that I’m writing about and I care about, but the MFA has given me the freedom to feel that I can write other things and that I can play. The MFA has given me the opportunity to find what I do like and challenge myself to also discover the forms that just don’t vibe with me right now. 

I also think the workshop space has been super generative.  When you’re writing poems in your room one or two people might see them. These people may not necessarily be inclined to have thoughts on your poems. It’s different being a room of people who are offering so much kindness and support by way of critique. 

I felt really held last semester. You were both in my workshop, so you were part of that holding. I have become more of a poet being in this program. I don’t think that an MFA is the only way to feel that becoming, but it has been very formative for me. It’s only been one semester, so there’s no telling where this journey will take me.

WSR: What has been one of the biggest challenges as a writer?

Cai: For me, it’s starting to write. I write in my head. I used to think that that was just procrastination, but it really is part of my writing style. I just have to think a lot, often, before I feel comfortable even just starting to throw stuff on the page. 

The hardest thing for me is telling myself you have to get this out of your body and put it somewhere else. I think editing is also one of the most difficult things to do because oftentimes we edit our poems raw, or we are too afraid to take things out. We are insecure about our ability to translate to others. 

I took my first poetry workshop when I was a senior in college. I remember my instructor saying, “Bruh, you gotta cut some of these lines. All your poems are 40 pages and they’re not 40 deep pages. It could really be a page.” I said, “You’re right.”  That is a common space where I struggle—I think it’s one of the toughest things.

WSR: How are you creating connections in the current moment?

Cai: I’m in an extensive number of group chats with some of my darlings, some of my dear, longtime friends.  My partner, who I live with, is definitely a grounding force in a time when we are literally so separate from each other.  Less tangibly, reading has been a way of feeling like I’m creating a connection to myself. 

I always feel like when I read, I am engaging with the fact that there are people existing elsewhere.  That for me is very calming, to be able to read the work of other people or read stories that people are crafting. It makes me feel more present in the world. If I can read a book, I know there are places where people are surviving.

WSR: How has teaching impacted your poetic practice?  Do they go hand & hand, and if so, in what way?

Cai: Teaching has really impacted me because I’ve taught things in different settings. I first came to teaching through poetry. I almost prefer the word facilitator. Oftentimes, I feel like that is my role. I don’t feel like I’ve ever been very equipped to show anyone how to do a thing as opposed to facilitating a space to discover that thing with me. 

I started off facilitating poetry with a group of third graders at a school near my college during my senior year. They were writing about rivers. We collected all of their work into a book called River Poems, which is on my bookshelf right now. I have a few copies. It’s my pride and joy.

That experience got me playing more in my writing. I don’t think we give poets in their youth enough credit for how innovative they often are. Especially when they’re younger, they have yet to deeply experience being policed in what it means to write “well” or “correctly.” Seeing their innovations with form and meaning pushed me to innovate, especially because I was responsible for translating their handwritten poems to the typed page. 

I told them, “Give me very specific instructions for how you want things to look” which gave me a challenge because they were so creative with their forms. I am definitely somebody who fears stepping out of the forms that feel comfortable to me, the forms that stick to the left side of the page, where it almost feels safe. Their innovativeness has pushed me to move words in different ways.

Now, I’m facilitating whilst thinking about financial resilience with young people and adults. I’m a teaching artist with this organization called Pockets Change. It’s a very different space. It’s about trying to vibe and connect with people around an important topic without the idea that you’re in charge and they are unknowing entities, which can be an almost violent way of learning together. 

Learning in a virtual space is more egalitarian in a way. It’s made me a better reader and listener when it comes to poetry. In some ways, the virtual space is a great way to dissolve our ego about what we make and what we share. Teaching, facilitating, and showing up in spaces with different folks have always been things I care about. They’ve helped me grow in ways I’ve not expected.

WSR: What projects are you working on right now?

Cai: I’m “working” on a couple of things. I don’t think I have the audacity to pretend that I have a particular collection in mind yet. Like I said, one of the things that this program has allowed me is the space to play and explore. I feel daring in the fact that I am able to commit to these two things.

I am thinking about Black trans-masculine histories and trans-masculine histories as a whole—excavating those histories through my poetics. I’m thinking about people like Little Ax, Billy Tipton, and Jimmy McHarris. Those names and those experiences that are difficult to find, difficult to really connect to. I’m working on finding places to exhume those histories and those bodies. I’m thinking about the nature of these histories of violence. 

I’m specifically thinking about the deep-rooted trans misogyny that has plagued trans women and trans-femme people since the beginning of time. A lot of trans-masculine people were able to “fly under the radar” historically—it is difficult to find them. Their desire was not to be found; it was to live their lives. 

There are these really violent histories about people dying.  During their autopsies, their bodies are “discovered,” and an undoing of their whole lives takes place after they’re gone. I’m trying to write about that.

I’m also thinking about the history of Boston from the lens of Black history because our history is so rich. Oftentimes, I don’t think we think of Boston as a place where Black history is really blossoming, as a place where Black activism is not only alive and powerful today but has been throughout history. 

I don’t think we talk enough about the fact that the Combahee River Collective and their seminal text on Black feminism originated in Boston. They did more than just write manifestos. They had whole movements. A group of 12 Black women went missing in the city. They created pamphlets about it, and they were out here doing really powerful work. I want to be able to honor their history and honor the histories of other Black people in Boston.  I want to be able to think about how these histories connect to my experience growing up in a very complicated and very segregated city.