Author Interview with Aerik Francis on BODYPOLITIC

1. Your first chapbook (BODYELECTRONIC) was also about bodily existence, and in your substack post on BODYPOLITIC, you write about Aliya Rahman, ICE, and surveillance capitalism: what does it mean to write about and occupy a body in this era of continued violence, antiBlackness, xenophobia, surveillance, and fascism?

Hi august, thank you so much for having me and thank you for the kind words and keen questions!

It’s just so awful what fascism is doing to people and all of our bodies, particularly those in prisons and detentions and concentration camps. To not have access to clean water, good food, healthcare, sanitary and safe living conditions, and worse, to have attempts to secure access violently thwarted. And even knowing and bearing witness to these atrocities takes a toll on the body. So much of what I hope my writing does is to fight against these oppressive systems in whatever ways I can.

I see the body as the beginning of our politics: the ways we can and cannot control our body’s abilities, appearances, needs, and desires, as well as the way these interact with other people and other living beings. For this, I think talking about the body can be a way of making a space of common ground to grow and develop a politic beyond partisan lines.

Talking about bodies also shines light on what's at risk and what is at stake. How can I be willing to put my body on the line if I’m not even willing to put my body in a line?

But in the midst of all of this, I also think it is important to talk about the possibility and potentiality of bodies: as sites of wonder, of pleasure, of discovery, of resistance, of change. And so, I wanted to write about bodies in new versions, bodies in healing, bodies in acceptance, bodies in progress, bodies fully in fluidity. I think our bodies can and do feel and respond to these complexities when shared.

2. So many of your poems in BODYPOLITIC are referential: I see you invoke Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Shaista Abdul Aziz Patel, Cameron Awkward-RIch, Wanda Coleman, and more. I see your work as always in conversation to ancestors, community, comrades, and I love that one of your poems “Lying to Live” is in reference to a conversation between Black literary luminaries Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. What is the significance for you in having your work communicate and be in conversation with other poets, writers, and community?

I believe in a poetics of reference, knowing that my work and words came to be because of the work and words of so many others. I am always thinking of the words of Sara Ahmed from her book Living a Feminist Life: “Citations can be feminist bricks: they are the materials through which, from which, we create our dwellings… we can hope to create a crisis around citation, even just a hesitation, a wondering, that might help us not to follow the well-trodden citational paths.” In this time where many people and many cultures are being targeted for erasure, modes of reference continue connections and forge deeper relationships, not just between writer and reference, but also among readers. And much like a scientific mode of citation, I see the references as a challenge to the reader to go directly to the source, almost as if to say, “You don’t have to take my word for it, see for yourself.”

So much of my writing practice is interwoven with my music practice, and often, allusion becomes a kind of adhesive to connect everything together. So much of my writing practice is interwoven with my reading practice [is interwoven with my life practices…]. It continues to feel important to, at the very least, speak the name of the person from whom a creation sprouted. I hope it also provides a reminder, if only to myself, of how inspiration can more reliably be generated from a robust reading practice than sudden epiphany.

As a final quick note on this topic, many of the poems use an ampersand to represent the word “and”, and while there is a stylistic choice to that, I also view the ampersand as a little body itself. It has a body and it connects bodies together. I also think it represents this desire toward inclusion and reference, as making space for possibility and continuation.

3. The title makes it obvious that the body is going to feature large in the chapbook-- and it’s true! In “Am I A Body?” for example, you take the reader through this visceral feeling when you “remove the muscles/cut the fat, shuck/the guts, break”-- but what I feel like you do so well is play with the body of the poems. In “Junetee[n]th”, a single letter removed blooms into an entirely new part of a poem, and evolving that into a poem, and “No Breasts” is born out of hacking and removal in “Gynecomastia (Breasts)”. Can you share more about this experience of writing poetry to and about the body but also writing poetry as the body?

I love this question of writing poetry as the body, and I wanted to invite that sense and that realness into the work. While the beginning of “Am I A Body” takes a quote from Roland Barthes and turns it into a thought experiment, the end is punctuated by the body. I suppose I could have kept writing and thinking through the poem, but at the time, my legs were actually growing numb, and it felt necessary to include that in, that my body was speaking to me in the real time of the writing. How and where one begins and ends a poem is always a question dependent on the context of the work, but in this case, the body determined both.

One thing I am amazed by in the thought of bodies is how everyone has a body and how each one is different. What fundamentally makes up a body? There are as many answers as there are bodies. Our bodies can, do, and will change: abilities come and go, wellness comes and goes, marks and scars come and stay. It’s very scary but it's also so wondrous. For me, poetry is a space where I can not only represent change, but also enact change. A poem’s form can change like a body’s form because the poem, too, has a body. And in many ways, I can shape my poetry body more easily than my physical body, though in many ways it bears the same restrictions on its form. “Fat4Fat” for instance, could have longer lines in another version, or prose poems like Body Language or My { } Hump or “Gynecomastia (Breasts)” could look different depending on the size of the page. I think about this reading and performing these poems too, how each time is different depending on so many variables.

4. In addition to being a writer, you are a talented video/mixed media artist! You’ve produced videos for poemsongs like “Cosmologic”, and I’ve read that you have some background in slam. This comes to mind for me because I think of the difference between the physical body a poem might have on the page and the form it takes in your ears. Can you tell me more about your process for creating these poemsongs, and how it adds to your experience of writing a poem? Will we see some for the poems in BODYPOLITIC?

The poemsongs are kind of a mystery to me too, often it feels like they appear in an extemporaneous burst rather than a methodological process. Mostly I try to be attentive to the poems and listen closely if they want to try new mediums or new genres.

I kind of see the music and the writing processes as separate. More often than not, the poemsongs combine music with already written poems as opposed to writing to the music. And more often than not, I don’t write poems with the expectation that they will be accompanied by music. That said, I do write with the idea that what is written will be spoken aloud, and given that, I like to try and incorporate as many musical elements to my poetry as I can/as the poem allows for (as every poem is different). Because my poems have many musical elements baked into it, it becomes easier to match the poems to music later on.

Similarly, music making feels like a separate process, though it is a very similar feeling. Sometimes the music gestures out to the poems and their lyrics– at various times, sometimes immediately and sometimes years later. When that happens, it gets to be fun to experiment and see about flow and fit. Something I find fascinating is when a rhyme scheme emerges from a poem that didn’t seem to have any previous focus on rhyme or rhythm. Or a chorus emerges from poems that didn’t previously seem to have repeats or refrains.

I’m hoping to make poemsongs out of BODYPOLITIC, but nothing exists so far. That said, I have plans to collaborate with musicians to make it happen in the coming months, so look for updates!

5. BODYPOLITIC is your third chapbook since 2022! At this point in your writing career, what have you learned from all three of your projects?

I learned that a project never concludes in the ways you think it might. Each project is still living its own particular life in the world. BODYELECTRONIC still comes up despite it being out of print. MISEDUCATION is still being read, still being performed in its own way. Even BODYPOLITIC is taking on new lives in ways I would have never thought possible before its publication.

I am also enjoying how each project is living with each other– how my reading sets sometimes include poems from each project and they are able to converse with each other and the audience in unique ways. I wasn’t expecting the ways in which the new projects carry the old projects forward.

I feel more aware of the values and limitations of chapbooks. That said, each project has had its own journey, just as people have their own journeys and receptions of their books and projects. Each project has given me opportunities to embrace humility and grace and gratitude for the ways they can and do make impacts rather than dwell too long on their shortcomings.

As a writer, they have given me more security in my taste and decision making. I feel more confident in organizing collections and more comfortable in advertising them.

6. What’s next for you?

I don’t know for sure! I have a few full-length poetry manuscripts that are ready and waiting for the right publisher. I also have been really into making music and have some projects cooking up for some near future. As much as I’d love for all of these to be released ASAP, I’m trying to relish in my time as Adams County Poet Laureate and continue to open up poetry portals. MISEDUCATION and BODYPOLITIC are both still having their moments in the world and I want to continue to give those projects time and space to continue meeting new audiences.

I often go back-and-forth about applying to MFA programs, so maybe that… or maybe not! In any case I hope I’ll continue to perform and write and facilitate poetry workshops, continuing to share and sharpen old work as well as continuing to craft new material.