Unlearning Strongwoman Podcast

4. I Wont Be Judged by Outside Measure - Vievee Francis

• Tolu Agbelusi

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In today’s episode, Tolu Agbelusi speaks to Vievee Francis in a conversation that spans accepting yourself, fragility, body dysmorphic disorder, beauty, forgiveness and a lot more. Vievee also reads poetry from her forthcoming collection the Shared World. 

 Vievee Francis is an award-winning poet, professor and artist. She is the author of three poetry collections—Blue Tail Fly, Horse in the Dark, and Forest Primeval. 

List of poetry collections, poems and essays mentioned in this episode. 


Remember, there's a transcript available in the notes if you need it. 

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The music for Unlearning Strongwoman is created by Shade Joseph
Locating Strongwoman, a poetry collection by Tolu Agbelusi can be purchased here.

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Vievee Francis:

So strength is, is complicated, unexpected, and I think different for each of us. And that's, that's the key.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Good people. Welcome to another episode of Unlearning Strong Woman. If I were to say that I am excited about this conversation, that would be the definition of an understatement. I am actually ecstatic, um, because my guest today is no other than poet extraordinaire Vievee Francis. If you have been to any workshop I have ever done, whether it is something that was actually to do with creative writing or whether it was a corporate session about power and agency, chances are you have heard a Vievee Francis poem come out of my mouth. Um, but for those of you who are not familiar with Vievee's work, I'm going to help you on your repentance journey, um, by reading some of the official stuff about what she does. Um, Vievee Francis is the author of three Poetry collections, Blue Tail Fly, Horse in the Dark, and currently my ultimate favorite Forest Primeval. I say currently because I have a funny feeling that the new collection,'The Shared World' might knock Forest Primeval into second favorite, but we'll see about that. Um, Vievee is also working on a memoir called Ugly, which will be in the world. Well, you have to wait to find out when it's in the world. Um, Vievee's work is a masterclass in how to evoke emotion, how to weave worlds with your words. And if you do any kind of writing, you need to be reading Vievee Francis because, why not? I should also say, uh, some of the other accolades; she is a professor at Dartmouth College. Her honors include the Rona Jaffy Writers Award, Kingsley Tuft Award, uh, Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American poetry. And I'm sure I left some stuff out, but you get the idea. You're about to witness greatness.. You're welcome. Um, Vievee, thank you for agreeing to speak with me today.

Vievee Francis:

Thank you for having me. Um' you were tickling me reading that and I was trying to be very quiet and humble. Thank you very much. I, I, I want you to do every introduction I ever have for the rest of my life

Tolu Agbelusi:

No, your work is amazing. There are a few, a few collections I go to when I think I have forgotten how to write, which these days happens more often than not. And your work is one of those. Your work, uh, A. Van Jordan's work, um, Scale. I don't know if you've read Scale, Nathan MacClain's Collection.

Vievee Francis:

I haven't read it yet. It's on my reading list. Um, because uh, his work is, yeah. Well, yeah. His work is all that. So that's a, that's a writer I like to return to.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. So those, those are a few, there are a few more, but your work is definitely high on that list, and a lot of your work is about, uh, perception and the body and how we see ourselves. And you always come at it in very interesting ways. So I'm, I'm looking forward to how we go here, because even when I don't think we're talking about the body, or we're talking about beauty and how somebody is seen I find it somewhere buried under things. And these interviews or these conversations often begin with the same question, uh, which is, what is a Strongwoman to you?

Vievee Francis:

Hmm. Well, I've, I've been thinking about that, uh, since knowing that we were gonna interview. So, um hmm. For me, a, a Strong woman is several things. The first question for me is, do I want to be a Strongwoman? Right?

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

it's, it's a hard question to answer because the idea of strength is put upon black women, um, African diasporic women. It's it, we're forced into its measure with someone else determining what strong is. So, I, I like trying to determine it for myself.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yes.

Vievee Francis:

But I find it really hard to find my own definition, considering most of my life has been spent with people having that expectation of me.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Um, and it's an expectation I don't meet or fulfill. I consider myself fragile, and I also know that I am fragile in a world of expectations that won't allow it. Um, but whether the world allows it or not, that's where I am.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm. um.

Vievee Francis:

So I, I suppose a definition for me is admitting where one is. Admitting one's state, uh, of being or mind, no matter what the outside world tells you. We know where we are and who we are, I think. And, um, so I know my own fragility, but I think there is a strength in being able to acknowledge it

Tolu Agbelusi:

mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and also, um, being able to, to grow, to have a flexible mind.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

I think is a sign of both intellectual keenness and strength. And I do have that. I, I have a flexible mind. I grow all the time. I am learning from everything around me. Um, I watch ice skating. I don't ice skate. This body is not going to balance. It's not gonna happen. Um, even roller skates, no balance is happening here.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I mean, I tried, what is the one you do in the ice rink? It's ice skating, I tried that once and I broke my ankle and I've never been back/

Vievee Francis:

I know that would happen and I've already had my ankles broken, not again. So, but I watch it because when, um, I watch it, Particularly at the level of mastery, you'll see someone falling down and then getting back up and falling down and getting back up and having to complete the program.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

It inspires me. So that's just one example. I'm, I'm constantly learning and I learn from my students as well. I'm a broader thinker because of the things over the years, they introduced me to, oh, and let me go back to'Scale'. Yes. Scale my brain fog. Forgive me, Nathan McClain's Scale is, is simply, um, one of the strongest books I've ever read. I love it. He knows that I'm, I think, Um, I think I state so in the book, but, um, wow. Father Son,

Tolu Agbelusi:

yes.

Vievee Francis:

Fire.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yes. Yes. There are many ways to say father, but I mean... and I never see/

Vievee Francis:

'There are many ways to say Father fire being one'. My father as well. So, um, that book particularly moved to me and. So I, I have some of those poems. I have so many poems from so many people that they've sent to me or that are outside of their text.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Or before the text was a, was a book, you know, and um, so you could say I'm a paper hoarder. and I go, when I go back to something, I don't necessarily go back to the books behind me. I go to the poems I've plucked out and put in all of these different folders.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm

Vievee Francis:

The folder I need when I'm grieving, the folder I need[laughter] the folder I make, you know, when I'm, I'm feeling moments of joy. I have these, I sometimes I have to buy two books because I tear the poems out. I'm not concerned with the body proper of the book. I am not a bookmaker, I am a maker of books. I, I'm a writer

Tolu Agbelusi:

So you have the pretty copy and then you have the one that you mark or,

Vievee Francis:

my working copy, yeah, the one I'm crying over and waste coffee on, and then I tear pages out and hang them on my walls,wherever, my studio or, or home, or at my office at Dartmouth, or I put them on the door of my office at Dartmouth. I had a Lucille Clifton poem on my office door at Dartmouth. Uh, the Celebrate poem.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

That was my way of saying, here I am, here I stay

Tolu Agbelusi:

[laughter] Deal with it.

Vievee Francis:

Okay. So, so I, I think that's a kind of strength too, which I've had to learn over the years, um, to stand up for myself and what that means, having been trained in a particular Southern US kind of way. I've been trained in quietude and I've been trained in forgiveness. But when a child takes that in, they take it in in a way that can erase them. So, um, I was in my thirties and forties before I could fully hear if I was being insulted or not. I couldn't hear sarcasm. I was so earnest I couldn't hear cruelty because I was not. And I, it took a while to learn when I needed to talk back. Now, of course, people wish I had never learned that because I'm talking about all of the time. So I would say talking back is a strength, but I'm also going to say earnestness. All my northern friends are cringing now. Earnestness is a kind of, um, Strength. Mm-hmm. I really want to get to the gist of things, uh, to the marrow of things, and I find earnestness gets me there, but it's not always appreciated. As a matter of fact, I would say among writers and particularly maybe in this era, and a kind of earnestness might be disparaged, well, I shouldn't say this era because it's really those in my age group.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

who disparage earnestness. I find my younger comrades in poetry, much more capable of earnestness who don't/

Tolu Agbelusi:

when you say earnestness, how do you describe it?

Vievee Francis:

To speak straightforwardly without agenda.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm

Vievee Francis:

without... to mean what you say and to mean it passionately without a fear of sincerity.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mmh

Vievee Francis:

without confusing sincerity and sentimentality. I admire sincerity when, when I hear it and I practice earnestness even though there's a price I pay for it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. Because people can't always deal with it.

Vievee Francis:

No, they can't. And they spend a lot of time saying, what's your agenda? They actually, they've made me cry before. And as I try to search for my agenda, you know, I'm like, I, I meant what I said as I said what I meant.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

I have a, a poem that references this and, um, it's a, I think it's about 7UP or something like that, that I find it refreshing and, um, saying that somehow draws the, the, the disdain of my friends. But but I, I'm not speaking towards a corporation. I'm simply saying when I drink it, you know,

Tolu Agbelusi:

this is how it feels.

Vievee Francis:

The fizzy, bubbly, feeling feels good, it's simple. There's no more to it. Now, if they want to talk about corporate engagement, that's a, that's a story I can, I can tell too, but most of the time I'm simply saying something that I mean, and, um, it's not taken in that way. And I won't say it's face value, because face value for me implies a kinda simplicity, uh, shallowness.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

but I'll mean it from my depths. So strength is complicated, unexpected, and I think different for each of us. And that's, that's the key. Uh, we tend to move towards collective ideas and ideals.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and I move against that.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Right.

Vievee Francis:

I want to know who the individual is. And I think strength is... differs for everyone and particularly for, um, Black women. There are some ways in which it intersects, uh, the ways in which we are protective of our beloveds, the ways in which we will find the courage to face down anyone who comes at our beloveds. I find that to be a particularly powerful trait in almost, well, I can't say almost in every single African diasporic woman I know across the world has that trait. So, and, and I've met others who did not have it. So I, I think there is something about that and us, but if you think about that, we're able to jump in the fray when it comes to others. My question is when do we jump in the fray for. For ourselves. And I don't think we do anywhere near as much as women from other groups do. And I don't think, um, and I think that's because of the slave trade. I, I think it may also, well, I, I don't know because I don't know how to separate what of me is product of slave trade. And, and what of me is, is something inherent?

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Uh, comes before the trade. But I'm going to make the assumption, I'm gonna make the leap that that protection of our beloveds comes before the transatlantic trade, because those in the diaspora, I know who were not, who, who were able to stay

Tolu Agbelusi:

mm-hmm

Vievee Francis:

on the continent, and were able to immigrate voluntarily later, they have the trait too. So that may be something beautiful that happens prior.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

But my inability to take stock of my own needs, that's slave trade. That's transatlantic. That's you are not as important as those you serve.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I mean, it is, but I think it's also conditioning. General conditioning. Societal conditioning of women.

Vievee Francis:

general conditioning of women, yes.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Oh, we said that at the same time. Mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Whenever I hear that there's a truth, I'm like, okay. I concede your point. Yes.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. Because it's that thing of you're, well, you're here to serve others.

Vievee Francis:

Mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

but not your, not yourself. So that whenever you choose yourself, it becomes an issue, which is one of the questions I'll get to in a different way during this conversation. But yeah, I think societal conditioning has a lot to answer for, for the way we see ourselves and, and how we hold ourselves in the world. Strength is its own thing and how you view strength and the difficulty to, of being able to extricate what has been given and what is, uh, just you. But having said that, are there, if you could mention, say, three women who widened the sphere of possibility for who you get to be in the world, who would those be and why?

Vievee Francis:

Oh, there's an interesting question. Okay. Um, Maya Angelou. Some people may be surprised, that is my answer, but behind me on my shelf is my Maya Angelou doll, because, because I'm inspired by her. She wrote inspirational poetry.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

that's what she wanted from her readers and listeners, her audience- for us to be inspired. And she does inspire me, not the poetry alone, but the life she led. Um, from dancer to speaker.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Just being so full in her life, following so many streams and understanding wisdom as she gained it. She, she had humility, but at the same time she knew that she had wisdom.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

And she allows me to be able to accept my own wisdom. She allows me to try different things to consider different paths.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and although those paths may exist for me only as something I do occasionally. I still do them because I see her. And also she's a model for moving past trauma.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And I've experienced a good deal of trauma. So knowing that she was able to become in the way that she did past her childhood is extremely important to me. So, so that would be Maya. Uh, Someone else would be, well, and I'll, I'll mention, um, a, a living person. I'm, I'm gonna say Aracelis Girmay and I learn a lot from peers and, um, her, her poetry, it's, it establishes itself earlier than mine does. So as I started reading her work, she, she's willing to peel back those layers. Um, and she thinks both about society and self.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

And I love that. Right. And I'm always trying to find those balances. I've only met her a couple of times, um, and just found her to be deeply engaging and, um, gentle but knowing herself, you know, that presence where you know who you are.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And I, I could list several, uh, several women like that, well, several persons like that. Let's. A third person. Oh, there are so many women that are, are roaming through my mind. Um, I'm, I'm going to say Nina Simone.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Okay.

Vievee Francis:

I'm saying Nina Simone, who also had great fragility even though she could speak ferociously.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Swear, she could act out, but underneath that there was such extraordinary fragility and she wanted one path, but found herself on another and maintained it, grew it. I'm not convinced she ever knew how important she would be, later, to generations after her. Um, and she doesn't die in the best way.

Tolu Agbelusi:

No.

Vievee Francis:

Um, it's, it's actually quite sad. I just read another bio biography and, and it made me cry in my bed and it made me concerned. I don't want to die in my bed. Um, but to push through. I, I think I'm, I'm admiring two um, women who, who push through and past the obstacles that are constantly placed in our way.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm. And it's interesting what you said, actually both about Nina, but specifically about Maya because I've had that conversation with others before. I've got friends who do not rate Maya Angelou at all, and I'm like, it's a good thing. I love you Like, I really love you because

Vievee Francis:

Yeah. I dunno if I'd have kept those that can't hear Nina, if you can't hear Nina and her piano playing if, if you can't take that in,mmmmmh

Tolu Agbelusi:

like

Vievee Francis:

I think I'll put out the questionnaire cus

Tolu Agbelusi:

The person I'm thinking of likes Nina, but I think they just couldn't see what I would like about Maya Angelou. And I was like, as a young girl, it's weird because some of the poems I was drawn to as a young girl, I did not understand. I understood something of them. There's that poem about, um, uh, the woman who, she came and she goes with everybody else's husband, but she goes home, uh, she does da, da da da, but she goes home. And there was something I didn't understand, you know, the life the woman in the poem was living. But what I understood was that this person was emotionally displaced, couldn't find where they were and didn't fit anywhere. And there was something in that that spoke to me so that all the other poems that everybody talks about, I like them too. But as a young girl, that one was the one that was stuck somehow in my head.

Vievee Francis:

It's pretty much like Morrison's, um, the, the females inside of Morrison's work. It, it's the same thing. I, I think you put that so well. It's emotional displacement, the right to be here as they are. Who makes space for them? They're having to make space for themselves, not necessarily conventional space. Not necessarily. No one's gonna let them have space.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

So within those sites, they're not necessarily going to act conventionally and um, But that, that's an interesting thing too'cus I'm working on this theory. What is conventional for a Black woman, particularly for those of us who are the descendants of slaves who have had to take on outside religions, outside cultures and be told who we are and what to be. No, I actually agree with Sarte, that we are existential that, that we live this existential existence and I'm going to, my measure is my own.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yes

Vievee Francis:

and I won't be judged by outside measure, and I'm really, I, I sound kind of adamant because I, I've really been thinking about this because what we do too often is, we'll act unconventionally, but the boundaries and the rules are still there in our heads and our hearts and our spirits. So we apologize for it. Or we go so far outside as a kind of reactionary stance as opposed to just thinking about what do we want? And living the way we want, unapologetically and completely impervious to outside judgment. And that's the life I'm looking toward. I don't, uh, think anyone can judge my choices through their social lens. Hmm, not a, not in America. I'm going to discover who I am, hopefully by the end of this life, my own way, and I'm going to live with my own choices. I reject many of the frameworks that are given to me. And even if you see me living inside of them, it is a coincidence. You get me? I can see that you get me.[laughter] Wait a minute, wait a minute Tolu, I have to turn my head. Do you see all this, all this gray? That was not there last time you saw me.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I've got a few myself.

Vievee Francis:

This looks like the skunk trail right here.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I've Mine are there. And there I was washing my hair this morning and I keep trying to, well, I don't, it looks like I have something in my hair, so I go to pick and then I realize it's not fluff.

Vievee Francis:

Oh,, I remember those years. Yeah. You, you, um, look exactly as I remember you. It's really just a delight to look upon you.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Thank you. One of the things you mentioned before, which taps into a question I like to ask is about how people step into themselves. Uh, Maya Angelou gave this interview with the Paris Review, I think it was in 1990, and one of the things she said was, most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. Uh, what happens is that most people get older, uh, they honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children but they don't grow up because to grow up cost the earth because it means taking responsibility for the time that you take up, for the space that you occupy, and you get to find out what it costs for us to love and to lose and to dare and to fail and maybe even to succeed. You get to find out what it costs and truth. Thinking about that

Vievee Francis:

mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I take it for granted, or as a given, I should say, that growing is a constant thing, or at least it should be.

Vievee Francis:

It should be.

Tolu Agbelusi:

But having said that, I also think, for me anyway and I think as women, as people, that there are moments or seasons in our life where the confluence of circumstances and experiences make you step into yourself in a definitive way that then launches the rest of the growth that happens. Uh, kind of, this is when I stepped into my power and then everything else flows. This is when I left the girlhood behind or whatever. It wasn't age. And so I always like to ask, what was that season for you and what was going on to make it, to make that shift happen?

Vievee Francis:

I am going to say

Tolu Agbelusi:

mm-hmm

Vievee Francis:

That it's been intermittent for me over my life, but that it began at nine years old.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hm.

Vievee Francis:

and that's because of the circumstances I was in. My parents were integrationists. I was living in the South that was still a Jim Crow South.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Because the signs went down, didn't mean it changed overnight. It didn't. I, I get irritated so much sometimes with my Northern American friends because they seem to think the signs went down and Oh, suddenly everybody was singing Hallelujah. It was great. Well, that's not what happened. The, the letting go of Jim Crow took far longer than any legislation. So I'm born in 63.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Um, around 72, maybe younger, 71, what you would learn later in life about parents being fallible, what you would learn later in life about adults lying constantly around you. And I'm talking about doctors, teachers, everyone. I lived in a place where everyone lied

Tolu Agbelusi:

and you saw it, at that age.

Vievee Francis:

And I saw it. I dunno how I saw it. Maybe because, uh, I had learned to read early.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah

Vievee Francis:

Maybe because, uh, I, I, I'm wondering if it's because of something my, my father said, you know, the Black games, uh, board games were popular then, and some parents had them. And I remember we had a history game. I thought enough of myself, I, I went into a classroom where I, I think it was in Amarillo, Texas, and my father had gone through flashcards with me. I knew my, my Maths, whatever, arithmetic. And I gave the answer and the instructor said no, and had me sit in the corner.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Another little boy gave the same answer and the instructor praised him. And in that moment, every lie I'd been told fell down on my head. I thought, and maybe I did have a nervous breakdown at that age, because it's too young to see the world that way

Tolu Agbelusi:

as what it is. Yes.

Vievee Francis:

All the scales fell from my eyes. I knew my instructor did not care for me. I knew the people who ran that school did not care for me. I knew my parents did not understand the danger they had put me in.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mmmhhh.

Vievee Francis:

I knew that they may have understood the danger they put me in, but that was the cost of the movement. All of those things went running through my wee mind in a way, in a way I didn't fully understand, but it, I know that it began the process of my becoming myself because when that instructor lied,

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And told me I did not have the answer after my father had drilled me because he was a man who expected you to get, A's. In that moment, I knew how adults could lie. I saw the lie and then I began to wonder about the rest of the world. And to this day, I interrogate everything. There is no received belief I am not going to rip apart to see if I believe it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Which is part of why I'm so adamant about having an'I' and honoring it. So I think that was a pivotal moment for me. It, it's the moment I remember, not the first moment of trauma, but the first moment where I believed myself over societal untruth. Does that make sense?

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. Yeah. In one of your interviews, you said something along the lines of, I determine who I am and how I am and what my name is.

Vievee Francis:

Mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

and for me, in many ways, writing poetry is telling you my name and saying, this is my name. I don't give it up. I want you to get it right because I am telling the story. Where does that need come from to assert agency and personhood? I mean, this experience that you just talked about for sure starts, starts a chain rolling, but where else and how else has it come to you as you've grown older that, no I am... my voice is something that is worth listening to. I am somebody too. Where does that come from for you?

Vievee Francis:

I'm not absolutely sure. I have tied it to society and racial realities before, but I might also tie that to art.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Okay.

Vievee Francis:

And what it is to be an artist. I think artists are more aware than most in most other fields of their'I' because they have to be.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and I think art often fails where there's not an awareness of that. And by art I mean the creation of something resonant, something that will haunt something that another might look at and, and find something for themselves in. So the art contains some kind of connective tissue, even if we say we're only doing it for ourselves. So I think it, it may be something connected to my being an artist, which I, I put artist, uh, as a kind of umbrella, over writer and visual arts. Um, I may not have called myself a poet until I was 24.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

But I knew myself as a poet at 19. But since I began reading, I felt, uh, some connective tissue between myself and those authors.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

I didn't read the way many I knew read, read as a kind of tourism, right? Uh, you can go to another country, you can immerse you, you're having a sojourn, or you can go and stay in a hotel, be a tourist. And I think, well, I think it's fine, but I think many people unfortunately take literature in that way. And I, I didn't take literature in that way. I took it in author to reader as well as character or speaker to reader.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

And so, um, maybe my sense of identity and the agency that followed, um, is coming from reading those who were developed, who had developed that within themselves.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Right. In one of my poems, uh, there's a line that says, being a woman is a house you must build from scratch

Vievee Francis:

mmmh

Tolu Agbelusi:

Must reject most donations for

Vievee Francis:

mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

and.

Vievee Francis:

Well put.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Why, thank you. And I'm thinking there of two things. One, obviously societal conditioning, which we'll come back to, um, but also family. And I say family in the broader sense of immediate family. Yes. But your community, whatever that community is, and so much seeps into us that we don't even realize is seeping into us growing up. Uh, the people we love who love us give us things of themselves and of their knowledge with good intentions sometimes, which as we grow older, we realize doesn't actually belong to us and we need to/unlearn

Vievee Francis:

give it back.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Give it back, unlearn, let go whichever way. So I'm, I guess I wanna know what ideas of yourself do you feel we're given to you by the women in your community, which you've had to separate yourself from growing up?

Vievee Francis:

It's, it's a little complicated because who I am now, much like who I was then.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

um, can be challenging to take So I was born in Texas and, uh, Texan on both sides of my family for several generations, but I didn't act the way they thought a Texan daughter should act.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Right.

Vievee Francis:

Um, I was, I, I was sensitive to the world in a way that's very discouraged in Texas. Um, Texas is not a gentle place and yet, If I go fishing with my grandmother, and this happened with my father and I put a live bait on the hook. I'm gonna talk to the worm- I'm so sorry. I know. It hurts Who does that? I had a peculiar sensitivity that my grandmother, Vicie for whom I, partly my name is a portment of. I'm named after both of my grandmothers who have passed: Viecee and Viora, Vievee. And Viecee, she protected me kinda. When she realized this child is just not meant for this particular part of the world. She was very protective of me. Um, we'd go out fishing. She caught a turtle once I remember, and I was gonna make something good. So she stabbed the turtle to kill it, and then she said, girl, go on and get that knife. Well, every time I pulled the knife, it's little legs wiggled, right? Oh, I just started sobbing. Like, I can't do it, I just can't do it. Oh. My grandmother looked at me as if, as if a fairy had come out of the leaves, from some fairytale book and, and not a good fairy either, you know, some kind of strange and twisted thing. And, um, I, she didn't know what to do with me. Um, so she decided I needed books. And so every summer when I went to see her, I spent enormous parts of the summer with her. She would just give me all of these books. Books. She herself wasn't reading just any book because this child is gonna live a life in books because we just can't keep her outside And I'd cling to her because they're gonna be a rattlesnake. She's like, come on, walk the property. Like, Nope. Is there gonna be a snake? So there was a moment when I loved the fields and running in the fields and the corn cubs and the cows, which I always called, I called every animal a butterfly. I don't know why. Um, but that dissipated over time. So I think my grandmother gave me more strength of walking through the world than I would've had without her.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm.

Vievee Francis:

And my mother did not like me. She loved me, but she did not like me. And I know in Black culture, that's a sin to say, cuz we never admit if our mothers don't like us. Oh, all mothers are good and I'm like, no, my, my mother loved me, but she did not like me, which I'm reckoning with since her death about four years ago. But, um, my mother was fearless. All the fears I had in the, the, I had many, many, many fears. But I got to watch her be fearless. That's how she could be an integrationist. She would just walk into any diner that looked good. Ah, that hamburger on the sign looks great, kids, let's go in and get it. You know? And I would be thinking, no, I don't wanna go in there. I don't think they're friendly, you know, she was, she really lived her beliefs about people and parody, and I didn't appreciate it when I was young. It just terrified me. But at this age, I deeply appreciate it and it makes me so much more courageous. I, I'm able to talk back, I think, because of my mother.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

So those are, those are two, two women there. And then my Aunt Laverne, my Aunt Laverne, suffered some of the greatest grief, um, loss of other human beings I, I've ever seen. And she stayed on this planet. She grew, she, uh, like Job, she built a new life. And that's ever, ever, instructional for me. So none, I'm not as strong as any of these three women, but I've, I've developed a strength of mind through them.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm hmm. And in a way that also speaks to, I guess, where we first started in terms of who might the women you perceive to be strong are, even if you aren't able to separate different things in yourself

Vievee Francis:

mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

to, to make that definition for yourself. Now, in terms of what conditioning which is a term we, we both mentioned earlier in terms of conditioning, familial, community, society, what have or what, yeah. What have the conditionings been that you have noted and identified for yourself that, oh, that's a thing that I need to let go of and which you have either let go of or working on letting go of.

Vievee Francis:

Hmm. I'm letting go of my Uber politeness. I have a Southern style politeness that it's a combination of East Texas and Georgia.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Okay.

Vievee Francis:

And I wanna let it go. It doesn't serve me. Nobody cares that I'm polite. Nobody says, oh, that vibey, she's polite. Although I put great store in my politeness. Hahahahahahahahahahaha. I, I'd like to let that go the way of Quilling. I'm one of the few people left alive who quills, it's a type of paper.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

um, paper art. And my grandmother Viecee thought to get a good husband, I needed to know how to cook and quill and several other things nobody's ever asked me about in my life. So, so I'd like some of my politeness to go the way of Quilling. I still have a terrible time not calling someone older than me, ma'am or sir. Um, I actively have to pause and practice and not do that. And where I live now, that's unheard of. So I'm, I'm learning. Those are things I, I'd like to get rid of. And politeness in an impolite society can be misread.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

So, what my politeness may do outside of Atlanta. It certainly doesn't work for me here in Vermont, in the free state of Vermont. So, um, I, I work in New Hampshire, but I, I live in Vermont. Um, so that's one thing I work actively on wherever my boundaries are. Like the things in the mind where you say, oh, I wish they wouldn't do that. When you get that moment.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Every time I get that, I try to let that go. I try to look at where that's coming from. I try to look at why did that make me wince and I immediately think it may be in me, not in the person that made me wince and getting to this point is, um, that makes me happy. Um, that's how I grow. I grow through examining my own responses. I would say in a lot of ways that's how I grow. I think there are other things that I want to let go, but they're not coming to mind because they're traumatizing things.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Right.

Vievee Francis:

And I can't draw them up quickly.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

or always, uh, be in the process of thinking about them. But I still have, I think, uh, inexplicable fears that are from being the only black person in the room or in the classroom or in the school. Those sets of fears I'm still and will probably be working through for the rest of my life.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm.

Vievee Francis:

And those fears, the way they manifest is through procrastination. They manifest through a complete shutdown of the self in a, in a manner of trying to protect the self.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and, um, they manifest in my tendency towards reclusion, uh, which I don't think is good for me. I'm not saying it's not good for others. It's not good for me. And now I live really in a very forested place, very, very, very few people. So I'm, I'm not doing a good job of being out in the world and the pandemic didn't help because like so many introverts during the pandemic on, not through Covid, of course, COVID was horrific and friends and family lost for my family comes to about eight. But, but, um, and a lot of suffering.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

But as far as, I saw very few people, that I, I just felt it feeding that impulse in me and feeding a kind of a agoraphobia I think I might fall into if I allowed it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

There are days I have to, well, there's something I have to let go of, but I can't let go of it. And that is, um, as a result of torment, physical, emotional, and mental in my childhood, I have, um, profound body dysmorphic disorder that centres on my face. Hmm. Um, BDD when, that type of diagnosis, usually you'll find one part of the body that you can't tolerate. And for me, it's my face. So there are days I don't feel this face can go out in the world.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

I don't wanna be harmed or I can actually be so distressed that I think someone seeing me might harm them. So it's not curable.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Right.

Vievee Francis:

Um, I was broken too early and too hard, so it's not curable, but it does give me the gift of seeing others. I have a really challenging time seeing anyone as ugly. I can stare at people all day. Not in a creepy way, but in, um, I kind of aren't people beautiful kind of way, especially when people are not paying any attention to me. I'm just like at a dance, watching people dance.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Um, and that's happened all over the world actually. I would love to be able to let go of the way the trauma I suffered in childhood has internalized, but it's at the cellular level. It cannot happen. Um, but I lean into the aspects of it that have broadened my own eye. Um, my, my, I want expansiveness for both my I, the letter I and both my I EYE.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. Speaking of, of beauty, and, uh, standards of beauty, your poem skinned, which begins for those who haven't heard the poem before or read it, uh, there are several ways to skin a thing. My grandmother knew most of the ways. She had been skinned herself, so to speak, in that her skin was so often examined and found wanting. I mean, big way to enter a poem, right? What comes to mind with that is also who is considered to be beautiful and what are we told about who is beautiful and where? And how does that become part of us? How much of that affects how you see yourself? The trauma, like you said, is one thing that definitely affects how you are in the world, but do those other things. The, you know, your face has to be this skinny and this symmetrical,

Vievee Francis:

That was part of the trauma and it, it really didn't matter what I did because for some, my darkness was always going to be an issue. Um, for some, my nose was always gonna be an issue. Um, for some, so the lack of angularity in my features was, was always gonna be an issue. Now my hair, that was a different story because my hair would grow to a particular length that people thought was unusual. They would say things to me like, girl, I'm glad you got that hair right, or

Tolu Agbelusi:

As though it was a saving grace to something else.

Vievee Francis:

If you didn't have that hair, what would you have?hahaha

Tolu Agbelusi:

Oh,

Vievee Francis:

and they, and because the expectation was, they would laugh because their expectation was that I agreed with those received beliefs, but I did not agree. That doesn't mean I could stop the internalization.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

My self-awareness couldn't stop it. It just gave me other outlets. So what I found I could control was how I saw others. So I could reject all of those ideas and I reject all of them. And when you reject anybody's idea of beauty, it is like rejecting their Jesus. Because they're hanging on to those, like, they've probably built their whole worlds around because we, we don't often think about how much of our worlds we build around physical aesthetics. This is a very visual culture, right?

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yep.

Vievee Francis:

So my rejection and I rejected it very, very, very early by the time I was 13. I had rejected a lot of these ideas. I held onto some, and then I dated a couple of men within the aesthetic I liked, and I let that go too after them So,[laughteer] by 30, the last of that clinging to any received beliefs around beauty was gone. But, um, when I couldn't, I could only control how I saw others. I wasn't able to control. Well, I take that back. I do remember when it broke. So I was in my forties when the, the final piece of me couldn't fight it anymore when the way others saw me had internalized to the point where I could not physically stop it. I could feel it happening to me and I could feel some part of me throwing its hands up saying, I can't keep fighting this. One, somebody's gonna kill me because that is how people see beauty. I'm gonna tell one person too many that I'm not who you think I am, that I see myself as beautiful and they're gonna shoot me.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mmhh.

Vievee Francis:

That is how angry people would get when I would declare my beauty. And people were not, they weren't, they didn't have the capacity, and I'm including several of my friends in this. I've lost friends over this. They didn't have the capacity to understand the difference between how I saw myself and how the world saw me. So when I still had a piece of myself, I would say, no, I'm speaking of how the world see me. I see myself differently. And they would still say things to me like, Aw, you're not ugly. It was as much the incapacity of people around me to understand that nuance as it was the people who were calling me ugly in various ways, that broke the last bit of my mind around my own beauty. And I mean, they shattered it. And I say that with so much adamancy because I still feel the shards moving across the linoleum floor of my mind. Right. I'm still stepping on those shards. Um, but it was almost a relief when my mind broke in that way because it took so much to fight it, but people did not win my capacity to see others.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And that, for me is a win.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Oh my goodness. It is a part of me that helps me love myself. I think Vievee you may have broken in this way, but in this way, when you hug your friends, you feel such great delight because they are so beautiful internally, but externally, physically, delightful to me. That means my friends with scars, my friends who who've been burned by people they've known. Um, it, it makes no difference to me. My, my friends who, um, a doctor or some slim well-misinformed white female might call morbidly obese, are a delight in my arms. I love my arms. because I get to hold so many people.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and I have held people who, like me, were told they were ugly all of their lives.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And, or that they're only saving grace was this or that. And I, I feel they know that I just feel overwhelmed with adoration and ease on my eyes. People are so easy on my eyes, if not on my spirit, easy on my eyes, and I'm essentialist. So I really feel they know. I mean it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. And I mean, even if I didn't have this dimension of seeing, if I didn't have the understanding of this dimension of seeing, I know for me when we met at Callaloo in 2016, one of the things that stood out for me and one of the things that I've said afterwards to others was like, you saw me. And when I[inaudible],

Vievee Francis:

you delighted me

Tolu Agbelusi:

Thank you.

Vievee Francis:

You were, you were so depthful that you were also like quiet and, and you meant everything you said. It was as if everything you said you thought through carefully and quickly in, in your mind and then said it. You, you are quite, um, it's one is quite incapable of forgetting you

Tolu Agbelusi:

Aww. Thank you. And afterwards, it's funny cuz I then, you know, you finish these things and sometimes, and this time was one of those times I was like, I'm gonna go and find out more about this woman, um, So I was digging through interviews and stuff and I think that was an interview with Muzzle, um, can't remember what year it was.

Vievee Francis:

Early on

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. Real early. And I was reading and I was like, oh, okay. So she didn't feel seen in the poetry circuit where she was Okay, I understand

Vievee Francis:

Oh no, I was not seen

Tolu Agbelusi:

I was like, I understand. Sometimes,

Vievee Francis:

it was years before I was seen.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's that thing cuz I, I feel like I, in many ways for a lot of the younger people who I mentor, it's that like I, I, I'm able to see them because I know all the ways that I haven't been seen,

Vievee Francis:

but it's so important.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm.

Vievee Francis:

It's so important. Um, I, I don't know if I can emphasize that enough, being seen. The capacity to see others, especially if one teaches.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm. Yes.

Vievee Francis:

I think that you know, that, that it's even more important that one has the capacity to see others.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Which encompasses believing in others and believing in their capacity and seeing the extraordinary capacity they already have.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm. Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

That's the joy of teaching. It's part of the joy

Tolu Agbelusi:

Part of it. One of your poems that I use the most in teaching is Taking It.

Vievee Francis:

Ah, yes.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Because I think it's just, there's so much in it. It's a masterclass for so many different things, whether it's how the story comes together, how you use silences, how you use rhyme, how you go through time in a continuum, but still making it all fit together. I mean so much. But what always strikes me the most about taking it is the voice of the speaker. She's kind of like, it happened. I'm not asking for your pity I'm not.

Vievee Francis:

Mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

pandering. I'm just telling you it happened. And there's that delightful line at the end of it where she says, is this too dramatic? Find another story, find a lie. And I'm just like, every time, I don't let anybody else read that poem when I'm doing sessions. I'm like, no, I'm reading that one. You're gonna kill it. So, but whenever she gets to that line, I'm just like, there is something about most of your speakers actually, where it doesn't matter what they are talking about, you are gonna make sure they have agency and

Vievee Francis:

Their say. Yeah.

Tolu Agbelusi:

And they have their say, even if everything is collapsing around them. Like, it doesn't mean that takes away your voice. And I'm assuming that's a conscious thing.

Vievee Francis:

Very conscious. Although now I, I think I've lived in my truth or walked in my truth for so long now that I think it's kind of inherent to the voice now.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

But, um, I, I do think about it and when my fears are, are too strong,

Tolu Agbelusi:

yeah.

Vievee Francis:

I tend to know it. So I have to let the poem rest until I gain the courage to say what must be said. So what I tell my students is, you, you don't have to say it. You don't have to publish it. You do have to write it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yes.

Vievee Francis:

You have to have some space where the unsayable thing gets said.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm.

Vievee Francis:

The unthinkable thing, the thing you fear, and that can still happen to me. Um, things that I don't want to face

Tolu Agbelusi:

mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

but my speakers, um, I have them, it's almost as if I try to give my speakers the strength to say, that thing. So poetry is definitely the place where, um, I speak and where I'm seen.

Tolu Agbelusi:

What do you say to your students about speaking the unspeakable thing, especially when you are speaking about people who might be close to you? Obviously I'm not assuming that every mother, every grandmother, I had to tell my own mother when my poetry collection came out, not all the mothers are you mom, just You know, some of them are, but not all of them are. But what do you, what do you do? Because that's something people are always wanting to know, but somebody else is... is it my story to tell? Uh, they might feel some kind of way that I've written this, even if it was my feeling about what happened. How do you deal with that?

Vievee Francis:

Well, there are a few ways. First, the story doesn't always have to be told in a biographical fashion. Yep. In that I'm thinking of a, I love that little short essay by Dana Gioaia on, um, Robert Frost's poem Nothing Gold Can Stay because the question and, and the supposition is that perhaps this poem is about the loss or is triggered by the loss of his son. And, um, the, the child that didn't stay, the beloved that didn't stay. So that may be so, however, what we have is a poem that doesn't mention a son, that doesn't mention a child, that doesn't necessarily state grief obviously. But of course there's grieving. If something is gold to you, if something is of great value to you and it can't stay, of course there's grieving. So the poem does encompass grief. So you can state the poem or write the poem without it being direct

Tolu Agbelusi:

yeah

Vievee Francis:

necessarily, or obviously biographical and it still gets the things said that you needed said. You know, I grieve the treasure gone. Right. Um, the other thing is poetry is fictive for a reason. Poetry is not memoir necessarily.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And literal poetry tends to be terrible art

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah..Yeah. It's that whole thing of even if you're speaking about yourself, the I becomes a character once you start writing. And so you have to serve the poem in, in some ways.

Vievee Francis:

And our memories are not reliable always. Right. So that gives us some wiggle room. The, uh, the poetic imagination gives us room. We are not puritans.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

So, you know, so I, I think that we don't have to use the names as they were given.

Tolu Agbelusi:

No.

Vievee Francis:

I write a poem about domestic abuse. Um, and the, the phrase is he hit her. Well, the truth is he didn't hit her. He stabbed her in the back with a point of an iron.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Ouch.

Vievee Francis:

Start a poem that way, your reader may not get to the end. Maybe your reader will. But I didn't start the poem that way. I let the poem build. I don't tell that. All I needed to say. The thing I had to say was she was hurt.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

And that's all I had to say. And that I hid from the viewing of it. And there was a witness and I was that witness. I, I think about Tarfia Faizoulla's, um, notes on Poetry Foundation Against Explanation. You don't have to explain, you can change the names.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

you can shift what you need to shift. There are the facts. Those facts should be attended to in journalism. Hello out there.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yes[laughter] yes.

Vievee Francis:

Who would be journalist. The, you know, hello out there politicians who don't think facts matter. Facts do matter, particularly in that realm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

But poetry is fictive. So I use the facts to get to the truth.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

And I'm thinking about what the facts are implying, and I wanna get to that. So if I'm thinking about the poem I wrote about domestic abuse that I just mentioned, the truth I wanted to get at was that everything wrapped in a beautiful package, it's not safe.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Um, is that there's a history in a tradition, um, male to male, brother to brother that allows for the harming of Black women. Particularly if those men are talented, then there's less said about the harm they do.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

So the poem had truths to get to, and, and that's what I wanted. So, so one doesn't have to, to stay with, this was the exact circumstance or this was the person's name, the thing you have to say is usually underneath those facts.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. The why of why you actually wanna tell that story. Yeah,

Vievee Francis:

absolutely.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yes. Hmm. Okay. Let me try for some lighter questions. Um,

Vievee Francis:

Okay, let's try, let's try for a couple of those. Ok.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Someone, uh, someone close to me, I think it was her mom who gave her some lipstick once, and she goes, every woman should have good lipstick. It is armour for the world. And I thought, Ooh, that is, Nice statement in its own odd way. So I always ask, what armor do you wear to go out in the world?

Vievee Francis:

My lipstick,

Tolu Agbelusi:

any specific,color make?

Vievee Francis:

Um, right now I'm wearing the blackest black of lipsticks. Um, I like the way it defines my mouth. Actually, I like, uh, the blackened gums of um, uh, some women in West Africa particularly, I just, it just hits me as gorgeous and, um, I have no idea how I could have my gums blackened unless I go to the continent and I don't know anybody who would do it for me. So I think that there's an echo there of that with the, um, the lips and my. Um, really aren't pink anyway. They're brown, light brown to dark brown. So I really love, um, the way the darker lipstick looks. I adore this kind of fashion as one likes it, movement. you know, um, particularly since the pandemic, people are just like, this is how I do it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yep.

Vievee Francis:

You like it. I don't care. this is my style. I'm definitely inside of that now, deeply inside of it. So I was at a Callaloo conference in DC and I, I heard the sister reading. She was just, her style was just something. And, um, we were in an elevator and I told her'sister! My God, how did you develop such a nice...? And I, and interestingly, what she said to me was, Vievee they're never going to like you. They're never going to think who you are physically is enough, so do what you want.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

Wow. Was that freeing? Especially living in New England.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and I thought, no, I, I'm never going to physically fit into New England's academic culture, into the class hierarchies here in New England, et cetera. So why not be, you know, uh, Vievee times 10, the Uber self. And so, although today I'm fairly sedate Mm. I am not sedate. Oh. I just love what I love and I throw it on and I layer it and, um, it is, it is an armor, but it's also freeing.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. How do you cultivate hope?

Vievee Francis:

I don't.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

I get in trouble for that too, inside of Black culture.

Tolu Agbelusi:

And when you say you don't, it's the case of you just see things as they are and what's gonna happen, happen.

Vievee Francis:

I try to, and I understand that I, I did not anticipate this future I'm in, which is full. Anyone who is my age or above who lived where I lived cannot say things have not changed.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

They have, they just haven't changed enough.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

I could not have married my husband where I was born.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

It would've been illegal for us to marry. There are changes. The problem too I see is not changing things. It's maintaining the change, the maintenance of the change. It's the real issue. So some of the things that have changed have not been maintained. We get, as human beings, we get lax very easily, lackadaisical very easily. So there are too many things I didn't think could happen. Obama too many things that I couldn't predict, didn't think would happen. So, so I don't say I don't have hope, but I simply can't anticipate the future enough to hope

Tolu Agbelusi:

mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

or to feel hopeless. Um, I'm in some kind of state in between. When I write about my own life, it is often hopeless, um, because I, I'm too traumatized. I battle depression. Depression is always there like a presence daring me to be here or not. So I have to struggle with that too much to call upon hope, but I am, oh, I am deeply engaged in the world. And I find that that engagement buoys me. The further away I get from the world, the more likely I am to be swallowed by my depression. But the more I engage in the world, the more I move outside of myself. I don't know if I'd call that hope, but I like my engagement with the world and I love, love, love most of what the generation's coming after me, what they're thinking, what they're questioning, what they're insisting upon, what they'll no longer tolerate. Um, moving outside of the binaries I never believed in, but grew up in the language of.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Right.

Vievee Francis:

And didn't know how I, I was able to think outside of those binaries, but I couldn't speak outside of them. So having the opportunity to see a generation that's pushing language as far as it is, and pushing their lives as far as they do, I, I can't deny that that doesn't make me feel some hope.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. Hmm. What is. Sisterhood to you, and does it matter?

Vievee Francis:

I'm still of that generation that calls, you know, every Black woman I see, sister, I'm still there. I, I'm still that sister, brother generation. And I've said in many interviews and written many places, my sisters don't always love me. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And that's heartbreaking for me. When that doesn't happen that my heart can't take it. What heals my heart is how much I love my sisters. Mm-hmm. I love black women. I see. And my gift is seeing if I have one gift. It is seeing, I see the gift that we are. Hmm. I don't think we always know it. So I think some of the ways we act within our various cultures are examples of the ways we don't know it.

Tolu Agbelusi:

What a gift we are or

Vievee Francis:

what a gift,

Tolu Agbelusi:

or what power we possess.

Vievee Francis:

Yeah. How resilient we are. and how fragile we are. Mm-hmm. which requires us to be even more protective of each other. I'm not the most forgiving person.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

I struggle with forgiveness, but I force myself to into its considerations when it comes to Black women. So sometimes those, I would not ever forgive if it's a Black woman, I try to find my way to it because we have so much put upon us. So much already riving us from within and without so many who are riven and can't find their minds. And because part of mine is broken, I get that. So the older I get, the more I become the person I want to be, which is a more forgiving person. But not on Judeo Christian, Christian terms. No, never. I'm not forgiving because somebody somewhere who believes in their Lord and whatever they call that Lord.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

Tells me that's why I should, that makes no sense to me. I want to forgive because humans are fallible and I am fallible and I want to perch above others as little as possible. I'm not without error. Now that may sound like a Christian ideal, but that is not where I'm getting it from. Christianity is not the only

Tolu Agbelusi:

No. Course not

Vievee Francis:

where one can find insights. So, so, so, um, and, and nobody, uh, call Tolu or write to her saying, oh, that Vievee she's not Christian. oh, she whatever. My family deals with me as a secularist, and for me, religion is extraordinarily private.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

not meant to be lorded over everyone, state of Texas. So I, um, for me it should be, uh, I'd like to see it as, anyway, a secularist ethos. And I don't insist that people forgive. I'm saying for me personally.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

I, I wanna strive towards that ethos again because I'm fallible. Do I think there are some things that are unforgivable? Yes. I do. But I will tell you that many of my young students find this impossible to handle.

Vievee/Tolu:

They are not forgiving or/ They refer to it as. Oh, they

Vievee Francis:

refer to it as that love stuff.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Okay.

Vievee Francis:

And they might be right because in 1968, I lived in Monterey, California, and there are a few things I love more than a hippie. I love my sisters and I love hippies. I love free thinkers. I love those who push back and those who just wanna live their lives.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

That, that, that original early hippie ethos is all over me. Just look at the albums if you ever came here. If you look at the vinyl, you would see the secrets, you know.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Do you ever think about legacy? And if you do, what do you want yours to be?

Vievee Francis:

I can't say I don't think about it, but I try not to.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Okay.

Vievee Francis:

And I try not to because when I start to think about it, I stop living in the present.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm.

Vievee Francis:

And because, and this leads back to our earlier conversation, the earlier part of our conversation, I give myself completely over to others. And I don't leave anything for myself. And that little'I' I had that was developing when I was very young. Yeah. I still protect it. I still have to. So is there a legacy I'm leaving? I, I don't know. That's gonna be for another generation to decide. I just keep working and being as present as I can with my writing, with my advocacy and trying to grow my courage so that I'm strong enough to face the things I still have to face.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

um, trying to grow my emotional and mental health. Um, so that nothing else in me breaks and I have to be too present to consider legacy. But I will let you all who are younger than me, when this old woman is gone

Tolu Agbelusi:

to speak things

Vievee Francis:

will remember me. So I hope my poems outlast me.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I think there you have no worries. They most certainly will. And I was rifling through one of my notebooks when I was preparing for this interview and when we had our one-to-one at, uh, Callaloo,

Vievee/Tolu:

we had tea/we were speaking about.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Was it tea? Yeah, at a coffee shop.

Vievee Francis:

We had tea in England so far as an American. I was just like, I'm having tea in England. Oh, look at me. And it was like my fourth time there or something, but I'm still, every single time, like I'm having tea in England. Look at me. Isn't this, you know? So I still have that kind of American, you know, Americans of a certain class, thing, you know? So I, so I recall that, yes. Okay.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah. I remember one of the things you said to me, um, although you were speaking to one of my poems, I, I, I thought it, it applied more broadly and I wrote it down. It was, you need to learn to love your own strangeness. You hit your power and you get scared of it. So you pull into a collective narrative.

Vievee Francis:

Uh, yes. You fold yourself up. It's easy to do. There will be no folding here. I have to talk to myself every morning. I look in the mirror, I'm like, there's no folding for you.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm. I feel like even when you are speaking normally it, like in this conversation, there's a lot you leave, behind. There are a lot of lessons. Whether or not you plan to that's how it that's how it unfolds. And for that, you know, whether or not you think of legacy and so much as it's been left to us, for the rest of us, you're a gift. Your work is a gift and I am grateful for it and for you.

Vievee Francis:

Thank you. Then, uh, that, um, that's landing. That's landing right on my heart and then it's going into my heart and some blood vessels bursting and it's and it's making me really happy. But while I have you in front of me Tolu, don't you want to read something?

Tolu Agbelusi:

I want you to read something.

Vievee Francis:

No, I want you to read something. Read me a new piece, please.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Something new. Gimme a second.

Vievee Francis:

Mm-hmm. My favorite Maya Angelou poem. Let me see. I was just thinking, I'm still thinking of Maya Angelou was, uh, Shaker Why Don't You Sing?

Tolu Agbelusi:

I don't know if I know that one.

Vievee Francis:

It's, it's different than any other poem she's written. Um, quite lyrical, but, uh, a lot of, she doesn't quite let you in. There's not a strong narrative, only a narrative thread. And it can't be fully followed, but it's a very intriguing poem, so I'm just putting that out there for you to read Shaker Why Don't You Sing?

Tolu Agbelusi:

Shaker Why Don't You Sing?

Vievee Francis:

Even that title. Ugh. I love it. I had that poem on my walls all through my thirties.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm. Okay, I'm gonna look for something new, but whilst I'm doing that can, do you mind reading something? Anything from A Shared World?

Vievee Francis:

So I think I will read a short poem. It's called Break Me and I'll sing. Will that do?

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah,

Vievee Francis:

Break me and I'll sing, my voice like marrow-- a blood yolk spilled upon the counter. You can't stop this song. More hands than yours have closed around my throat. You may crack me. You have cracked me. I'm frightened, but so what? I'll testify, witness, if you can. Listen. I slurpped the frog leg soup gone bad. Held a brass spoon like a barrel to my mouth. I could tell you what you want to hear, but I'd be broken just the same. So why not sing? I'm singing now louder this time and in the round we are a wounding of red plume birds. Every voice a bloody feather in the bone crown.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Hmm. I feel so very special right now. I just got a special reading, just me, um, and I can't wait. Can't freaking wait for the book. Um, let me read something. It's, I'm still messing with it, but yeah, it's called If We Are Made For Connection.

Vievee Francis:

Mm, mm-hmm.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Forgive me, father, I must have sinned it has been 4,015 days since my last collision. Last week I hugged a friend, so tight, she demanded an explanation. What words can translate this longing that begins and begins, and begins, not for her, but for the heat oh Lord. Skin, pressing on skin. The oxytocin, the tangible dopamine flooding my veins. The mercy of a palm on the small of a back. The head's surrender of weight to a willing weight in chest. Two hands caught up in constant entanglement just because the heat, Lord of touch. Even the memories of old intimacy that used to make the body whimper fade and fail me now. Their embers reduced to ash polluting the landscape of my fantasies with their emptiness. And why? What transgression did I commit

Vievee Francis:

And why? What transgressions did I commit? That mind moving against that mercy of palms. Oh, what, oh. You could, there is no, there's nothing to forgive in any transgression for the speaker in that poem who allows for the mercy of her palms who, who, who offers another. The mercy of the palm My God. That is, that is lovely. And mercy, you've hit the key word for me, that perhaps the highest value for me is Mercy. Mercy.

Tolu:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

I received a little, but I will leave this world giving as much of it as I can.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Yeah.

Vievee Francis:

That mercy. Well, thank you.

Tolu Agbelusi:

And I guess it's... thank you. This has been, you made my day

Vievee Francis:

I want to go run and write a response to that poem so you'll see it in the next book.

Tolu Agbelusi:

I wait heartily for that. Thank you.

Vievee Francis:

It will say for Tolu. Well, it's, um, it's, it's already in process, so Yeah.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Uhhuh sweet. I am, yeah. I'm gonna let you go, but thank you again so, so much.

Vievee Francis:

Thank you for having me. I, I appreciate it so much and I will move through the rest of my week, feeling loved and, um, loved by my sister.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Mm-hmm.

Vievee Francis:

and that means the world to me.

Tolu Agbelusi:

Thank you. Thank you Good people. Thank you for rocking with us on another episode of Unlearning Strong Women. For the Poetry Heads who are listening, and anyone else who is interested. All the references to essays and poems can be found in the notes for this episode. Vievee's Poetry Collection, A Shared World will be out in April, but it is already available for pre-order. There is so much to take away from this episode. If there is one thing that plays on my mind, it's this. So many of us are brilliant at advocating for others, but take a minute and consider, do you jump in the fray for yourself? Do you do it enough? We will be back with a new episode at the end of next month. In the meantime, do subscribe, share, and feel free to let me know your thoughts on the episode. You'll find me on Twitter or Instagram@ToluAgbelusi. Details and spellings appear in the show notes. Until next time, this is Unlearning Strongwoman.