Courtesy of Walela Nehanda.
Walela Nehanda is a Black, queer, and disabled cultural worker and poet. Their forthcoming debut YA poetry memoir, Bless the Blood, on surviving advanced stage leukemia, will be released next year. Nehanda is Zócalo’s Poetry Curator for June. They chatted with us about Leimert Park, Germany, and having dinner with their first ancestor.
How has the pandemic affected how you think about or write poetry?
It’s been twofold for me. Seeing how important poetry is, and how important making an archive of myself, even if no one sees, if nothing gets published—that this existed. I have 20 journals stacked on my bookcase. I really saw the importance of, especially considering the ways in which I’m systematically impacted, how many people who look like me or are in similar situations as me, died. I was immunocompromised. I had no immune system, no white blood cells. There were a lot of things where I felt this need to get my story down so that I could have said that I was here.
Surviving trauma while writing poetry, I find myself even to this day having difficulty turning to the page as a means of coping, and as a means of mourning. Because a lot of the pandemic has forced me to monetize my writing in a way that feels very unnatural. I’ve seen a lot of other people have to do it, and in some way that I think, with everything to do with capitalism, it does take away what certain activities and certain practices mean to us for the sake of literally just living and being able to have our material needs met. So, the monetizing of poetry is really difficult because it changes your relationship to poetry as a poet. But then, on the other end, I have a lot more reverence, and I’m trying to have it again for my own story and other people’s.
Where would we find you on a typical Saturday morning?
On a typical Saturday morning I am definitely at home. I am a homebody. I am likely making coffee or tea. I’m probably walking my dog who’s 5 years old, a Doberman shepherd mix named Riley. Ideally on a really good day at the beach, though, like watching the sunrise and being able to go get coffee after, and then get on with my day. And usually that involves writing or reading or watching TikTok.
If you could have dinner with any person, alive or dead, who would it be?
My very first ancestor. For Black people, we only know so far with our ancestry. I’ve been able to trace pretty far back with certain lines of mine, but eventually it feels like walking into a white-walled room, and it’s just seeing a slave schedule and the numbers are your people, and they don’t have names. They’re not even tracked like livestock. It’s just a number. And so to know who that person was even just there, even maybe five or six generations back—it doesn’t have to go all the way back to the beginning of time, but just getting an answer that I wouldn’t be able to get otherwise other than with some type of magic.
What is one book you’re currently reading or plan to read?
Another Good Loving Blues by Arthur Flowers, which is a story about a voodoo practitioner who falls in love with a blues musician while traveling from Arkansas to Tennessee during the Great Migration. The Great Migration is a period of time that I don’t have a lot of understanding about. My grandparents had migrated from Texas, fleeing racist violence, and just everything that was happening, and came to L.A. This author actually has the same last name as my family and I’ve never seen another Black Flowers before, so I’m like, “Oh, this is probably someone who may be my kin.” I don’t know, but I feel like I’m going to get some understanding about my grandparents and their love story, and like that’s a really special thing.
If you didn’t live in the United States, what country would you want to live in?
Lately, I’ve been leaning towards Germany because my father is German. I just feel like that would just be a really unique experience for me. I’ve been paying attention to the art scene out there, and that’s something I would like to experience for a period of time.
Summer is coming up. Do you have any plans?
Just working. I’m really excited for the direction that Zoeglossia is going. I work as social media director and I also help with fellowship programming. There’s a lot of unique opportunities with our new fellowship class that makes me really excited in a way that I haven’t been in a minute, and that’s just when you have a whole bunch of new poets in the space. It’s just a really lucky thing to be a part of and witness. I’m excited to find ways to support them. And then I’m preparing for my book to come out in February 2024, so I think this summer is going to be kind of like my last summer, of just kind of kicking it a little bit.
What’s your favorite spot in Los Angeles?
It’s hard because it’s been gentrified but I would say Leimert Park. It has a lot of rich history of Black L.A. that often goes completely unknown or misunderstood. Leimert Park has a really interesting history of working-class Black people. I think about World Stage Performance Gallery, which is one of the oldest poetry venues in Los Angeles that’s read by Black elders. I think about the Vision Theater. There’s a drum circle that used to happen all the time there. I grew up going and seeing that when my mom would pick up barbecue. That’s the old communal sense of L.A. that has been somewhat lost. It’s been revamped for middle-class people who are taking over the properties. Essentially, unfortunately, a lot of Black people are working class and pushed out, so it’s hard for me to still enjoy those things knowing that.
What was the first music album you bought?
Destiny’s Child’s Survivor. I used to listen to it on this portable CD player. I remember when we would go to Hawai‘i or go on a flight. I’ll put it on, and time it exactly to when the jet would take off. I would look out the window and be all dramatic all by myself.
When are you at your most creative?
When I’m open to being emotionally eviscerated. I’m most creative when I have a question that’s deeply shameful and I want to find an answer that’s not rooted in that shame, where I want to just investigate myself and those around me, when I want to investigate a memory. It kind of siphons into a poem or a piece of writing. I remember recently I wrote, “I want so bad to kiss the jaws of what is feral and come back judged but unscathed.” And that’s the whole thing with writing, when I’m ready to judge something without being scathed by other people’s perception or being concerned about that.