The Identity Repairman: from A Conversation with Thomas Sayers Ellis, Editor of Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets

Figure 1.

© Jia Micole Cunningham

ROWELL: What is the origin of this project, and why are you mounting it?

ELLIS: I have been re-reading Addison Gayle, Jr.'s The Black Aesthetic and asking myself how I might extend, in a very simple way, the exploration of black aesthetics gathered there. I also knew I wanted to do an anthology, not a regular one though, but one that would reach (in its own way) beneath poems into poetry and, perhaps, into those very things that both build and destroy community.

Being interested in process, in how things get made, in what's beneath writing, genre, diction, etc., in where things come from—especially in the roots of things, and in what might be considered the first language of a poem, I've often wondered, while reading my favorite poems, which lines/ideas/images/ came first, where are the triggers—the meaning ones, the music ones and the accidental ones. And wouldn't it be nice to have a creative testament of the working philosophies of the contemporary African American landscape.

ROWELL: Will you describe the project?

ELLIS: Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets [QC: NFBP] is a collection of comments on the craft of poetry by black poets.

It is also a dialogue between emerging and established poets from all over the world about a wide range of social and aesthetic concerns, some of which are race, tradition, reading, publishing, performance, literary trends.

QC:NFBP is divided into two sections: Quotes and Community and each section is an open dialogue of what can only be described as a mosaic of triple conscious call and response—of shout-outs, signifying riffs, dos and don'ts, afro-aphorisms, reading advice, and one-line identity investigations.

It consists of comments from more that 140 poets and is, structurally, very disrespectful of distinctions that create barriers of age, gender, sexuality, reputation, class. QC: NFBP is for everyone and by everyone.

There are 600 entries and, out of respect to the writers, each comment is followed by the author's name. With so many comments, I am hoping that the names and reputations will vanish into the dialogue the way voices rise above a family reunion.

ROWELL: What effect do you expect Quotes Community to have? What do you want it to do for Twenty-First Century writing communities?

ELLIS: Within the African-American writing community, I would like for QC: NFBP to get the folks talking to each other who don't usually do so, and sharing ideas and resources across borders of age, number of books, awards, fame, intellectual hierarchy, relation to white folks (i.e., marriage, dating, friendships, etc.). I think that sharing certain "close-to-home" practices and personal beliefs about the "being" in being a poet and being black will reveal healthy samenesses and healthy differences within the community, and, perhaps, generate some new ways of creatively discussing the complexities of that being as it pertains to each writer.

The effect it (we) will have on other communities is the one we always have on them. We revitalize them. We inject the language and culture with new energy and the reasons and routes for survival.

ROWELL: Why are all of the writers in Quotes Community black? Do you expect white writers and readers to take instruction from this gathering of comments?

ELLIS: Because I work at "home," because the tools I was born with make it most possible for me to care/critique/repair there, because I am passionate about black writing (and there is such a thing), because I love listening to black people, because I believe that the future of the English language, the transformation of it into lovely flava is consciously and unconsciously occurring everyday in the mouths and minds and behavior of black people, and because I believe their schools (rules) only get us as high as their mountains.

I don't expect white writers and readers to take instruction...