She honors the lives and creative works of Black feminist geniuses as sacred texts for all people. But in any, any, any form of creativity. Undrowned : Black feminist lessons from marine mammals : Gumbs, Alexis Alexis Pauline Gumbs drafted 19 of the 58 chapters of her work in progress, The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony which is under contract with Fararr, Straus and Giroux.She wrote several chapters for edited volumes: "Preface" in Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought edited by Briona Smith (New Press); "Water and Stone . This is exactly what, because this is like, where I have gone in my hour of need. Okay, that's my breath. But it does connect me to the legacy of those literary workers whose brave experiments have made my work and life possible. I don't think I've ever read a thing that Jesmyn has written that I have not loved. Um, I know you mentioned in earlier correspondence that you've been researching, and archiving, and writing about, and thinking about Audre Lorde since you were like a teenager, right? Welcome, y'all. Thank you best, because my question was struggling. All of the books I have written so far defy genre. I think the like emotional, I don't know, I definitely had a kind of reckoning when I started arriving to work. And thats what Jacquis work does for me. And so, you know, I think it's, it's important what you said about when you read the work not being able to do that distancing thing, because like, what, you know, why should you read it, and then it's distant, you know, what I mean? In doing so she imagines new forms of poetry and critical essay writing and opens up an alternative to conventional literary practices." Stay Black. I want that to be kept in just for (inaudible). "I dont want the kind of career where everything is sensible and safe; Id rather suffer through the anxiety of wondering where Im going next than suffer the boredom of dancing in the same safe square.". [4], Gumbs holds a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. If I want to be happy, if I want to be mad, if I want to be in my country bag, in my rock bag, in my disco bag. on the Internet. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is most recently the author of The End of San Francisco, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. About Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Just for that sound interpretation. BOMB's Oral History Project is dedicated to collecting, documenting, and preserving the stories of distinguished visual artists of the African Diaspora. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. All rights reserved. Stealing the meaning back, as you say, is the opportunity to say that who and where and how we are is meaningful, even if it is on a scale that is beyond our like buttons and our lifetimes. Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, "Spill is not just a poetic collection where art meets criticism or where art is criticism. // logged into Facebook user but not a GR app user; show FB button Fellowship Work Summary, 2020-21 . How to say Alexis Pauline Gumbs in English? And so in your book Undrowned, you're weaving this exploration of marine animals, and BIPOC, through our relationship to colonialism and our kind of interrelatedness to each other. Eden Sena Kokui Segbefia, Scalawag, "Gumbs not only speaks to the spiritual, bodily and otherworldly experience of black women, she allows readers to imagine new possibilities for poetry as a portal for understanding and deepening feminist theory." A Survival Guide for Humans Learned From Marine Mammals at the beginning of the book, Gumbs ends her note with this quote: "When you think it's time to come up for air, go deeper. All of the different markers allow us the opportunity to see that there is distance between what we recognize and what we are becoming, which is unrecognizable. By exploring how Black feminist theory is already after the end of the world, Gumbs reinscribes the possibilities and potentials of scholarship while demonstrating the impossibility of demarcating the lines between art, science, spirit, scholarship, and politics. I mean, plantain, rice, and peas. Because I do that, you know, like I do that, in a certain way, when I'm studying people's work, but just that the primary thing be that they feel that it belongs to them, they feel like it's for them, they feel like it's for their life. Best, you know, my favorite number is seven. Publication date 2020 Topics Science -- Social aspects, Science -- Philosophy, Feminism, Marine mammals -- Behavior, Feminism, Science -- Philosophy, Science -- Social aspects Publisher Chico, CA : AK Press Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; akpress On that day, I was with the marine mammals. One way of remembering how to breathe. So I want you all to choose a number, but I just forgot how many times how many days I've been writing about her. I don't think, I think I had to surrender to the process that was Undrowned before I would really be able to write about Audre Lorde in the way that I spiritually believe that she would want me to write about her. And the constant turns in that poem, I was like, oh, let me, like best said, let me buckle up. . She is author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity and coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and the Founder and Director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina. PDF Alexis Pauline Gumbs Duke University Press And so, I have applied to the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in prose years and in poetry years. I don't know. They are simultaneous. So like to get to listen to Audre Lorde receiving these accolades from all of these people who are like, we love you, we place you at the center of poetry, and to hear her get up and just like, I mean, first of all, just be like, this event is about my three favorite things: beautiful women, poetry, and me. And I think that frees up the space in my brain for writing. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. MBS Youre addressing serious topics, but theres always a sense of play in the bookits one way you reach into the border areasbetween history and memory, myth and clich, invocation and critique. 1. When I was writing, I was really surprised by the scenes that I saw and where I ended up, in the future and possibly on other planets. Hi, I'm Brittany Rogers, and I'm counting down until whitetail season, and then my life will be together. Been loved. I didn't know like what she was talking about, you know, I was just like, oh, that's so beautiful. Top 5 easily. I love it. I mean, its after the end of the world already. Dub: Finding Ceremony by Alexis Pauline Gumbs | Goodreads I love I love your framing of that. And it's phenomenal to me that I could be loved by people who did not overlap with me in life. . Like, I can't listen to Aretha or Etta James or Nina Simone when I'm writing, I can't do that. So some like just slight level of physical discomfort with the comforting of tea if I'm doing like play or character work, then listening to songs that I think that the character I'm writing for would like listening to music that I think the character that I'm writing for would like. Locked. Alexis is a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize Winner in Poetry. //Duke University Press - Spill Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Adam McGee, Ed Pavlic, & Ivelisse Rodriguez ORIGINS Binguni! It feels like where I go hang out with Audre, and Im like, okay, no, I have to go. But I think what has been most important for me to learn recently is just about, and the poem that I read kind of speaks to it, is the pervasiveness of the walls that I put up to protect my heart. And so instructive, and so important. I can't choose between the two. Spill transformed me from a reluctant bystander of theory and poetry into a willing and enthused participant. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. Academia is one access point for what I call the Black Feminist Pragmatic Intergenerational Sphereeven though academia has also killed Black feminists and refused to acknowledge their labor over and over again. Fred Hampton says, Because I love the people. And he had that clarity. Inserting hindsight about the end of the worldwhile the end of the world is still happeningdoes offer meaning to actions that we may think of as meaningless. It is a portable ceremony for you to participate in for your reasons, and for your transcendence, and for your journey. There has to be another story. That answer is bringing up a lot of things for me in thinking about your work, specifically, in thinking about Undrowned. You can contribute this audio pronunciation of Alexis Pauline Gumbs to HowToPronounce dictionary. But we are in the borderlands, in the sense that Gloria Anzalduaa major influence on Jacqui Alexander, by the way, and on me tootalks about it. I think my most honest answer is Jesmyn Ward. I think that's so beautiful. I don't have to be visible to be viable on my path. So I wouldn't say it was shocking that she had a machine in her kitchen to polish stones that she found because she just loved like she just loved earth that much, y'all. And I think that it's not to say that then okay, well, I go to like a place in my brain where there has to be some research I can do about this, though, that has been a historical theme of mine. For me, publishing these three books that engage theorists whose recognition is pretty strictly limited to academiathough Jacqui is going way beyond that in her work in Tobagospeaks way beyond those institutions. And yeah, that's, that's why it's a never too much situation. img.scaleToMaxWidth(385); by Lee Ann Norman, bell hooks . If I'm just like, researching, didn't wrap around my collaging, then it's rap. No part of anywhere was free, Gumbs writes, as she pushes her prose into the gaps between meaning and feeling. So to watch somebody so deeply in love and so deeply in research after so many years, you know what I mean, and still have like, curiosities and questions. Listen to Alexis Pauline Gumbs on WUNC's The State of Things, Listen to an interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the Writing Home podcast, Read an interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Guernica. If I want to be sad, If I want to be sad, I can be sad. So shoutout Sophia Snowe. by Farid Matuk, Kenya (Robinson) And not necessarily by choice. And so that's, that's part of what I'm dissolving, and unlearning. And I think the music choice like differs depending on what I'm doing. . I definitely don't have control over that. Do you have any hopes for the way that they received that scholarship or what they do with that scholarship? 5 66% (813) 4 22% (275) 3 9% (108) 2 2% (22) 1 0% (5) Book ratings by Goodreads. Alexis Pauline Gumbs was the first person to dig through the archives of several radical black feminist mothers including June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and Toni Cade Bambara while writing her dissertation We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism, a 500-page work. And I mean, like. . Though, I'm not going to disclaim that. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Dub: Finding Ceremony, M Archive: After the End of the World, and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, and co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines. This is the trifecta right here. And just the reality, and I know that it's like this, you know, with some of our foremothers, I can't actually imagine myself without what this work provided me at such a crucial time. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities have held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals - Goodreads And one of the major essays that I draw from in that book is about an uprising of students, faculty, and staff at the New School, against the ideological self-definition of the New Schoolparticularly the way the New School defined Black feminist work, and Jacquis work specifically as marginal, to the mission of the institution. Can y'all hear the train? Her new novel, Sketchtasy, will be out in October. A beautiful and graceful text, Dub will inspire readers to return to and to rethink Wynter's work and her place within African Diaspora studies, Caribbean studies, and Black feminist studies. Lisa B. Thompson, author of Single Black Female, "Breath is an important theme in Dub. So the way this game is going to go is that we are going to give you a category and you are going to give us the best thing in that category. It was not a real smile. Listen, that line took all the restraint I had. May you study the pink of yourself. Rachel Stonecipher, Feminist Theory, "This book is alive. Do you skate? What does it mean that what are what are these patterns in my relationships? I'm really reflecting. And, its poetry that is critical of academia. And so what draws me to Audre Lorde's work is that I need to be reborn. So if we're thinking like decades from now, and folks are studying your work, which duh, they should be, right? It actually feels like you are in conversation. So I'm grateful for that. Gumbs is a black queer poet and independent scholar and self-described troublemaker and love evangelist. There are only two things I have to do, my mom taught me, and I can do them in the company of my choosing. Like, am I crying? Fred Hampton-Fred Hampton on Revolution And Racism and love is why., Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. And it's like graceful, and how can they even do it? Until Next Time: Join our newsletter for a weekly update of recent highlights and upcoming events. show more. syllabus. Kathryn Nuernberger, West Branch, "In this luminous, heartbreaking work, Alexis Pauline Gumbs highlights the art of Black feminist theorizing, showing us how Black feminism lives in the hair and legs and wombs and choices of individual Black women." Its an embattled project, for the same reason Black feminism is a project, a political legacy and a poetic imperative. and love is when. apg is really 1 of the most important voices of our time. Kenya (Robinson) reflects on the end of her MFA program and becoming a professional artist. When I was wee young lad. Well, this is what may end up being the epigraph to the whole book. And that was always also political. And I don't even like to use the word weaving, because it's like a layering more than it is a weaving. Just pure time-crossing oceanic revolutionary planetary ancestral current-present brilliance. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the Recipient of the 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize in Poetry, 905 W. Main St. Ste 18-B Alexis Pauline Gumbs Yes, with gratitude, glee and reverence, I am in conversation with M. Jacqui Alexander. Engaging through a university press can influence the academic fields that have benefited from the labor of Black feminist thinkers. To best understand your work. 63 likes, 3 comments - Alexis Pauline Gumbs (@alexispauline) on Instagram: "Awesome conversation just now between @cauleen_smith and @hansulrichobrist on @circa.art 'S IG." Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Instagram: "Awesome conversation just now between @cauleen_smith and @hansulrichobrist on @circa.art 'S IG Live The ring light reflected in . ." Gumbs creates a dialogue between herself andSpillers and simultaneously envisions new opportunities of relating Spillers to other black feminist thinkers. And it's, it's an offering, it's proof that they are loved. And I'm not rushing, but I look forward to that space (laughs) very much so. I don't see it happening that I'll be like, okay, well, I did that. Duke University Press - Dub About Alexis Pauline Gumbs Anything involving a bookstore or a place where you can be around a lot of different plants. There's all sorts of fields of science I never even heard of, but in order to really talk about Audre Lorde's work, and also the scope of how she understood her own cosmic existence, I have to learn so much more. . One of the first images that came in my writing process was of a woman on a planet made of sulfur watching her heart blacken into a future diamond. adrienne maree brown is author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism and co-editor of Octavis's Brood. I really love the way you situate and imagine research as this like wandering and being with and then the way ritual enters into it. What was it like in the 2020s. . Oh my goodness, okay. {{app.userTrophy[app.userTrophyNo].hints}}. Nothing foundtry broadening your search. It's not like, oh, it has to be like, a diamond or ruby, like literally any rock you pick up can shine. you let it go. Ashia Ajani, Sierra, "People throw around terms like Genius and Magic frequently but if you open this book, flip to any passage, and dont feel moved from your soul then I will assume that you dont have one. Its living past peak oil from the vantage point of expendable fossil fuelwhere you are the fossil. The contradiction that requires Black feminism to exist and intervene in the intersecting forms of oppression that sacrifice life at every turn is the same contradiction as that of a species so basically dependent on oxygen but fills the air with substances that we cant breathe, and decimates the forests that provide the air we need. You have earned {{app.voicePoint}} points. The structure is poetry and narrative, swift and untethered to typical rules of writing. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers. MBS The subtitle of M Archive is After the End of the World, and this vantage point allows you to look back at our world to offer incisive critiques of the violence of capitalism, technology, and electoral politics, what you call the combination of digital knowability and pretend participation. You write, they started by stealing the meaning, and Im wondering if M Archive is about taking the meaning back. Breathing. I think Beyonc has given me everything that I need to engage, because I wanted to go with a writer. The information they store is not sent to Pixel & Tonic or any 3rd parties. But I think it will love them. Lecture notes for Undrowned are attached. 2019 Duke University Press. Being a Black feminist engaged in the university, like I was during my PhD program, is like looking at artifacts of an apocalypse while breathing sulfur. Like, I'm here, like, with the however, many gallons of tears a human can cry, which is nothing compared to the ocean. I'll say Dionne Brand, because I'm saying Dionne Brand, and I mean, Dionne Brand, for sure, but I'm also thinking about actually that generation of Caribbean women writers, because I understand my work in the context of, of their work. But its true. Read an interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Sierra Magazine. [10], She was awarded a Windham Campbell Prize for poetry in 2023.[12]. Tiffany Lethabo King, Antipode, "[G]round-breaking. She is coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and the Founder and Director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina. Ah, I love it. . Yeah, if there's a fan club, I'm in it, so. So let's, let's get to writing. The popping, start-stopping poetry of Dub is a tour through a history of colonialism, semi-autobiographical storytelling and suggested futures. I am in the midst of an evolving practice that I call Black feminist breathing that is something like a meditative process of chanting words written and spoken by the ancestors who influence my practice of Black feminism. You know like, every stone is precious. That didn't matter. I so deeply, deeply fuck with that answer. Okay, I cannot pronounce that word to save my life. (Laughs). Okay, best music to listen to by the ocean. That was terrifying to me, like, will I actually drown? If you are interested in cultivating a sustainable and sacred daily practice sign up for our 10-day self guided Stardust and Salt process. MBS Throughout the book, you offer scathing, heartfelt, and sometimes hilarious critiques of academia. Yeah. I think, I think that and I think the part of the familiarity, am I saying that right? In M Archive (Duke University Press), the second book in an experimental triptych, Gumbs looks back on our current . Okay, so for 123 days, this is what I've been doing. And, and I trust that so it's like, you know, its like, well, marine mammals like you know, girl, you aint no marine biologists like what? I wrote first thing every morning for every day of this process. Alexis Pauline Gumbs | National Endowment for the Arts Looking at Blue Asteroid. 1), Roll Call: Gabrielle Civil vs. Black Time or the dj vu, Roll Call: Breaking the Line: A conversation about Black visual poetics. Her books include Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Dub: Finding Ceremony, M Archive: After the End of the World, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. So I really, really appreciate that answer. [9][10] Her writing and activism is influenced by the work of her grandmother Lydia Gumbs who designed the flag of Anguilla during the countrys 1967 revolution. Original Combahee River Collective member Chirlane McCray has been organizing for more equality, healthcare, and services as the wife of Bill de Blasio, current mayor of New York City. } else { SubjectsGender and Sexuality > Feminism and Womens Studies, Literature and Literary Studies > Poetry, African American Studies and Black Diaspora, "Gumbss writing has luscious urgency and rhythmic drive, which will make it of interest beyond its titular audience." Bees? Quarterly in print & every day online. . Walking, which for me includes potentially rolling. Following the innovative collection Spill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's M Archivethe second book in a planned experimental triptychis a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following a worldwide cataclysm. Right, like she has these like calcified memories of hurt and betrayal that she held on to. Unfortunately, this device does not support voice recording, Click the record button again to finish recording. you show your shoulders what to do with sky. Its so strange to be alive, what if we acknowledged that for minute? There was never a moment when I was not loved because Black feminism got here before me, so. Because nothing will get done. Adrien Julious, Authentically Adrien blog, "I am so grateful that Alexis Pauline Gumbs listens to Black women writers and scholars the way that she does. And yet, not only is the book on an academic press, but, you discovered M. Jacqui Alexanders work while in a PhD program. The research, research is just a way I know of getting next to who I need to be next to, and who I just want to be influenced by, and who I know will allow me to meet aspects of myself that I really need to be with, but I, I don't know how or I'm terrified to or, you know, whatever it is, and I never know really what it is that I'm supposed to learn from that experience. Offering a sweeping, thoughtful, and exquisite meditation on Sylvia Wynter's work, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's poetic engagement represents a new and unique way of encountering and paying homage to Black feminist theory and Black feminist theorists. She is the author of Spill and M Archive, both also published by Duke University Press. At the same time though, you do know. It was like, oh girl, you ain't going deep enough. Oh, okay, after the game. "We Need Your Freedom": An Interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs Alexis Pauline Gumbs Seems like your pronunciation of Alexis Pauline Gumbs is not correct. Ready? But a lot of people who arent affiliated with the university in any way are reading my books, and its very important for me to share the work in a way that makes that possible and common. reading these poems felt very timely for me as someone trying to understand their place in the cosmos and woven in lonely between the threads of love. M Archives: After the End of the World illuminates the dark feminine divine, pointing to the fact that she has always been here. $$('.authorBlogPost .body img').each(function(img) { A Survival Guide for Humans Learned From Marine Mammals Alexis Pauline Gumbs tells Laura Flanders why she looks to the ocean world for lessons on how to thrive. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 2020-21 - National Humanities Center This site uses cookies. Like a whole dish? It's just a lifelong relationship because she was in relationship with something that is so core that has to do with what life is, and how life is beyond even the experience of one body that I don't think it's possible to outgrow it. And it's also like, there's just no way to stay on the surface of my own emotions, while seeking to, at all, represent someone who lived her life refusing that for herself, and for the people around her, honestly. And yeah, that is one of the reasons why I think she's so phenomenally brave. 47,514 downloads. She is the author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, also published by Duke University Press;coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines;and the founder and director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina. All of this means that Black feminists in toxic academic spaces have these books as oxygen sources that say: we are here to do more than reproduce this space and prove the unprovable. And her words held space for me in that way. As an educator, Alexis Pauline Gumbs walks in the legacy of black lady school teachers in post-slavery communities who offered sacred educational space to the intergenerational newly free in exchange for the random necessities of life. It's not about, it's not about me. I mean, I can just read any poem in The Black Unicorn, and it'll it will be like a question for my life on that day, an urgent question for my emotional, spiritual, physical life that is in there. Kim Adrian, The Rumpus, "[G]round-breaking. My work as a writer so far has been instead to remind my communities how familiar they are with the unrecognizable. Ooh, this is gonna sound shady. I mean, writing a biography of her is terrifying. I really mess with that. [11] Gumbs teaches online seminars, writes blog posts, and runs webinars through her website Brilliance Remastered. My little heart is tender. So yeah, I love, I love hearing that. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. I need the rigor of someone who believed that poetry could give people access to a power within them, that would change everything. I believe that our movements, which have invested and sacrificed a lot to be included in academic institutions, can evolve past the colonization, classification and co-optation that allow those institutions to persist. Triangle Tribune, "At a moment when the clamoring academic response to #BlackLivesMatter sometimes threatens to abstract representations of it away from black lived experience, Gumbs returns to [Hortense] Spillers work to craft a narrative, episodic poem about a woman finding her way out of a home where she does not belong."