LaTida: Good evening, friends. I’m LaTida Smith, president of The Winston-Salem Foundation. At the Foundation, our work is rooted in the belief that communities are strongest when people come together to shape a shared vision where everyone thrives. We are grateful to have you here with us tonight to reflect on how we stay human and connected in very complicated times.
In Against Breaking, you describe poetry as a kind of shared shelter, a place to breathe, pay attention, and stay human. When you walk into a gathering like this, full of people who care deeply about this place, what do you hope poetry can make possible between us?
Ada: I think one of the most beautiful things that poetry can do is give us some private strength. It can begin with just that individual who wants to explore where they are at and delve deep into that. There are times where people will say, “Oh, I want to create a safe space for people.” It’s a beautiful thought, but nearly impossible. So what I try to do for myself is create a safe space for myself, and that’s called the page.
And so I think for many people, just beginning with creating whatever it is, some safe and sacred space where you can be totally and completely honest with yourself about what you’re going through, that is a really huge power that poetry has.
And then if you can gather with those poems, if eventually you feel like sharing them and you can gather and come together, you’re witnessing people’s private selves in a public realm, which is a vulnerable and really remarkable thing to share with each other.
So I think poetry has quite a huge power not just to gather us and to help us explore our own language, but also to galvanize us with what we share in common.
“Poetry has quite a huge power to galvanize us with what we share in common.”
LaTida: Your work also treats nature not as a backdrop but as a living force, a theme that runs throughout your work, but in particular your signature project as Poet Laureate, You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. What did you hope we would come to understand about the physical spaces we share and our relationship to them?
Ada: I think that we live in a world where sometimes looking around feels almost dangerous because we’re too busy to do it, right? We get, “Stop staring out the window. Pay attention.”
And then we have this incredibly bright shiny object that’s in our hand all the time, where we go like this. And then if we do see something, we take a picture and then go right back to it.
So I hope that in my own work I show what attention can do, that looking out and being present and receiving the world is such a beautiful way to go through life feeling connected to the planet.
Because I feel like it’s very easy for all of us to feel really disconnected. Not only because of the busyness and the idea that we’ve got to sort of “win” at life, whatever that looks like, but also because we forget to stop and think: Here I am in this beautiful place. I get to be alive in this body at this time and witness this.
That is a gorgeous thing to even come to terms with, even if it’s just for one minute in one part of your day. And so I hope that my work can encourage that.
“Looking out and being present and receiving the world is such a beautiful way to go through life.”
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LaTida: You spoke earlier about the challenge of offering our full selves in spaces that are not always ready to receive them. I wonder if you can tell us more about how you’ve navigated that and what you hope we might begin to see differently as we think about belonging.
Ada: The Laureateship taught me a lot about this question. I thought that I was being vulnerable as an artist before, and then the platform became so large that I thought, “Oh, how interesting that as a Latina woman, I’ve chosen a profession where everyone’s first question is, ‘Why do you exist? Why does poetry exist?’”
And I kept thinking, “That’s funny. I’m going to have to defend myself all over again in these spaces.”
What I wrote in my journal on the day of the Laureateship was the words “joyful service.” I thought, “This is how I want to serve. I want to serve in this role joyfully.”
But what joyfully meant was wholly, with a sense of wholeness. It meant I was entirely who I am. If I wanted to be goofy, I wanted to be goofy. If I wanted to weep, I wanted to weep. If I wanted to be angry or rageful, that was part of it too.
I needed to do that because I wanted to show anyone who ever thought the Laureateship was something they could consider, or really anyone who wanted to move through the world as a public artist, that they might be able to do it while being holistically themselves.
That being said, I still had to protect myself quite a lot, and I still do. My mother once said to me, “Why are you wearing all these suits now that you’re the Laureate?” And I said, “Oh, because it’s a protection spell.”
I really felt that. Like I was putting on my human uniform so I could protect the artist self a little bit more.
So there were ways in which I realized that vulnerability and being totally who I am is a beautiful thing. But when you move in the real world, you also have to protect yourself. And those two things had to be true at the same time.
“I wanted to show people they could move through the world while being holistically themselves.”
LaTida: The Hurting Kind begins with the poem “Give Me This,” which asks, “Why am I not allowed delight?” In times like these, why is it so critical that we also make time for delight?
Ada: I found it so interesting when I was first serving that people would say things like, “Why does poetry matter?” Which is such a funny question because it’s like, “Why does a tree matter? Why does your soul matter?”
But then the next question would be, “Okay, so how can poetry save us?” And I was like, wait, does it not matter or is it supposed to save us entirely from ourselves?
So I started to laugh at the questions a little bit. People would ask me what my thoughts were about terrible things happening in the world, and of course I had responses to those things. I am an activist. But I’m also an artist. And both things can be true.
With that poem, I was trying to ask: Why am I not allowed delight? Why don’t I allow myself joy sometimes? The joy of making something. The joy of being in the body. The joy of falling in love.
I think sometimes the outside world wants one narrative from people. But showing up wholly means showing up also in my joy.
And I’ve always thought that joy is rebellious.
I try to bring that not just to my work, but to my life, because to know me is to know me laughing. But I’ll also say Joni Mitchell said laughing and crying are the same release. And that’s true. I’m laughing at one time and crying at another. Those two things have to be in the room with me in order for me to feel fully alive.
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LaTida: Your most recent work, Against Breaking, holds rage and grief alongside wonder and tenderness. Many people in this room are living inside that same tension every day, supporting immigrant neighbors, addressing food and housing insecurity, strengthening our public schools. As we leave tonight, what do you hope we carry with us about naming what’s broken while still holding on to what’s possible?
Ada: I love that so much because it’s basically how we have to live, right? You’re always going to have to hold two truths. One is the reality of what we need to do. And the other is this miracle that we get to live, that we’re alive together in this moment, and that we get to show up for each other.
One of the things I really hold dear is that we can’t do any of this work, whether it’s creating art, staffing the soup kitchen, volunteering, or even cleaning a creek bed before it rains, alone.
I’m someone who cleans the creek bed before it rains because I think, “Oh, it’s going to rain. I better clean out the litter so it doesn’t end up in the bay.” Those little things matter.
And I think it’s really important that we witness each other’s good work because it’s very easy to feel alone in this work, and we are not.
One of the reasons I chose my project You Are Here was because I got to work with park rangers. And if you ever feel sad, go talk to some park rangers. They are remarkable. The way they are stewarding our most precious places with such fierceness and generosity is truly a delight.
Whenever I start feeling isolated or like the work is too much, I watch someone else do the work and I remember, “Oh, right. Oh, right.”
People ask, “How do you hold on to hope?” And I think hope is not something you have. It is not something you hold. It is something you do.
When I feel a lack of agency, I do something. That can be cooking a meal for someone. Cleaning a creek. Writing a poem. Whatever puts yourself back into the world and away from despair.
And we need to remind each other of those tools. We need to remind each other that there are so many people caring for their communities every day. We need to shout out each other’s good work and remember that we are not doing any of this in isolation.
“Hope is not something you have. It is not something you hold. It is something you do.”
LaTida: Thank you so much for sharing your work, for sharing your hope. It has been a joy to invite you here to Winston-Salem today.
Ada: Thank you so much. Thank you all of you.
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RESOURCES FOR CONTINUED REFLECTION:
- Read Jacinta V. White’s commissioned poem, “Inside Possibility.”
- Learn more about Ada Limón’s books and poetry.
- View the video recap for a look back at the evening’s moments of connection, creativity, and possibility.
- Watch Yen Azzaro’s live illustration from the evening.
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