Today on VS, Brittany and Ajanaé commemorate their final VS episode by answering audience questions! Join them as they discuss their favorite VS moments, how their friendship has deepened over the course of the show, their role as curators and archivists, and looking toward the next adventure. 

Writing Prompt: 

Write a poem setting intentions for the next season of your life. What will you pursue even with fear? How will you love yourself and your neighbor more deeply? What dreams will you court? Who will you study? What will you revere? What, from this season, will you carry with you? 

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Today on VS, Brittany and Ajanae record their penultimate episode with aja monet! Join them as they discuss the role of anger and passion as poets and people, identity as a type of performance, the significance of feeling the poem in the body, poetry as a spiritual practice, and navigating the language, ethics, and the care that we give to people vs. causes. 

Until Next Time:

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• Ntozake Shange - Ntozake Shange preserves Black history and culture through literature (1989 interview)
• Robin D. G. Kelley - “Freedom Dreams”: Historian Robin D. G. Kelley on 20th Anniversary of His Book & Movements Mattering
• Bessie Smith - How Bessie Smith Influenced A Century Of Popular Music : NPR

Writing Prompt

Consider a poem from a poet who came before you that made you feel less alone. Write an ode to the persistence of the shared emotion you both explore in your writing. 

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Today on VS, Brittany and Ajanae are in conversation with Shaina Phenix. Listen in as they discuss the literary universes of Black femme characters, the process of unlearning for eldest daughters, waywardness, audacity, and the ways that we learn to name and rename ourselves. 

Until Next Time:

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• Lucille Clifton - Remembering Her Memories: Lucille Clifton’s Generations in Our Time - JSTOR Daily
• Lil Kim - Lil' Kim's Iconic Interview on Her Illustrious Career, The Notorious B.I.G., Women in Hip-Hop
• Wanda Coleman - Wanda Coleman - Poetry.LA Interview Series

Writing Prompt

Choose a character from your favorite literary universe and write a poem where you put yourself in conversation with that character. 

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Today on VS, Brittany and Ajanae interview Khadijah Queen. Listen in as they discuss their love for their hometowns, approaching non-linear form across genres, navigating projects with long life spans, the importance of leaning into intuition and curiosity, and revisiting past projects and eras in our writing.

Until Next Time:

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• Fernando Pessoa - Fernando Pessoa & His Heteronyms
• Lucille Clifton - Lucille Clifton talks of her books of poems, including “Good Times”
• Toni Morrison - Toni Morrison: The Life of a Literary Giant | The Dig at Howard University

Writing Prompt

Revisit some of your oldest poems. Write an ode to that era of your life—that version of yourself. 

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On today’s episode of VS, Brittany and Ajanae interview Rachel Eliza Griffiths; join them as they discuss forthcoming projects, their evolving concepts of home and privacy, approaching photography as a poet, writing for the ones that come after us, and the importance of curiosity.

Until Next Time: 

• John Coltrane - A Deep Dive into John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ by His Biographer, Lewis Porter (Pt. 1) | WBGO Jazz
• Toni Morrison - Toni Morrison’s Recipe for Love, Life, and the Perfect Boiled Egg
• Joan Mitchell - Four Decades of the Abstract Impressionist Joan Mitchell | Expert Voices | Sotheby’s
• James Baldwin - James Baldwin at 100

Writing Prompt

Write a manifesto of commitments for the politics of loving and protecting yourself. 

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On today’s episode of VS, Brittany and Ajanae have the opportunity to talk with Cornelius Eady and Major Jackson live in Chicago! Join in as they discuss the capacity to feel, the legacy of themselves and others, the importance of community, the way that boundaries and ethics shift after writing for a long time, and what things still scare them about the page.

Until Next Time: 

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

Cornelius Eady

• Shreela Ray- A Manner of Attachment by Shreela Ray 
• Nicanor Parra- Nicanor Parra | Nicanor Parra's 107th Birthday
• Frank O’hara- Frank O'Hara reading and discussing his work

Major Jackson

• Phillip Levine- What Work Is
• Sonia Sanchez- What does it mean to be human? | Sonia Sanchez | TEDxPhiladelphia
• Derek Walcott- Derek Walcott discusses his painting and poetry

Writing Prompt:

No poems today. Create a map of the versions of yourselves that have existed during your tenure as a writer. How do their fears differ? Their joys? What excites or surprises them? What craft choices they lean toward? 

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On today’s episode of VS, Brittany and Ajanae interviewed Jada Renée Allen. Listen in as they discuss their rabbit holes of research, “Drill” the manuscript and the music, the relationship between Black women and water, and the influences on our poetics. 

Until Next Time: 

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• Alexus Rhone - Playwright Alexus Rhone on Taking God's Call and Taking Your Meds
• Patricia Smith - Dear Poet 2024: Patricia Smith Reads “When the Burning Begins”
• Rita Dove - Rita Dove for Fulbright World Poetry Day 2021

Writing Prompt: 

Write an ode in gratitude for an artist or character who shifted the way you see yourself. 

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Today Brittany and Ajanae have the pleasure of talking with Saúl Hernández. Listen in as they discuss writing about tense familial relationships with tenderness, the act of being made invisible, grief as transformation, childhood as a lens, and how to identify a monster (spoiler alert: it could be anyone!). 

Until Next Time: 

• Walter Mercado - Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado | Official Trailer | Netflix
• Ethel Cain -  The Intricate Storytelling of Ethel Cain’s “Preacher’s Daughter” – The Junction Journal 
• Toni Morrison - Toni Morrison | National Endowment for the Arts 

Writing Prompt: 

Write a poem that functions as a dream.

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On today’s episode of VS, Ajanae and Brittany interview Barbara Fant. Join them as they discuss the relationship between family and authenticity, the importance of intergenerational connections among poets, writing as a tool for wellness, and joy as a part of chaos. 

Until Next Time: 

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• Sunni Patterson - Sunni Patterson - Letter from the Porch
• Mahalia Jackson - Mahalia Jackson: Gospel Takes Flight | National Museum of African American History and Culture 
• Bone Thugs-n-Harmony - What Happened To '90s Hip Hop Group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony?

Writing Prompt:

Consider the last moment of chaos you found yourself in. Write an ode to a person or object that brought you joy in that moment. Consider the chaos to be the negative space around the joy, giving it shape.

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On today’s episode of VS, Ajanae and Brittany interview W.J. Lofton. Join them as they discuss how they handle failure within their process, grief as a form of generosity, queer intimacy, spiritual expansion, and the process of unlearning harmful beliefs.

Until Next Time: 

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• Danez Smith- 5 things I wish I'd known before I started writing {with Danez Smith}
• Kiese Laymon- Rice’s Kiese Laymon awarded ‘genius grant’ MacArthur Fellowship
• Toni Morrison- From 2004: Toni Morrison on a writer's life
• Imani Perry- Imani Perry: Letter from Home — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER

Writing Prompt:

Considering the relationship between the elegy and ode, write a poem that explores what grief has gifted you. 

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On today’s episode of VS, Ajanae and Brittany interview Hanif Abdurraqib. Listen in as they discuss burned cd’s, the cost of being a collector, living archives, new projects, and obsession as an origin story. 

Until Next Time: 

Here is some media to accompany your experience of the episode and a writing prompt to tide you over until we meet again!

• June Jordan - June Jordan at the NYS Writers Institute in 2000
• Gloria Naylor - GREAT BLACK BOOKS! Presents THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE by Gloria Naylor
• Aracelis Girmay - “You Are Who I Love” Reading by Aracelis Girmay

Writing Prompt:

Consider a piece of ephemera or archival material in your family. Write a poem using the object and the year of its making as the title. Consider what the object represents now. 

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