Alyssa Gaines opens up about her creative process and shares one of her favorite poems.
This year’s National Youth Poet Laureate is 18-year-old Alyssa Gaines. The Indianapolis teen was chosen out of a field of 65 talented young poets from across the country who participated in this year’s Urban Word competition. She joins the ranks of gifted writers like Amanda Gorman whose moving performance at the inauguration made her a literary star.
We spoke to Alyssa about her poetry, her literary influences, her eclectic interests (she’s a history buff and into lacrosse and musical theater), and much more. Plus, we’re sharing one of Alyssa’s favorite poems, a villanelle inspired by her family’s southern roots called “blue dashers.”
Katie Couric Media: How did you first become interested in poetry? And what do you enjoy about the medium?
Alyssa Gaines: My introduction to poetry was an assignment in the third grade. From there, my family started taking me to youth poetry slams around the city. I got involved in youth poetry organizations — one being Voices Corps, the local sponsor of the Indianapolis youth poet laureate program. I got the chance to perform at the Library of Congress. That slam was my first time ever getting a perfect score, ever getting a standing ovation. I was 13 and seeing all those people respond to something I had to say really showed me the power of my language through poetry. I thought I could reach other people, even being a young person, even having a very specific story to tell with my words.
Can you tell us a little about your writing process? Where do you draw inspiration from?
I’m really interested in form. So sometimes I’ll have a topic and I’ll have an in and I can write a free-verse poem about it. Other times I want to really unpack a subject before I write about it. So I do a lot of research, look into poetic forms that might be connected, and start from there.
I’m also inspired by things that I’ve learned in school or research that I do. I like to combine these things in my writing and use my poetry as a way to synthesize information and grow my understanding of the world around me.
Amanda Gorman captivated the country with her performance at the inauguration. What does it mean to follow in her footsteps as the Youth Poet Laureate?
It’s super exciting to me to be named among five amazingly talented poets who use their writing and their art to inspire civic engagement. Also just to be involved in the Urban Word network, which is the program that curates the national youth poet laureate competition, is a big honor, because I get to workshop with other poets around the country and I get to learn and evolve as a writer.
What themes are you interested in exploring through your work?
A lot of them come from things I’ve seen and learned growing up. I live on the east side of Indianapolis and it’s a very complex area to grow up in. There’s a lot of communal grief. There’s gun violence and incidents of people being killed when they’re very young that you hear about — whether it’s someone you know or someone you’re friends with or someone you’ve seen at a party. That experience of communal grief and communal healing is also something that I’ve always been interested in. Also being a Black girl — that intersection of race is something that I’m really interested in exploring.
I also speak Spanish, so I try to use that other language to inspire my writing and the qualities of that language to deepen my writing. I’m also always looking to my family’s roots as a constant source of inspiration for me.
What’s your favorite poem that you’ve written? And can you tell us about how that came together and the message behind it?
One of my favorites is my poem “blue dashers,” which is a villanelle. The villanelle has repeating lines that cycle through each other, which adds this quality in the reading of the poem. I think a lot of the Southern and Black poetic traditions have these refrains and they’re poems that sound good aloud, they’re easily remembered and shared with other people.
The poem is about the intermixing of Southern culture and Black American culture. I wrote it after I took a summer trip to the south. I was thinking about my family’s origins in the south and was doing research on similar topics for a school project. I love that in this form I was able to combine not only something that’s very relevant to me but something that was also related to my studies and then also connected to the form of the poem.
Who are your literary influences?
Of contemporary poets, I love Danez Smith and Melania Luisa Marte. Some of the older poets I really value are June Jordan and bell hooks.
Do you have any other interests or passions?
Academic research is something that I really enjoy and have come to love. And it’s something that I hope to continue. I’m very passionate about history and learning about the world around me and different cultures, and I think that comes across in my writing. I also participate in musical theater, which is something I’ve done since I was very young. And I play lacrosse.
What’s next for you after graduation?
I’m going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an economics major, but I’d also like to study history and literature. I’m really interested in policy-making. So as of now, I plan to go to law school. But I’m also interested in theater, so if something changes I might pursue an MFA.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
blue dashers
blue dashers dancing atop the lake, light strokes across the heavy landscape, eagles fly & bowriders call i was baptized in the blue waters of a red state & came to south of the mason-dixon & there i was, stagnant and black against the holy water in the land stretching its fingers to god
heard the sweet hymn of deep trees, the timbre & hum of cicadas, closed my eyes & dreamt of how slow i could talk i was baptized in the blue waters of a red state & came to south of the mason-dixon blue dashers dancing atop the lake, light strokes across the heavy landscape, eagles fly & bowriders call
free as a crystal sparkling surface on fire, sweat runing wild & sticking me to a flowy white dress, rosy like a doll dipped in milk, drunk on honey, grasping at salt, but quiet and wishin
& there i was, stagnant and black against the holy water in the land stretching its fingers to god
then rising on the lake, in my dress, born again, washed, resurrected and all watching a flag fly off the back of
the boat, reverent in its gall
i found an errant breath & heard a familiar whisper like god in the wind telling freedom stories in
the tides of dreams passed like prayer across kin
blue dashers dancing atop the lake, light strokes across the heavy landscape, eagles fly & bowriders call
light breaking thick mountain forest, to glimmer down, make this all gold. i watched in awe
every hair standing up, mouth open to the chill wind
& there i was, stagnant and black against the holy water in the land stretching its fingers to god
in branson my world distilled into lake and slowed to the crawl of a white chris craft and a southern drawl
i was baptized and born again to a new religion
blue dashers dancing atop the lake, light strokes across the heavy landscape, eagles fly & bowriders call
& there i was, stagnant and black against the holy water in the land stretching its fingers to god
but was it god or ghosts that made this promiseland?
voices in the wind of my kin asking me where i’ve been
wondering how long it would take me to reclaim the land promised to them
to jump unshackled in the lake and let them watch me swim
and what if i drown
in a memory of all they were
amongst chosen people too proud & too taught to bleed red
and me
still black against the water and black as the swing of the trees
and me
trying hard to be blue like a dasher
or water
or sweet like honey golden light
black as whatever breathes at the bottom of the basin
and the undercurrent it came through
and wishin still
to rise
to dance in the wind like the stars and stripes
from the back of the boat in flight
the first thing i saw when i finally opened my eyes.
