Ep. 228: Jasmine Mans on Harnessing Play to Expose the Truth

Jasmine Mans is a Black American poet and artist from Newark, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison, with a B.A. in African American Studies. Her debut collection of poetry, Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels, was published in 2012, and BLACK GIRL, CALL HOME, just out, is a love letter to the wandering Black girl, and a vital companion to anyone on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. Mans is the resident poet at the Newark Public Library. 

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Transcript:

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #228 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad that you’re here with me today, rather emotional. Okay, so here’s how me, filming my podcasts usually goes, I get a guest, we chat and then it goes in the bank. I’m probably a month and ahead, maybe even two months ahead right now in terms of interviews, which is awesome. I love the publicist, send me amazing authors and they get to read their books and then I get to talk to them. But it doesn’t mean that by the time I release the episode, I haven’t talked to them in four or six weeks or more. And I don’t want to do that today. You guys, I just hung up with Jasmine Mans and I cannot remember a guest ever making me cry before on the show. You’re going to love the episode. It’s brilliant. It’s beautiful. Because she is those things and her book is those things and I want you to get it and read it. And I’m so moved that I can’t, I just can’t wait to share it with you. I can’t wait six weeks. So, as jumping the queue, it’s going in front of everybody else and it’s going to go out this week because it’s important to me and the things we talk about in the show about play and love and fear and life and the way we as writers put that on the page. It was an incredible conversation to me. So I hope that you enjoy it too. And I know you will. 

[00:01:52] Well, what’s been going on around here. Well, you may hear it’s a little bit more echo-y on the podcast and for those of you who are audio files and who noticed those kinds of things, I apologize for it, but we are finally starting to pack for the move to New Zealand. It’s really getting real. We, I can’t remember if I mentioned this on the show, but we have to enter a New Zealand by August 19th to honor my wife’s visa. I can go in anytime, but she’s got to be so that we have to enter by August 19th. So that means we have to sell the house. We have to pack everything we own that we want to take, which is almost nothing compared to what we own. We’ve been in this house for 15 years. We don’t have a garage. Thank God we don’t have. And we have very small closets, but we still have managed to pack a bunch of stuff into this 1100 square foot home. And we’re trying to leave most of it behind. So we are jumping into that. I, and my room is just emptier now and it’s feeling nice and it’s also feeling terrifying. What else is going on, while we’re doing that, I’m just trying to figure out some kind of a balance. And I don’t know if I’m going to be able to nail it because my priorities outside people who are always my highest priorities, but my priorities are writing, teaching and then moving, where do podcasts fit? I don’t know. I mean, how do you write we’ll keep going because I’ve got episodes in the bank and it’s an easy show for me to do and produce, but my newer podcast Youre-Already-Ready, I think I’m going to move that to a bi-weekly format because I just can’t keep up with the writing of that podcast and the recording and the release. I love that podcast, but it takes a lot of time finding, I need to squeeze time out of places where I’ve never squeezed time from before. And that’s kind of stressing me out. It’s a good stress, but it is a true stress. 

[00:03:52] Physically, I think I’ve seen one of the last doctors on the list that I needed to see, to try to figure out why I was so sick for those couple of months. And yesterday I was, I saw the specialist of all the specialists and she had no answers. So I remain a medical mystery. Still don’t know what was wrong with me. And I probably will never know. Which is frustrating, but I am just trying to accept it. That is, it’s kind of like these things, we always, I always talk about with writing. We don’t want to write. Writing is hard. Writing is difficult. And we get to accept those thoughts, those feelings, those truths, and still sit down at the desk and do our work. Having those thoughts does not prevent us from doing the work and knowing that I don’t know what my body is doing or has been doing doesn’t prevent me from living my life to its fullest. And hey, you know what? I’m really grateful after all these tests, they didn’t find something really wrong with me. How awesome is that? Like I was literally disappointed that they couldn’t find a diagnosis until, well, I still am a little bit disappointed about that, but then I really did have to snap myself out of it and say they didn’t find a bad diagnosis. Hell yeah. Fantastic. 

[00:05:16] I’m really grateful for that. Also grateful for the fact that I’m going to have to start remembering what Hush Little Baby, the book that comes out in May from Penguin, it’s a thriller, is about because it’s been off my desk long enough that I’ve kind of forgotten. And I have a, the first publicity call with my team this afternoon. I’m going to have to try to be professional. I’m still not putting on a bra. But I’m going to have to try to be professional and remember what I was trying to do with that book and what I would like to share with the world about that book. So that’s super exciting and I love my editor and I love my team genuinely. I’ve worked with this publicity team for the last book and they just are really awesome people, Dutton as an imprint is phenomenal and I’m so happy to be with them. So that’s coming up this afternoon. Other things that I’m grateful for are so many, and I’m just trying to remember them every day. But right now, I just want to say, thank you. I’m grateful for you. For you listening to this show, we have this weird, special connection that you allow my voice into your head. And that means a lot to me. And I appreciate you for doing that. And I hope that I bring you value and God knows this show today is going to bring value to your life. So I’m pretty confident in that. 

[00:06:39] Also, I would like to just quickly say thank you to new patrons. I can’t read her name here. Oh, here it is, Daphne Garrison. Thank you, Daphne. Welcome! And also to Mona McDermid, who is just one of my favorite people. Thank you, Mona, for supporting me. I really appreciate that. And okay. That’s all I got to say. I’m feeling gratitude. I’m feeling emotional. Get ready to hear me panic, because I realized that I’m crying. I must say that, you know, ever since Clementine died, I feel like I really let down some walls and I’m, you know, and I’m sober now and I have feelings and I feel like I allowed so much sadness with Clementine with coming and stuff to fill me that now the sadness is just like, Oh, we got a channel. We know how to get there. We know how to make the tears happen. And, yeah. So, you’ll, you might be able to witness my horror at realizing I’m going to cry on a podcast. But it’s because of what Jasmine reads and, so open your heart, maybe figure out if you have any tears that need to be shed and enjoy this incredible interview with a phenomenal writer. And that’s all I got to say. So I wish you very happy writing and we’ll talk soon my friends. 

[00:08:00] This episode is brought to you by my book Fast Draft Your Memoir. Write your life story in 45 hours, which is, by the way, totally doable. And I’ll tell you how. It’s the same class I teach in the continuing studies program at Stanford each year, and I’ll let you in on a secret. Even if you have no interest in writing a memoir, yet the book has everything I’ve ever learned about the process of writing, and of revision, and of story structure, and of just doing this thing that’s so hard and yet all we want to do. Pick it up today.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:35] Okay. Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show Jasmine Mans. Hello, Jasmine! 

Jasmine Mans: [00:08:41] Hi, pleasure to meet you.

Rachael Herron: [00:08:42] It’s such a pleasure to meet you. It’s an honor. I love your poetry collection that just came out. Let me give a little bit of an introduction and then we’ll chat all things writing. Jasmine Mans is a Black American poet and artist from Newark, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison with a B.A. in African-American Studies. Her debut collection of poetry, Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels, was published in 2012 and Black Girl, Call Home, just out, is a love letter to the wandering Black girl, and a vital companion to anyone on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. Mans is the resident poet at the Newark Public Library, which is so freaking cool, by the way, love a library, but also your, your bio, your like you were blowing up, like you’re on all the lists that Oprah and time and all of these things. How is, how has that, how has that feeling? You, you open for Janelle Monae.

Jasmine Mans: [00:09:41] I once in my life, since I was maybe 11, 12. 

Rachael Herron: [00:09:48] Oh my goodness. 

Jasmine Mans: [00:09:49] That was beautiful poetry and yeah, it’s crazy right, because I didn’t imagine this I would’ve been grateful with a happy book that came out, and then there was the opportunity to be great, right. And to go all the way and to be magical. And then why not? And so I am less to have a team that believes in magic period, 

Rachael Herron: [00:10:16] Magic and fearlessness. I got a lot of fearlessness from your book and of course the fear is in there. Because you’re human, but you also seem to possess the ability to look everything in the face and put it on the page. And I really appreciate you for that. Would you mind before we get into the questions, would you mind sharing a poem with us of your choice?

Jasmine Mans: [00:10:42] Yeah. I want to give you a love poem because love make me feel warm

Rachael Herron: [00:10:49] Yay

Jasmine Mans: [00:10:50] This is The Light on page 155. Stared at a picture of Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte wondered if we still fight the same or buy it the same, if they ever made more love than sense, if they ever stared at our generation and just wondered where all the fireflies went. Do they all die or did they just not find us worth the light. Did they not find us worthy of them dressing to the nines in their shot? Waiting to become falling stars between the hands of a blushing girl in front of a boy waiting to give a pro audacity and her world. I promise, that if I died tonight in these sheets, I would still want you next to me. Like this love survived all of those riots. I know when you are scared, I hold your hand when the hurricane came. Pass me my lighter, I’m sorry, I made you cry. I don’t care if you cry I will always wipe your tears when you cry. And I know you did not give me permission to, but already started asking God about you. Told him if he doesn’t mind, I’d like to make it to heaven before you do to run your bath water and to make you a plate to turn your TV to your favorite channel and turn it off. And make you believe that you left it that way. And I vowed to never to open the door for a scent other than yours, and I promise. Promise to always remember your sin and that we will laugh at everything that hurt, when we were humans. Like when we were poor, when we slept on our bedroom floor on Leslie street when we only had water and we grilled cheese. The moment you said, baby, I may not have any money, but I’ve got a soft spot and a melody in it and a pair of arms that could rock you just so what? Are you thinking about taking a chance on me? 

Rachael Herron: [00:12:37] Well that, I don’t usually cry on my own show, but that, that poem brought me to tears when I read it too. I have an amazing wife. I’m gonna have an amazing life with her and we’ve been together for, I don’t know, 15 years something like that. And that is how I feel about her. I want to get to heaven first. So thank you for that. Thank you for breaking me down on the show. I appreciate that. 

Jasmine Mans: [00:13:03] And it’s those moments like where you can like read a poem to someone you love in bed. It’s, and these poems I wrote about women that I love and were no longer in my life anymore. And women that, that really have implanted on my heart. And so it’s weird, right? So I haven’t been removed from so many relationships and I’ve learned so many things and to put all of that on a show and to say, I lost so much, so much love, so many people are written about who are no longer here. And it’s on a shelf now and that’s, it’s a mourning ceremony, it’s a joy and it is overwhelming undertaking. 

Rachael Herron: [00:13:56] And it’s an honoring of all of that that you had and that you went through and that you had with them. And you also, speaking of the women that you’ve loved, you also really unpack beautifully the mother daughter relationship, which is my favorite relationship to explore in my own writing. And, yeah, I just want to thank you for doing that. I want people to buy Black Girl, Call Home, just buy it people. Put this on your shelf. If it can make Rachael cry on the podcast for the first time in five years. Perhaps you’ll like it. Let’s take down my cortisol level. Can we talk about your writing process, when and where and how much do you, and I’m because I’ve only come to, I’ve come back to poetry this year. I was scarred in grad school and then didn’t write for 15 years, 20 years and have just come back and I’m, I know how to write fiction and I know how to write non-fiction. I know where that fits in my life, but. How does poetry fit into your life as a process? 

Jasmine Mans: [00:14:59] I’m trying, it’s so interesting because, it’s like an unlearning, right? We get scarred in school. We’re taught to be masters of things and to be brilliant, and that there is a hierarchy on what language is best and which either mama or mommy. Is it tomato or tomato? Like so much stuff about what is great versus what is lower, what is on here? And for me, it has become and what I’m learning as I, as I experienced life more, and as I engage as a student with so many elders and the work of so many elders before me, it’s about playing it’s about, 

Rachael Herron: [00:15:44] I literally just wrote the word, play on my notebook to make sure that one of us said it, you play in this book, 

Jasmine Mans: [00:15:52] it’s about playing and joy and discovery and like my coffee mug holds, can hold poetic depth, just like the bark of a tree, just like a mother, if sometimes if we’re listening properly. And so what I’m trying to teach myself as a scholar who is removed from school, is to place value in depth and things and relativity and things because people wants to feel related to and remembered even when it comes to how we approach our objects. And so my process, sometimes it’s read a bunch of books and do some research and take notes and instructionally build a poem, and I can very well be emotionally removed and sometimes, it’s so emotional that the poem doesn’t happen and I’m just in this emotional space until maybe a few weeks later the poem does happen. But sometimes like, even like when you’re thinking of a good meal, like for your wife, it takes preparation before way before you get to the actual turning of the stove on, and you might have to even go to the grocery store or go to the fish market, a couple towns over, but the preparation that it takes can always be different depend on, depending on what we’re writing and what the stakes are right? If we’re writing to get somebody back, or for writing to say thank you but sometimes the stakes are different.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:30] How do you? For this particular collection there, you do so many different things inside the collection. And there are a lot of poems and they’re different styles. There are different placements. There’s different fonts that you’ve got narrative prose, poems, you’ve even got the sketch in there of- how do you decide what to put into a book of poetry? This is, I know this is like a newbie basic question but 

Jasmine Mans: [00:18:01] No, you sit with it. I wanted to create a flow or routine I was saying to someone it’s just like, I keep using these food references. But you know, you taste something until you know it has enough salt, and then they might have to dial- you might have to dial it back a little bit because it might be too much salt in there. And so it was just a matter of tasting. And so it was the perfect taste, until it was the perfect organization and that took tenderness and love and rereading and gentleness and a lot of rereading, I remember being like, I don’t think we’re ready, I don’t think I’m ready, and but it does take constant tasting and we looked at each poem individually, but then we had to look at poems next to each other. How did just like musicians think like, well, but how does this sound, song sounds coming after this song. And so that’s the same similar concept of like, is there a flow? Where’s the art? Where’s the emotion? Is there two, is it too emotional here? And how do we bring them out of their emotions? At the end of the book, are they home? Did you start home and did you bring them back home? That was the, that was the number one point to go back home and so that’s what I hope I did. It was a lot of processes throughout the writing of this, because the stakes were all different. There were poems where I was like, you’re honoring your mother. There were poems where I was just like, you have to deliver this message that historically happened properly. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:46] Yeah. You, you dive so deeply and bravely into the women whose bodies were used for medical research and assumed that they had no pain. And you look at that, but then you fit it into a book which also includes, you know, lightness. And the fact that you’re able to do that in a, in a rhythmic way that leads the reader through perfectly is just outstanding. 

Jasmine Mans: [00:20:12] Those themes, I was a huge theme of the women’s bodies and my mind was stuck in that space and research while writing, because I was thinking about those women bodies and then I was thinking about Whitney Houston too with multiple poems in the book. If you find that, I repeat, they don’t give our bodies back to them. And so often when we talk about poetry and literature, we don’t repeat things like you just, you’re not supposed to repeat things. Don’t recycle lines, but there was a moment where I decided that I want people to remember this line and it was fluid throughout the book. And I was nervous about creatively, is that a decision that’s okay to make? Does it seem a bit amateur? And I was just like, no, this is what I want. This is a refrain. This is a note that I want people to hold on to when we talk about the black woman body. And I’m so happy that it caught on to those. You’re actually the first person to ask me about those pieces and those were the pieces that were the hardest and those are the pieces that I wrote the latest in the collection. 

Rachael Herron: [00:21:27] It’s so much about the body. It’s so much about the corporeal form and from the mother to these women lost and unnamed and to you and your lovers. And then there’s that incredible one where your grandmother loses Grandfather next to her and his corporeal form stays in bed, but he leaves without her. Like it’s all about the body and naming it and claiming it and it’s incredible.

Jasmine Mans: [00:22:02] Thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:05] I’ve chills. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to doing this work? 

Jasmine Mans: [00:22:10] I think I have a couple of challenges, receiving myself. 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:15] What do you mean by that? 

Jasmine Mans: [00:22:16] You have imposter syndrome of like is this the point, can I run away now? Let’s just pretend like this is not happening and when you think you’re brave, you poke out your chest and you’re like, we’re doing this. My dreams came true. Amen. And then you think you better be careful what you wish for. Now everybody’s going with it now. Now what if you got a book deal? What if everybody read your poetry? No don’t. And people are taking photos of the book open and I’m like, don’t you dare. It’s as if your diary was left open at someone’s party, like how I’m offended, I’m appalled. How dare you take and you just snatch it up and you run away. If I am naked out here and afraid, but we’re going to do this. It’s beautiful. It’s we’ve come this far for things that I think are good and positive, and I believe in those things. And so I’m still dealing with the rawness of it. Like y’all got all my, all my stuff here, all the laundry but it was, I was intentional about it though, about how I wanted to shape people and narrative and love. And so even to like one of my ex-girlfriends is in the book and I haven’t spoken to her in a few years and 

Rachael Herron: [00:23:48] I was wondering about that, you know, I was wondering about that

Jasmine Mans: [00:23:49] And I wonder what she thinks about it. Like, well, will she be angry that I mentioned her name, will she honor, or she know that I’ve learned about and I didn’t want to write the book without mentioning her. Because I was just like so much about what I learned about myself in love is connected to that woman and so many women. And some, you just have to say like, thank you and I’m sorry. And I hope that this honors so many people in so many ways. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:29] What is your biggest joy when it comes to doing this work?

Jasmine Mans: [00:24:39] Seeing people feel seen. 

Rachael Herron: [00:24:42] Yeah. What a gift to give

Jasmine Mans: [00:24:46] Yeah. When people feel like, when people tell you that that’s their story. I think that’s the biggest joy because they remind me that I’m not alone. It’s just like, people like, why don’t you do this? I want to remind people that they’re not alone, but then when someone says, I read your work and on this page, it’s like, oh no, you’re actually reminding me that I’m not, 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:09] That’s gorgeous. Could you share a craft tip of any sort that you use in your poetry? 

Jasmine Mans: [00:25:31] I was trying to find this quote about craftsmanship that I say all the time, but that’s not coming to me. I go back to play that playing is the most significant thing, to find inspiration in everything. And so often the conflict with inspiration is, so many artists in different mediums will say, I’m waiting for inspiration. I’m waiting for the song for the image to paint, I’m waiting. And so now your craftsmanship is always dependent on an outside variable to hit you in the head and supposed to be inspirational. But, like I remember a friend of mine held a red cup and said, this is fire. And it was fire because he said it was, and this is my little sheep here that a friend got me, but it’s a cloud and it’s a cloud because, because I said it is, and if I’m going to say this and what, what is the work that I’m going to do to prove that to you? And that’s what I’m doing here as a poet. And that should be playful and joyful. And I’m realizing that that poetry and the form, the practice of writing has to be playful and joyful because we have to get through and we have to be able to write traumatic things and you can’t stand in trauma without giving yourself joy. That’s why, when you have so much salty foods, they have to give you an extra large soda. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:13] That’s exactly right. The contrast. Yeah.

Jasmine Mans: [00:27:18] Yeah. If I’m going to say, or try to be brave enough to stand in the narrative, it has to go through it, the body doesn’t exist without both. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:33] Yes. What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Jasmine Mans: [00:27:39] Running. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:42] Actually like physically running, 

Jasmine Mans: [00:27:43] Physically running. I realized because sometimes oftentimes I don’t want to write poetry, like, especially engaging in black literature. I didn’t call myself black. But when I do write about things that are engaging black folks, and I don’t like, someone’s like what inspires you to write about death? And I’m like, it’s not like a gorgeous, beautiful thing that happened upon me then, like, I can say gorgeous things about murder or harm or trauma, right. And running helped me notice that you are going to do things that are hard and that don’t feel good, that are important, and that are right, and I get up and I run every day and it’s hard and I don’t like it. But it’s right and I have to do it. And it’s a part of the discipline. And I didn’t know that my body needed to be disciplined in order for my mind to show up there. Right and so that’s what I’m learning. I’m learning how the body and the mind engages each other emotionally in order to induce a product. And if I’m going to do this, we have to be healthy and safe and running put yourself, puts you in a space of like this ain’t fun, this ain’t, but it’s going to render me something good. And the same with writing hard stuff. This isn’t going to writing about some of this stuff don’t feel fun at all, but it’s worthy. And how do I get my body to stay present when I want to run away from the computer. When I run away from the pen, it keeps you disciplined though. Like my body can, I can stay here longer and do it. I’m okay. And I think that you want that, 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:45] Yeah, there’s that physical training I ran, I’ve run two marathons and now I don’t run at all. Now I swim, but I ran- when I first, when I completed my first marathon shortly after that, I was able to complete my first novel, but I had never been able to complete a book until I proved to myself that my body could carry me over the finish line, which I thought was impossible. So, and I always think that those things are linked

Jasmine Mans: [00:30:10] It all starts with our mind and the body does follow and they have to be, they have to work together. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:21] Yeah. And unfortunately I would like just to be a brain. That’s what I would really like, but it doesn’t work. What is the best book that you’ve read recently?

Jasmine Mans: [00:30:33] Oh, my gosh. Well, I just read Sula that was the best book indeed, and I just read it and I’m in love. Oh On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:46] I have that from the library right now and I haven’t cracked a spine yet. It’s so good. 

Jasmine Mans: [00:30:51] You just read it, I would just love for you to just call me back so we can talk about that book. And I borrowed, I gave it to somebody and I got all my notes in it because I’ll write poetry within someone’s poetry book and within someone’s novel, and I’m reading and I’m just like, I’m so inspired that I’m writing all through it and I’ve let someone borrow it. And I’ve been trying to get that book back and you just reminded me to go get my book. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:18] You have to get that book back. Yes.

Jasmine Mans: [00:31:21] Let me get it. And I, that book is stellar.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:27] Oh, okay. I cannot, I’m going to start it tonight. That’s what I’m going to do. Can you tell the listeners where to find you, please?

Jasmine Mans: [00:31:35] Yeah. Any YouTube, JasmineNicoleMans for all creative work, PoetJasmineMans on Instagram, and if you by chance, find yourself interested in Black Girl, Call Home, it’s available at Target finds noble and on Amazon and why not request it at your local library and bookstore? 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:56] Local libraries are the best, independent booksellers are the best, but hello, congratulations on getting Target. 

Jasmine Mans: [00:32:02] Oh, yes right. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:03] Huge. Huge. Oh my goodness. Jasmine, thank you so much. I can’t thank you enough for this conversation. I feel like hanging up with you and trying to write a very bad poem, which then I can polish later, which is what we do.

Jasmine Mans: [00:32:18] Very, that’s what life is about

Rachael Herron: [00:32:26] Thank you for everything. Congratulations on finishing your media blitz today. Now you can relax and have something delicious to eat, hopefully. And thanks for being here with me and my listeners. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. 

Jasmine Mans: [00:32:38] Pleasure is mine. Talk soon. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.