Poet Golden’s debut collection explores family history and personal identity

“A Dead Name That Learned How to Live” opens with picture collages of Golden’s household. Their mom’s aspect is on the left, their father’s aspect is on the fitting and portraits of Golden and their two siblings are on the middle. “That encapsulates all the things I used to be making an attempt to do with this guide,” Golden says. “My work is an extension of those folks, so I’m bringing everybody together with me.”

It’s unattainable to learn Golden’s poetry with out seeing the affect of the important folks and locations from their upbringing. Their dad and mom attended the identical elementary, center and excessive faculties collectively within the small city of Pocomoke Metropolis, Maryland, a spot the place most residents spend their total lives, like Golden’s grandmother, whom they name “Grannie.” Golden’s dad joined the Air Power and the household settled within the suburban army city of Hampton, Virginia. That’s the place Golden grew up with their twin sibling (whom Golden calls “Twin”), and their older brother Cam. “The Black rural South is what raised me,” says Golden.

The gathering’s 16 poems sing about sturdy household bonds between dad and mom and kids, grandparents and grandchildren, and each mixture in between. These bonds are echoed by the household photographs and Golden’s personal portraiture interspersed throughout the gathering. Golden says, “This guide is a mending and a transferring, a dialog between the previous and the current, between {a photograph} and a poem.”

Golden’s work additionally harkens again to their lineage of artistry, with their Grannie as a poet and their Pop Pop as a photographer. They are saying their Grannie has all the time had a approach with phrases, calling her their “little Maya Angelou.” Their Pop Pop had taken photographs for his hometown’s historic file, however as an older Black man, he by no means thought he may make a profession out of pictures. Given these outstanding familial influences all through their childhood, right this moment, Golden views their very own poetry and pictures as one and the identical. “I consider my pictures as a poem I haven’t written but. Poetry is a doc of one thing that doesn’t have a picture, nevertheless it’s a picture I’ve captured in my head,” they are saying. Their Pushcart-nominated poem “Family Portrait with Ancestors” is appropriately located subsequent to a childhood household portrait, however Golden’s phrases alone are simply as vivid.

“Have you ever ever sliced by way of a watermelon
wound & watched your loved ones suck all the crimson out?
Twin tends to the rind, Mother salivates salt & guards

the seeds, Dad beats the bleeds out of our t-shirts,
Cam brings pails of bleach & scorching holy water
to uncooked rinse the deck. All of us knife our wound’s smile

till summer season offers our childhood again.”

Golden’s picture work has centered round portraiture since they have been in highschool, starting with self-portraits and portraits of Twin. Their method to pictures grew to become extra sharply outlined whereas they have been pursuing their BFA in pictures and imaging at New York College, the place they needed to adapt to new environment and residing in a distinct metropolis than Twin. Images got here to be about id, concerning the intersections of Blackness and gender, about being. Their thesis venture “Identification and Studying The best way to Reside” would later evolve into “A Lifeless Identify That Realized The best way to Reside.”

The primary poem on this assortment, “Y’all,” feels as a lot a self-portrait as a panorama of Maryland and Virginia and as a candid group picture from years previous. Throughout the gathering, Golden displays on their upbringing and present relationship with the South after a long way. Transferring up north to the “queer utopia” they name New York Metropolis allowed them the prospect to discover their gender and sexuality in methods they didn’t have the vocabulary for earlier than. However “dwelling” would all the time be Hampton and Pocomoke Metropolis. Collectively, all of those locations have inextricable affect over who Golden has turn into as an artist and an individual — similar to Golden’s household.

“I’m not saying
there was nobody like us, what I’m saying is, we
didn’t know the place to shout, to twerk, to go away
our our bodies’ limbs. Typically it’s important to run
away to like your nation again, to know the way
to look your loved ones within the face with skunk
in mouth, razor on belt, tar as mascara & defile
goals.”

A number of the poets who first impressed Golden have been basic writers like Maya Angelou, however publicity to modern poets like Porsha Olayiwola and Danez Smith expanded the probabilities of what a poem may very well be. “I keep in mind sitting in Washington Sq. Park and studying Danez Smith’s assortment ‘Black Film’ inside an hour. I understood what poetry may do on the web page.” Now, Golden describes poetry as, “the connectedness of all the things. It’s being engulfed and anxious.”

A powerful instance of what Golden is ready to accomplish on the web page is their sequence of visible poems “[X][Y],” “Twin,” and “[X][X],” constructed to seem like chromosomes. These poems converse to a time in Golden’s life when homophobia and transphobia divided their household, however Golden shares that they’re in a position to publish this poetry now as a result of they have been all in a position to work previous that harm, and now there’s nothing however love between them.

The gathering additionally voices that fierce familial love. “To Dance with My Father” and “And I Will All the time Be Your Mom,” undertake the views of Golden’s dad and mom, saying “& I’m not sorry, cus I’m a mum or dad, that approach. We need to repair all the things we didn’t have. We’re kids, that approach. That is how I grew to become a person, your father,” and “You might be me. & There isn’t a situation on this world that may cease your Momma.” When speaking about the way it felt to put in writing from their dad and mom’ standpoint and the way they craft their poems generally, Golden says, “I’m all the time shocked and shocked once I write. These poems simply fall out of me. It’s like different voices inhabit me which have this message, and simply push this out of my physique.”

Becoming a member of the NYU slam poetry crew in 2018 ushered Golden to the following part of their craft journey — bringing their poems to life by way of voice and efficiency beneath the teaching of poet and educator Crystal Valentine (now Mass Poetry competition supervisor). Valentine introduced Golden to the Home Slam out of Haley Home in Roxbury. That 2018 efficiency prompted Boston’s poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola to ask the then-New York Metropolis-based Golden to hitch her slam poetry crew, setting off a sequence of alternatives that will ultimately result in the town of Boston honoring Golden as one in every of its artists-in-residence for 2020-2021. Valentine and Olayiwola each invited Golden to hitch their Boston-based slam crew. Two weeks after graduating faculty, Golden packed their luggage for Massachusetts.

Throughout Golden’s tenure as 2020-21 Boston artist-in-residence, their aim was to middle trans Bostonians, particularly trans folks of shade, for his or her public arts initiatives. One such venture was the proposal for the mural honoring Rita Hester, whose unsolved homicide in her Allston condo in 1998 sparked the creation of Transgender Day of Remembrance. The mural of Hester was delivered to life this yr by the artist Rixy by way of Boston’s Transformative Public Artwork Program. Golden says, “I used to be making an attempt to attach the work between those that have handed and uplift their lives, but in addition do the work to have a good time trans people who find themselves residing.”

Golden additionally curated the We Been Here poetry kickback series, that includes trans and nonbinary poets and artists, and hosted the Transgender and Nonbinary Town Hall to collect suggestions on how the Metropolis of Boston can higher help all of its transgender and nonbinary residents. The group Golden has surrounded themself with all through their time in Boston has turn into a brand new extension of their household. However as Golden prepares to maneuver to Brooklyn with Twin, they mirror on how they need the following part of their life to be targeted on reclaiming time for themself. The chapter of their life that has been devoted to writing a poetry assortment and different initiatives centered round exterior topics is coming to an finish.

“& When They Come for Me,” the ultimate poem in “A Lifeless Identify That Realized The best way to Reside”, blossomed from conversations Golden had with Grannie when the 2 of them spent some treasured time alone collectively. “It was such a wonderful factor that we typically take without any consideration, having every week with an elder and speaking about tales.” Amongst talks of God and the tip of life, the poem conjures hopeful imagery of bees and dogwood bushes, summertime and vulnerability.

“Father-sun, I need to be someplace singing by way of the wood door of my name-made home, with a maiden identify. Ask my mom, we’re occurring trip to different worlds inside ourselves. I hope you’ll be able to run. Oh look, the solar’s popping out Grannie.”

Golden shares that they’re just like their mom in that they have a tendency to tackle the position of caretaker in relationships, so this poem “is a want to attain in direction of prioritizing myself and love and need, and to be indignant and pleased and all these imperfect issues, all these items as Black folks from South conceal from the world.” Subsequent to this ultimate poem is a self-portrait of Golden posed beneath a wall of household photographs of their Grannie’s home. On this assortment about household, Golden makes use of this ultimate poem to deliver the main focus again to themself, the toughest factor for them to put in writing about. “I need to catapult to my subsequent guide…writing for myself about myself.” They’re crafting their very own legacy as a Black gender-nonconforming trans-femme particular person, poet, photographer and twin from Hampton, Pocomoke Metropolis, New York Metropolis and Boston unexpectedly.  Fittingly, the final line of the poem and the gathering is, “I made it dwelling.”