Janay Kelley
Interview with Golden
Golden refuses to be boxed in. A multi-hyphenated artist, they wield both photography and poetry to tackle what it means to be seen and known wholly as one’s true self. Their award-winning photographic self-portraiture series On Learning How to Live captures existing and persisting in the United States as a Black trans person. Their chapbook A Dead Name That Learned How to Live (Game Over Books)—a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry—is a testament to remembrance, place, and becoming, themes they continue in their newest project.
Reprise (Haymarket Books) serves as a hybrid poetry and photography book. Their unique approach to form and bookmaking creates a visually captivating experience while expanding the reader’s understanding of what a poetry collection can be. In fact, being is the connective tissue holding this work together. Being American, being trans, being Black, and being alive—Golden, poignantly, addresses the complex modes we exist in, asking us to think more broadly about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. As praxis, the poet is unafraid to be present in their photographic and poetic work. Possessing a sharp voice filled with grit and heart, Golden shows us how to be alive, on and off the page, in and out of the archive. In the coming times, as uncertainty looms, Reprise presents us with a portrait of what we are and a roadmap to what we can become.
WASHINGTON SQUARE REVIEW: With a chapbook—A Dead Name That Learned How to Live—under your belt, and releasing your newest poetry collection Reprise, how are you feeling?
GOLDEN: I’m excited, but I also am a little nervous for the second one. With the first one, you come in bright-eyed, and you’re like, “I’m just excited to release the book into the world.” After having done it, I have more expectations. Not of the work itself but content-wise. The first book was very much about my family in a more contained sense. It was very much about the South and my childhood and coming into being. This book is much more—in an external sense—about belonging and Blackness and America in a larger sense. Especially as we’re going back into another Trump presidency. I think it has more of a charge underneath it. That has become more of an uneasy feeling. But I am excited about the work. A lot of work and collaboration and love has gone into it. And it shows from how the book opens and moves throughout.
WSR: Yes, I understand that. The charge you speak about is exceedingly present in Reprise. You show us that no matter what time it is in America, whether 5 or 50 years in the past, it’s always been the time to recognize and rectify ourselves as Americans and our place in the world. Can you speak to how nationalism operates in your work? What motivates you? What shaped how you see national identity?
GOLDEN: America is one of the largest countries and largest personalities of a country in the world. I would say we probably rival Great Britain and this legacy of basically defining how the world operates. Oftentimes, either through our own making, but also having hands in many different other countries making and daily lives. In this book, I’m trying to not deny the Black American experience, you know, while being black, but also problematized that, like, oftentimes that Americanness has been weaponized against Black people in particular in this country.
I tease out this word: nationalism. Like even belonging to a country—that’s something I’m trying to problematize or even question. What does belonging even mean to a Black American. I necessarily am not the warmest of the term American for myself, but at the same time, in a global sense, you can’t deny being American. Especially in this era of this iteration of the genocide going on in Gaza and with Palestinians around the world. We can’t deny this—the American imprint on the world. And so I’m questioning, problematizing, answering at times, or responding to or responding against this.
WSR: In your first “When They Come For Me (Reprise)” piece, you wrote, “I will die so let this be without the language of glory.” Can you speak to what you mean by “language of glory,” and why you deviated from it?
GOLDEN: I wrote that piece in 2020 when everything was hitting. So many people died because of COVID, died because of different things happening in the world around that time. I think a lot of times in these American sagas, we can kind of glorify everything. Especially as someone who grew up in Virginia, we went to slave memorials as if these were these regalias. Like something to be held up. It’s like this kind of colonial, tourist attraction. I felt at the end of the day, death is absolute. We all will die, so let’s get that out of the way. I really wanted to jump in. In the opening of the book, as it goes through “Quadrennial,” “When They Come For Us (Reprise),” and then “XX XY,” I think the beginning is exploring the idea of America. I wanted to cut through and be like, this is the real. The real complex.
WSR: In your previous works, like A Dead Name That Learned How to Live and from your photo series On Learning How to Live, you’ve been exploring this subject of living and being and belonging in a world that very much does not want you alive here. What have you learned just about yourself, about your art, about your practice from going through these different projects, mediums, and moments in time?
GOLDEN: I feel like I’ve learned a lot of just what I want from my life. When I wrote A Dead Name That Learned How to Live, I kind of knew there was more I wanted to write and learn. That’s why even some of those later poems in Reprise are a continuation of this book. I knew time needed to happen. I have learned that being so specific and also learning how to really take care and know myself really empowered me to take stock and build with other people. A lot of my work is about collaboration. About family. About creating my nucleus. Showing them that they’re beautiful, that we’re all beautiful.
I don’t have all the answers. There’s a poem in Reprise that says like, I’m not the best of anything, America. But in this book, it feels like it’s coming together. At the end of the day, we die, we live, and all we can do is be ourselves. Celebrate who we are as Black people, trying to hopefully make it through this.
WSR: Since we’re on the subject of Black people in general, let’s talk about your use of the word nigga. Because it’s very transformed.
GOLDEN: Ha! It’s my favorite word. I’ve always loved saying nigga. I know that there is this kind of professional dichotomy of using nigga in poems. And I will say, I probably have never really thought about it this deeply because I think about that [Toni] Morrison quote of being the center. If I’m always writing from that place—we are the center—then all the people who get it, get it. I felt like I never really needed to explain. I write from the same speech that I talk with. Yes, I can give you the wonderful metaphor and the beautiful language and write sonnets and do all that. But I can also show y’all that nigga is also in this colloquium. Nigga is an expansive term, is an expansive way of looking. That’s why I’m so focused on using it.
WSR: So much of you as a person is very prevalent in your art, just from your own self-portraiture work, where you are the subject. And now you’ve created such a rich photo-poetry fusion. What does it mean to be so visually present in this literary work?
GOLDEN: I guess it’s second nature now, but I mean, it is tough, right? That’s why I take a lot of time away. I’m a very introverted person, but at the same time, I pop out when I pop out, but it can be difficult at times just because my image is the thing that’s driving a lot of this. And sometimes, especially when people aren’t used to seeing self-portraiture, or artists like Carrie Mae Weems and Latoya Ruby Fraizer who expand that idea, especially in a social media-heavy world, people might be like, “oh, this might be self-centered.” But it was a way for me to document myself over time. A lot of these self-portraits I call a living archive. And this was built because when I was in high school and middle school, I didn’t have the self-confidence to really see myself. I think that it was a way for me to really fall in love with myself and explore expression and how I wanted to be in the world. My hope with this book is to encourage others to see yourself first before you see the rest of the world. If you don’t love what you see in the mirror, you’re not going to know how to show up and love each other, right?
In this process, it allowed me to be kinder to myself, to be more vulnerable when dealing with this subject matter. There’s different symbols in my self-portraits that are odes to my family. One is an image of me in this white veil, which is very similar to this image of my mom on her wedding day that sat in our home. There’s a lot of different layers to these self-portraits that oftentimes look like they’re just about me, but they’re at my Grannie’s house, in her backyard. My Grannie lives right across the street from the cemetery where my whole entire generation is buried. Oftentimes, if you’ll see a portrait of me in that space, it might seem like it’s about one thing, but it really is about being present and showing [trans people’s] presence in families. Because a lot of trans people don’t have that: those visual artifacts or these visual documents that show, yeah, we’ve been here and we always have been here.
WSR: What role does self-portraiture play in poetry?
GOLDEN: I think that they are doing similar things. And that’s why I’ve always considered my self-portraits poetic. And that’s why I like to use poetic in a larger sense. It’s not just about words to me. It’s about showing that everything is in tandem and always kind of in conversation, right? Poetry, in its layman’s terms, is about comparing the world, right? It’s about showing that the world is always about interaction and being and showing vulnerability. That’s always been in tandem for me. Also, it’s a moment to be like, okay, let me check in with myself. I think both self-portraiture and poetry (in a poem sense) are about sharing what has been on my heart, what’s on my mind. I feel like my self-portraiture-poetry, mesh and mending is allowing me to be vulnerable.
WSR: I read in your afterword interview with Imani Davis, the conversation you both had about image curation and how much went into creating the look of the book. I love the pages where you have the white text on red paper and the stars creating these images. It’s all so visually fun and alluring, especially when the text moves boundlessly across the pages. How do you think about design and form when it comes to your poetic work?
GOLDEN: Yes, it’s something that’s super, super important to my work. I’m definitely very hands-on in that regard because I was lucky to be trained in photography. I went to school for photography at NYU, and so I was able to learn InDesign. I even started off just building zines with my friends and different artists around New York. That background helped me when I was moving into bookmaking.
With my first book, I started to lay stuff out in InDesign. I usually write most of my poems in Notes, moving it to Google Doc and then moving to InDesign. The design is usually the last area, but at the same time, it allows me, as a very visual person, to see everything mapped out. I love, love, love making books! I love, love, love designing books! I think that can be seen.
Also working with the designers at Haymarket has been really fun. I also like when people say yes to my crazy ideas. I say, “oh, this page would look really cool red. I wonder if they’ll let me do that.” And then they said yes.
One thing I think could help poetry in a larger sense is thinking more expansively about our work. I don’t think a book just has to be just serif text on a page. If we’re talking about the world, we can do a lot more expansive things. One of my favorite spreads is the one with the tennis court. And to talk about form, I was really trying to think about the poem as a photograph. That’s why a lot of my stuff is also very visual. Thinking about the container that makes the most sense for a poem. For example, I have poems that are very formulaic. I have sonnets in there, right? What does it mean to take the rules and throw them against the wall? What does it mean to play around with how this will be in the world?
WSR: I don’t know if you’re aware, but we’re in a That Bitch-That Nigga surgency. Durand Bernarr sings, “I’m a bad bitch, and I’m that nigga.” And then Tyler, the Creator says, “Give a fuck ‘bout pronouns. I’m that nigga and that bitch.” You have a line of similar sentiment where you wrote, “I am that nigga with no hunger. / I am that bitch who lives past dusk & dirt.” Do you have any thoughts on this contemporary juncture—a sorta Black genderfluid expression?
GOLDEN: I love it. I love it. The more people get away from these binaries of gender, the more expansive we can be. It reminds me of one of my favorite poems of all time called “My Pronouns are Black” by my friend Zenaida Peterson. Very much in that regard that Blackness is so expansive. If we start leading with how diverse Black culture is, we’ll stop being pigeonholed by these white European standards. So I love this era. I love this Renaissance. Well, I guess you could say a Renaissance a little bit. Renaissances usually happen in tough times. We’ve seen in history, right? There’ve always been things to go against. So I love that against the wall of anti-trans laws being passed, I think that’s where the book kind of does its work. There’s all this bullshit going on over here but I’m going to still be that nigga and that bitch over here. You know what I’m saying?
WSR: Absolutely. How are you feeling about the study of trans poetics right now?
GOLDEN: The thing I’ll say is we need more. Especially for Black trans femmes and Black trans folks in general. There’s a lot of poets coming up doing a lot of expansive work right now, but in a studying sense, a close reading sense, I don’t see that many trans folks of color or Black trans folks being studied in the same terms or ways. I would love to see more of us in these syllabi because we’re doing such expansive and great work.
WSR: What’s your writing practice?
GOLDEN: I write whenever my heart feels like it. I’m not a person who needs to write every day, but I feel like taking in the world and art is also part of the writing practice. That’s the best thing you can do.
WSR: What’s next?
GOLDEN: What’s next honestly is the book coming out. Ha! That’s what’s next but I definitely want to do more readings and features now. There’s this commission that’s coming out sometime next year, and I’m working on some residencies and stuff like that. I am working on a third book low key. It’s called Dear Love, so the next one is going to be about potentially love and relationships and different things. My friend Imani—actually the one who edited my book—they were like, “you know, you never write about niggas. You never write about relationships. You never write about love.” Well, maybe down the line. Listen—maybe when I’m thirty, that book will come out.