Author Q&A

Author Q&A: Thomas Sayers Ellis

By Jennifer Pullinger, WIW Member

The business of poetry, some may say, is more challenging than that of any other form of writing. When WIW spoke with Washington, D.C., born and raised, poet Thomas Sayers Ellis to get some answers about how to become a successful poet, his responses raised more questions than they answered.

Ellis, who recently published his first collection of poetry called The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press), describes growing up in the District as being an instrumental influence on his writing: It is here that he learned to appreciate "discipline and form" and "balance and the line" just through his everyday activities as a youngster.

The 70s go-go music scene, which was developed in the district and led by funk sub-genre pioneer Chuck Brown , also had an impact on his writing style. Though Ellis, an Associate Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University and co-founder of the Dark Room Collective , a community of African American writers based in Cambridge, Mass., said he doesn't want to be fenced in by one particular form of writing: " I write writing," he says very clearly. Chapters of The Maverick Room are divided like the quadrants of the district ¾ N.W., N.E., S.W. and S.E., including a middle chapter called "The Maverick Room," which is named after one of the go-go clubs Ellis would visit growing up.  

Ellis is also a 2005 winner of the Whiting Writers' Award given by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.

Here, Ellis' elusive, unconventional, slightly whimsical answers align with his approach to writing poetry, which is no doubt what makes him successful.

How did growing up in the District influence your voice as a poet?

Let's be specific: I grew up on 7th (See Jean Toomer's Cane) and O Streets N.W. I attended First Rising Mt. Zion Baptist Church, played in and on the tanks, airplanes, rockets and hillside sliding boards of the original J.F. Kennedy Adventure Playground. This is the period of the struggle for Home Rule. I studied Tae Kwon Do, Korean style Karate at The Cobra Do-Jang School of Karate at the Benjamin Banneker Recreation Center on Georgia Avenue. This is where I learned discipline and form, where I believe my interest in balance and the line (as a unit of sound and a unit of meaning) was reinforced. I rode the #70 bus every other day, often sneaking on the back door... just to be unknown cargo. There was the Bicentennial; and in my memory the entire city except the black community (thank God) was made to resemble a red, white and blue birthday cake. The nickname "Sayers" stuck, as did "Sticks." I heard Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers for the first time on a snowy night before they left D.C. to tour for Bustin' Loose. Their pocket, the one between Gregory "Bright Moments" Curran (congas) and Ricky Wellman (drums), was like an honest grammar, the perfect link between idea and noise, like a public school without walls. Ever since, I have tried to make my prose and prosody as percussive and continuous as the Dee Cee pocket.

How would you describe your style of writing?

I try to move, in my work, like the body, not like writing—with more feeling than thinking. That natural. I'm into de-decorating intelligence and interrupting form and control. I want the stanzas in a poem to have a sense of their making and a sense of each other, to be multi-conversational and multi-directional, whole, an enemy of all things flat, fixed and finished. I'm a gatherer, a mini-March on Washington, the C-natural debris beneath the bridge. All one, all one, all one and you can find me. I stay next door.

What does it mean to you to win the Whiting Writers' Award?

The external thing it meant was surprise—the internal thing it meant was breathing room, a witnessed recognition. Even, if you will, an acknowledgement of my purpose.

And of all the noises, past and present, that came together to make The Maverick Room. It is, also, a major green light to pursue—without hesitation—more unknown and embarrassing work. I plan to be courageous, to be difficult, to be tough, in search of the art after art.

How do you inspire yourself on a daily basis? In other words, what are your sources of creativity?

I long ago destroyed the false boundaries between what I do and what I write. I am close to instrument; I am being played—the writing is writing me. I surrender, as I am, as word. My sources of creativity? Imagine a breathing rectangle: in one corner sameness, in the other, difference and in the other TSE [Thomas Sayers Ellis].

What is it that draws you to poetry as opposed to other forms of writing?

There is only one form of writing and that is writing... everything else is tool and disguise. I write writing. Poems do not own simile, lyricism, imagery or metaphor.

Poem, though, seems to be the most comfortable, written representation of poetry. I guess you can say that I like failure, the attempt and try. Again, perhaps, it is drawn to me, and draws me. I do, some days feel drawn—penciled—like a line. Every breath, a break.

To be successful, do you recommend aspiring poets take a class or work with their natural abilities, or both?

I advise class but not rooms, study but not dogma and a whole heap of listening. I advise openness, hunger, greed, ego, manipulation and theft. I advise song, honesty—writing that gives itself, its central energy away. All study is helpful; the integration of disciplines, ideas, forms, more difficult. Much more than both are necessary. I advise never being done. All young poets should study walking.

What do you owe your success to?

To pronouns,
To my mother,
To my literary ancestry,
To right now,
And repetition.
And to folk ways.
To used bookstores,
and to escape routes

What are your thoughts on how to market yourself as a poet to publishers?

This equation is unknown to me. Being black I am naturally cognizant of what of me sells, is for sell and can sold—in art and life. Thus, the marketing for this poet is built-in, way in, beneath the aesthetic. It often is the aesthetic, like a hook. Poets, be topical, explore many styles and live today.

From a newly published poet's perspective, how important is it to understanding the entire publishing process, from query letters and editing, publicity and marketing, to the day the book is released and beyond? Have you been actively involved through every step or do you believe your work will naturally find its audience?

I believe this process to be a mutual and gradual one. My aesthetic/practice/style has developed over time as a result of both being left alone and by opening to community. The audience, the first one, is inside, so one must live in such a way that one's senses are connected to one's contemporary moment. Then the struggle for style and what to write about will, seemingly, come naturally—like breathing. You can build certain types of listeners into the work by responding to or creating responses to specific themes, energies, etc. The good handshake, the one you can trust, happens simultaneously.

How do you work with editors? Did they leave your writing alone for the most part?

At Graywolf Press, the editors left me alone and let me be me, this me, the current TSE. They accepted the odd, always in motion shape of The Maverick Room and I am grateful for that.   I had a vision for the book and they let me pursue it. The noises, even fixed to the page, are as they birthed me.

What are your future projects?

To free (at last) all black text.