In celebration of our newest publication, Girls Write Now On the Art of the Craft: A Guidebook to Collaborative Storytelling, we’re featuring conversations from the book on mentorship, Girls Write Now history, and the power of storytelling to traverse generations.
The following is a conversation between Publishing 360 mentee Asma Al-Masyabi and mentee alumni Brittany Barker. Read Brittany’s poem “Empire State” and read Asma’s illustrated response, “Colorado” in Art of the Craft, out on April 2nd.
ASMA AL-MASYABI: I really love your poetry. Can you tell me a little about yourself, how you came upon Girls Write Now, and what you do now?
BRITTANY BARKER: Thank you for choosing my poem. I wrote this in 2010, when I was a junior in high school and just getting my feet wet with poetry. It feels like a full circle moment to see this poem again when I haven’t seen it in such a long time.
I stumbled upon Girls Write Now in around 2009 or 2010. My guidance counselor knew I was interested in poetry and writing and she was like, you should try out this program. I did the application process, and I started the following school year. It’s been a beautiful experience. My time with Girls Write Now has really influenced who I am today.
Writing is very much a part of my life. Right now, I’m an Educational Consultant and a Creative Director for a company called Creative Soul House. I develop workshop experiences and programs for youth and adults and it merges the creative arts, social-emotional learning, and social justice. The creative element that I really got to explore in Girls Write Now is what lives inside of the way I teach and the way I show up for my own company. I just signed up for a poetry competition called the Women of the World Poetry Slam, and I’m getting back into a season where I want to make writing a primary thing in my life. That’s where I currently am.
AAM: For me, Girls Write Now has really helped me bring writing to the forefront of my life. Before, I would do it on the side and mostly focus on school. But the program has really helped me to improve and focus on my writing.
You said you wrote your poem ten years ago. What did it feel like to re-read it after all this time? Did it remind you of some things you felt before?
BB: Yeah. It reminded me of the kind of writer I was at the time. It reminded me of my curiosity for my city. And it reminded me of those nights with my mentor, Joslyn, revising and then feeling the pressure of deadlines for the anthologies and so on.
I still believe that New York holds a lot of stories, some that are hidden and muted, some that have gotten to see the light of day. I still believe that there are a lot of places to play— to be yourself, to explore. And I still believe that to an outsider New York must look like this crazy confusing place. But once you find your spot in it, it’s home.
AAM: That’s a beautiful way of putting it. While I was reading the poem, I found it interesting that you talked about New York from an insider’s perspective and that you also tried to look at it from an outsider’s perspective. That was really neat, and something I really struggled with when writing my response. I had to walk around town and try to focus on what makes this place special to me. What might other people who visit pay attention to, that, for me, has kind of faded into the background?
BB: Right. Sometimes we can take where we’re from for granted and it isn’t until you go to a new place that you notice all the intricate small things. But then when you go home, it’s like, that’s just a building. That’s just the sky.
I thought in your poem that you did that so beautifully. You talked about the hillsides and the rooftops and the sky with the cornfields and the snow. It made me curious about Colorado and it gave me an interesting visual for what it would look like. I’ve also been to Colorado, but I’ve never seen all those places that you described. You did a great job.
AAM: Thank you. For my poem, I tried to focus on the things I notice every day. You go out, you go to the grocery store, and in front of you, you see the mountains.
BBM: That’s beautiful.
AAM: And there’s Denver. I know, compared to New York, it’s tiny.
BB: Do you live in Denver?
AAM: I live in Aurora, but I drive to Denver for college, and while you’re driving you can see the skyline. It’s pretty tiny, especially against the background of the mountains. I found it fun to play with perspective like that. Has your writing process changed since you wrote this poem?
BB: The writing process, yes. Most definitely. I would say back then I had a hard time letting go of lines. Sometimes I would think, this is a really good line, I want to keep it, I like the way it sounds. And my mentor would ask me, but what purpose does it serve? Does it just sound nice or is it helping the reader see what you see?
A lot of the time it was her trying to build that muscle memory in me. Now I would say it’s definitely second nature to say very concisely what needs to be said. Of course, allow yourself time to move through the beauty— as you do wonderfully in your piece— but don’t waste your words. Use each word wisely and if it’s not needed, don’t waste the reader’s time. Sometimes less is more.
AAM: If you were to re-write this poem today, would you do anything differently?
BB: I would do a whole lot! I would definitely be more specific with the story. In the forest stanza, I talk about voices melted into the ground with choirs of mute prayers laid across city streets. I’m like, okay, that gives an image, but also, me now is like, what does that even mean? You can say that in so many ways. You can give some dialogue in this piece. You can say more about the city streets— what does a mute prayer look like across a city street? Does it tell the story of poverty? Does it tell the story of kids on the corner waiting to get a bacon egg and cheese from the store? What does it really look like? I would definitely show more, rather than tell.
AAM: They say a poem is never done. Looking back at my old poems, it’s always hard not to want to change something about them.
BB: And a big question is, how do you know when your poem is done? That’s my question for you. How did you know when “Colorado” was done?
AAM: Well, illustrating a poem is a bit different, because once you put the illustrations in you can’t go in and change it. I had to think pretty hard on whether or not the text was where I wanted it to be. Since there’s images involved, I tried to balance the words and the visuals. Sometimes the visuals support the words. For the text, I wrote it first and then I drew inspiration from your poem and what you focused on— the city streets, how she looks from the outside, barbed wire fence for teeth.
In mine, I said, “purple-jab compass felt into the horizon,” so I focused on trying to mirror the elements of your poem. Then, once I was happy with where that was going, I had to then figure out if it sounded right. It took a few drafts. Then I tried to figure out how I wanted to portray it on the paper. Some of the images came to me more easily than the others. And you might notice that with the lines, one is zoomed in and the other is zoomed out, like looking it from the inside versus the outside.
BB: Yes! That’s creative. And you know something that you also did really well? You didn’t use people to describe Colorado. You just used descriptions of the geography of Colorado to bring it to life. I really appreciated that. Even the last line, which reads “an asphalt laid….” You could have said people finding their way home, or leading to people’s homes, but you said the streets and personified it. The streets are finding their way home. I thought that was just such a beautiful way to capture how alive Colorado is.
AAM: Thank you! That’s actually something I take inspiration from you on. You described New York as a person. Like, you talked about her, and how the skyscrapers have personalities or how playful Riverbank State Park is. Although I didn’t do that as directly, I still tried to have Colorado be the character.
BB: You did that very clearly.
AAM: Thank you. I know you’re an educator. Could you tell me about why you chose that as a career path?
BB: Yeah. I’ll start with a funny story. I think I was trying to be educated before I even knew I wanted to be an educator. Initially I thought I was going to be a neurologist and I had a very misinformed understanding of what neurology was. I was like, I like the way the brain works. Yeah, neurology. And then my counselor in high school told me I would have to take biology and I was like, yeah, no.
But the funny story is that when I was in third grade, I had a crush on this boy. We’ll call him J. J and I used to make up these exams. I would print these tests and bring them to him at school. I was really excited and I was all for it, and one day he was like, why do you keep giving me all these tests? That experience is something I keep in mind. Because I didn’t become an educator to test people. But there was just something bubbling there since I was very, very young.
I also really appreciated the spaces that a few of my teachers carved out for me. I went to an Early College school where professors come in and teach us things, and one of the courses was a Caribbean Literature course. And I had never seen myself in the classroom. I was learning about history, I was reading texts from authors who didn’t look like me. And it wasn’t until them that I noticed that my experience is worthy of study.
There are places and opportunities for you to feel affirmed in the classroom. Seeing that was sort of the heart of it. I wanted to replicate that experience for other people, because it was so integral to who I am and the way that I walk into a room, the way that I speak about myself, the way that I take care of my community. It’s all because there were teachers who let me know that the experiences of people who look like me are worthy of study and a vital source of knowledge to help you move throughout this life.
I want to do that for other people and I want to make it fun. I want to be creative with is and I want people to know that learning and study don’t have to be this boring, monotonous thing. You can learn through poetry, you can learn through exploring your emotions. That’s the foundation of me wanting to be an educator.
AAM: That’s such a beautiful reason. How does writing factor into your job as an educator?
BB: That’s a great question. As I’ve grown and entered into my career, I’ve learned that everything is writing. Marketing, ads, billboards. Little old me in high school thought writing was just books and poetry, but it can live in so many places. Writing is alive in the curriculum I develop. I used to be an English teacher, so that’s how I got started. I was writing about writing, about teaching, about language. That’s how writing has lived.
I’ve done some playwriting classes. I’ve submitted a film to a film festival called Pursuit. And even though the words weren’t on the screen, I was like, that’s writing. You wrote that. Just consulting for companies and organizations, drafting a lesson plan, putting things together. Writing takes on so many different forms. Journaling. That’s the flexibility of the craft. That’s how it lives. I’m becoming more and more interested the many different ways that I continue to try the skill in a new avenue or through a different lens.
AAM: Writing is applicable in so many different ways. What do you think draws you to poetry?
BB: I think I’m an introvert and that poetry is my honest space. It’s a time for me to process and to imagine and be messy. I don’t like to be messy in front of people. I like to be controlled and have my things together, but poetry is a space where I can come as myself. It exists between me and the page. I love it because I get the space to process, but I also get to imagine. I get to be the mess that I am in my head.
AAM: This is something I’ve had to do a lot. In creative writing classes they always ask, why poetry? I think what I like about it is what you were talking about, the cutting away. I feel like it’s language with everything extra cutaway, and you can really get to the heart of what you’re trying to explain. It’s that one-on-one connection with you and a poem where you’re not trying to hide anything.
BB: I love that. The power of poetry is that you can start it in one place, and then in three minutes— if we’re talking about performance— you can take your listener somewhere else. Poetry gets you right at the heart of the thing to make you feel. it can make you change the way you think. The shifting is really beautiful.