The personal and the political meld together for Aja Monet, whose work as a poet and activist brought her national recognition — and eventually brought her to Florida.
Originally from New York, the surrealist blues poet and musician of Caribbean descent moved to South Florida in 2015 where she worked closely with youth-led social movements, including the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project. She also co-founded Smoke Signals Studio in Miami, an arts collective dedicated to music, art and community organizing.
”It was a beautiful time. I learned a lot and I think it was integral to a lot of my current ideas and perspective on poetry and organizing,” she said.
At 19 years old, Monet became the youngest winner of Nuyorican Poets Café’s Grand Slam. In 2018, she published "My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter," which was nominated for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry. Her work as a jazz poet has even earned her a Grammy nomination and been featured on NPR's Tiny Desk.
Five years of Monet’s life in South Florida culminated in her latest poetry collection, Florida Water, that was released in early June. It touches on experiences of heartbreak, her social activism and her spiritual connection to the land in Florida.
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Inspired by the practice of spiritual cleansing, Monet's writings help confront the challenges she's faced as a social activist and artist in the South. She said that she was particularly fascinated by Florida's history of maroons, or Africans in the Americas who escaped slavery and joined a free settlement.
“Those themes, those stories, those narratives showed up and they became this recurring imagery and perspective. I think living in South Florida shaped so much of how I saw the rest of the country," she said.
WLRN’s Alyssa Ramos spoke to the surrealist blues poet about her time in South Florida, the power of Florida’s natural wonders and art-inspired activism. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: Your latest collection of poetry is called Florida Water, inspired by the cleansing water often used in spiritual baths. When did you know you wanted to write about Florida specifically?
MONET: I don't think I went into it being like, 'I'm gonna write about Florida,' but I think Florida was writing about me. It attracted me and brought me there. I had a reason to return. I had a reason to be there. There are people who escaped to Florida. And the story of that in the history of maroons, and escaped Africans who moved down to the South seeking freedom and community and belonging. I think that those themes, those stories, those narratives showed up and they became this recurring imagery and perspective.
So there's a lot to be said for what Florida represents in my personal relationship to the land and to living there. But then there's also this historical context that's conjured when you are living there and when you learn about our history as Black people in this country. I think it's a place that everybody should learn more about.
Do you feel that Florida draws out a certain kind of spirituality in you?
I've witnessed and bear witness to God on many occasions in Florida, especially when it comes to one's surrendering to the will of the weather. Your spiritual relationship is forged, I think through that connection to the land and through bearing witness to the power of other forces that are greater than you. And so you just have to pray that it doesn't ransack your home and your community, you know? There are things you must do to prepare, and it builds a certain kind of resilience. It builds a certain kind of spirit, a certain kind of person who knows, like I said in the book, knows how to read the weather.
"Florida has a bad rap, but there are people who make up Florida that are completely pushing this country forward. They know a lot more about the country than the rest of the country."Aja Monet
There's a lot of ambivalence when it comes to Florida. People either love it or hate it, but I felt that through your poetry, you captured both the beauty and the tension of South Florida. I'm curious how your perception especially of South Florida, evolved through writing this collection?
Florida has a bad rap of being this very conservative, right-wing, racist haven and it's not fully wrong … that narrative is there, but there are people who make up Florida that are completely pushing this country forward. If you actually really spend time in Florida and confront the realities and the experiences of what Floridians are going through and what they know to be true in their intimate lives — they know a lot more about the country than the rest of the country.
At one point in your Florida journey, you were heavily involved in social activism. Some of your poems reflect your involvement in the youth led social justice organization, Dream Defenders. How did that experience impact not only your writing, but how you view social movements?
It was no longer just rhetoric, you know? It wasn't just the poems talking about the issue. It was living and becoming the poem in real everyday life. Something I talk about in the “Initiation," which is sort of the intro of the book, I literally say:
How writing a poem became a form of organizing or how organizing is a poeticform. How the page failed me. the courage and compass created in the process of struggle. The growth. To be transformed. poetry is the wading through or with, diving further. in depths. The why. The door to door blues of organizing in south florida. The paintbrush of canvassing in neighborhoods. The heart as puddle. To be shapeless as the swamp. We give thanks to the water spirits.
To me that's the best way I can encapsulate what it was like to organize, because I think I started to question and interrogate, well, what is the effectiveness of what we want to do? How do words liberate and how do they give? How does language help us arrange the world? How do we start to be more intentional with our language toward each other and leave room for us to deal with the contradictions we all have?
You also have a poem about “smoke signals”, which also was the name of the recording studio you had started here a while back. Can you tell me about that project and how that helped you cultivate community within the arts?
Smoke signals came out of this vision of what we could do with extra space in our home. 'cause I had never — moving from New York, I didn't have that much space. We wanted to have a music studio. We wanted to do jam sessions, we wanted to do workshops. And so a lot of that came to be and came into fruition. And it really helped to sustain the community in a very tangible way. People returned to the organizations intentionally, people were more engaged. People showed up to action. People were actually loving on each other, taking care of each other, and we saw sort of the intimacy of movement be rekindled — that it wasn't just about us fighting something larger outside of us, but what we were trying to create together.How we could practice freedom on the day to day with each other.
I think it was sort of a beacon to the rest of the country. And in many ways at that time we didn't see a lot of organizations that existed in the same degree or institutional cultural spaces that were really highlighting the role that art played in, in our organizing movements. We felt like we were breaking ground.
What do you hope will change or stay the same about the arts community in South Florida since you've returned for a little bit?
I feel like a lot of people in Florida that I know that I was working or organizing with have expressed a deep sadness of the state of things, at least in South Florida. There is, I think, a disconnect between what we were doing and creating and what currently exists. I think people have felt very siloed and isolated from each other, and that there hasn't been anything created sort of, in the emptiness or vacuum of what Smoke Signals was — at least for our community members. But I think that I believe in the power of the people. I believe in the vision and the fortitude of people that have the courage to create the things they don't see and want to see.
There's great art being made. They're great artists that are creating in Florida. I look forward to those artists coming together and organizing together to do and demand what they want to see out of the state of Florida and the country.
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