Interview with Jason B. Crawford, Author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz
jason b. crawford (They/Them) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI.
Their debut full length Year of the Unicorn Kidz will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications.
jason b. crawford’s debut full-length poetry book, Year of the Unicorn Kidz, is out from Sundress Publications. They sat down to answer questions about the intersections of identity, gender, and sexuality, vulnerability in poetry, and the therapeutic value of dance.
Jacquelyn Scott: Congratulations on your recent release, Year of the Unicorn Kidz! What inspired these poems?
jason b. crawford: First off, thank you so much! This book was a dream come true. When I started this collection, my friend, Sam Herschel-Wein and I were talking about cruising poems; I had written one that was published in 45th Parallel. A lot of the work I had been writing up until that point centered around finding the joy in Blackness, I truly had moved away from fully writing about my queerness.
I wanted to write a collection that expressed the dangers of being queer even during acts of lust. I started to use the vehicle of cruising as a jumping off point into the dangers of being queer. After that, I wrote the very long poem, Debt, which is a reimagining of childhood. I had to ask the question, “What would it look like if I came out or even understood my queerness at a younger age?” This poem, although coming very late in the stages of editing, made a drastic pivot to the language and the meanings of the other poems.
Scott: What were some pleasures and challenges you experienced when creating work that juxtaposes love and violence, desire and despair?
crawford: One of the hardest parts of writing these poems was dealing with the truthfulness in the language.
The truth is, as queer people, we are often the subject of violence based on who we love and how we identify. This doubles down for Trans folx. We talk about acceptance all the time yet very frequently do not get to experience it. There are laws being drafted around our country as we speak to actively push against my Black, queer, Trans body. Colorado Springs happened in 2022, not 1965. We love, and that love causes violence. We desire and that is also the direct link to our despair.
Scott: Why was exploring those dualities important to you?
crawford: I think at first, I just wanted to write poems about sex. Growing up, sex was both very open and taboo. My family wasn’t very closed off talking about sex, however, because I was unaware of where I fit within the sexuality spectrum, I didn’t want to bring it up. This made writing about sex very difficult for me.
When I started to approach a full length, my sexual experience was important. When I started to write the poems, the duality started to show through. Every poem that I drafted started to end in my own death. I could see myself dying at every hookup, every cruising spot. That is where the duality started to play the biggest part for me.
It wasn’t just about sex, it was about how queer bodies are subjugated to violent acts when they just are looking to be alive.
Scott: These poems explore the intersections of identity, gender, and sexuality. What was navigating that space through your work like?
crawford: Part of this was very difficult for me. I came out at the age of 23, and I didn’t feel connected to my queerness until at least 5 years later. These poems were another process of navigation. I have never really been outwardly expressive of my fears toward my own queerness. The other part allowed me to confront and accept my desire.
A huge part of my younger life was shrouded in shame for sexual acts, mostly by my own doing. I never talked about sex or who I was having sex with or what I wanted to do sexually. Even in my fraternity when the other guys (straight or queer) would talk about their conquests of the weekend, I would tell them we had other business to attend to.
This allowed me to say on paper that I had participated in sex, I was afraid of dying during sex, and my body can be a vulnerable place. I needed that.
Scott: How did you decide to order the poems in this collection?
crawford: I do it the old-fashioned way: print them out and lay them on the floor. Truthfully, I choose the order that tells the story the best in my opinion. I always start with a vision of what story I am trying to tell and I build the order from there. Sometimes there are detours to the story I thought I was telling, and sometimes we tell a completely different story but the layout helps.
Scott: Why is vulnerability important in writing poetry?
crawford: For me, poetry is not just an act of telling a story or even my story. It is a way to connect and heal. My worst poems were the ones that started with a wall up I refused to budge from. I would always write around the problem and never try to say what I needed to say.
Writing from a space of vulnerability, even if it’s just a little, evokes a sense of relatability. I do not write poems for journals, I write them for my people, my friends, my family. I want that space in the poems to be for them, to open up for them.
Scott: You once said in an interview that "Sometimes dance is the only form of salvation, the nightclub our only place to pray." Why do you think dancing and movement have such therapeutic value, and how do you translate that value into poetry?
crawford: Have you ever danced on a Friday night in a gay club surrounded by other queer people while swaying to an EDM Robyn mix? Dancing is about emotion and feeling. In the moment, when I am dancing alone, soaking in the music, I am the safest I will ever be and the happiest. The same goes for dancing with a partner, where the room doesn’t exist. The same goes for dancing at a cookout with the peoples and the grill is hot and the Cupid Shuffle comes on and you are engulfed by people that have been doing these moves since before they met the mainstream. Dance is everlasting.
When I write it in poetry, I try to not just focus on the names of the steps. I want to live in the dance. Think about the movements of the body, the sounds it has to make, the impossibilities of a body as it moves. There becomes something impossible about dance that translates into the impossibilities of being alive.
Scott: How do you like readers to connect with you?
crawford: When out and about, if you see me, just say, “Hi!” I am actually kind of friendly. But truly, my website if they have inquiries, www.jasonbcrawford.com or my Twitter/Instagram @jasonbcrawford.
Scott: What are you currently reading or working on?
crawford: My current project is my thesis at The New School. I am working on a set of poems around Black exploration, Afro-futurism, and migration. The idea behind the new work is to ask the question what if Black people all left the Earth in search of a space where they are just safe. The series of poems explore the galaxy and all of its vast possibility, truly leaving behind global warming, whiteness, and oppression. Almost every poem in this new collection is set around a thousand years in the future after we had already found a home away from oppression.
Scott: What is the best piece of writing advice you've received?
crawford: The best piece of writing advice I've ever gotten is that you do not have to write every day, you do not have to think or act as other Writers do, you do not have to be a bestseller off your first book, you do not need to worry about who is winning what awards, you do not have to wonder if your work is holding up to other poets, you do not have to worry about how much time is lost in trying to get to the next award all you have to do is write and right from your heart. When it is your time it will be your time and we cannot Rush that process.
So honestly just write and hope the words you put on paper touch the world.
From Sundress Publications:
Year of the Unicorn Kidz by jason b. crawford
Jason B. Crawford’s Year of the Unicorn Kidz beautifully explores existence on the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. Their profound navigation of identity, violence, and desire transcends boundaries and binaries. Vulnerability takes the centre stage as the speaker of these descriptive and passionate poems unburies old relationships and haunting memories. Year of the Unicorn Kidz reads like a coming-of-age story for marginalized youth in
America, sketching the body in terms of disconnection, loss, and the explosive nature of desire. From burning rage to healing friendships to the thrill of forbidden encounters and the regrets that follow them, Crawford revisits the reckless elements of youth that capture the inner and outer conflicts of self-discovery. They bring incredible depth to their poetry with urgent and vivid storytelling that delicately reveals the complexity of reality, while also leaving room for readers to reflect on their own.
Get your copy from Sundress Publications.
Do you have suggestions on who I should interview next, or would you like to be featured? Send me a message or find me on social media.
