CJ Suitt didn’t realize his poetry was political. For him, he was just speaking from the perspective of an young African-American male. After realizing the power of his poetry, he helped found the Sacrificial Poets Project in Chapel Hill, NC and now tutors and empowers high school poets across the country. CJ sat down with Glass Reflex after performing his poem ‘Fireworks’ for this week’s City Session.
Glass Reflex: How did you get into poetry? I know you have a brother who was getting into the church about the same time you got into poetry. Is there a link?
CJ Suitt: Poetry means a lot of things for me. I drew up in a southern pentecostal church, meaning every Sunday, every Wednesday, I was seeing some preacher in the pulpit, take some 2,000 year-old story, wrap it up in a metaphor, and give it back to the people in a way they could apply to their daily lives. That’s what poetry is for me. It wasn’t always that. My brother used to write formal poetry, these amazing short love poems. It wasn’t until high school that I started writing my own poems, writing rhymes for a while and love songs to my crushes in middle school. At a black history month program in high school, my teacher had me read one of my poems. I did my poem, and it felt like the whole school stood up — it was probably really only like two or three people, but it felt like the whole school was like “AHHHHHHH!” I kind of stayed with it, got a chance to travel, and went to a couple of music festivals. I did Bonnaroo doing poetry. It changed my whole perspective on what poetry could be and connected this bridge between traditional poetry and the church I grew up in, seeing those two things as one and the same.
GR: You’re also involved with the local poetry community in Chapel Hill, like Sacrificial Poets, which I see as being tied to social justice and activism, specifically here. What do you think about the balance between talking about things through poetry and action?
CJ: It’s never enough just to talk about things. We talk about personal shit, not acknowledging there are political implications for the brands we wear, the shoes on our feet, for the everyday things. When we choose to eat a certain cereal, or buy a certain brand, those personal decisions we make are political. For me, that’s always been a simple thing. I’ve never had to compromise. Also, because of my identity as a black-brown male in this world, people don’t give me many chances in the first place, so I’m forced to deal with the world in a very real way that in some ways, my maleness allows me to ignore, but I think being black and male, all bets are off. You never know how people are gonna treat you. As a poet, I was empowered to just speak to how I was treated. I didn’t even realize it was political at first. Then I did a poem about Chapel Hill and I started getting invited to all sorts of rallies and protest, and I said, “Oh, shit, this is...this is political, too, I guess.” I think the balance is, to get back to your question, is in recognizing how in your own life you may be adding to the patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist culture that is so deprecating to anyone who is marginalized in society.
GR: What kinds of roles do you hold in the poetry community in Chapel Hill?
CJ: I’m the youth outreach director, former executive director and co-founder. Right now, I organize all Sac Po’s young people. We’re working through programs with 10,000 youth annually, but over the course of the school year we work with about 100 directly. I facilitate slams, I visit their poetry clubs, and do workshops with them. I’m up all times of night talking to kids about poems. I’m Skyping to see people performing poems. That’s my job. That’s what I’m doing if I’m not writing or performing.
GR: Do you perform shows yourself?
CJ: I’ve been in the classroom a lot, but I’m always open to having people contact me to perform or do a workshop. There’s gas in the tank, get me there, we’re good. Ain’t no thang.
GR: What was the inspiration for the ‘Fireworks’ poem?
CJ: I went to see the July 4 fireworks at Kenan Stadium, but we were late. The fireworks had started going off when we were about halfway there, so we were running. It was hot. It was like North Carolina summer. We sweating, and we get there, and the whole stadium is packed. We’re corralled into the entrances, and we can barely see. The fireworks are going off, I’m watching, and I’m feeling kind of uncomfortable. I see a friend of mine from high school who I knew had gone into the military — I can’t recall his name — he was leaving. He was headed out. I saw a couple other faces who looked like they weren’t enjoying it. I had this realization that this must be tough for someone who had gone to sleep with real explosions, with real bombs going off in a way less pretty fashion than what’s happening here. In the middle of it all, I had to go. I was there with other people, but I had to be up out of there. So I left and wrote this poem, most of it.
