This Grammy-nominated poet fuses art and advocacy to inspire.
FEMINIST sat down with Aja to learn about her poetry journey and upcoming projects:
Aja Monet @ajamonet
Aja Monet is a surrealist blues poet, community organizer, and teacher. At age 19, she won the title of Grand Slam Champion, at the Nuyorican Poets Café, making her the youngest Grand Slam Champion in the venue’s history. Her Grammy-nominated debut poetry album, when the poems do what they do, centers around themes of Black resistance, love, and the inexhaustible quest for joy. Aja is also the Creative Director at V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against all women, gender expansive people, girls, and the earth.
<— photo: Daniel N Johnson
What does being a feminist mean to you?
I never really described myself as a feminist but when I think of a feminist… it’s a person who’s invested in the full humanity of all people which means providing a more free and possible world for all genders to fully express themselves. Feminism has changed over the years but I definitely think of someone like Angela Davis. I think of a feminism that is abolitionist, decolonial and just committed to a broad, radical expression of love. That's probably the best way I could describe the feminists that I have admired but it's interesting because it's not a title I've worn.
What do you envision a liberated future looking and feeling like?
I don't know if I'm fully sure what it will look like but I think we will know it when we feel it. I think liberation is an embodied practice and an embodied approach toward collective values, rooted in a respect for individuals' rights. But for me, it's not fair to try to throw a universal idea of Liberation because it will demand different things for different communities and different people across the globe. But the foundation of all Liberation movements, in my mind, is solidarity. I look forward to a world where people move from a place of hyper empathy, deep investment in one another's being and expression of our gifts, our soul, our skill sets and that all people have their basic material needs met. And there's some idealism I have – no war, no poverty, no hunger, and where every person is able to exist in the realm of poetry.
As an organizer and poet, your work is rooted in activism, particularly in movements for racial and social justice. And, your dedication to issues like Palestinian liberation is deeply personal. How do you see poetry as a tool for sustaining and fueling long-term movements towards a more just future?
The older I get and the more I reflect on how language is used to describe what we do and how we do it, I start to realize that we often diminish things. We don't use language to expand and broaden the horizon of our understanding but to help us contain and control and easily feel access to it. So, it's a limited entry point into ideas. And for me, I've never called myself an activist. It just never felt accurate. However, it implies a committed concern for not just oneself but the implications of impact around one's decisions to the people around them…
I think that the poem has become a sort of invitation into the wandering of one's interior world, into the depth of the language of emotions, the language of the heart. I've never been like “I'm gonna set out to write a poem that's gonna change the world!”. I think that's too much pressure for one poem. A poem couldn’t possibly live up to such a charge. However, there is a surrealist possibility in art that allows for a deep exchange between spirits, and in that exchange, one can become possessed with the will to change, the will to be, the will to do. I know how the creative process can transform a person in their own lives. But there is no ultimate promise in a poem. If we're present, if we're truthful, if we're authentic to the moment then we may perhaps change our condition here for a better, more just and equitable world.
photo: Fanny Chu
That's making me think of another question which is why poetry for you? What inspired it?
Writing was the first thing anyone ever told me I was good at. I loved language, and I loved the way people in my family used the expression, the way that they embodied words. For better or worse, words could be a weapon or they could be a wand of infinite possibility. I was very aware of the power of words that could be spoken over somebody and completely transform one's reality, and I learned that from my grandmother.
I gravitated towards the church at a young age. I learned the ceremony of scripture. Poems became my scripture. I came to poetry with a sort of reverence for the spirit of words, for the things that words could do, hold, preserve, and inspire. When I started to learn of other poets, I recognized I want to make people feel the way they make me feel. But when I was exposed to performance poetry in high school, it just took it to another level because that's what those people in my family were doing, even though they didn't know that's what they were doing. And so for me, it was a very selfish personal love affair with language and with how people say a thing, how people journey through emotions and ideas and stories and how the mouth becomes this ritual for wandering expression, for possibility for ridding and rinsing of pains and troubles, but then also conjuring and celebrating deep joys.
I had a profound young self-righteous inclination towards right and wrong. I was deeply affected by the decisions in the world that impacted our lives that we couldn't do anything about or that we were told we couldn't because we were children. So for me, the poem was the one place that made me feel a sense of power: it was the stone that I could hurl at Goliath, so to speak. I think words have their limitations for sure, but for me, I've made a life out of poems. I wake up in the morning and I make my meal with poems. I pay my rent with poems. The lights are on because of poems. The clothes on my back because of poems. The life I've made is to be a poet and I don't think I know any other way.
I'm very grateful to be at a point in my life where I could really understand what my elders and the feminists that came before me meant when they spoke about the power of poetry. I think of Ntozake Shange and June Jordan and Audre Lorde, all these other incredible poets. It's something you would do whether it was providing for you or not. It's a way of life. I feel grateful that I found poets in this strange tribe of poetry that were able to articulate the obsession that I had from being a small child into now being an adult and a young woman.
photo: Daniel N Johnson
That’s actually one of the questions that I had for you which is, what would you tell your younger self?
I mean, I would tell her a lot of things, but she wouldn't ever understand it until right now. I would tell her, “be more compassionate with yourself.” You're a walking breathing miracle come alive. Against all odds you will persevere. You're stronger, wiser, lovelier than you know and you are worthy. You are deserving of all-encompassing ecstatic committed furious love.
So, the Grammy nomination is a big deal! Congratulations. What does this kind of recognition mean for artists who are pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo like you?
There's no greater joy for me than to bear witness to the whole way and love and approval of the people I love and the people I've been creating with for many years. It's unfortunate, but these kinds of awards get people to pay attention in ways that all the years of committed consistency, truthfulness, authenticity, showing up, being exemplary, being skilled, struggling through suffering and overcoming don’t. It's like somehow now this sort of public national recognition elevates you. It's not fair, but it doesn't mean that I don't value the acknowledgment.
When I learned about the politics and the orchestrated machine behind some of these awards and acknowledgments, it just made it more clear to me that one's success, one's effectiveness should never be equated to awards by institutions that don't even fully understand what you're doing. I am more excited that as a poet, word musician, and someone who grew up watching the Grammys, I am now able to have a conversation with the music industry that is about valuing the contribution of poetry as a musician. It elevates the conversation. And honestly, so long as people take what I'm doing more seriously, we give thanks, but those awards can never determine the true value.
Amidst her moments of respite, Aja is gearing up for something big—the launch of her latest project, “VOICES: A Sacred Sister Scape" Presented by V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against all women, gender expansive people, girls and the Earth of which Aja serves as it’s Creative Director. Set to premiere at the iconic Apollo Theater on May 31st, this audio play promises to be a celebration of sisterhood and solidarity. Following its debut, the play will be available worldwide on June 11th, allowing audiences everywhere to experience its beauty. But that's not all—Aja's album is already out, and she encourages her supporters to purchase the limited-print vinyl for “When The Poems Do What They Do”. And looking ahead, Aja has even more in store—a new book of poems titled "Florida Water" is set to be released in the fall or early winter, accompanied by a tour. But perhaps most exciting of all, Aja is on the brink of realizing a dream she conceived in Zanzibar—a signature tea blend. This project, a labor of love, is a testament to Aja's ability to infuse every aspect of her life with creativity and purpose.
Where are you finding the most joy right now?
Rest and cooking. Just the flavors when I do justice to the ingredients, and the pleasure I feel just to enjoy a meal I made for myself with love and intention has been really beautiful for me right now. Resting at home has become a cathartic process, like decorating my house and putting things in frames and finding places for memories to sit. It brings me joy to just look around my home and see that I have a home, I have a roof over my head, that I have somewhere to come back to in the corner of this world. Everything in my home loves me back. I really am grateful to have a space where everything from the curtains to the pillows, the order of the books and the hanging plants, I mean everything loves me back, and I'm grateful to have that in my life at this point. I didn't grow up with that, so deep gratitude is bringing me joy.
photo: Daniel N Johnson
