The morning we speak, Destiny O. Birdsong is wearing a bright yellow headscarf with blue cat-eye glasses that I immediately obsess over. When I compliment them, Destiny returns the favor. 

"I like yours too," she says, with a sweet, quiet smile. She has a soft nature about her, calm like chamomile tea, which puts me at ease, thankfully. I am talking to a powerhouse artist, and I feel, frankly, not worthy. 

Destiny O. Birdsong's work has been featured in The Paris Review Daily, The Best American Poetry anthology, and the Academy of American Poets website, just to name a few. Her work has been supported by Cave Canem, Tin House, MacDowel,l and more. She's a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine and frequently interviews fellow powerhouse writers and artists. Now I’m turning the tables and interviewing her. 

We talked the path into writing, poetry versus fiction, freelancing and balancing art with money-making. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

LB: You are a multi-faceted writer and artist. You write poetry, fiction, and essays; you teach; and you freelance in ways that feed and celebrate the literary world. Tell us about your journey in the world of creative writing.  

DB: My life as a poet began in the seventh grade. I used to come home from school and watch cartoons. One of the cartoons was the "re-cooled" Batman of the 1990s and there was an episode—I don't remember the name of it—but he was on this Dr. Moreau-esque island and there were these half-animal, half-people figures running around. One of them was pretty bad—half-man, half-panther. I didn't know it at the time, but Batman quotes William Blake's "The Tyger." After that episode, I wrote my first poem called "I am the fire." 

That was the first time I wrote something and felt the feeling I often feel when I finish something, which is this weird mix of excitement and exhilaration. Like I'm doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing. That was the genesis of it. 

I wrote poetry in high school, not so much in college, but when I got to grad school at Vanderbilt, the first year of my PhD program was the first year of their MFA program (2006) and I wanted to take a workshop. My graduate advisor at the time gave me the advice she was supposed to give me, which was that it was a terrible idea because I was supposed to be taking survey classes and reading for my comprehensive exams… Anyway, I didn't listen. I took the workshop, and I loved it. 

I eventually asked Mark Jarman if I could join the program. It was a thing that hadn't been done before because the program was so young, so it took a lot of meetings and letters and things like that, but that's how I got my adult re-entry into creative writing. I didn't go to grad school planning to focus on writing. I'd always been told I would be a professor. You know, just go to grad school because that's what you're supposed to do. 

LB: I got told the same things. I didn't take creative writing classes even though that's what I was really interested in. I didn't even put writing on the radar because it wasn't practical. I didn't want to be a professor, I didn't want to go to grad school, I didn't want any of it. What were you studying for your undergrad and graduate degree? 

DB: My undergrad degree was a Bachelor of Arts, double major in English and history. I was originally intending to be a political science major, and I took a class on the Constitution and it was, like, the most boring class I ever had. I was just like… I should stop. I should stop pretending. I can't survive four years of this. So when I transferred to Fisk, I began as an English major. At Fisk, you have to take a set of core classes—English, science, math, history. There was a history course with a professor named Dr. Quirin who taught that you can't really grasp the totality of the history of a place unless you're looking at the art being made while history is being made. So we read novels, and I just fell in love with that. I fell in love with the idea that you can understand people by looking at their art. That's how I became a double major in History. Then I went to graduate school as an English literature grad student and then I took up the MFA. 

There's just something in me that knows who I am and what I do, and that part feels very, very, very uncomfortable when I'm not doing it.

‍LB: How did you come to terms with being a writer? 

DB: I think I'm still coming to terms with it. I just spent two years working as a writer-in-residence and I taught courses as part of that appointment, and there's still part of me that's like, what's wrong with you? Why don't you just get a job as a professor? But there's just something in me that knows who I am and what I do, and that part feels very, very, very uncomfortable when I'm not doing it. If I'm being honest with myself, I've never been great at putting on a good face and pretending to be something I don't want to be. I'm not a great liar, not great at performing. That's how I come to terms with it. 

LB: Do you approach poetry and prose differently? Is the spark of the idea different, or does it feel very similar? 

DB: When I get that inspiration to put something down on the page, I kind of know what shape it's going to take. The shape is in the DNA of the idea. The obvious difference is that with fiction there's a specific story to tell and there's a certain amount of space I need for it, but I'm also a narrative poet. I don't know what prompts me to write a long, narrative poem versus a short story. Sometimes they blur the lines. I love it when poets write fiction because the language is beautiful and the metaphors are rich. I hope that's true for me. 

Regarding nonfiction and fiction, when I want more control over the narrative, non-fiction will be best. If I have a very specific experience with racism or sexual violence, then I want to tell that story. Whereas with fiction, the characters have their own stories and I don't have as much control over that. Those characters will shape the stories they're telling. 

LB: Do you go through seasons where you're more drawn to poetry versus fiction or nonfiction? 

DB: I think so. I'm not the kind of person who has to write creatively every day. For me, there's full and fallow periods where I'm writing a lot and working on a project, and there are periods where I'm not writing very much at all. If there's a writing opportunity, I'll take it. If I come up with an idea, I'll explore it. 

LB: Do you have a favorite poem [that you’ve written]? 

DB: Oof, that's hard. But two do stick out for me. One of them is "love poem that ends at popeyes." That's the poem that people tend to really love. I wrote it in a difficult time. I was very sick, very sad, very lonely, so I decided to write a poem that day. It came out pretty much as it is now, first draft close to last draft. But what I love most about it is that I wrote it at a time when I felt all those things mentioned above, but I also felt useless as a writer. The poem is special to me because it's a reminder that even in my really low moments, I'm capable of producing something beautiful—if I try. It took effort to sit up in bed and write that poem. And I love that it came out so easily because that doesn't always happen. 

The second one is the last poem in my collection, Negotiations—"and though the odds say improbable," which is a line from Stevie Wonder's "Overjoy." It's about watching these beautiful Black ladies having lunch and just having a really good time in each other's company. I love that one because it's rhyming couplets, which is not a thing I do. I said to myself, "I want to write the anti-Cambridge ladies poem," which is an e.e. Cummings poem. So it started off as a sonnet and then became rhyming couplets and took several hours. I was on Facebook at the time and a writer, Ernesto Mercer, had just posted a clip of Esperanza Spalding singing "Overjoyed" and that's how I came to the title. I love those two poems because they were both so serendipitous. One written at a time of heavy grief and one written at a time of really lovely joy. 

LB: How do you balance the space and clarity the poetry and fiction require with the noisiness of freelancing and academia and money-making? 

DB: You have to prioritize, especially if it's a project that's important to you. Through most of last year, I worked on a novel. I did other things while I was doing it, but that was the priority. One of the ways to navigate that (just writing when I'm drafting) is to write for a couple hours a day and then turn to other things. I can't produce new work for eight hours a day. That's not a reality for me. I get a few good hours of writing in and then the quality goes down. So that's one way to do it—set aside time every day to do it and feel like I've made progress. That's the thing that's hard to navigate for me—the feeling that I'm being pulled away from work that I really love and want to do, in order to do other work I love and want to do but that doesn't necessarily belong to me. It's work for someone else, a publication. It's a different kind of work and it matters in a different kind of way. It still matters, but it's not the story I'm burning to tell about these characters, this experience. I think creating partitions of time to work on different things has been helpful for me. And it's nice to have the luxury to say no. I hope to get to that. 

I'm not the kind of person who has to write creatively every day. For me, there's full and fallow periods where I'm writing a lot and working on a project, and there are periods where I'm not writing very much at all.

LB: What advice do you have for writers who are looking to grow their network and move into literary freelancing? How might writers who are outside of academia build their networks? Is it necessary to get the MFA? 

DB: I don't know that you necessarily need a degree to do anything. Some of our favorite writers may have had some degrees but didn't have the MFA. I think you should absolutely get it if you want it, if it will be beneficial to you. Go for it. You should go for the things you want. But just let people know that you're interested and open to doing that kind of work. Like, "Hey, I'm here if someone needs developmental editing or freelance writing." I do think it's okay, in order to get your feet wet, to take a few jobs to get acquainted with a publication or to get your writing out there. There's an argument for investing in yourself that way. It's also just good to read the kinds of things you want to write to get a sense of how they're done across publications. Let people know you're available, read widely, try your hand. 

LB: What are you manifesting right now? What do you wish would fall in your lap? 

DB: Work that pays all my bills. Work that I love to do, that feeds me creatively, but that pays my bills. That's what I'm manifesting right now. 

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