We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Monica Prince a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Monica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on was my forthcoming choreopoem, Roadmap. When I started this choreopoem back in 2015, I was basically transcribing interviews from my ex-boyfriend about his life. But I stopped working on the choreopoem because we lost touch and I wanted to work on other projects.

In the fall of 2017, I joined the faculty at Susquehanna University, and one of my charges was to build community. So, I finished How to Exterminate the Black Woman, a choreopoem focused on a Black woman navigating her own fracture in the United States, which required an all-Black woman cast. I recruited students to rehearse and perform this choreopoem, bringing Black women from all parts of campus together. After its premiere in the spring of 2018, the Black men on campus asked me if I would write a choreopoem for them. At first, I didn’t feel qualified, but I wanted to honor their request.

So from May 2018 until February 2019, I rewrote Roadmap to be performed at Susquehanna in April 2019. I wanted to keep some aspects of the original project–the research, the song, and the narrative format–but I wanted to rework its premise. I took Dorian, a non-character from How to Exterminate the Black Woman, and gave him his own show based on the CDC statistic that the most likely cause of death for Black men aged 15-34 is homicide. Using more research into self-harm in Black communities, pansexuality, and maternal mortality rates, Roadmap came to life as a response to my Black students’ request, but also as a love letter to my little brother. I wanted to demonstrate that his survival is not just cause for celebration, but proof that growing old for Black men is a luxury.

When I submitted this choreopoem to my publisher and he said yes, I knew this was a chance to honor the miracle of my brother’s continued survival on a global platform. And of course, Dorian is a metaphor for my brother, but also a metaphor for my hopes and dreams for the students I teach. I hope we survive each other.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a choreopoet, which means I write choreopoems. A choreopoem is a choreographed series of poems blending poetry, art, dance, music, song, yoga, parkour, Zumba, voice overs, and other forms of performance art all together and put on stage like a play. Coined by Ntozake Shange in 1975 with her original choreopoem, For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, this hybrid form works to combine performance elements with the accessible genre of poetry. I’ve been writing these since college, and I teach choreopoem workshops online and in-person for aspiring performance writers. I offer one-on-one choreopoem workshops as well.

Additionally, I’m a college professor. I teach activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University, and I serve as the director of Africana Studies. I teach choreopoem within my department, but I also teach poetry of all kinds: performance, lyric, magical, erotic.

And finally, I’m the managing editor of Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP), an independent press with global distribution celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. I edit for our online journal, The Project (formerly The Quarterly), and supervise our authors on their path to publication. (We open for submissions in December!)

I’m most proud of my writing, and I’m jazzed to work with other writers on honing their craft as poets and performers. I’m available for writing consultations and other workshop opportunities. My personal philosophy is centered in high heels and hubris, so I use my extremely high self-esteem and extroversion to promote my own work and that of others.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is having people come up to me at conferences, readings, or in random places and telling me they love my work. I was at AWP in Seattle recently, and a first-year MFA student who has been following my work since high school told me she was my biggest fan. I was floored to meet her and listen to how my writing had influenced her journey through poetry and performance. It was truly the best part of my day.

In contrast, I love meeting writers I admire. At the same conference, I ran into Danielle Evans. Tyehimba Jess, Danez Smith, Jericho Brown, Taylor Byas, Aaron Coleman, Patricia Smith, Lynne Johnson, Aurielle Marie, Saida Agostini, Richard Siken, Faylita Hicks, and so many others–and I kept telling them how incredible they are, how honored I feel writing in the same lifetime as them. Being an artist who gets to commune with other artists in public is one of my favorite parts of creating art. When we get together, it’s always magical because we’re not in competition, we’re in community.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Members of my family sometimes struggle to understand what it is I *do*. They want to know why I write poems and books when I could be doing anything else. My sister, thankfully, is a fiction writer, and my brother loves to read, so they get it a little better than my parents and extended family. But I still find myself having to justify and over-explain what I do.

I started writing poems to save my own life. I didn’t understand that therapy or anti-depressants were options for my clinical depression, so I wrote down everything to deal with my intrusive thoughts. Poetry became a mechanism for clarity, as the more I wrote, the better I felt. What folks don’t understand about writing is that it’s not just something you do for class or work. It’s a holy act. You’re creating something new from the past. You’re imagining worlds where safety, freedom, and love are possible and required. You’re protecting versions of yourself from pain or cycles of trauma. When I write a poem, I’m engaging with every poet who is writing now, has ever written, or ever will write. It puts me in a community of vulnerable raw nerves, people with a desire to ease the project of living and decrease the loneliness capitalism and white supremacy thrive upon.

If I stopped writing, I would be lonely. More depressed. Broken. I find no meaning in a world without art–without TV, movies, dance, music, literature. Creativity makes life worth living, makes every day an impressive journey into the unknown, holding hands with other strangers who are desperate to explore, too. Someone has to make the things we love. I don’t see why I can’t be part of that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.monicaprince.com
• Instagram: @poetic_moni
• Facebook: @MonicaPrinceChoreopoet
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monica-prince/
• Twitter: @poetic_moni
• Youtube: @MonicaPrince

Image Credits
Apryl Williams, Jess Ram, Monica Prince, Wesley Barkley, Ann Piper