Honoring Juneteenth

In honor of Juneteenth 2024, Padma Venkatraman interviews Zetta Elliott about her poem, Juneteenth 2022, which appears in her latest collection Perennial, and is reproduced with her permission below.

Juneteenth 2022

before we lose the light

and the planets spin out of alignment

mark this moment with remembered rituals

pay tribute to the truth but

place nothing false upon your altar

spurn the paid prophets

honor the example of our elders

who let the circle be unbroken

preserving practices for generations

that never knew the sort of sacrifice

our ancestors made for us to be free

Padma Venkatraman: Why did you choose to include the year 2022 in the poem’s title, given that the lines don’t seem limited to that year - or am I missing something ?

ZETTA ELLIOTT: After I published Perennial, I realized that I had given two of my poems the same title! The first "Expectations" appears in American Phoenix and that's also where I intended to publish my 2020 poem "Juneteenth." At the last minute, however, I pulled the poem from the collection and shared it with my agent who submitted it to Alvina Ling at Little, Brown. "Juneteenth" the poem became the picture book A Song for Juneteenth, which unfortunately had to be canceled pre-publication after the illustrator was charged with a crime. We've just signed a new illustrator, the brilliant Noa Denmon who won the Caldecott Honor Award for another poem of mine, A Place Inside of Me; our Juneteenth picture book will be ready in 2026. So adding the year to the title is my way of distinguishing the two poems. The first is a love letter to Black children; "Juneteenth 2022" is my way of cautioning readers against the commercialization of African American traditions that, until recently, were not recognized by the mainstream.

Padma Venkatraman: If a teacher were to use it in a classroom, how would you want to see it taught?

ZETTA ELLIOTT: I trust teachers to select and share poems that speak to their students. I think young people today have a lot to say about cultural appropriation and so that would be one entry point. I took a class last spring with Dr. Paulette Richards and she explained how anthropologist/author Zora Neale Hurston toured the South documenting African American rituals before adapting them for the stage. One challenge Hurston faced was admitting an audience to a ritual that traditionally was performed in a closed circle. That stayed with me and much as I admire Zora Neale Hurston, I almost wished she had given up because once the circle is broken and outsiders are given access to the ritual, it changes forever. The creators lose control and the audience is trained to feel (even more) entitled--as if they deserve access to things that are sacred and private. Juneteenth is a complicated holiday because it stems from injustice: White enslavers in Texas disregarded President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation for years so they could continue to exploit Black laborers. African Americans turned that experience into a way to celebrate freedom, family, and community but now Juneteenth, as a federally recognized holiday, has become another way for corporations to make money without actually investing in our communities. Black cultural forms are continuously "borrowed," distorted, exported, and the original creators rarely receive credit and/or compensation for their creative labor. If I were teaching this poem, I might put students into groups and ask them to make a list of pros and cons--what's gained and what's lost when something that had limited visibility "blows up?" Does greater exposure lead to collective progress or profit for a select few? Do "ethnic holidays" truly promote understanding and appreciation of difference? Students could independently select a holiday that matters to them and write a poem to contrast public perception and their personal experience of the occasion.

Padma Venkatraman: Finally, could you share your thoughts on the challenges of shifting to an adult audience and choosing to self-publish this collection rather than going with a traditional press? 

ZETTA ELLIOTT: My first collection of poetry, Say Her Name (LBYR), came out at the start of 2020 and I wasn't sure at that time if I was going to continue to write poems for young readers. Yet when the pandemic shut things down a few months later, I began getting lots of requests from teen services librarians for online poetry workshops. I've been an educator for over thirty years and so I feel like I wear multiple hats when I'm writing; I'm always thinking about how a text could be used in the classroom. When I share American Phoenix or Perennial with teachers, I make sure to tell them that they were written for an adult audience but that some poems are suitable for teen readers. Nadine Pinede, a fellow Diverse Verse member, is editing an important anthology that will come out from Chronicle in 2025--The Earth Is a Living Thing: Black Poets Celebrate Nature and Belonging. I initially submitted several nature-themed poems from Perennial but an older poem caught Nadine's eye. I'm thrilled that "Black Coral" will be included, and I'm grateful that Nadine was willing to consider a poem from American Phoenix, which is self-published. These days I don't write poetry with a teen audience in mind, but I'm aware of particular poems that might work in a high school classroom and hope poetry-loving teachers will be open-minded about how/where they source texts to teach. Next month I'll be heading to Alaska for the first time and can't wait to meet with a small class in a juvenile detention facility. The four teenage girls have already been given my writing workbook, Find Your Voice: A Guide to Self-Expression, and I'll be taking all my poetry books to donate to the facility's library. There's still stigma attached to self-publishing but when traditional presses reject my work--as they regularly do!--it's empowering to know I can produce books myself and still reach readers.

In her third collection of poetry, Zetta Elliott explores the certainties of life in the US - tulips blooming in the spring, police officers killing unarmed Black people, ginkgo leaves turning gold in autumn and mass shooters targeting people of color simply trying to live their lives. Using free verse, tanks and haiku, Elliott contrasts the beauty of each season with the brutality of American injustice, revealing the contradictions of contemporary urban life. As climate change disrupts the familiar patterns that once brought comfort, war highlights the unequal policies that open borders for some but not others. Elliott’s voice reveals vulnerability and defiance as the Black feminist poet struggles to hold onto hope despite exhausting and enraging conditions.