Poet Golden's debut collection explores family history and personal identity

Poet, photographer and community organizer Golden’s first slam poetry performance in Boston received a standing ovation, cementing Golden’s pathway to becoming a local poetry icon.

This past August, Golden released their debut poetry collection “A Dead Name That Learned How to Live” with Game Over Books, a culmination of work they’ve written over the last four years living in Boston where they were artist-in-residence in 2020-2021. This past September, Golden announced on Instagram that they plan on moving away from Boston by 2023, saying, “This book feels like the perfect way to close this chapter that has given so much to me.”

“This book is a mending and a moving, a conversation between the past and the present, between a photograph and a poem.”

Golden

“A Dead Name That Learned How to Live” opens with photo collages of Golden’s family. Their mother’s side is on the left, their father’s side is on the right and portraits of Golden and their two siblings are at the center. “That encapsulates everything I was trying to do with this book,” Golden says. “My work is an extension of these people, so I’m bringing everyone along with me.”

It is impossible to read Golden’s poetry without seeing the influence of the essential people and places from their upbringing. Their parents attended the same elementary, middle and high schools together in the small town of Pocomoke City, Maryland, a place where most residents spend their entire lives, like Golden’s grandmother, whom they call “Grannie.” Golden’s dad joined the Air Force and the family settled in the suburban military town of Hampton, Virginia. That’s where Golden grew up with their twin sibling (whom Golden calls “Twin”), and their older brother Cam. “The Black rural South is what raised me,” says Golden.

The collection’s 16 poems sing about strong family bonds between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and every combination in between. These bonds are echoed by the family photos and Golden’s own portraiture interspersed across the collection. Golden says, “This book is a mending and a moving, a conversation between the past and the present, between a photograph and a poem.”

"I think of my photography as a poem I haven’t written yet. Poetry is a document of something that does not have an image, but it’s an image I’ve captured in my head."

Golden

Golden’s work also harkens back to their lineage of artistry, with their Grannie as a poet and their Pop Pop as a photographer. They say their Grannie has always had a way with words, calling her their “little Maya Angelou.” Their Pop Pop had taken photos for his hometown’s historical record, but as an older Black man, he never thought he could make a career out of photography. Given those prominent familial influences throughout their childhood, today, Golden views their own poetry and photography as one and the same. “I think of my photography as a poem I haven’t written yet. Poetry is a document of something that does not have an image, but it’s an image I’ve captured in my head,” they say. Their Pushcart-nominated poem “Family Portrait with Ancestors” is appropriately situated next to a childhood family portrait, but Golden’s words alone are just as vivid.

“Have you ever sliced through a watermelon
wound & watched your family suck all of the red out?
Twin tends to the rind, Mom salivates salt & guards

the seeds, Dad beats the bleeds out of our t-shirts,
Cam brings pails of bleach & hot holy water
to raw rinse the deck. We all knife our wound’s smile

until summer gives our childhood back.”

Golden’s photo work has centered around portraiture since they were in high school, beginning with self-portraits and portraits of Twin. Their approach to photography became more sharply defined while they were pursuing their BFA in photography and imaging at New York University, where they had to adapt to new surroundings and living in a different city than Twin. Photography came to be about identity, about the intersections of Blackness and gender, about being. Their thesis project “A Dead Name That Learned How to Live” would later evolve into their debut poetry collection.

The first poem in this collection, “Y’all,” feels as much a self-portrait as a landscape of Maryland and Virginia and as a candid group photo from years past. Across the collection, Golden reflects on their upbringing and current relationship with the South after some distance. Moving up north to the “queer utopia” they call New York City allowed them the chance to explore their gender and sexuality in ways they didn’t have the vocabulary for before. But “home” would always be Hampton and Pocomoke City. Together, all of these places have inextricable influence over who Golden has become as an artist and a person — just like Golden’s family.

“I’m not saying
there was no one like us, what I’m saying is, we
didn’t know where to shout, to twerk, to leave
our bodies’ limbs. Sometimes you have to run
away to love your country back, to know how
to look your family in the face with skunk
in mouth, razor on belt, tar as mascara & defile
dreams.”

"Poetry is the connectedness of everything. It’s being engulfed and concerned."

Golden

Some of the poets who first inspired Golden were classic writers like Maya Angelou, but exposure to contemporary poets like Porsha Olayiwola and Danez Smith expanded the possibilities of what a poem could be. “I remember sitting in Washington Square Park and reading Danez Smith’s collection ‘Black Movie’ within an hour. I understood what poetry could do on the page.” Now, Golden describes poetry as, “the connectedness of everything. It’s being engulfed and concerned.”

A magnificent example of what Golden is able to accomplish on the page is their series of visual poems “[X][Y],” “Twin,” and “[X][X],” constructed to look like chromosomes. These poems speak to a time in Golden’s life when homophobia and transphobia divided their family, but Golden shares that they’re able to publish this poetry now because they were all able to work past that hurt, and now there’s nothing but love between them.

The collection also voices that fierce familial love. "To Dance with My Father" and "And I Will Always Be Your Mother," adopt the perspectives of Golden’s parents, saying “& I’m not sorry, cus I’m a parent, that way. We want to fix everything we didn’t have. We are children, that way. This is how I became a man, your father,” and “You are me. & There is no condition in this world that can stop your Momma.” When talking about how it felt to write from their parents’ point of view and how they craft their poems in general, Golden says, “I’m always shocked and surprised when I write. These poems just fall out of me. It’s like other voices inhabit me that have this message, and just push this out of my body.”

Joining the NYU slam poetry team in 2018 ushered Golden to the next phase in their craft journey — bringing their poems to life through voice and performance under the coaching of poet and educator Crystal Valentine (now Mass Poetry festival manager). In spring 2018, Boston’s poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola invited Golden to feature at the House Slam out of Haley House in Roxbury. Their performance received a standing ovation and set off a series of opportunities that would eventually lead to the city of Boston honoring Golden as one of its artists-in-residence for 2020-2021. Since this feature took place during the House Slam National Poetry Team qualifier period, Golden was encouraged to try out by their friend Zenaida Peterson, executive director of the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam and a member of the House Slam Team themself. Living in New York City at the time, Golden stayed with Peterson each time they progressed through the qualifying rounds, culminating in their Grand Slam win and a spot on the team. Two weeks after graduating college, Golden packed their bags for Massachusetts. Golden says, "If it wasn’t for [Peterson], I wouldn’t have come to Boston."

During Golden’s tenure as 2020-21 Boston artist-in-residence, their goal was to center trans Bostonians, especially trans people of color, for their public arts projects. One such project was the proposal for the mural honoring Rita Hester, whose unsolved murder in her Allston apartment in 1998 sparked the creation of Transgender Day of Remembrance. The mural of Hester was brought to life this year by the artist Rixy through Boston’s Transformative Public Art Program. Golden says, “I was trying to connect the work between those who have passed and uplift their lives, but also do the work to celebrate trans people who are living.”

Golden also curated the We Been Here poetry kickback series, featuring trans and nonbinary poets and artists, and hosted the Transgender and Nonbinary Town Hall to gather feedback on how the City of Boston can better support all of its transgender and nonbinary residents. The community Golden has surrounded themself with throughout their time in Boston has become a new extension of their family. But as Golden prepares to move to Brooklyn with Twin, they reflect on how they want the next phase in their life to be focused on reclaiming time for themself. The chapter of their life that has been dedicated to writing a poetry collection and other projects centered around external subjects is coming to an end.

“I want to catapult to my next book…writing for myself about myself.”

Golden

“& When They Come for Me,” the final poem in “A Dead Name That Learned How to Live”, blossomed from conversations Golden had with Grannie when the two of them spent some treasured time alone together. “It was such a beautiful thing that we sometimes take for granted, having a week with an elder and talking about stories.” Among talks of God and the end of life, the poem conjures hopeful imagery of bees and dogwood trees, summertime and vulnerability.

“Father-sun, I want to be somewhere singing through the wooden door of my name-made house, with a maiden name. Ask my mother, we’re going on vacation to other worlds within ourselves. I hope you can run. Oh look, the sun’s coming out Grannie.”

Golden shares that they are similar to their mother in that they tend to take on the role of caretaker in relationships, so this poem “is a wish to reach towards prioritizing myself and love and desire, and to be angry and happy and all these imperfect things, all these things as Black people from South hide from the world.” Next to this final poem is a self-portrait of Golden posed underneath a wall of family photos in their Grannie’s house. In this collection about family, Golden uses this final poem to bring the focus back to themself, the hardest thing for them to write about. “I want to catapult to my next book…writing for myself about myself.” They are crafting their own legacy as a Black gender-nonconforming trans-femme person, poet, photographer and twin from Hampton, Pocomoke City, New York City and Boston all at once.  Fittingly, the last line of the poem and the collection is, “I made it home.”