“It was poetry that had its way with me”: An Interview with Whitney French

All Lit Up: Syncopation takes place in the aftermath of a “Memory War,” in a world where memory itself has become a form of currency. What first sparked this idea for you?

Whitney French: Maybe I’m wrong about this recollection my own memory but there’s a flicker that surfaces; it was many years ago at Regent Park in Toronto after a creative writing workshop that I hosted and afterwards some organizers and participants gathered for a dinner post-programming. I met the remarkably talented Shilbee Kim and we created a sort of portal (as we often do in our vortex of nerdom) and she pressed me about this novel I was crafting. She pushed on the right places to get to me to think about an economy system that felt meaningful. I had very half-baked answers, but I know I was curious about memory as currency and perhaps on another level, I wanted to subvert the idea that memory-keeping or memory preservation was entirely a good thing. As you read the book, you’ll see that the heirloom of memory shapes identity which can be to the detriment of the person walking around with it.

ALU: What does it mean to you to be a Black futurist. How does Syncopation engage with or expand on traditions of Black futurism and speculative storytelling?

WF: This a delightful question. To be a Black futurist means to use all the tools necessary to imagine Black folks in the future. That can be science, foresight, technology, history, policy, or in my case, imagination via storytelling. I am sure there are folks who grossly disagree with this definition but it’s what I got. My relationship with speculative storytelling opens a prism of possibilities that is refreshing and valuable to me. Syncopation is doing a lot to underscore Black histories, Black geographies, and also to highlight ways of telling our tales. It’s no accident one of the main characters moves through the world sound first as a Neo-Griot, which is taking storytelling traditions all the way back to the beginning. Before the pen. When we are in the practice of speculative storytelling, we’re activating muscles to stretch our capacity as humans. And this type of imagination work requires deep listening, first and foremost. Black futurism, mythmaking, future-plotting, and unusual speculating don’t mean all that much if we aren’t paying attention to each other and what’s around us.

ALU: How did you approach worldbuilding to keep the speculative elements grounded in some kind of truth?

WF: Also a good question. I have no idea. Or more accurately, I was unaware of my approach until after the manuscript was completed. So many fantastic writers I know are OG worldbuilders. Immaculate. Glossary-obsessed, map in the front and back, complicated political system building geniuses. Not I. Perhaps for me, I had to listen to what the characters were living through and then build the world around their immediate needs, desires, fears, anxieties, transgressions, and so forth. For example, when spending time with my character Brice (who isn’t a lead character) so much of the world building came to light simply through the process of meditating on his desire to leave the legion he once belonged to. His want led to so much of the fashion, history, subculture and underground of this world. Is that true, Whitney? Maybe, yes. And also nature inspired a lot of the spec here. That and DeviantArt vis a vis Pinterest.

ALU: Your novel is written in verse. Why did you choose poetry as the vessel for this story, and what possibilities did it open for you in terms of rhythm, pacing, and voice?

WF: I did not choose to write this novel with the techniques of poetry. It was poetry that had its way with me. Very strange to think of it now but Syncopation started as an ekphrasis poem from a photo from someone’s Tumblr account (Ebony Sade, hey!). The possibilities meant that I could do more than I believed possible with prose, or what I really mean to say is, poetry gave me the compression and expansion I needed to tell this specific story. It was stupid and friggin’ hard. But I was also able to become a student to poetry; I took so many poetry workshop classes and read so many poetry collections and I don’t know if I would have done the same thing; that is, analyzed the multiple approaches of the novel in the way I analyzed approaches to storytelling through verse. Particularly, I studied Black poetic forms (shout out to my P&C crew) like the Golden Shovel, the American Sonnet, the Duplex and others. So, when I needed to get into someone’s point of view, I could jump into a persona poem. A haiku offered a poignant beat. Need a jazz track playing during a pivotal moment between characters? Write a Bop. All the elements needed to convey to my reader what syncopation actually is was far more available to me through the practice of poetics—the music, its rhythms, all of it—than prose could offer.

ALU: What was your process like? Did the poetry or the plot lead the way?

WF: Poetry. Yet all the pieces were very narrative, as you will see in the work. Someone told me that this is not a long poem, which is what most folks think of when they see a novel-in-verse. They described it as micro-scenes, not unlike linked stories that are poetically rendered. I don’t know if that is what I did but I like that description. I could talk about process all day, but I will say, this novel took over ten years, so my process wasn’t fixed. It changed so much from those early-days-what-the-heck-is-this drafts to the nail-biting-send-the-manuscript-to-the-editor-already drafts. And the last thing I’ll share is the plot also altered so much, right down to the wire. My writing process is chaotic, and I don’t recommend it to anyone.

ALU: If Syncopation could leave readers with one lingering question or feeling, what would you want that to be?

WF: These types of questions are hard because I simply want people to experience the work without my influence (I’ve influenced them enough with the words). But perhaps I can indulge the question by saying that a book like Syncopation invites folks to consider a type of love story where people are steadfast in their values even when those they love are radically different than them. They don’t need to sidestep their main quests in order to find tenderness in the harshest of conditions. And the time we have is the time we have.

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Whitney French (she/her) is a writer, educator and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter and Griot: Six Writers’ Sojourn into the Dark. Whitney is a Black futurist who explores memory, loss, technology and nature in her work. She is a certified arts educator and an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of British Colombia. She is also the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada.

Find a copy of Syncopation here on All Lit Up.