Chris Martin

Author's Statement

We owe the soul of this country to the enslaved, persecuted, uprooted, and oppressed Americans who have brought and continue to bring forth the art, justice, conscience, and life-affirming spirit which define our better will. Over the past few years I have been trying, somewhat desperately I fear, to create poems that approach this better will while necessarily interrogating its opposite.

Of the many things this grant will allow me to do (write, think, read, engage) or not do (toil, fret, get a real job, become a full-time childcare provider), chief among them will be the allowance for failure. In writing toward this better will and its opposite, I have been immersed in failure, our society’s and my own. The resultant poems have been largely insufficient. Whiteness, especially as articulated in the works of Toni Morrison and Claudia Rankine (not to mention Herman Melville), is incredibly, unconscionably, and strategically elusive. But I’ve written a couple poems that feel real. A few. There are some moments that beckon, if not reckon.

My poetry is rooted in difficult questions, difficult choices. I like to call poetry the most ethical art, because each poem hinges (thousands of times over) on choice. You make one every time you break the line. Critics often refer to my lines as “spare,” but I see even my shortest lines as bursting; demanding the turn, the change, the break. So, to what end are these choices made? Having just brought a second child into the world with my wife, the poet and book designer Mary Austin Speaker, I’m not in a position to fail over and over again at something that doesn’t bring us any significant income (although nothing that brought us significant income would allow us to fail over and over again, I suppose.) But we have made the same choice, over and over again, to take that financially irresponsible path. Why? Because convenience is the stepladder to oblivion. Because bank accounts are deafening. Because calamity demands risk, calls us to leverage our individual power for the cause of justice. Because we belong to the long lineage of poets that choose what’s difficult and transformative over what’s expedient and expected. And because we’ve had the lifelong privilege of appearing white (the privilege whose dark side is spiritual crisis), we can (and must) afford, in all senses of that term, to take risks. We owe it to our neighbors, our country, and ourselves.

This grant means I can not only fail and fail and, Poetry willing, eventually find some way to speak about whiteness in my work, but I can do restorative labor in my community to combat white supremacy through publishing (Society Editions), teaching free workshops for vulnerable populations, and continuing my work with the autism community in support of creativity, increased quality of life, and the neurodiversity movement. When the NEA supports my writing with this grant, it supports all these other necessities.