Tracie Morris, Harryette Mullen, Jo Stewart, and Yolanda Wisher on the Collaborative Process
We created this poem with the intention of interweaving four African-American women voices, each in different US cities. This poem is in conversation with, yet markedly distinct from, Nina Simone’s ground-breaking song “4 Women” as well as her extraordinary life’s work. We began with sharing block texts, much of which was improvised. We then started interweaving our lines: adjusting for mutual inspiration, vocabulary, syntax, and punctuation as we went through a few drafts. We conferred throughout the process, agreeing on title, epigraph, and form, as well as agreeing on when the poem felt fully connected and complete.
Born in Brooklyn, interdisciplinary poet and sound artist Tracie Morris earned an MFA at Hunter College and a PhD at New York University. She studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and at Michael Howard Studios.
In her poetry, Morris transforms and complicates her subjects of abuse, power, and the body through repetition and accretive adjustments or substitutions, creating an...
Harryette Mullen is a poet and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing and African American literature. Her collections of poetry include S*PeRM**K*T (1992), Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), Recyclopedia (2006), Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (2012), and Open Leaves (2023). Her poetry has been hailed by critics as unique...
Jo Stewart is a poet and theater maker. Her work appears in the Poetry Project Newsletter, Danspace Project Journal, BOMB, and others.
Poet Yolanda Wisher was born in Philadelphia and raised in North Wales, Pennsylvania. She earned a BA at Lafayette College and an MA at Temple University and was a Cave Canem fellow. She is the author of the poetry collection Monk Eats an Afro (2014). Her work has been included in the anthologies Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (2006), The Ringing Ear: Black Poets ...