Benji Hart
Seen on these playlists
We Have Never Asked Permission to Sing
You’re about to read a heartfelt offering—to trans people of color, from trans people of color. In 2019, five poets lent their radical imaginations to Forward Together’s annual Trans Day of Resilience art project. They aimed to celebrate the magic of our trans family and chart a path to the full lives we deserve. These poems were written alongside the project’s visual artwork and spill with the seeds of our future world. Let these words be our spells, prayers and protest songs. Let them conjure bolder dreams and louder demands. May we celebrate ourselves, claiming freedom as our birthright. May we never ask permission to sing
View playlistPoetry + Abolition
On his work with the Prison Story Project, Matt Henriksen once said: “Regardless of our pasts or your pasts and regardless of those walls, we can meet in the space words create and share stories and ideas. We bring our story-telling-know-how to you and bring your visions of the world back to us.” As I reflect back on Matt’s legacy of advocacy for the incarcerated, and the poetry we shared over time, his presence feels deeply connected to my own growth as a reader & writer contemplating justice within the creative word. Over recent months, I have found myself turning or returning to each of these poems as I deepen my understanding of the prison industrial complex and the necessity of abolition. In August 2020, after another psychotic break, I found myself turning to poetry & mad survivor narratives to make sense of my own lived experiences, standing on the bridge between disability justice & abolition. A few months back, I stumbled upon “Zombies in a House of Madness” in an old 1970’s copy of Madness Network News Reader, & have been both haunted and comforted by the legacy of Michael Beasley as a poet and abolitionist before my time. I was enamored by Beasley’s reach—from a short film of his poem by Saul Landau within San Francisco Jail, to a musical collaboration with singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, Beasley’s connections to others begin within and move beyond the prison’s walls. Each poem in this playlist speaks back to what I see in Michael Beasley’s work, and has been in my ear as I think through the necessity of disability justice, mad narratives, intersectional movements, and our call to abolition.
View playlist