Book: I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood

I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood - Tiana Clark

Every year on Nina Simone's Born Day, I post a thread on Twitter of some of my favourite quotes by the revolutionary and the legend who when asked in the mid-1960s by Vernon Jones, the head of the Urban League, how come she wasn't more active in civil rights, replied "Motherfucker, I am civil rights."

When Nina sings, I am ready.

And this February 21, 2020, as I was posting my thread of #NinaSaid, I came across an essay written by Tiana Clark about a pilgrimage she made to the singer's family home in Tryon, North Carolina. That visit was foundational to The Rime of Nina Simone, an incredible imagining of a conversation between the classically trained pianist and the poet. In the poem - which is worth the price of entrance to this collection alone - Nina Simone, whose ambition to continue her training as a classical pianist and play Bach and Beethoven was thwarted by racism, warns Tiana Clark that that same racism will demand that the poet perform Black pain in order to succeed at her writing programme.