Meet the Mentor | Michael Frazier
Graphic by Andy Zeng. Photo courtesy of Michael Frazier.
The COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective is an online, 8-week fellowship program that allows creative writers, visual artists, and musicians to explore, illuminate, and grow through collaborating on interdisciplinary projects. Learn more about the Arts Collective here. For the next weeks leading up to the application deadline, we will be featuring mini-interviews with 2020 mentors.
About the Mentor
Michael Frazier is a poet and high school teacher in Kanazawa, Japan. He received his BA from Gallatin at New York University, where he was the 2017 poet commencement speaker and a co-champion of the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. He has performed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Gallatin Arts Festival, among other venues. An alumnus of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, he has poems published or forthcoming in Construction, Day One, the Visible Poetry Project, the Speakeasy Project and elsewhere. Recently, he was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow and a runner up for the Construction Literary Magazine Poetry Contest. He loves reading poems and is on staff at the Adroit Journal as a Poetry Reader and was a 2020 National Writing Juror for the Scholastics Arts and Writing Awards. Ask him about his favorite anime and what Christ has done in his life.
CAC: Could you briefly introduce yourself and your discipline? Why did you choose this discipline?
MF: I am a poet living in Kanazawa, Japan. My youth was marked by moving constantly, but, if I had to choose, home would be Rochester, New York. I come from a slam background, but in general, I love poetry in all of its forms, and a long-held dream of mine is to write a YA series and Japanese-style animation. My work circles around family, God, the transience of home, sexuality, and my experiences as an African American man.
CAC: Why do you make art? When did you realize it was something you wanted to pursue?
MF: Writing teaches me to be empathetic, to ask the right questions, and to never be satisfied until I reach a new and burning truth. The other reason I write is because I love telling stories and connecting with people over shared experiences.
I was a voracious reader as a kid; reading gave me permission to dream and was a comfort from a not-always kind world. I want to create work that can be the same for others. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was young, but 2015 is when I decided to dedicate myself to pursuing poetry. Two things happened that year that changed my trajectory: I spent the summer studying poetry in Florence with some amazing writers and I heard the poem “Black Privilege” by Crystal Valentine for the first time.
Michael Frazier “Acne: Answers” — Visible Poetry Project
CAC: Can you discuss the last project(s) that have meant the most to you?
MF: My most recent project was with the Visible Poetry Project. Pulkit Datta, a film producer in NYC, adapted two of my poems about my father into a short film called Blood Don’t Mean Stay. At first I was apprehensive. But the producers and actors really made the narrative their own while respecting the integrity of the work. And watching Pulkit connect with and interpret the poems gifted me with a new perspective to approach my own work.
CAC: What are you currently working on in your artistic life?
MF: I am working on my first manuscript! It’s been a lot of fun to write because I am finally putting all of the poems I have written over the past five years in conversation with each other. Also, all of my different cultural backgrounds are informing my work. In my manuscript, I’m pulling from contemporary Japanese art and poetic forms, interviews with family members, soul food recipes, and local botanical and ornithological knowledge.
Micheal Frazier Profile in WSN
CAC: How do you manipulate medium, style, and/or voice?
MF: I love collaboration between artists from different fields! Last year, my poem “Acne: Answers” was animated by a film producer based in England (the kid in me was shouting seeing my words cartoon-ized!). Since high school, I have choreographed and performed group poems with other poets. These days, I am working on a project with my brother, who’s a musician, to combine poetry with neo-soul flute instrumentals. Ekphrastic poetry—poetry in conversation with works of art—is also an essential part of my writing practices.
CAC: Why did you decide to mentor for the 2020 Arts Collective?
MF: The three pillars of my writing life are Reading, Writing, and Fellowship. Fellowship includes teaching and mentoring. I am in-debt to all of the teachers who have taken time to read my work and speak life over it, because I wouldn’t be where I am without their generous guidance. I want to support young writers as well, and for me, the teaching relationship is reciprocal: When I teach or mentor, I learn new ways of engaging with art because everyone has an innate and unique perspective. Also, I really enjoy helping writers figure out what works and what in their writing isn’t quite singing yet.
CAC: Is there anything else you would like us to know?
MF: Can’t wait to meet the new class of Arts Collective Fellows!
Sarah Feng is the editor-in-chief of COUNTERCLOCK Journal and the director of the Arts Collective. Her creative writing has been awarded by the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Adroit Prizes in Prose & Poetry, NCTE, the Critical Pass Review, American High School Poets, the Leyla Beban Young Author’s Foundation, Teen Vogue, and the New York Times. She plays piano and dabbles in charcoals, and she thinks rhythm and light and lyric pulse in every field of the creative arts – if you can call them distinct fields at all. In other words, she has faith in the power of the interdisciplinary arts and their persistence in our memories and minds. She studies at Yale University.