We’ve had the chance to sit down with Dean Atta, author of the fierce and vulnerable coming-of-age story The Black Flamingo and winner of the Stonewall Book Award. We asked him all our questions about his upcoming release, the spoken word, and so much more!
Hi, Dean! Thanks for chatting with us! Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m a debut novelist from London, England. I currently live in Glasgow, Scotland, with my boyfriend Tom. I’m super excited to have my first novel published in North America. From my perspective, living my whole life in the U.K., it feels like we get a lot of cultural imports from North America but I’m not sure it happens as much the other way round. I grew up listening to lots of Hip Hop and R&B music from The States, and when I started getting into spoken word poetry what I first found on YouTube was Def Poetry Jam. Poetry was my route into becoming a writer, which is why I’ve written this novel in verse.
The Black Flamingo is all about Michael finding his wings – can you tell us a bit more about your inspiration and process of writing Michael’s story?
I was inspired by the sighting of a real black flamingo in Cyprus in 2015, I felt a deep affinity with the bird and what I felt it represented: standing out from the crowd. My mum’s family is from Cyprus and my dad’s family is from Jamaica. Michael also has this same dual-heritage identity, which helped me write authentically about his struggles to find his place within his two families but also within British culture and society. My process was to write a series of poems, in which Michael learns different lessons about himself and society. I wrote most of the book out of sequence, then tied them together. I took inspiration from other recent verse novels by Elizabeth Acevedo and Jason Reynolds. Claudia Rankine’s lyric essay Citizen was also a major influence. Michael experiences a number of racial microaggressions, although he never names them as such. Throughout the writing process I had to be careful to keep my adult voice and knowledge out of the book, and stay true to Michael as a child and teenager.
The Black Flamingo is filled with deep truths and doesn’t shy away from the hard topics of growing up and accepting your beautiful self – what do you hope readers take away from Michael’s story?
I didn’t want this story to look away from difficult topics, such as race and sexuality. But there are times in the story when Michael doesn’t fully understand what he’s seeing or experiencing. At these points, it’s up to the reader to bring their own experience and understanding to the story and form their own opinions. Michael and other characters make mistakes and have misunderstandings, get hurt, and hurt others. I guess I want the reader to take away that it’s okay to make mistakes, so long as you learn from them.
You’ve been writing and performing for a long time. What draws you to poetry? And how did you get started?
I think poetry is my first language. I’ve always loved music, and as a child I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs into a notebook. After that I started writing my own lyrics, which over time I began to think of as poetry. For me, poetry is a direct line to my heart. I’m pretty articulate in a conversation but I can best tell you how I feel about anything if I write a poem about it.
You also lead workshops for younger audiences to help them get started – do you have any tips for our readers who might feel anxious about starting with poetry?
One of my favourite ways to begin is a simple process called free-writing. You set an alarm for 5 or 10 minutes and then write non-stop without lifting your pen from the page. It works best if you do it with pen and paper because if you do it on your phone or computer there is a greater temptation to edit. The point of a free-write is not to stop and think about what you’re writing, just to keep writing until the alarm sounds. Some fun starting lines for a free write are “I remember…” and “I come from…” When you’ve completed your 5 or 10 minute free-write, look at what you’ve got and pick out any lines that you find interesting, and use them to carry on crafting.
And I know that this may be a really hard question, but is there a line of a poem that stuck with you throughout the years or maybe even inspired you to pursue being a poet?
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Maya Angelou’s poetry spoke to me when I was younger, and still does. Her poem “Still I Rise” is so powerful, and those opening lines set a tone of defiance and strength. I feel proud with The Black Flamingo to have written a story so close to my heart, and provide positive representation of black queer characters, who are often left out of history and mostly have tragedies written about us. I hope my writing has some of the strength and defiance of Maya Angelou’s.
The world has been in an uproar these past few months. Do you have any tips on distraction techniques or how to channel that inner storm into your writing?
I’m using poetry as a way to write about how I’m feeling right now, and I think others could benefit from doing so too, even if they don’t consider themselves to be poets. For me, there’s no point trying to distract myself from this global pandemic, I’m leaning into it and writing about fear, death, love and loss. We experience these things all the time, it’s just that we have a shared sense of them right now. I can’t escape thinking about Coronavirus because my boyfriend Tom is a doctor working in a hospital, so he is on the front line. Politicians around the world talk about beating Coronavirus in similar ways that they would talk about fighting a war. And if we look at the two world wars of the 20th Century, poetry is so important for us to understand how people felt at that time.
Beyond The Black Flamingo, what’s next for you?
I’m working on new books but I’m not allowed to talk about any of them. I’m mostly looking forward to hearing from readers in North America, I really want to know how this book translates for them, what readers find familiar in Michael’s story and what they learn from it?
Last but not least, do you have any bookish recommendations for our readers?
I’d wholeheartedly recommend Almost American Girl by Robin Ha. I was so blown away with this beautiful graphic novel. I felt there were some similarities to The Black Flamingo, with the main characters both having single mothers, and both experiencing language as a barrier to fitting in, but ultimately both finding people with whom they have shared interests, and with whom they feel like they belong.
