I will not lie: it is slightly intimidating to interview two individuals as beautiful as Biankah Bailey and Marcellus Nealy, co-editors of “Umoja: Black Diaspora Edition”, the latest trailblazing offering from ToPoJo Excursions. Fortunately, we do it over Zoom, which makes it just a tiny bit easier to keep my cool. On the screen, Marcellus shivers in an unheated music room. Biankah sits tall behind glorious cheekbones. My cat shrieks in the distance. The stage is set!

ME: OK, I wanted to start with a little bit of background! How did you two first get started in the Tokyo writing scene?

MN: My first public poetry performance was at What the Dickens back in… 1996, 1997? My natural self is actually very shy. It always has been. I was incredibly nervous that first time. My hands were shaking. The paper was shaking. But at the same time, there was this adrenalin rush, this opening of cosmic doors, this connection to what I felt like was my true self, that was more powerful than my natural born bashfulness. And so I just kept going. And I haven’t stopped.

As for Biankah, she blasted onto the scene in 2011 as one of the co-founders of Writers’ Bloc, an electrifying collective of foreign writers who held open mics and performances throughout the capital.

BB: That was my first time reading and performing poetry in front of people. I am also very introverted, and for me it was contrary to the reason I was into writing in the first place. I did writing as something looking inward, but then with performance, you have to be more outgoing. …But with time, and practice, and with building the community here, I got more comfortable with it, and even did events like Tokyo Poetry Slam—something I would have never thought I would have done!

These details are absolutely astonishing to me, as I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that these two consider themselves shy! I’ve seen Marcellus onstage at poetry events with an actual BULLHORN, for example, galvanizing the audience with feverish shouts of verse, and I’ve witnessed Biankah silence an entire bar more than once with her fiercely powerful words and presence. Perhaps it is this shared sense of intriguing incongruity that made it inevitable for these two to collaborate on a volume that is by turns gentle yet defiant, raw yet polished.

The origin story is thus: Jeffrey Johnson, co-founding editor of the Tokyo Poetry Journal, had been hankering to publish a volume of Black writers for ages. Who to spearhead such an endeavor? He contacted Marcellus.

MN: And I thought that would be really interesting—but one of the things I was concerned about was whether or not there would be enough writers within Japan to fill a whole volume. Then when we put out the call for submissions, I was quite surprised at the numbers we got. After I agreed to do this, I thought about who would be the best person, the best partner in crime, to help me out. So I thought “Ah! I know! I’ll call Biankah!” I called her and asked and she was like Yeah! Let’s do it!

ME: Is that how you remember it Biankah? Were you just like “Yeah! Let’s do it”?!

BB: Well, I thought about it for a minute. [laughter] The idea really appealed to me because something like this had never been done before here, in Tokyo.

The concept was simple: an anthology of poetry, prose, and art by Black writers and creators, both living in Japan and around the world. But one of the early challenges was specifying, at least in broad strokes, what exactly is meant by the term “Black writer”. A specific voice? Just writers who happen to be Black? Or possibly something deeper than that?

MN: Eventually I realized: there is no monolith. There is no one image, just as any group. We are many voices, many ideas, many modes of expression. And from many places in the world. Biankah’s Jamaican, I’m American, there’s some Nigerian writers in the book, and from Trinidad… So then I became fascinated by this idea, like from all of these different places and different experiences and different perspectives and voices and modes of creation—it will be quite interesting to put all of those together in a book that will take people on a journey through this.

The title of the volume, Umoja, comes from a Swahili word that means “unity”. As Marcellus sees it, this flawlessly illustrates the concept of presenting one collection from among many voices.

MN: I thought in many ways that was the beauty of the thing, and also the symbolism of Blackness itself. The varied experiences creating this one people.   

BB: Before we even came up with the title, that was kind of the concept I was thinking of as well. The idea of Blackness being simultaneously one, and also multitudes. And the fact that we have some threads of shared history and culture, but that at the same time we are also so diverse—in culture and points of view and these sorts of things. So when Marcellus suggested Umoja as a title, I thought it was perfect.

Both Biankah and Marcellus grew up with a strong connection to Black literature and traditions in their respective cultures. For Marcellus, these included brilliant American poets such as Dudley Randall and Amiri Baraka, and he retains a deep affection for Maya Angelou (more on that later). Biankah recalls the rich history of Caribbean literature she was exposed to in Jamaica—C. L. R. James, Frantz Fanon, and the folklorist Louise Bennett-Coverley. Still, these were not nearly as represented as they should have been, particularly in the educational system: Marcellus remembers high school English classes devoted almost exclusively to white male writers such as Yates and Pound and Whitman, which is identical to my experience as a student in Canada as well. And there is a similar absence in the foreign literature receiving the most attention in Japan.

BB: For Black writers, I don’t really think I’ve seen anything front and center, like when you talk about English language literature coming out of Japan. It tends to be very white, American, European. That’s the most prominent.

MN: Representation is super-important, of course. Our voices are part of the collective voices of culture and literature, which have existed since the beginning of man. So why not add those voices to the collective, and make them available for everybody to read? That’s the mindset I had when I agreed to take on the project.

BB: One thing that I hope for is that after the publication of this volume, there will be more. So that we can continue being part of the conversation in this canon of foreign language literature here in Japan.

Writing is, almost always, a deeply solitary undertaking: generally conducted in silence, alone. Often there is gnashing of teeth and crushing existentialism and silent screams hurled at empty rooms and blank pages (in my own experience, at least). So I wonder how these two introspective poets, perfectly content in the quiet communion of pen and page, felt about the experience of suddenly spearheading an international project that led to them forming links and networks with fellow writers all across the globe. Was this a positive thing? In a word: yes.

Biankah enthuses about the connections forged over social media—Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. “Just seeing the excitement of people to be involved in this project in the initial stages—that really hit it home, that this is something we should be doing. It’s necessary.”

And Marcellus reports predominantly positive experiences as well. So many people were happy to contribute and support. He even risked a long shot, sending a query to world-famous poet and novelist Anthony Joseph (or to his manager, to be precise)—“I thought he’d never give us a poem, but he did, and he was very excited about it, very happy. And that was representative of how pretty much everyone responded. They were all so eager to find out what this would become.”

I ask if they had any specific tone in mind for the volume, and if any selection criteria were put in place to meet it, but the answer is no: absolutely not.

MN: Part of the variance of tone was the symbolism of what it means to be in the diaspora, where there are many voices, many perspectives. We have Afro-futuristic works, we have poems in Nigerian voices where you can feel that African energy, I think, in the words. So many different voices. So I personally, and I think Biankah would agree, didn’t want to set any kind of restriction. We wanted to see what people would bring to us, and then try to arrange that in a volume that represented variety.

ME: That really comes through, I have to say. Especially the works from Africa – it’s very different from the stuff I’m used to reading from Western countries—very powerful. And then there are also a couple of pieces with religious themes, like the stage play! I haven’t read anything religious in years and years and years, and actually it was refreshing to be exposed to it again.

BB: And it was important for us to reflect diversity not just in tone but in media as well. Different types of art showcasing not only that we come from different places and different points of view, but also express our creativity in different ways.

With the official launch of Umoja less than two weeks away, both editors are in a flurry of preparations. There are final edits, consultations with the printer, proofs—and the finishing touches for the launch party, which promises to be a dazzling celebration of words and music. Marcellus will be putting together a DJ mix of recordings from many of the poets based overseas, which will be played during the night, and there will be live performances of poets and musicians hailing from places as far flung as Ghana and Senegal.

And the work will not stop there. Future volumes are already being conceptualized, and the two editors have their own personal projects simmering as well. Biankah is working on a sci-fi novel (I CANNOT WAIT for this!) as well as a sci-fi short fiction series (check it out here), while Marcellus is embroiled in the continuous scribbling of poems, the authorship of a textbook, and rehearsals for his upcoming tour with pop group Dreams Come True (follow his adventures here).

Finally, the question that I’ve been hopping-on-one-foot excited to ask them from the moment our interview began: Who is one writer, dead or alive, that they’d wanna bang? The public has a right to know!

BB: Ooooooh!

MN: That I’d wanna BANG?! Oh good Lord. …A WRITER?

BB: A writer… Probably Derek Walcott. He just always seemed, you know, really attractive to me in the way that he wrote. And I mean, this is not some guy who wrote a lot of, you know, sexy poetry, he was a very serious—and Nobel Prize-winning, actually—a very serious writer about the Caribbean, and Caribbean history, but—yeah. That’s the first person who came to mind.

ME: Kinky! Nobel Prize winner in bed. Wow.

Marcellus: I have NO idea… I mean I really love the works of Maya Angelou, but…

Marcellus thrashes with the question for a while, suggesting first a woman who is not a writer (“Frida Kahlo? She seems so mysterious, in her world of art”), and then, in a burst of inspiration, “Ah! Joy Waller!” (this answer is swiftly rejected on grounds of flattery), and then “I want to say Biankah Bailey,” accompanied by apologies to Biankah Bailey’s husband, presumably in close vicinity of the Zoom call. Ultimately, it is a question that must wait for another day.

But for Umoja, the day is now. In truth, the day has always been now—the day has been now for thousands of years of written and oral history—and here, in Tokyo, it takes physical form in one incredible volume weaving a tapestry of multitudes.

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Launch party (more info here):

12 February 2022 6 p.m.

Haretara Sora ni Mame Maite

150-0034 Tokyo, Shibuya City, Daikanyamacho

20−20 モンシェリー代官山B2

Charge: 3500 yen (includes a copy of the book)

* Those wishing to attend online can purchase tickets here.