Author: Naila Francis

Naila Francis interviewed by E.C. Barrett

Naila Francis’s poem, “After encountering the grey whales in El Burbujon, Laguna Ojo de Liebre,” is a rhapsody of connection with nature and letting yourself be moved to action by an ecstatic moment. We spoke of grief and joy and learning to embrace big emotions and vulnerability as fuel for change-making.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

E.C. Barrett: What was the inspiration for your poem?

Naila Francis: For me, whales sort of symbolize the immensity of grief. After my dad died ten years ago, I started having dreams about whales, and I began to associate them with the idea that you can let your grief be as big as a whale, you don’t have to make it smaller. We’re constantly being told to move forward or keep our grief quiet or private or get over it. But your grief can take up as much space as it needs.

I took a trip last year to a very remote part of Baja California Sur in Mexico, where grey whales migrate south from Arctic feeding grounds down to these lagoons to mate and to have their babies. You go to these lagoons and you sit in boats and the whales swim up to interact with you. They’re so curious, they want your attention, they let you pet them. I kissed whales! I honestly did not know that this was something that happened anywhere in the world—that these whales actually crave human touch.

One of the days we were leaving the lagoon, I was watching this whale that had been following our boat. Tears started streaming down my face and I heard the words, “promise me you’ll cherish and protect what I love,” which I didn’t know at the time would be part of this poem. The experience brought up a lot of grief that I didn’t expect. When I came home, I was in tears for a long time after that trip. I would wake up crying; I would sit at my altar and cry; I was very, very emotional.

So often we have these encounters in the natural world, and we’re moved by the beauty on top of this mountain or the amazing animals we’ve encountered, but what do we do when we come home? How do we keep that with us and let it live through us in a way that we remain connected? How do we honor and protect and revere that place, that tree or flower or animal, whatever it is? That’s what I was thinking about.

 
ECB: You lived in the Caribbean for the first ten years of your life. Did that geography and those experiences influence the way you see and interact with writing, the environment, or issues of environmental justice?

NF: Wow, thank you so much for this question, because I’ve never actually thought of that at all . . . how growing up on the islands as I did, especially St. Lucia, might have influenced my writing or how I feel about the environment. Among the memories of childhood I treasure the most are the times I spent with my grandfather and my cousins on his farm. He would pile us all into the back of his red pickup truck and we’d drive out to the country with him and watch or help as he tended his animals. We’d play in the river, see how copra was made (the dried flesh of the coconut that we get coconut oil from), eat fresh sugar cane and mangos. Those times were so magical to me.

I have a younger brother, and we also spent so many hours outside, swinging from these vines that fell from towering trees along the hill where we lived, clambering over rocks and mounds and remnants of the old barracks from when the British and French fought over the island. And of course, I grew up going to the beach regularly. When we were really young, my mom would take us every day after school.

I think all of those experiences nurtured a love and reverence for and a joy in nature that I’m not sure I would have gotten growing up in the digital world we have now. They also sparked my creativity because we had toys, yes, but imagination was involved in every aspect of our play. Thank you for helping me connect the dots from those years to now, where some of my biggest inspirations for poems come from being in nature.

 
ECB: What role does creative writing in general and speculative fiction in particular have in the fight for environmental justice?

NF: I can’t remember who said it, maybe multiple people, but words are wands. They have power. In my work as a grief doula I offer a lot of grief writing experiences, and I often think of the quote by Toni Cade Bambara: “Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.” That definitely feels applicable to creative writing and speculative fiction especially in helping us to not only grapple with the many questions and crises at the heart of the environmental justice movement but also in pointing us toward possibilities, for better or for worse, of what could happen next.

I also love the use of radical and strange imagination, whether it’s grounded in reality or not, to help us think about the choices we’re making and how we’re interacting with each other, new and emerging technologies, and the living world.

 
ECB: Are there any writers you’ve read recently that are helping you think through any of these issues?

NF: Ross Gay’s most recent collection of essays, Inciting Joy, in particular his essays, or incitements, “We Kin” and “Free Fruit for All!”. I also love the poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, who writes with such exuberance about the natural world. Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow is a grief book I always recommend. He writes about the five gates of grief that we all walk through as humans and one of them is the sorrows of the world, which includes the destruction and diminishment of habitats and species. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to sitting down with How to Live in a Chaotic Climate by Laura Schmidt with Aimee Lewis Reau and Chelsea Rivera.

 
ECB: What does it mean to be a grief doula? What do you do?

NF: I hold space for people to explore their grief and to transform their relationship with this very universal experience. I do that in one-on-one and group sessions. I’m also part of a collective called Salt Trails, here in Philly, that holds community grief rituals. I’m a grief-tender. In a culture that is grief-phobic and grief-avoidant, I want to normalize that we all grieve and that it doesn’t have to be such an overwhelming, pathologized and isolating experience.

 
ECB: The last three years have certainly highlighted exactly how grief-avoidant we are. There’s been no real outlet for grieving over the pandemic and the people and ways of life we’ve lost. I’m thinking also about the grief of climate change. I wonder if you could talk to me about your relationship, or the way you see our collective relationship, to grief and climate change.

NF: I think that’s one of the big griefs of our time. And, whether some of us acknowledge it or not, it’s one of the reasons that depression and suicide, sadly, are so high among teenagers. There is this sense of despair about whether we are going to survive this. Every day there’s a story that could bring us to our knees.

I think it’s important to name it. So often people don’t name the thing that’s causing them grief, and it might be they don’t even realize it’s grief, because it isn’t about mourning the death of someone they love. There are so many things we could be grieving because grief is a natural response to any significant loss or change, and that includes climate change.

It can be helpful to really let yourself feel that, don’t resist the emotion, the anger, the sadness, the despair, whatever comes up. Let yourself feel that and, if you can, let yourself feel and process that in community. Then ask yourself: well, what can I do from this place of such tenderness? Such sadness? What am I being called to do? How am I being called to serve in this moment?

It’s easy to be immobilized by feeling like we have to do all the things because we’re concerned about all the things. But what can you do just in your garden, or in your neighborhood or community? I have a friend and she’s transforming this plot of land, in what some might consider a blighted part of Philly, into a community garden and also creating a space for kids to learn and play. That’s such a beautiful project. I think you’ve got to start right where you are. If you can go bigger and deeper and wider, by all means go for it, but you can also just start where you are.

 
ECB: It strikes me that it requires a lot of trust to be vulnerable enough to grieve publicly and communally, to process grief communally. I wonder if you see cultivating the ability to trust and be vulnerable as a necessity for survival moving forward?

NF: Yes, I do. I also feel that we have to be able to trust our grief and trust opening ourselves up to feel it. If we didn’t feel grief for all that’s happening in the world right now, what would move us forward into inspired action and change? How are we creating space for something new?

Grief honors emptiness, falling apart, breaking down, disappearance, darkness, loss—all these thresholds and reckonings we’re now facing. There needs to be room to acknowledge and honor all of that to—borrowing the last lines of my poem—bless and save what we cherish.

Part of grieving publicly is cultivating that kind of trust together, building containers where it feels safe enough for people to be that vulnerable. I mentioned poet and essayist Ross Gay. I think often of how he writes of sorrow and joy and their entanglement. He’s always inviting us to join together in grieving as a practice of holding and caring for each other, which he says is a kind of joy. I agree with that, that to sorrow in community is one of the ways we bring healing to this world. It’s also how we soften and deepen in compassion for ourselves and each other. It’s powerful work that connects us to our belonging, and when we remember who we are, we can’t help but be called to show up differently in the world.