Room Swept Home: Remica Bingham-Risher Holds Communal and Ancestral Narratives in a Universe of Poetry

Postpartum Production

"It's about history, it's about family lineage, and it's about what we bring into the world." - Remica Bingham-Risher

We continue our exploration of birth and creativity with Remica Bingham-Risher. Remica is the author of Conversion, which was winner of the Naomi Long Magit Poetry Award, What We Ask of Flesh, which was shortlisted for the Hurston Wright Award, and Starlight & Error, winner of the Diode Editions Book Award. Her first book of prose, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions that Grew Me Up was published by Beacon Press in 2022.

Her next book of poems, Room Swept Home, was published by Wesleyan in February 2024, which we spoke about in the podcast. This beautiful collection examines the murky waters of race, lineage, faith, mental health, women's rights, and the reckoning that inhabits the discrepancy between lived versus textbook history. She's currently the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University, and she currently lives in Norfolk, Virginia with her husband and children.

In today’s conversation, Kaitlin and Remica discuss:

1. Room Swept Home and the research Remica conducted to build this work of archival research, as well as personal memoir and communal history that is infused in the book and her research
2. The ways in which she encountered birth in this collection of poetry
3. How the narratives of childbirth through her own personal history have become such a compelling and fruitful space for her own exploration as a person, as a mother and as an artist

Discover Remica’s work here:

• https://www.remicabinghamrisher.com/
• @remicawriter

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