Note: This transcription is edited to facilitate the reading experience. For the best viewing, please read on a desktop or horizontal on your phone :) | Read my review of Praisesong For the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas in Honey Literary
DeeSoul Carson: Nothing is a monolith. No place is a monolith. And it’s really like, we should be giving more — we owe so much to the South and to the people who are there, that we get to live as comfortably — if comfortably — anywhere else, you know?
Amanda Johnston: And you just said a very important word — power. Nothing is more powerful than the people. Sometimes that power has to be embraced and recharged and owned, but when you sit there and you actually look at the reality of things, power is with the people.
DeeSoul Carson: Hello, poets of the internet! I’m DeeSoul Carson, and this is e·pon·y·mous, an O, Word? podcast series interested in poets, the title poems of their collections, and how their work finds its way into our hands. Today’s special Juneteenth episode is on Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas, edited by Amanda Johnston.
Amanda Johnston is a writer, visual artist, the 61st Texan Poet Laureate, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.
Hi, Amanda! How’s it going?
Amanda Johnston: Hi! Thank you so much for having me.
DeeSoul Carson: Of course. I have to say that you are, with this collection, you’re working with my favorite, one of my favorite of the small presses, Host Publications.
Amanda Johnston: Oh, yes. Host does beautiful work. I’m so grateful to them. Shout out to Annar and Claire for quickly answering the call and saying yes and putting out this anthology in a year, which is unheard of, if you know about publishing.
DeeSoul Carson: And to get, I mean, to get all that organized and for it to create such a gorgeous product —
Amanda Johnston: Well, the nice thing was the project already existed, so the great poems were already
DeeSoul Carson: Okay, great. So they just had to put it together in the physical form. Oh, that’s really great. I’ve loved how accessible the project is for folks to reference, so that’s been really great.
Defining the “Praise Song”
DeeSoul Carson: I would first love, since this is called Praisesong for the People, if you could explain for the listeners here what a praise song is or what it entails. Is it just another way to say ode, or is there something specific to the aim of a praisesong that ode doesn’t quite capture?
Amanda Johnston: So a praisesong, the specificity is on a person, usually. That’s what makes it a little different from an ode, where you could call it — an ode essentially is praise, but then an ode’s written about anything, right? Any and everything, which are beautiful. But a praisesong, historically, has been on a person, right? It comes from ancient tradition, as old as oral history has been around, which is from the beginning, right? How we communicate praise songs, have been there to praise people, to praise deities, to praise some personhood. So for the project, obviously I wanted to focus on the people all across Texas, so that’s why a praise song instead of an ode.
DeeSoul Carson: I love the energy that praisesong brings to the project. Is this a form or tradition that you yourself have written in for a while?
Amanda Johnston: No, actually, and that was one of the things I wanted to challenge myself with. We need each other as a species, but when it comes time to give someone their flowers, we typically do that when they’re gone. And I didn’t wanna wait. I wanted to rise to the challenge, and what happens, especially in trying times, when we pause and look [at] our neighbor, look [at] our people and say, “Wait a minute, I’m actually not alone. I see you, and there’s so much to praise for you just being here.”
DeeSoul Carson: I like what you’re saying there about not waiting until someone is gone to give them their flowers, which I think happens so often to the people that we love. What does it mean to you, especially with this being about everyday people, to give people their flowers while they’re here? Or to take the time out of your day to give someone that praise?
Amanda Johnston: So I have to say too, in the prompt that I gave to all of the poets, [I] commissioned 70 poets to be a part of the project, and I’d said for everyday people. What I meant was not a notable figure, a celebrity, a political figure, someone that is known in community and society.
I wanted it to be for the unsung heroes who are just living their lives and — by proxy — making it better for all of us, right? To take time and as these poets, —these incredible poets, all of them at various different stages of their careers, right? There’s several other poets laureate featured in the collection. There are several poets whose first publication is the anthology, different styles of writing — to have them all use their incredible talents to say, “Wait a minute, I know exactly who I’m gonna thank, who I want to do this for, and I wanna give them their flowers through my creative practice, through my art.”
There’s something really powerful in that, to know going in that it’s going to be a gift to someone. I wanted the people to receive them, to get that moment and to see what happens. We always see these wild things pop up from time to time. “Why do we need poetry?” “Is poetry dead” or whatever. And you know, it’s all false, it’s all a lie. It’s just clickbait. But you can see it in real time. Write a poem for someone and give it to them, let alone publish it and have it out for the whole world to see. It’s a very powerful connection that happens, and that’s what I’m most concerned with in anything that I do.
DeeSoul Carson: It’s beautiful seeing the way people’s eyes light up when you’re like, “Oh, I wrote this about you,” you know?
Amanda Johnston: That happened several times, with the anthology. I think of many of the poems where they did give them to the people they wrote [about], or they came to the event and got to hear it live in person, and tears and hugs and joy and gratitude, and it’s just, again, affirming and moving to know that that is still here with us.
DeeSoul Carson: We love signs that we’re still being thought of, that we’re still on somebody’s mind. There’s a whole thing that’s like, if someone pops up on your brain, either call them or send them up a prayer or write them a poem. We can write them a poem. Write them a poem and see what that, what that does.
I had a professor that used to say so much of history is made by people we’ll never hear about. Really thinking about when we’re thinking about moving away from talking about only the notable figures is that so much of our daily lives are made about people who — they don’t have books written about them, poems written about them, but why not? They’re just as special to the functioning of our lives as anybody else. I really appreciate what the project here encourages about the way that we regard one another. Any one of us is worthy of that kind of attention.
Amanda Johnston: Absolutely. And also that poems, that poetry are not only meant to live in books and on the shelves — they live in life. When you write or [are] writing — listen to this, poets out there, please — don’t only be writing for publication, this to go into your next collection or into that coveted journal or magazine. Yes, we do that, and the work lives in that way, but give it directly from your hand to someone. It’s hard to describe. You have to feel it, the power that happens, ‘cause you’re being vulnerable, and they’re being open to receive it.
DeeSoul Carson: The gift that language is. We’re in such a strange little genre, you know? Everyone wants to be the next big national thing. But what’s helpful to remember [is that] so much of our work is actually supported locally. It’s supported by people who know us, and read us, and tell people about us. In the same way, we support other people locally, right?
Giving that to someone that you know in person, that will do worlds of wonder more than maybe the best poem in some publication. It doesn’t mean as much to them as the one you put in their hand. Yeah.
Amanda Johnston: I started writing praise poems every time that I was traveling to a different part of Texas for the project. I went across the entire state and scheduled readings for the project, and when I was traveling there, I would write a poem in praise of — all of mine were of strangers.
DeeSoul Carson: Oh, lovely.
Amanda Johnston: What it made me do is be an intentional witness, and that’s something that I wanted to do. Sending the work out for publication is great and important, don’t get me wrong, that’s how we document and preserve the work and share it with a larger audience, but the art is actually happening in the making while you’re doing it.
The Project’s Inception
DeeSoul Carson: What was the impetus for this project? Was there a specific event or inspiration that prompted you towards the project?
Amanda Johnston: When I got the news that I was going to be Texas Poet Laureate in 2024, I wanted to do something that was diverse, inclusive, representative amongst all of the many people that call Texas home. I wanted to do something to amplify poets across the state, knowing so many poets could be poets laureate, and that we have many incredible poets, and those who don’t know yet that they’re poets, but maybe will be inspired to start writing, once seeing the project and being invited to listen and hear or have a poem written about them, right?
I wanted to do something that was expansive for this very large state, inclusive of the many different diverse poets across the state, and through them, their incredible intersectional diverse communities. That’s what first started, and then to say, “Okay, well what do they do?” Well, praise poems, celebrating the people that make this place wonderful.
I travel a lot and so people will ask me like, “Oh, you live in Texas. How is that going?” And they’ll have this concerned look on their face. And depending on what mood I’m in, I can laugh or I can give a face back. I was born in East St. Louis, but raised in Texas. I was raised in Austin, and this is my home and this is where I raised my family. My husband and I are here, and we raised two daughters here. And I know that there are millions of amazing people in this state who love each other, care for each other, look out for each other. Why wouldn’t we wanna praise them? And so I wanted more people to see them in that light, right? And so now I think it’s a great thing having the book that when someone asks me that question, I can just hand them the book.
A Concern With Freedom
DeeSoul Carson: Something I think [is] worth mentioning and emphasizing that we’ve said a couple times already is that this is a book of poetry that celebrates the people of Texas specifically, which I do think is important to the book’s energy and aim. As we discuss this book, we are also thinking about Juneteenth, a holiday celebrated by Black people, particularly descendants of the enslaved, that has its roots in Galveston, Texas.
As you think about the project around this book — and this is not to suggest that one led to the other, but — what does this project mean for you as you think about celebrations of freedom in this country? And then to push it further, what conversations do you think the poems of this anthology are having with the idea of freedom in this country?
Amanda Johnston: One of the things that I’ll do as a temperature check, even for myself, is if you ever wanna know how free you are, check how often you bite your tongue.
Can you speak freely? Can you write freely? We are descended from folks who [were the] only demographic in this country that was lawfully, legally forbidden from writing or learning to read, punishable by death. So to write and to share and to praise, right? In all situations, if you read the collection of the poems, there’s some really amazing poems that are praising folks who stood next to us in protest. Shout out Aris [Kian], former Houston poet laureate. “to trans kids,” by Gaby [Benitez], and the first line is,
how could I praise anyone else?
And we know that there are folks who are under attack, right? A great poem in the anthology by Kenan [Phillip] about nuns at the border, right? But I also want folks to remember, it’s not that the poems are political. The people are not actually political, but people’s personhood and experiences are politicized. When we’re talking about freedom — what is freedom in this moment, in this day? While we’re living in a time where they’re saying words are banned, books are banned, highest book bannings ever, education is under attack, libraries and books are under attack, to say, “No, I am going to write freely, and I’m gonna do it with joy and praise —” that is a radical, powerful act, that I think gets us closer to that idea of freedom that we are still on a path to.
We have not achieved it yet. And for every accomplishment, every success, every step of progress, ask yourself: how often do you have to bite your tongue? How often? And is that pressure from a known power that is doing that? So, for me, the book was mostly a concentration on what I am for, then.
I’m for us. I’m for the people. I’m for expressing ourselves freely and doing it all with joy and love.
DeeSoul Carson: Thinking about this project as an extension of love and liberation as an extension of love, right? An ability to say, “I love my fellow man so much that I want them to feel as free as I do.”
Amanda Johnston: To be free.
DeeSoul Carson: Want them to be free. Yeah, not just feel free. I want them to be free. That’s a great distinction. I appreciate that. I want them to be free. And, and so many of the laws that we work against are, in their own ways, limiters on love, right? It’s working against the kind of liberation that we want for all of our people.
Amanda Johnston: The creative work of poetry and writing is putting it all down so that erasure cannot [happen] — physically, you [have to] be seen. You would have to go back and erase the words, but it still can’t erase me. It’s documenting presence, our communities, our personhood through a radical freedom rooted in love and joy. Everything starts there. My fight, which is a fight, for justice, liberation, and equality, comes because of love, because of what I am fighting for. And until we all can have access to that life, where we can love freely, live freely, create freely, then none of us truly have it.
Resonant Entries in the Anthology
DeeSoul Carson: Something I think about, ‘cause you’re the editor of this large project, 70 poets, and of course editing something like this is no easy feat; I’m sure there is love for all the contributors that make a thing like this happen, but were there any poems in particular in the collection that have stayed with you or that you feel like you return to often?
Amanda Johnston: Oh my gosh, yes. They’re all incredible, but we all carry our own stories too, so there are ones that I feel really deeply in my spirit. And one, “In Praise of the Cleaning Lady” by April Sojourner Truth Walker, is fantastic.
It’s just what the title indicates. It’s about this moment where she is looking for a safe place to nurse her newborn son, and the cleaning lady doesn’t just tell her, “Oh, there’s a bathroom over there, there’s a place,” but guides her to a safe place and then comes back and checks on her. And that moves me every single time ‘cause I feel in it, as a mother — I have two daughters — that protectiveness of your child in that moment, but then also that vulnerability that’s like, I need to feed my child. This is a very, very guttural, basic need that is bigger than anything else right now in the world. And to have another human being who doesn’t know you, but knows what’s happening, see that and care for you — ah, I love it. It gets me every time.
And then another is by Logen Cure, incredible poet from Dallas, and their epistolary poem — that’s the other thing, a praise poem can be any shape, any form, as long as the subject and the center is praise — Logan wrote an amazing epistolary poem for the professor of their classic queer lit course at Texas A&M, and thanking them. There’s a great line in the poem that goes something like:
my life was radically changed
when you gave me the gift of my own context.
And just, that being seen in such a way because someone else is brave enough to walk openly in your life, and what permission that then was granted, oh, extraordinary. And then I found out that Logen did share the poem with their professor, and that they had not spoken over, what? Almost twenty years? Since they had been in that class. Poetry can transcend time and space.
DeeSoul Carson: It’s part of the reason why I love this collection. It’s just us putting words to the way that someone has impacted our lives. “In Praise of the Cleaning Lady” was one of those ones that’s like, oh yeah, this is such a particular moment of connection between these two strangers, right? Which I think is probably some of the most important connections we can actually make, is the way that we connect with people that we don’t know at all and may never see again, right? I think that’s really where things show up for us. It’s easy to maybe love the people we’ve known forever, but how do we love someone who, maybe except for the 5, 10 minutes that you interact, you may never see again?
Amanda Johnston: Yep. And how can that guide us in how we treat those moments, right? Because they matter. There’s over eight billion people in the world, and of those eight billion people, your actual circle, whether they’re friends or family or colleagues, coworkers, people just that are in the general vicinity of your life, I wanna say the number’s around 200-something. It’s less than 300 people, your circle out of eight billion. And then within that, you have the people who you actually live with: your family, your friends. Now, that gets down under 100 people, right? So when you start thinking in those terms, that’s also only people that really know you’re alive. And you, in turn, see them and know that they’re alive. They’re not a number. They’re a person in your life. So with the magnitude of that, then, how do you treat each other? If that is your circle, that very small circle out of eight billion, how do you treat each other, right? Then that will multiply and multiply.
I often think about the power of poetry; there are so many things I could point to, but the incredible poet, Santiago Baca, incredible. He was writing in his memoir about being in prison and that there was a pivotal moment he was almost going to kill someone. Then [he] thought about it and said, “A poet wouldn’t do this.”
DeeSoul Carson: Wow.
Amanda Johnston: A poet wouldn’t do… a poet would not kill someone. Ooh. I mean, seriously, this is where the art and the work start changing you on a cellular level.
DeeSoul Carson: The way you think. The way you, your thoughts. Yeah. No, that’s ... He’s a better man than me.
Amanda Johnston: I can really get far out there on it, but again, out of eight billion people, we have a very small circle, and we have so much power in how we conduct ourselves and what we create and how we care for each other in those circles.
The Hope for the Anthology
DeeSoul Carson: The last question I’ll ask: we’ve talked a lot today about the role that we feel poetry plays in bringing communities together, and the power of poetry as a kind of connective tissue. As you send this book out into the world and more people start to learn about The Praisesong Project, what is it that you hope that these praise songs point us towards as we think about our neighbors locally and globally?
Amanda Johnston: Well, one, I hope that people who read the book, the poems, consider the everyday and the people in their lives. Just start there, truly thinking about that. “Oh, I read Naomi Shihab Nye‘s poem about the bus drivers in San Antonio. I ride the bus. There are bus drivers there, right? How do I talk to and what do I see and notice with the bus driver that I see every day? Do I know their name if I get on this bus every day?” Maybe we start there, right? So I want them to first, hopefully, be reflected, you know, and think about lives and the people in their lives, right? And then…my work in the world is in poetry and in literature. But if you do something else, how can you use your talent, use that art to then make an impact? Maybe you bake, maybe you work in care services. Maybe you work at a school, a lot of educators and folks there.
In that space, what other thing can you do and share that can add more visibility, more love, more care through your practice, the same way these poems did?
I tell you right now, none of us get out of this life alone. We did not actually come into it alone, we won’t leave it alone. And how we are this thing called life, as Prince would say, is how we are caring for each other. And we get to make decisions about that every single day. And if we hadn’t thought about that before, let’s start now.
DeeSoul Carson: Right. Yeah, it’s never too late to start.
Amanda Johnston: Never too late, never too late to start. Beyond that, the craft of the poems are incredible. So this is a great tool for anyone who wants to look at the different types of poems that are included in the anthology.
When you’re looking at an incredible sonnet that’s in here, or a different style of poem, share that and then talk about that and then also talk about the additional work that it’s doing. So it doesn’t just end with craft; what does the power of the art form allow us then to experience? These are individual vessels for empathy that we get to send out into the world, and I hope readers tap in and connect with it
DeeSoul Carson: Thank you. What a wonderful note to end on. Amanda, I really appreciate your time and your energy. And to close us out here, I would love it if you could read us your poem from the anthology.
Amanda Johnston: Sure. I almost didn’t put a poem in the anthology because I was so focused on wanting it to be about the other poets and, and people, but I was like, “Okay, I, I have to again, my practice and being vulnerable, let me write a poem.” So this is one of the poems I mentioned that were written while I was going to an event for a stranger.
Bat Crossing
One million bats, two million little wings flutter out from under the Congress Street Bridge in the blue-pink ombré of dusk. The photo in the Austin airport captured the moment so perfectly I had to take a pic. In the frantic airport traffic, millions of little feet about to soar, I stop and fumble with my phone— apps, angles, my tiny desire to witness. The man sees me, stops, and waits. A flock of people moves around us. He waits, and for a few seconds, we hover on a tiny cloud of kindness. I get the shot and we float on. Praise the little moments of seeing. Praise the pause and patience we share in the pixelated moments of life.
From Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas, Edited by Amanda Johnston, published by Host Publications. Copyright © 2025 by Amanda Johnston. Originally published in praisesongforthepeople.com. Used with permission of the author.
Amanda Johnston: So, a very short story with that. I was in the airport, you heard the poem. But the man, he was just kind. He was gracious. He didn’t rush past me when he saw me trying to take my photo. He just stood there. He saw me, and we both gave each other a moment to just be. Him seeing me wanting my photo, me seeing him, and without saying, “Please let me get this, don’t walk across the frame, please.” We just saw each other and allowed for that grace, right?
When I was done taking the photo, I just turned to him, I said, “You’re kind. Thank you.” I wanted to verbalize what just happened. “You were kind, and thank you.” And he nodded, and he walked on. I got to the gate and got on the plane, and he was sitting right next to me on the plane. Elbow to elbow.
And yes, and I thought about that. What if that moment had been negative? What if he had been in a hurry or on his phone and not paying attention? And then what if I had been rude — “Oh, go around me,” or, “Why do you gotta cut in front of me? You see I’m trying to do this.” You know, I’m human, too. We all have emotions. What if that had been a negative interaction, and then we are on this plane for three hours together?
It was just a very tangible and loud acknowledgement that we are closer, so much closer than we realize. You have so much more in common with people than you don’t. And when we truly do see the power that the people have is when we’ll know that and embrace that.
DeeSoul Carson: Thank you all for listening to this Juneteenth episode of e·pon·y·mous, a series of the O, Word? podcast produced by me, DeeSoul Carson. The music for e·pon·y·mous and O, Word? is provided by Esoteric Creations. Check them out on Spotify.
If you are interested in this collection, our guests would like to encourage you to check out all of the 70 poets featured in this collection. A good place to start is the anthology’s website, praisesongforthepeople.com, where you can see the work featured in the anthology, along with free lesson plans related to the collection and other resources.
Thinking about this holiday, I would like us all to consider what freedom and liberation looks like as we witness injustices across the globe. Ask yourself: who is still waiting for their freedom to be delivered? And what are we doing to help everyone get free? O, Word? is enjoying a summer break to rest and prepare new episodes to drop in the fall.
Until next time — keep reading, keep writing, and thanks for listening. Our guest, Amanda, leaves you with this writing prompt:
Make a list of everyone you see in one day and include something to praise about each person.
