Brian Gilmore - No More Worlds to Conquer: The Black Poet in Washington, DC

No More Worlds to Conquer by Brian Gilmore is a history of Black poets in Washington, DC, revealing how they have reflected and transformed American cultural discourse. Read on for a Q&A with the author to learn more.

How did you tackle the difficult research task of documenting the history of Black poets in Washington, DC, given the challenges associated with fragmented historical records?

Fortunately, there is a lot of documentation. Howard University, and the city’s many print newspapers provide an easy source to get started. Then, there are just books, and journals, and all sorts of sources to pull from. George Washington University has done a great job of keeping the records and papers of writers. Many of the writers who lived and wrote here left behind good records. Many writers are still around. I could have written probably a lot more than I did.

In what ways did your own experience as a poet and writer shape the way you approached the research and collected your findings?

I came along right at the time that one major era was winding up and another was beginning. I knew that there are two major periods for most Black writers in America: the renaissance period (I don’t use “Harlem Renaissance” normally) and the Black Arts period. While many of my contemporaries were Black Arts influenced poets and who took those lessons and influences serious in their work as they wrote about apartheid, the Reagan era, and the backlash against racial progress in the 80’s and 90s, the Spoken Word / Hip Hop period was also part of this as well. I felt I was uniquely situated to discuss all those new tracks for Black poetry in the city because I was part of it. I was a poet who wrote poetry mostly for the page, but the Spoken word poets energized Black poetry. All of us were part of creating poetry for the page and the stage. It was a significant part of Black poetry always but in the 1990s, it truly became a phenomenon within itself because of music – Hip-Hop and, locally in the city, Go Go music.