Is anyone saying “It’s time for a black president in the United States” or is it him that is the specific attraction?
DERRICOTTE: I am sure it’s him. Just like I don’t think anybody but Hillary could have gone as far as she went. It’s definitely him. He arouses some sense of hope maybe that’s been asleep, maybe 9/11 and the war makes us try to think a different way about the things that have made us a country and the things that hold us together as a country. You know, your immediate reaction may be a Bush reaction for a lot of people, but maybe upon seeing the war and spending some time living with that response, maybe they see, “Maybe that’s not quite the way I want it to be now.”

So there’s a level of discrimination towards blacks in America. Has some of that been diverted away from blacks to Muslims, because of 9/11 and other terrorism in a twisted way?
DERRICOTTE: Yes, right. Yes. Yes. Although, they say he’s a Muslim, too, you know.

Well, I don’t necessarily mean that about Obama. I just meant that in general.
DERRICOTTE: Well, you know, just to throw something in the ringer from my fearful mind, even I think, “Okay. Now Obama’s running– was nominated. Okay.” I sometimes wonder if things get recreated and recreated until they get worked out and are we still recreating sort of a battle that happens when we have an underclass, an under-representation, the minority. When it was just black people then you had these things that black people did among themselves. Like, there was upper class, “We’re not like those niggers. We’re better than them.” You know, it was a way of diverting self-hatred by projecting it onto somebody else. So you had a way in which racism sort of perpetuated itself because you fractured the minority and they couldn’t really address this as a whole group, because they were too busy saying, “I’m not like the one that’s really the black person.” You know, dividing themselves. Then, I started wondering if the same thing was happening about gender and race when Hillary and Obama were– is that the way of creating the minority. You fracture it and then you sort of destroy the power. And so that is one of my fears about just sort of living in the same problem that has existed in the past. But I’m hoping that that’s not going to happen. But there are a lot of people, you know, changed, “Hillary is not going to win. I’m not going to vote Democrat. I’m going to vote for McCain.”

So I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have no idea. I think Obama’s certainly a good man. I was so pissed off at Hillary and Bill for doing what they did at the end there, I just thought they were better than that. I really did. I met them when they had 100 poets for dinner at the White House and I spent several hours with them. They were wonderful, very literary. They recited poems by heart. You can’t just do that if somebody gives you an hour briefing. You know, this has to be a part of you.

Vastly intelligent people, both of them.
DERRICOTTE: But, you know, I thought their heart was in a better place. I just hope that we have an opportunity to see what happens next.

What does a writer coming up now need to do?
DERRICOTTE: Listen and be open. At Cave Canem, you know, one of the things about Cave Canem is we wanted a place where it is safe to write about race if you wanted to write about race and where it was safe not to write about race, because in certain white communities– just like that chancellor of the Academy of American Poets said a few years ago on the radio, John Hollander, that there couldn’t be a black chancellor, because they weren’t really poets yet because they were still writing about race. And so they couldn’t be because they weren’t universal. As if white poets are not writing about race, right?

He’s no longer in that position.
DERRICOTTE: No, he’s not. A lot of shit went done about that, though. But then there are black poets that tell black poets, “Well, if you’re not writing about race, you’re not a real black poet.”

So we wanted a place where you could pursue your art in any way and in any fashion. And that is what I would say to an artist now. I mean at Cave Canem recently, Claudia Rankine last week is doing these technological things. She took the footage from the 2006 World Cup of Algerian Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt. She took five seconds of that and did a video, but broke it into about five and half minutes. And all the time it’s showing, you see them, you don’t know it’s going to happen, and then suddenly you see this guy turn.

And she’s saying all these incredibly brilliant lines as you’re watching this, which it turns out to be are all quotes from all of these famous writers all about race and violence. So there are all kinds of just new exciting, provocative, brilliant ways in which people are organizing the new kinds of minds that we get from living with technology and I’m just so excited about it. So happy to be able to see it.

You’re very optimistic about it.
DERRICOTTE: Oh, I am. I can’t tell you how optimistic I am seeing the release of these voices into American poetry that were not there when I was growing up. There was nothing in existence. You did not see another black poet or another woman poet for 100 miles. You never read them in your books. I didn’t read them in high school. I didn’t read them in college. I didn’t read them in graduate school. When I asked my professor, he said, “We don’t go down that low.” Yeah, it’s a big difference.