Candace Williams Keeps The Fire Burning
Photo: via Alice James Books
Candace Williams (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and continuous learner who nerds out about a lot of things. Among their accolades, Candace has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2017), was a finalist in the National Poetry Series competition (2018), and their most recent collection of works, I AM THE MOST DANGEROUS THING, has received praise from Book Riot, Vogue, and Morgan Parker, among others. In the summer of 2020, Candace moved to Providence with their partner—educator and visual artist Laimah Osman—to take up a teaching job. We chatted via email.
The Well (TW): Hi Candace. You’ve lived in Seattle, NYC, and elsewhere; how’s Rhode Island working out so far?
Candace Williams (CW): Rhode Island has so many opportunities to connect with nature. I love going on walks, hiking, and trying activities that are new to me like kayaking and paddle-boarding. We go to Goddard Park, Colt State Park, Lincoln Woods often. I’m excited for my summer. I’m learning to run and swim, so I hope to find new running trails and try open water swimming.
I’ve also enjoyed meeting artists who are working hard to create inclusive spaces. For example, I’m learning DJing and music production at The Nest’s Club: Club (ig) DJing and music production can be the opposite of inclusive, but I’ve been able to meet like-minded people, be a beginner, and try new things in a safer space.
TW: Quick organic plug: DJ Caloric (Club: Club’s founder) spins at Myrtle on June 28th! On the subject of being a beginner, how’d you get started with poetry?
CW: In seventh-grade English class, my teacher assigned awesome creative projects including a poetry collection with 10+ poems featuring a variety of forms and topics. I remember I saved all of the work until the night before it was due, but I put a lot of time and effort into writing and illustrating a poem where I personified weather elements to depict a sunrise. Sadly, that would be the last time I wrote a poem until I picked it up in my late-20s.
TW: Two parter: Why’d you put the pen down and, is there imagery—like the weather—that you find yourself returning to?
CW: In school, I wasn’t exposed to environments where I was expected to write creatively. When I left graduate school, I didn’t have the time, space, or money to write. For most of my time in New York, I had unstable housing. I didn’t even think of writing a poem until I had a safe studio apartment and enough money to access good food, stable housing, and the space to think.
My poetry features a lot of abstract concepts borrowed from my old physics, econometrics, and mathematics textbooks. I love the process of taking a specific term from a field of study and applying it to contexts that aren't expected. For example, in studying DJing and music production, I realized the concept of volume in audio literally refers to the volume of air displacement created by sound waves. I definitely put that in my back pocket.
The Well’s note: We also love Candace’s work with erasure as a creative process. It’s omitted from this interview because it’s a well-covered topic elsewhere. We highly suggest “A Black Queer Poet Takes a Dagger to White Supremacy and Capitalism” by Mandana Chaffa for Electric Literature.
Black Sonnet, poem by Candace Williams, print collaboration with Laimah Osman,. Paper lithograph on Rives BFK paper , 8 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches, 2018
TW: Years ago, you talked at Eyebeam (NYC) about a range of related topics like surveillance capitalism, encryption, and privacy—could you speak to that a bit, in relation to creative work, being seen, etc?
CW: When I write or make any kind of art, I’m trying to see myself. There is a flow that happens when I write a poem or make something new. In the flow, I encounter thoughts that are new to me—maybe they were in my subconscious and it’s the first time I’ve been able to work with them on a conscious level.
Survival is important, and often, survival requires outrunning the search light or hiding in plain sight. If anything, producing art can be dangerous because my thoughts can be cataloged and analyzed outside of their original context. I’m constantly learning how to be myself in the face of danger.
TW: With it in mind you’re learning to DJ, that answer calls back to the Black and queer origins of House. Could you talk a bit about your own musical history, tastes, and what you’re exploring.
CW: I grew up in a household that helped me appreciate all kinds of music. Between my mom, dad, and older brother and sister, you’d find anything from pop, soul, funk, and disco, to jazz, rap, hip hop, R&B, folk, and classical music playing in our house and cars. I took guitar and piano lessons for a few years as a young child and played clarinet and bassoon through high school. When I moved to New York, I got into dance music, opera, and many subgenres from around the world like reggaeton, bomba, and dancehall.
In terms of DJing and music production, I lean toward many house subgenres. 70% of my setlists are jackin’ house, deep house, and tech house. I also like to work in adjacent genres like minimal techno, acid techno, big room / club, and nu disco. I try to stay open to new influences, understand what people are dancing to right now, while also bringing my unique perspective to the floor.
Right now, on the electronic side, I’m listening to Green Velvet, Honey Dijon, Ronald Clark, Frankie Knuckles, Fred Again.., 070 Shake, Todd Terry, Carl Craig, Theo Parrish, Target Demographic, Ultra Nate, Mau P, Caribou / Daphni, Purple Disco Machine, Peggy Gou, and the Chemical Brothers.
Candace at the opening for Spells for Black Wizards. Photo by Seze Devres for Ace Hotel New York.
TW: You just went out for Coachella, right? Quick scene report?
CW: Immaculate vibes. Incredible music. Sun for my melanin.
TW: Nitty-gritty time! As a poet, an aspiring DJ, a traveler...can we ask how you’re affording a life of creative exploration?
CW: I've had a dual career in teaching and technology since my mid-20s. Now, I work for a healthtech company based in California. In my late 20s, I got into a MFA program, but decided to keep my full-time work and creative work separate because I saw a lot of friends struggling to make ends meet with their art and I worried that being tied to an intellectual institution would put my creative freedom at risk. At that time, I left my tech job and returned to K-12 teaching. Teaching is a lovely, generative experience (and I used my summers off wisely). In 2022, I realized I was burnt out after teaching during COVID and returned to tech.
I'm privileged to have full-time employment. It definitely costs money to be creative. Before COVID, I was making a decent amount of money doing poetry readings and talks at universities and non-profits. I did that alongside my full-time middle school teaching career. Now, I tend to spend more on writing and music.
TW: That feels very balanced; is the practicality coming from your family or just a path you found on your own?
CW: I grew up in a household where we struggled to stay in the middle class. My mom worked full and part-time jobs with 70+ -hour weeks to make sure that I had stable housing, food, and opportunities. My mom and dad encouraged me to try new things (and paid for all of those endeavors). When I wanted to go to a private high school, my mom put in even more work (thankfully, I had partial scholarships to help). In my first year of private high school, I got invited to study in the Czech Republic the following summer. The trip cost $2,000. She didn't tell me that she had overdrawn her bank account but sent me on the trip anyway. I learned that she won a few hundred dollars from a lottery ticket and that allowed her to pay for the trip.
My mom taught me about hard work. The opportunities I've had have required a lot of luck, but hard work has helped me make space for luck when it arrives. When I got to college, I worked four part-time jobs. When I learned that we didn't have to pay for each class or credit, I made sure I took 1-2 extra classes on top of the typical course load (I finished five years of school in four). I took advantage of every opportunity I could. The first week of classes, I walked into the debate union and said "I heard there's free travel if I do debate". My college paid for all of my international travel and even gave me stipends so I could work summer internships at the non-profit in India, for my local congressman, and in a day reporting center tied to a juvenile detention facility.
These early experiences shaped how I approach life now. I'm financially stable right now, but I know that can change at any time; my financial stability has fluctuated my entire adult life.
I AM THE MOST DANGEROUS THING, 2023. Order a copy here.
TW: Awesome mom! The visit to the Czech Republic, was that your first international trip? What kind of impact did it have on you?
CW: My mom worked for an airline for many years. She took me to Mexico for a week when I was very young for a vacation. The trip to the Czech Republic was the first time I traveled outside of North America, or without my parents. I was there for a month with a group of high school students studying economics and international relations at Palacký University in Olomouc. Out of the 30-40 students there, only a handful of us were from the United States. My biggest memories are walking everywhere (I grew up in suburban car culture), being the only Black person until I went to Prague for the final week, and going to clubs for the very first time. The Czech Republic has an incredible nightlife scene, and I can’t believe I got to dance in discotheques when I was a teenager.
TW: The legendary status of Czech discotheques is very real! How about other trips since then; maybe the farthest you’ve trekked?
CW: During a summer in college, I was invited by a university in Xian, China to run a debate program. I went to China for two weeks, flew home to Seattle for three days, and got back on a plane so I could fly to Delhi, India for a month of work at a non-profit. China and India taught me that the world is a diverse, complex, and interesting place, and that I can be pretty tough and self-sufficient when I need to be.
TW: You mention being invited. Can you expand a bit on what that means, exactly?
CW: I chose Claremont McKenna College (CMC) for my undergraduate studies because the school invests a lot of money in its students. They had grants that I could apply to each summer. The first grant I used funded my work at a juvenile detention facility. The second grant enabled me to intern for my local congressman in his re-election office, and my last grant gave me the money to find an internship abroad.
When I decided to apply for the third grant, my school connected me with an alum who was very well-connected. He floated a few ideas by me, and we decided that since I had an interest in human rights work, that I should work at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in Delhi. That summer, my debate coach invited me to join a trip to China. A few universities in Xi’an wanted to expand their debate programs into the format we used at school. CMC paid for the trip.
TW: Thank you. For folks who haven’t traveled with the assistance of grants, mentors, school clubs, etc—the process can feel really mysterious. From all your travels, you got any wild stories?
CW: Not that I can write here.
TW: Hah! Fair enough. How about, not-wild stories? Up at the top you mentioned learning to swim and getting on trails more.
CW: After a few years of chronic pain and inactivity, I've gotten to a place where I'm training for a 5K and (an ambitious) SwimRun race (Google 'SwimRun' - one word...I had no idea this event even existed). I run, swim, and strength train 5-6 days per week. This past January, I also decided to transition to a whole food plant-based way of eating. Early on, I realized that one of the coolest and biggest challenges of changing how I eat is exploring how to create flavor without relying on animal products, oil, and salt. I've learned a lot and am enjoying the process.
TW: Very cool. How about some Staff Picks?
CW: I've returned to this Rich Roll podcast episode with Ellen Langer multiple times. I like her latest book, too. [Also] Song of my Softening by Omotara James and The Butterfly's Burden by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Fady Joudah).
TW: Given your range of practices this might be an unanswerable final Q but, is there a particular project you feel most proud of?
CW: The work I'm most proud of isn't the end product—the book, song, lesson plan, DJ set, or 5k. It's the work behind that work—the process of learning new things and building community around ideas I really care about.
On a more personal level, I'm proud of myself for being myself.
Candace and Laimah are part of Awesome Foundation Rhode Island, a monthly micro-grant Myrtle also supports. Learn more at awesomeisland.org.
For more on the origins of House, check out Do You Remember House? and our interview with author Micah Salkind.
