The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This process note by Thea Matthews is part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and her poetry classes at the University of San Francisco and Dominican University. Thanks for reading.
GRIME, by Thea
Matthews
City
Lights Books, 2025
Given that that many of the poems in GRIME often take the form of a dramatic monologue and engage with charged subject matter, I wanted to include an author’s note to succinctly convey my ethics as a poet––
These poems are a book of love, an exploration into the human condition, into the complexities of resiliency, and into what people have done or would do in their attempts to survive afflictions. What I observed and absorbed growing up in San Francisco contributed to the depth and weight of these poems. Some poems are autobiographical, and many are dramatic monologues.
The “eye” or “I” of the poem shifts and morphs, yet regardless of the poem, the speaker is an extension of the self, a prism angle of the human conscience. As a poet with an academic background in social behavioral sciences, I’ve crafted these dramatic monologues to serve as vehicles to inhabit a discourse rather than to be a romanticized rant or sensationalized calamity. To write dramatic monologues, I rely on a cultivated basis of compassion and neutrality.
Ultimately, GRIME is more than a book of poems, a strident genre of music, the dirt beneath your nails or ingrained on the windowsill, it’s an experience to face.
~
When writing in dramatic monologue, I employ the form to meditate on human nature and cross-examine aspects of the self; and the ability to be self-searching aids in my approach to persona as a prism of selves and the “I” in the poem is expansive.
In 2019, I served as a poet-in-residence at Alley Cat Books, a San Francisco bookstore in the Mission district that has since closed. During my time, I kept finding myself reflecting on the interplay between the words grim and grime as I walked the streets, observing the underclass and the systemic crises of houselessness, addiction, and police brutality in the city I was born and raised in and damn nearly died in.
As a writer, I cannot ignore or suppress the coercion, deprivation, and tragedy that form the underbelly of a metropolis that is also the epicenter of multi-billion-dollar industries. The widening gap in literacy—both technological and financial—alongside the evaporation of life-sustaining resources for people dying of addiction, is a heartbreak I feel.
Some of the first GRIME poems drafted commented on the ways in which life is often stratified, and the perceived value of one person or nation does not equate to the perceived value of another. Not all of those poems made it into the book. And as time went on, I moved across the country, went to NYU for my MFA, and more of life happened! I grew as a writer, and I continue to grow, evolving my approach to the craft.
The lens and voice of someone grappling with survival and despair also grew, but in an expansive, limitless way to understand and feel what (or who) is often perceived as misunderstood, stigmatized, or demonized on a macro as well as interpersonal level. I also engaged with form, whether it be a sonnet or the golden shovel. For instance, “In My Room: A Golden Shovel,” the speaker is Kalief Browder, and the end of each line is a word from William Carlos William’s “Red Wheelbarrow.” I juxtapose WCW’s take on the significance of an object to the objectification of this African American teenager trapped in a cycle of systemic abuse and violence in the judicial system:
No cold feet, I punch a wall to stare inside a canyon so
empty the edge cannot be erased. Life is too much
to bear with nightmares. What I see at night depends
on how loud my name is being called. Voices rest upon
how fast my body can move through sheetrock or a
herd of shoppers, where they don’t look like people but red
stripes walking, talking, moving as if life is a bike wheel
spinning, and mine is riveted, shocked, like a stunned barrow. . .
GRIME reminds me what poetry can do––Can I be moved, can I feel what someone else is feeling, can my heart and mind be changed, can I understand without condemning, can I reach a sense of justice amid injustice?
I also interwove poems of family stories and childhood experiences, and I ultimately took the braid approach in the final order of the book, removing sections.
Once you enter, you’re in.
Thea Matthews [photo credit: Coskun Caglayan] is the author of GRIME and Unearth [The Flowers], which was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry books of 2020. Her work has been featured in The Colorado Review, The New Republic, The Massachusetts Review, Obsidian, and more. She lives and teaches in New York City.
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