This interview between John Fox and Darnell Epps is taken from the essay John wrote in September discussing Cultivating Goodwill and Democracy Through Poetry and Poem-Making, an in-person poetic medicine retreat offered in August, 2024. John spoke with three of the participants from the two-day event to allow them to share their personal experiences of the impact of working together in community to listen, write, and bear witness to themselves and to each other. You can read John's full essay with all three interviews included here.
"We must make the choices that enable us to
fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves."
Thomas Merton
John Fox: Darnell, could you share why you decided to attend the retreat?
Darnell Epps: I would say this past spring I was arriving at what I would call burn-out. I heard it said that it is important to connect in the community and to reach out, but I was how the hell am I supposed to do that when I am so busy?
There were some things that got restructured, and even though my team was smaller at work, I received coaching and support to work more strategically—to pare back so that I could have more impact with fewer resources. That afforded some space mentally going into the summer; but I knew in my body—I am exhausted. I knew I had to reach out to some folks.
As a young professional I thought I needed to have the answer. I needed to show up and know what to say, how to navigate. My God, what a humbling year. I made mistakes. It was humbling from a learning and professional standpoint. It was also liberating because I learned I had to ask for help. I had to learn that there is no shame in asking for help.
JF: Are you saying that the retreat was helpful?
DE: It is as if I came with the soil—ready to receive. I started reaching out and one thing led to another. Here comes this invitation: Do you need to recharge? Do you need to invest in yourself? As leaders in community-building, we can find ourselves empty. That was the first Neighborhood Connection workshop. Healing! Connection!
I used one of the poems in my senior leadership retreat. As one who has a complex relationship with formal schooling—words, literacy, and poems in particular, I always thought poems were not accessible to me. I didn’t understand them. What am I supposed to make of this?
Then I had this dynamic first experience—omigod—this is what I needed.
You mentioned the retreat was multi-generational, multi-racial and then the socio-economic diversity—that was key. I grew up working class. My grandparents came from the south in the Second Great Migration. My grandmother worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital. I am thinking as a child she is a nurse, a doctor…then learned she was a custodian. There is no shame there. I didn’t know. They worked and worked and saved and saved, and their generation put my parents in a different place.
I went to what is considered a “failing school.” It was under-resourced. There were challenges there. I learned how to do it, how to get through—but I struggled with reading and comprehension. I probably would have been diagnosed with learning differences if they had the resources for testing.
Long story short, I go to the first evening of the workshop, and I want to go again to the second day. It was so cool hearing the different variations. As one who has moved from lower class to middle class, that was helpful to me to have that complexity because of often being the only Black person in predominantly white spaces, it was good to be in a majority person-of-color setting so I could think of other aspects of my identity. I could think about privileges that I have which I don’t think about. For instance: unhoused experience was uplifted. I have always had some type of home my grandparents, my parents…so that was a lens I had not considered.
JF: How does this connect with the Goodwill and Democracy workshop?
DE: I knew I wanted to come back even though these poems I am not sure about. You said something that created this invitation. You talked about playing with words. You scaffolded this in a way that gave me courage to try. There were other people speaking from their experience. You raised questions in such thoughtful ways.
I needed a safe space to say, “John, I don’t know.” The freedom to say, “I don’t know” made me more curious. These lines from the song the Heart of the Matter as sung by India Arie ring true now to me:
The more I know
the less I understand
The things I thought I figured out
I had to learn again
This space of learning. To seeing again. To going deeper. To wondering. My heart, my body, is craving that so I wanted to be intentional about being in community. What a more beautiful way than poetry?!
JF Note: Here is the poem where Darnell reflects upon and allows for not knowing:
I appreciate how you tried to keep me safe
The harvest I now enjoy from the seeds you sowed last season
I understand more fully how you showed me the straight and
narrow path
The path hard to find
Yet, oh how I long to dance, dance in the freedom of the unknown
To stray, wonder, walk down the wayward path
I consider what possibilities await in the wild spaces, the expanses
I won’t forget you as you are a part of me
Come visit, but don’t stay too long
It’s time to let go—to let you
Although, I don’t know
I don’t know how
Darnell Epps
This poem was prompted by / based on the Third Habit of the Heart: The Capacity to Hold Tension Creatively:
Our lives are filled with contradictions—from the
gap between our aspirations and our behavior to
observations and insights we cannot abide
because they run counter to our convictions. If
we fail to hold them creatively, these
contradictions will shut us down and take us out
of the action. But when we allow their tensions
to expand our hearts, they can open us to new
understandings of ourselves and our world. The
genius of the human heart lies in its capacity to
use these tensions to generate insight, energy,
and new life.
as well as the poem To Fear by Nga Reh, a 15-year-old refugee from Thailand:
To Fear
You that is in my heart
When the time is wrong,
like lightening you appear.
What are you? Where are you?
Where have you come from?
Do you have a family?
You seem new-born, like a freshly hatched egg,
I should take you in, I should teach
you right from wrong,
you need protection from the unknown
of the world, from struggling to keep your emotions
in balance, not sad about leaving a place you love,
not so happy that you go overboard,
the unknown should be known to you,
only when the words right
from wrong are spoken
I should raise you as my own.
Nga Reh
This poem was published in the anthology Our Table of Memories: Food & Poetry of Spirit, Homeland & Tradition.
Darnell Epps is a proud native of Baltimore, MD. He serves as the director of Fair Play (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice) at Hawken School. In this role, he works collaboratively with faculty and administrators, leading programming to create more equitable and inclusive spaces for all members of the school community to build culture and cultivate belonging. He is a skilled facilitator, presenter, and storyteller. Darnell earned a B.S. in Music Education from Lebanon Valley College (PA) and a M.A. in Music from Washington State University. He is a proud volunteer in the Media Ministry at South Euclid United Church of Christ, enjoys spending time with his family that includes Robert (marriage partner), Louie (pug dog), and Titon (cat), and walking in Forest Hill Park.
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