🌑 MONSTERA
🗣️ Help me build a Guaranteed Income Program for Black Poets
In honor of the Black Poets who have always gathered me including but not limited to (because their endless names would take up the full breath of this piece): June Jordan, Nikky Finney, Sonia Sanchez, aja monet, Lucille Clifton, Jericho Brown, Jayne Cortez, Safia Elhillo, Danez Smith, Audre Lorde, Evie Shockley, Terrance Hayes, Margaret Walker, Ama Codjoe, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Rita Dove, Paticia Smith, Dave Drake, Hanif Abdurraqib, Mo Browne – Djeli Said, Carl Phillips, Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall
It’s that time of the year where another grad school application season is upon us. Folks are deciding between MFA programs, fellowships, residencies, & other ways to survive as artists. Every Poet seems to be asking the question “what environment is going to help make doing my work possible?” I include myself in the numerous writers pondering this thought. In my own conclusions, I have determined that when Poets discuss enrolling in graduate degree programs or applying to fellowships we want to know how to make a living as writers. The diction of this query is one that we are very comfortable with but it also dances around the root of it all which is money. Poets want to know how to do we love while financially supporting ourselves. Yet it is much easier for programs & individuals to dance with the language of how to make a living, in other words how to create space to write, rather than how to make money from your writing. I believe most Poets know how to wield their pen & are great at finding communities that help them continue honing their gifts. What most Poets need to continue doing their work is money.
Towards the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong proponent of Guaranteed Income as a way to provide economic stability.
“I am now convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
Guaranteed Income differs from Universal Basic Income because it is for a targeted group of people. In the case of MONSTERA, it serves the targeted group of Black Poets. In a time where institutional support is being rapidly pulled & denied while witnessing late stage capitalism, we need our Poets to feel confident in using their backbone to turn us towards what we need to see. In many ways, our Poets remind us of the embodied knowledge we already know by turning us towards the darkness we were taught to fear. Furthermore, our Poets turn our heads to bear witness to each other’s experiences.
I believe artists are all in search of a tree-casting shade—especially Black Poets. Additionally, we don’t have to travel far, over-exert ourselves, or succumb to how other beings are growing to do so. It is possible to stay rooted where you are & be nourished by the abundance within & around you. In her poem entitled “Job Prescription,” Evie Shockley wrote “trust me when i say that poetry heals, guides, feeds, & enlivens.” Therefore, it is only right that we in turn help deliver resources that help heal, guide, feed, & enliven our Black Poets before or if they ever win the life changing monetary prizes from selective institutions.
MONSTERA is the result of two years of writing the Assemblage: Baby’s Breath publication starting, on October 28th, with a love letter to the Poets. Since then, I’ve also continued wondering & wandering on & off the page to get to this point. The point being where I can help transform affirmation banking, coined by me in this piece, into fiscal deposits of support for those that gather so many of us. I’m sharing MONSTERA with the intention of starting to distribute the guaranteed income funds to Black Poets in February 2026. I present MONSTERA: Casting a shadow of support for Black Poets to Lean Towards Dark Futures.
Become a member of the sprawling unrestricted support system by becoming a monthly donor. All monthly donors of any amount are able to nominate Black Poets to receive guaranteed income!
Please share this piece & the donation link in the button below widely making sure to include my name Kay Brown (she/her) and a link to the publication of the Assemblage: Baby’s Breath substack in your citational practice. If you are an organization or someone who champions Black Poets willing to give time, resources, &/or platform(s) I would love to hear from you! All of the above are welcomed introductory communications to learn how we can sustain MONSTERA. I am specifically looking for support about funding, events, & opportunities that contribute to MONSTERA’s growth & sustainability. Please reach out via email zonezero.assemblage@gmail.com
is a forest refuge where Black folk can create knowing the sky of support is whole, dark, & enveloping.
is the moss growing on the north side of trees—a map stamped with rogue footsteps—guiding Black folk to collective liberation through the wild terrain of life.
is rooted in Black Feminism & acknowledges that “Black woman’s bodies can’t be divorced from the theories they produce” (A Voice From the South by Anna J. Cooper). As such, we invoke the Grandmothers who always pulled you aside & said let me put a lil something in your hand. We invoke the Sunday dinners where you broke bread, never went hungry, & had plenty to take home. We invoke the I’d give anything for you baby sentiments & the tight hugs that linger as you are sent along your way.
is an air purifier helping Black Poets b r e a t h e & be well while enabling, through the centering disability justice, Poets to create a rich habitat to sprawl across & call home.
is a sprawling unrestricted guaranteed income program that stretches beyond the imposed boundaries & carved borders of the Poets justifying their labor & time in traditional grant applications. Poets have been touched & in turn move us. So we unabashedly trust the expression of how their work made the water wave from the loving folks beside them. MONSTERA trusts the waters wave enough to wade in, lapping over the shore to return/give/share again.
acknowledges that Poets, naturally as human beings, are a part of the natural world. Thus our Black Feminist & anti-colonial values intersect with Black Feminist Ecologies centering the collective living world.
detest the Western knowledge system of providing who, what, when, where, why, & how before giving Poets permission to wonder & wander. MONSTERA believes the more we wander the more we wonder & lets what rises to the surface become the ledger of time. MONSTERA empowers Poets to wander, wonder & create without needing a preamble of what they anticipate to find.
acknowledges darkness as a blanket of protection ensuring sustainability, community, & self-sufficiency.
uplifts Black Poets who are on the verge of precarity whose work & very being are almost incinerated by the blinding light of “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (bell hooks).
is a nutrient-rich fertile ground for Black Poets to root & find support for their growth otherwise disregarded from being forced to learn to lean towards the blinding withering light.
Please remember if you choose to quote this piece, share this piece, or any piece on this publication to always CITE BLACK WOMEN. Please always include my name Kay Brown (she/her) and a link to the publication of the Assemblage: Baby’s Breath substack in your sharing practice.
🍃 Work with me 1:1 in Poets Need People
🌀 Step into The Clearing
💌 Letters From Me to You—Yes, in the mail— in Written by Herself!
🚪“Come on in. And don’t let all my cold air out!”
🌑 Donate to MONSTERA: A guaranteed income program for Black Poets launching in 2026
Lastly, remember that referrals are now available! This means you get to speak the name Assemblage: Baby’s Breath out loud to your community while receiving unique grounded gathered gifts from me. Thank you for being here 🩵.
© Kay Brown. All rights reserved.
