In 2019, Rashaad Thomas was named Best Poet by Phoenix New Times. Not only is he a well-decorated writer and poet, he’s a father, husband, survivor, and veteran of the U.S. Air Force.
After being awarded a coveted MacDowell Fellowship – a residency program for artists of exceptional talent across a range of genres – Rashaad was inspired to write Deliverance in the Blues, a poetry collection that details his experiences with mental illness and homelessness as a Black man. He’s also a founding member of the Gutta Collective, a Phoenix-based group that uses poetry to give Black and Brown people a voice.
Rashaad’s poetry and prose has appeared in The Rumpus, Columbia Poetry Review, and many others, but his favorite piece, entitled “Where I Go: Afropolonia: ‘Writer and Poet Rashaad Thomas Imagines ‘a Planet Only for Black People,” appeared in October of 2021 in Zocalo Public Square.
What inspired you to start writing, and when?
In 2005, I lost everything except my life and honorable discharge. I left Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona, for the last time, destined to be unemployed and homeless for nearly two years.
The Military Personnel Flight out-process briefing could have been longer and more helpful. I was unaware of the Post-9/11 GI Bill to attend college or veteran preference points when applying for government jobs.
It would have been invaluable to know that Veteran Affairs and other civilian organizations offered assistance programs for veterans having trouble paying rent or mortgage before eviction.
Shortly after separating from the USAF, I was evicted from my apartment. My car was home. I escaped the Phoenix heat by mingling with the public library’s books. I sat at the table at the end of the library’s stacks that held Black voices and poetry.
I didn’t have an address or phone number to put on job applications. Even after a couple years of working and an apartment, I still struggled with alcohol. My alcoholism pushed a lot of people away. But, writing gave me a sense of purpose and value despite being alone.
Guilt and shame pushed my shoulders to the bottom of alcohol bottles.
While in the service, I drank extensively to cope with several deaths in the family over a short period. The military’s toxic drinking culture followed me into civilian life. I didn’t care. Drinking eased the pain of shame and loneliness.
After two off-duty DUIs, I was forced to leave the USAF. Years later, a fellow veteran encouraged me to apply for a disability rating because of my chronic hypertension.
As part of the application process, I retrieved my medical records. I scanned the pages. One page made my heart drop. I didn’t know Luke Air Force Base’s psychologists had diagnosed me with clinical depression before separating, I had so many questions. Did the USAF dispose of me to rid them of another troubled airman? Would I have become homeless? Did the depression worsen before applying for a disability rating? What if I had known of the diagnosis, could I have gotten help to address using alcohol to cope with depression?
I had been self-medicating for nearly six years. Over those years, I blamed myself and sometimes no longer wanted to live. My USAF comrades and later, civilian friends had disappeared. They didn’t want to be associated with a failure. The silence was my only friend. It made me uncomfortable because conversations with death were too loud.
I sought help because my only so-called friend was alcohol. I cried out for help. So, I called the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) and other rehabilitation treatment centers in Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Oregon. I pushed everyone away.
Rehab evaluation results concluded I didn’t meet the criteria for alcohol treatment. They told me my drinking was not bad enough for alcohol treatment. They suggested Alcohol Anonymous or continue searching for an addiction program that met my needs.
I lost hope and drank more. I thought it was worth the pain, and sometimes didn’t want to live anymore. When I felt this way, writing became my treatment.
It took nearly two times the number of days for Veteran Affairs to send their decision. I called to check the status of my disability rating decision. They informed me that my application had fallen through the cracks and would take a little longer to decide. It took approximately another year and a half to receive my disability rating.
I submitted my disability rating application in early 2009 and received my decision in late 2011.
Repeatedly, medical professionals said that it seemed that I used alcohol to cope with family deaths, loss of friends, homelessness, and trauma attached to each incident that attacked my mental health.
I wrote on business cards, printer paper, toilet paper, strips of paper that wrapped restaurant napkins with silverware and college-ruled and composition notebooks.
I finally found my breath and a voice to write about my life’s experiences.
Ultimately, I felt like my ribs, bones, muscles and skin were a prison. I was sentenced to life on death row. The only way to free my mind was by writing about pain. Because anything I write or have published, is a freed thought, and I can move on with the next thought about what to write.
How did your military experiences influence the work you’re doing?
After the military, I traded my BDUs for a shadow of my dignity. I failed myself, my family, and my country shamed me into silence. Guilt metastasized into anxiety and depression.
Eventually, my military experience caused service-connected mental health challenges. Every day, I struggle with anxiety and depression. It adversely impacts my marriage, children, and friends. Maintaining a career, continuing education, and healthy relationships is hard.
Some days, It’s hard to have perspective beyond the tip of my nose. Death seems more imminent than a successful life. Before knowing about USAF psychology diagnosing me with clinical depression, I blamed myself for failing my family and country. Guilt metastasized to shame and worthlessness. As a result, I tried to take my life.
I learned about the USAF diagnosis of clinical depression five years after separation. I prescribed myself alcohol to deal with my daily struggles, not knowing I lived with anxiety and depression.
I drank alcohol to cope with the symptoms of anxiety and depression for years. I ruined a lot of relationships, lost jobs, and dropped out of college, unaware of my mental health. Among the failures, I thought suicide would be a success.
The more I wrote, my voice became stronger and clearer. I wrote without guilt or the imposter syndrome on both shoulders, whispering in my ear.
Several family members died briefly before and during the military. The list of family deaths was my father, who served in the USAF for twenty years.
Death stole several of my family members’ lives, military careers, souls, and dignity.
What’s your favorite piece/project to date?
My favorite project to date is a piece called, “Where I Go: Afropolonia: ‘Writer and Poet Rashaad Thomas Imagines ‘a Planet Only for Black People.’”
I dreamed up this afro surrealist piece after years of being submerged in Afrofuturism. It took a few years for me to articulate my vision. It challenged me because I felt naked in front of the world. These were my personal thoughts that I feared the audience would not accept. However, it was part of the journey. I struggled to step away to ensure I was engaged with self-care.
I am working on a few projects, #failedpoetry collection, and a couple mixed media projects focusing on “The Talk,” the generational lecture about how to engage law enforcement as people of color and lynched Black Veterans.
What inspires you to continue?
My family. I want my work to impress my wife, Nancy. But she is an artist and highly critical. I like writing experimental poetry. She doesn’t particularly feel those poems. I don’t want to stop creating experimental poetry. I work to create accessible poetry, no matter how avant-garde it may be.
My daughters are happy and curious kids. They look at the world without bias. They seem free. I want them to be free from struggle. Conscious of their own evolution. I also have to embody the same spirit. I used to be very cynical; justice is unattainable because white people don’t want to change themselves or the world to maintain the power rooted in white supremacy.
I changed my behavior by approaching life with fresh eyes and childlike behavior, open to learning new ways to seek success and justice through engaging communities, writing, and creating art.
I could have had a better experience at Arizona State as a nontraditional Veteran student. But, past trauma doesn’t deter me from being a part of academic events because my mission is to create work that can be used in the Ivory tower and the grassroots of the impoverished. I create art to inspire multi-culturally relevant policies that change society.
Future generations inspire. I want to leave the youth of color a blueprint to navigate the liminal space of their identities and how it impacts their communities. In time, a bridge from the ghetto or the barrier will be built, and more youth of color can attend university and community colleges. I want to impress upon them that they can receive a college degree to give their children a better chance to survive and thrive in a society that views them as troubled juvenile delinquents.
How did the conference at Arizona State University come into being?
In 2015, I attended the Third Annual Veterans in Society Conference, “Veterans in Society: Race and/or Reconciliation.” I met Ms. Nancey Dallete, the associate director of Arizona State University’s Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement (OVMAE). I shared my story about a Scottsdale police officer who stopped me while walking home in a predominantly white community from the Circle Store, only a few blocks from my home. He stopped me and waited nearly 10 minutes until he returned. He told me he stopped me because they wanted to monitor the neighborhood.
As for the ViS conference, I was still determining what to expect. Especially because we were traveling to Roanoke, VA. I heard there were active Ku Klux Klan groups throughout the state. But I kept an open heart and mind. I met a lot of wonderful scholars, artists, and Veterans. I returned to Arizona and raved to Ms. Nancy Dallette about the conference. I told her that the ViS conference needs to come to Arizona State University. Then in 2018, I virtually attended and presented a collection of poetry I had written at the Fourth Veterans in Society Conference: Veterans, globalized: veterans and their societies from an international perspective. I proposed this because I noticed at the previous conference there were very few participants of color, and I was one of two artists to present.
Lastly, in 2022, I shared a poem called “Phoenix Don’t Love Them” at the conference welcoming of the Fifth Veterans in Society Conference: Resilience, Pedagogy, and Veteran studies.
Interviewed by Hannah Connor
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