Mackey’s writing draws on Sufi and West African mysticism and music, Bedouin traditions, the Quran, African American music (especially jazz) and history, and ideas of love, nothingness, initiation and spiritual journeys. His poetry and fiction exist in continuous transit between language that conjures an imaginary music and music from which language floats — in some cases, quite literally like a bubble. His criticism helps us understand disruption, discord and divergence as a ‘discrepant engagement’ — something that engages with the violent disparity between societies’ presumed norms and the lived experience that those norms work to eradicate or exploit. His idea of the ‘tellingly inarticulate’ frames choosing not to make sense as a way to reject and indict racist societies and the ways they make sense to themselves.
“It is not simply writing about jazz, but writing as jazz…” - David Hajdu, The New York Times