I had a revelation this week about how much I love both music and writing. They are honestly two of the topics I could talk about for hours ad nauseum. It’s hilarious to me though that I didn’t become a music writer. It’s like I love them separately but equally. To close out our series on poetry this month, I wanted to talk about the marriage of poetry and music.
Read MorePoetry challenges me in my own writing process. When I’m writing an initial draft of a manuscript, I’m mostly attempting to get the story out of my head onto paper. It’s not necessarily going to be this beautiful language that convinces you that I have any ability to write at all. But it’s those later drafts where things really start to come alive, and often, I’ve read some poetry in between.
Read MoreI recently came across an author discussing their thought that fiction isn’t activism. I’ll put a pin in that to say, poetry definitely is and I don’t want to hear anything else about it. Maybe I don’t know the true definition of activism, but I know that poetry moves. I know that poetry unites. I know that poetry has for centuries highlighted the human condition, brought the perils of society to the forefront and has been at the helm of movements.
Read MoreBack in the day, I grappled with how to define myself as a writer. It was a combination of imposter syndrome’s “you could never” and the idea that I needed to prove myself before embracing the title. The title I struggled to accept at the time was poet. But the struggle didn't stop there; it continued with questions like, 'If I call myself a poet now, does that mean that’s all I’ll ever be?’ I already had dreams of screenwriting and had started to experiment with short stories. In my mind, I nurtured the dream— ‘I want to write everything that can be written,’ but in my heart— crickets.
Read MoreTo read how Ms. Sonia Sanchez perceives the poet, it’s no wonder poetry has always felt an intimidating genre to me. Growing up in Philadelphia, we were never short on hubs where words flowed over microphones in syncopated rhythms, sometimes over music, other times, solo straight to the ears of the audience, shooting this crafted language right into their veins.
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