*In 2022, I was interviewed by staff at Midas Magazine, an arts and culture publication of my alma mater, UNC Charlotte. The resulting article, edited for brevity, appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of the magazine. Here are my extended answers to interviewer Leenah Newby’s questions.*

Q: Why did you choose poetry as a way to describe part of your upbringing in a Black community? What’s significant about poetry and prose to you? 

A: Like many poets, I have a love interest to thank for my initial forays into poetry. I kept a diary throughout junior high school-once I got into high school, I started to write poetry. I wasn’t conscious of writing about my community at all really. I was mostly expressing feelings of longing and infatuation. Now that I’m older and much wiser-far more knowledgeable about American history, and the enduring effects of the racist laws that created differences in Black and white quality of life-I feel more of a responsibility to talk about those effects in my work. But I also talk about family and the people who raised me.  I do it to chronicle my upbringing for my own family and friends, but also for people who aren’t Black who want to learn about and be exposed to a different culture. I feel it’s important to do my small part to record for future generations what life was like in my time, the thoughts and nature of the people I lived with-even if that leads to talking about uncomfortable topics. For millennia, poetry and prose writers have passed down information about the nature of people and shown us that while technological advances have changed human life, human nature hasn’t changed much at all.  

I came to love poetry from being exposed to quite a few of the now-often-derided “dead white men” who then dominated the canon. I especially loved William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams-poets with Ws in their name, apparently. We didn’t get much Black poetry beyond Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool.” Yet, the elevated, ornate diction of the British poets and the music of Whitman was alluring. Movies like Dead Poets Society lit a fire in me-I wanted to recite Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain” and teach people to love poetry like Robin Williams’s character. This isn’t an original thought, but I’d say poetry chose me. I was in love with the idea of being a poet, of being someone who could write something beautiful and pithy.  As I’ve gotten older, I often tell people that I prefer poetry because I’m a lazy novelist-poetry allows me to make allusions and inferences about characters and issues that might have to be more properly fleshed out to meet the expectations of a fiction reader.  
 
Q: What inspired you most to create and publish your poetry collections?

A: The more poetry I was exposed to, the more my desire increased to be counted in the number of people who called themselves poets. I wanted the experience of curating my poems so that they told a cohesive story, creating a body of work that conveyed a certain mood. Of course, one needn’t be published on the page to be a poet, but for me I needed the validation of having something people could pick up in a library or buy at a bookstore to feel truly fulfilled as a writer. I’m a big music fan, and I’ve always looked at poetry collections as albums that captured a moment in time. If I wasn’t going to sing, these books would be my records. 

Q: How would you define Black literature? Is it a genre all on its own? 

A: I’d keep it simple-I define Black literature as quite simply any literature created by black people. But I think it’s interesting to think about how Black literature in America would be regarded without the experience of enslavement. By now, I think we think of the work of descendants of, say, Irish Americans, as just “American” literature. Black literature is frequently concerned with telling stories that wouldn’t exist without slavery and segregation. The stories of Black immigrants are often quite different from those of us who are descendants of slaves-they have been fortunate to have come of their own volition to a country far more conducive to reaching the “American dream.” Consider the work of acclaimed author Chimimanda Adichie-in her breakout book Americanah, the novel’s main character, who like Adichie immigrated Nigeria, admits to being alienated by the expectations of racial solidarity from Black Americans. Ifemelu does not want to be forced to identify with a history she doesn’t share. And so the spectre of enslavement plays a significant part in a work by a Black immigrant who isn’t the descendant of a slave. Even though African immigrants are often the descendants of people who endured centuries of colonization, the middle of the last century was characterized by the independence movement. Black immigrants coming to America leave places where Black people dominate governments and institutions. What does Black literature look like when written by people who come from that environment? Is the literature of people who come here of their own volition “more American”? Black literature (both in America and around the world) is a genre all its own, but its subject matter is deeply affected by white colonization, so we have no idea how black literature might be characterized in the absence of that history and experience-or if we’d even call it “black” at all. 
 
Q: Have you felt a sense of community surrounding your work and/or others similar to your work? How do you think it brings people together?  

A: The Black experience is part of the American experience, and the fact that so many of us share the same origin story inevitably creates community, camaraderie, and a significant degree of political solidarity amongst Black people. Many Black writers are, in effect, writing about the world enslavement and colonization created for us, even when they aren’t doing so intentionally. It’s hard to establish community, camaraderie, and a significant degree of political solidarity with people who are ignorant or willfully ignorant of that work, and therefore ignorant of your origin story and that experience. This is why having people on school boards who are sensitive to this reality is important.  

Anecdotally, it seems to me that the first collections of Black poets often center on origin-where you come from, who raised you. This is certainly the case in my first collection, In My Feelins, and I could cite many more examples. I feel this is less so the case with white poets, and I’m not quite sure why. But my guess is that we view publishing a book-given the relative disadvantage into which we are born-as a wondrous accomplishment, and wish to show, as we say in the Black church, that “God has brought us from a mighty long way.”   

In my writing, I have many poems that don’t overtly deal with race or politics at all, and I have observed that white friends with whom I have nothing in common most readily identify with that work. At this point in my American life, this is only mildly disappointing. I am hopeful that they are amended in some way by encountering the more “political” work, and I am of course quite grateful for the support they demonstrate by purchasing a book.  

But I’ve always been more interested in truth than bringing people together. We live in a significantly flawed democracy, one in which voting margins of 50 percent plus 1 vote-or even 50 percent plus 3 million votes-aren’t always determinative of political outcomes. Therein lies an argument for tact in hopes of gaining consensus for change, one beautifully articulated in part by Martin Luther King’s tempered rebuke of contemporaries like Stokely Carmichael and John Oliver Killens in his book Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?:  
 
…the Negro’s struggle in America is quite different from and more difficult than the [African] struggle for independence. The American Negro will be living tomorrow with the very people against whom he is struggling today. The American Negro is not in a Congo where the Belgians will go back to Belgium after the battle is over, or in an India where the British will go back to England after independence is won. In the struggle for national independence one can talk about liberation now and integration later, but in the struggle for racial justice in a multiracial society where the oppressor and the oppressed are both “at home,” liberation must come through integration….Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live? 

I offer this context because it colors the way I think of the notion of “bringing people together”-which is largely in the context of politics. I’m not at all interested in lying to people for their comfort, but I’m also not interested in engaging in counterproductive invective for the sake of gaining credibility with an ideologically homogeneous group of people, be they Black, fellow writers, or political allies. I have long held a romantic notion that exposure to the “right” art could affect politics and thereby effect change by creating ideological solidarity within the Black community and stirring the consciences of potential allies beyond it.  

However, I must concede that the events of January 6, 2021 effectively served as a rebuttal to idyllic notions about the efficacy of persuasive dialogue, of the possibility for “coming together.” The condoning of the acts of that day as “legitimate political discourse,” the lionization of those who committed them, and the delegitimization of Black votes-all views held by the overwhelmingly white political party of the day-bring to mind the environment in which the terrors of the 1866-1900 post-Reconstruction era came to pass. Over this period, the Black vote was eviscerated in the South. Since January 6, more than ever, even the Obama years-I have struggled to feel optimistic about the direction of the country. I have a nagging sense of hopelessness about the extent to which art-or anything other than capitulating to the onslaught of false narratives about the devastating effects of America’s history of racist law and policy-can bring Blacks and whites together. Sadly, I’d guess that sentiment is probably highest among Black artists who try to address race in America in their work.   

Q: Were there any other significant or lasting connections you’ve made with other Black authors through your poetry? What about other authors in general?

A: I’ve been fortunate to have established relationships with many other Black poets and a few novelists by attending graduate school and Associated Writing Programs annual conferences, and by participating in workshops such as the Cave Canem Workshop for Black poets and the Carolinas African American Writers Collective. But it’s interesting to think about poets I met who reached out to me after having read my poetry. It’s rare that I’ve had the honor, but perhaps the two that come to mind most readily are the poets Len Lawson and D’Angelo Dia. You don’t encounter many people in life with whom you establish an easy rapport despite distance and long intervals of time passing between meetings-I feel I have that kind of relationship with both guys, and I’m grateful for their friendship.  

Q: How do you feel about movements and communities such as The Urban Reader—a Black bookstore showcasing Black authors and their respective stories—and the Carolina African American Writers Collective? Do you think it’s alienating Black culture from the rest of the public, or uplifting it?

A: I’m grateful for independent bookstores in general, and appreciate the mission of  independent Black bookstores in particular. They are generally labors of love, not get-rich (or even profitable)-quick schemes, and to be determined to specialize in Black books is an even greater leap of faith. Of course, from a business standpoint, the proprietor is likely limiting their ability to be profitable by limiting their scope. 

I don’t find Black bookstores to be any more alienating than historically Black colleges and universities. Only those who lack historical perspective about why one would feel the need for such a place and take pride in it will be alienated by its existence-unfortunately, the pervasiveness of this kind of ignorance is what makes the decision to open such a store so admirable and risky.   

As an active member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective prior to a stint living out of state, I’m very supportive of workshops for Black writers. They exist because of the uniqueness of the Black experience in America. To be in a workshop like Cave Canem or The Watering Hole is to be able to write in cultural shorthand, knowing that allusions to your life experiences will likely be grasped with an immediacy you’d be less likely to enjoy in a more diverse workshop. The most successful writers from these workshops have ample (or at least sufficient) “crossover” appeal, as evidenced by their award-winning books and positions in academia. A country’s and a community’s cultural output is enhanced where opportunities to write and rigorous critique of that writing exists, even if people outside of those groups don’t choose to engage with the work. 
 
Q: What would you like to say to other young Black authors who aspire to be the next Langston Hughes or James Baldwin? 

A: “All genuine poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”- William Wordsworth 

Of course, a lot of great writing has been created in the absence of tranquility. However, I think I’ve done my best work in solitude and silence. I’d also recommend not arguing with brave rednecks on Twitter who use portraits of Austrian economists for avatars and have handles that mostly consist of numbers; further, I’d add that these prospective authors should do as I say and not as I do in this regard. I think folks like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Clint Smith, Heather McGhee, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Natasha Tretheway, and Adam Serwer have already navigated how to find tranquility and avoid interacting with people who keep them from their important work- but perhaps the generation of writers that look to them the way that group of luminaries likely looked to Baldwin or Hughes will find this advice to be of use.