A few weeks ago, I started writing poetry.
It’s a form that I’ve only recently become interested in, after years of being pretty indifferent to it. It wasn’t until I started college that I was exposed to it, primarily via reading Black poets and hearing spoken word artists perform.
These experiences showed me that poetry could be used not only as a tool for social and liberatory change, but also for personal healing and growth. From that point on, I was an outsider looking in, too afraid to attempt it myself. But, something changed a few months ago.
Writing is a therapeutic vehicle for me. It has been one of the few ways I’ve been able to truly make sense of my experiences and the world around me. Regardless of what was going on in life, writing has been one of the few constants.
Writing has always been there. Writing has always kept me. No matter what, writing has always loved me back.
But over the past few months, this hasn't been the case. I’ve struggled with emotions and ideas that, for some reason, I just couldn’t get out in regular prose. I would sit down to write... and nothing. Or I would write something, hate it and delete it. For whatever reason, nothing would stick.
I attempted to fix this by returning to my favorite and most influential book, "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin. I read it at the start of my first year at UNC and it fundamentally shifted how I see the possibilities of writing.
Long story short, it didn’t work. But reading it did lead me to James Baldwin’s poetry, and the work of other Black poets like Tracy K. Smith, Eve L. Ewing and Clint Smith III.
I began watching and reading works by spoken word poets like Ariana Brown and Rudy Francisco, after what felt like years of not doing so.
