Terrance Hayes encourages broad creative outlets and frequent practice

For poet Terrance Hayes, writing and being creative is no different than eating.

“It’s equal to food to me,” he said. “The same thing I get from food I get from being a creative person, so it just means I do it all the time, more than anybody I know.”

This point was one he reiterated during his public reading last Tuesday at Hill Hall, where he read ten of his works for an audience of around 400 people.

Hayes’ reading was part of his week-long role as the 2024 Frank B. Hanes writer-in-residence at UNC. This program, run by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, invites different contemporary writers to UNC annually to speak with students in classes and give public talks.

As writer-in-residence, Hayes said he has been able to meet with a mix of writers and readers at UNC and answer questions about what it is like to be a poet. 

Hayes is a professor of creative writing at New York University and has taught at various universities since 1997.He said his love of literature drew him into teaching, which he knew he would pursue as a career since high school because he wanted to be able to talk about the things he had read with others.

He has published seven poetry collections alongside some prose pieces and essays. He recently published his book “Watch Your Language,” which reflects on a century of American poetry through reviews, poems and sketches.

Hayes began reading as a hobby long before writing. Even today, he considers himself more of an avid reader than a writer.

“I'm much more likely to brag about how many poems I've read or how many poets I know than I am about how many prizes I've won or how many poems I've written,” he said.

It was only around his middle school years when he began to write poetry. Over time, he has picked up other artistic hobbies such as drawing and music.

“I'm a person who believes [in] art across the board,” he said. “Even when I applied for graduate school, I thought it should be creative writing instead of poetry or fiction or nonfiction. So that's my attitude about everything really — not even genres should stop people from being creative.”

Though his writing covers topics like race, masculinity and music, Hayes said being human and staying attentive to the world around him is a theme throughout all of his work. 

During the public reading, many of his shared works were based on observations from his life, such as continuity mistakes in films and real-world activism.

Toluwanimi Dapo-Adeyemo, a member of the spoken word collective Ebony Readers/Onyx Theatre attended the event and said Hayes’ personality stood out in his poetry. They said he seemed like a fun person based on his writing style.

During a Q&A following the reading, Hayes answered both simple and technical questions related to his poetry. Dapo-Adeyemo found Hayes' responses accessible and easily-understandable.

“I think after this, a lot more people in the room will take poetry a lot more seriously, or will be willing to delve into poetry more, because of the way he handled that with care,” they said.

Liz Gualtieri-Reed, the director of special programs in the English department who helped coordinate Hayes’ visit, said his word choice and use of poetry techniques were impactful, but still fun.

“His works I, for some reason, ended up reading aloud to myself a lot — and to my husband in the car — and it's so amazingly powerful to read his poetry aloud,” she said. “I think all poetry is that way, but he's just an amazing wordsmith.”

For aspiring writers, Hayes said that daily practice is important to implement into their routines.

However, he also said that writing and art is something every person should do.

“I just want people to be creative,” he said. “It's how you learn to be more empathetic and more emotional and more self-critical and more observant.”

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