I feel like I’m a much stronger poet. Let’s make her everyone’s brother A book means a completely different thing in that realm. They is a two-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, placing second in 2014. All rights reserved  |  About  |  Interviews  |  Contact, Copyright 2014 divedapper. He holds a BA from UW-Madison where he was a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar. There’s not a huge range of time between us. But in this book, there’s a lot of interesting work being done in the space of the page, too. Yeah, absolutely. For more about shipping and international shipping times, visit the Button Poetry Store FAQ! This site uses cookies. I’m sick of everybody needing to understand. Even the dirtiest things deserve to be pretty. Rachel has represented Columbus at multiple National Poetry Slam Competitions and was a finalist twice in 2011. It’s a “new” conversation to be entering the national consciousness but it’s not anything new for black people. How do you elevate what is already a sensational experience into lyric? I hope we can move all literary writing towards being unapologetic. That’s something I carry with me in all of my art-making. Well, and it was so strange that people saw you as the arbiter, the official spokesperson who could say, “Okay, yes, you’re one of the good ones.”. The ear of that writer is still there, though, the concern with saying something plainly but beautifully. High Point Shoulder (HPS Length) is measured from the highest point of the shoulder to the bottom hem of the shirt. He is the author of “[insert] boy” (YesYes Books, 2014), one of the Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Books of 2014, &… MORE. I don’t need to understand shit. I’m still going to get up from reading it and be a black man walking down the street and looking at the police, worrying they’re going to slow up right next to me. 4 poems in the Ampersand Review. A poem does not pay the rent. Poets. 4 poems in the Ampersand Review. Right, and I think poetry is as close to being a true meritocracy in that way as we can reasonably hope for. I’m humbled and I’m grateful. There’s a long poem in the new book about a magic paradise where all murdered black boys go that’s swallowed up so many hours and tears. Even in the most joyous of spaces, the end for us is always lurking around the corner. About Danez. Description. I think the editorial or curatorial aesthetic you’re describing is also a prominent feature of your poetry. With Franny Choi, Smith is co-host of the poetry podcast VS from the Poetry Foundation. Poets do that in the space of a poem, but it’s in here even at the line, “a cold black body is a prophecy fulfilled / you have always been a dying thing.” What a gorgeous, wrenching sentiment! Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. It’s given me access to something that feels real and true. Their work has published widely, including in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Buzzfeed, Blavity, and Ploughshares. It pisses me off. I want them to just shush, and listen, and let me talk about this singular black experience for a while. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, Button Poetry hopes to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form. “These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make “dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.” That’s no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith’s way–saying & laying it beautifully bare. I think when you’re writing from a place that acknowledges all those boxes, it creates a sort of sincerity that flies in the face of the default ironic posture struck by lots of contemporary poetry. It’s what I love most in poetry, not being directed towards one feeling but having a tension built or broken or spiraled. Congratulations for that. Those spaces allow us to be unapologetic. I’m excited to see what people think of it. It says I can write in an authentic way even when the white literary world tells me I should not. This has come up a lot in poetry in a really beautiful way. Jericho Brown’s Please was big for you, right? We want everyone to have what they need in order to be able to write. I want to do more than talk beautifully about dead black people. Sure. I use godly, holy language. Yeah, there are all these boxes you can check. I needed to bring my faith, my sexuality, my gender, my race, my every experience into every poem. It’s my first book, you know? - The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry … High Point Shoulder (HPS Length) is measured from the highest point of the shoulder to the bottom hem of the shirt.