You know, I grew up, you know, in terms of my — in terms of the sort of accessibility of the prose and the poetry that I try to write, I remember reading Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni and Hakeem and all these amazing poets and learning so much from them; being informed but also being inspired in so many ways by their words.
And that inspiration came from the feeling that their words gave me, but it also came from a place of I was able to understand what they were saying. I was able to get it and relate it to my own life. I’ve tried to write like that. I’ve tried to make my poems and my prose, which are very personal, I’ve tried to make it your business, and I believe that’s so important, especially when we talk about getting young people engaged with reading.
I went through a phase in middle school where I did not like reading. In fact, I loathed it because I was being forced to do it. And I think that books are like amusement parks, and sometimes we have to let the kids choose the rides. And I wasn’t being given that opportunity to ride, to find my groove. And I think I try to write from that vantage point.
I try to write from a vantage point of making sure the work is accessible, commercial, literary. I don’t want to be put in one box, but I need to do all these things that I’ve grown up learning how to do, and I guess inevitably it’s my style, it’s my swag, it’s sort of how I dance on the page, and it works for me. And I think that is the key that I learned from Nikki is that it has to work for you first and you stand a much better chance of it working for the rest of us.
