Poet Danez Smith On 21st Century Blackness in America

Award-winning poet Danez Smith, whose work is mined from the place where blackness, queerness and a solid feminist politic all meet, is one of poetry’s great black hopes – one of its great hopes, period. His collection [insert] Boy (YesYes Books, 2014) put him on the map but he’s continued honing and refining his eye and ear. He recently dropped the poem, “It Doesn’t Feel Like a Time to Write,” which captures both an age-old dilemma for black writers – how inept to the task of fighting for black life writing can seem when bodies are literally falling – while underscoring just how important it is that wordsmiths take pen in hand and document the world in which they and we live.

The poem begins:

being black feels like a lot right now.

they shot a man then they shot

the people mourning the man.

they shot a man while he was

  1. handcuffed
  2. walking away
  3. already dead

It then takes the reader through an intimate confession that delicately but powerfully unfolds into a scathing critique of white supremacy and how it manifests in relationship to blackness.

i got a fear of being black in public

& white folks are raised to fear of me.

niggagoraphobia has taken over the nation

& i’ve never been more afraid

of a white man’s temper.

in my dreams all the black folks

turn to ants & America is a toddler

stomping us out – she’s so damn scared

& we can’t get away.

Read the whole poem here.

And watch Smith read his poem “Twerking as a Radical Form of Healing” below.

Top image courtesy Yes Yes Books.

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