I’m always telling stories, but I sort of fuck with the idea of thinking about myself and my work in a lyrical sense. Because that’s now how I’ve traditionally thought about myself. And it pushes up against the way the academy has been taught to discount black poets and the way black poets speak about real shit, or speaking for and of the people.
At Blavity, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib interviews poet Nate Marshall about his first collection, Wild Hundreds, Chicago’s influence in his work, and the importance of capturing joy in writing the black experience.
