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My poetry primarily serves as documentation
of the interior landscape. It is
the way that I process the world
and my relationship to it. The majority
of my poems are narrative poems
that rely heavily on the oral tradition
and voice. I am interested in exploring
the ways that the conversational
intersects with the written word,
and my work seeks out the places
where these things converge. My
writing aesthetic is deeply influenced
by the works of novelist Toni Morrison,
the early poetry collections of
Nikki Giovanni, rap music of the
late 1980s and early 1990s, and
the lively, poetic conversations
of the women in my family. After
reading and listening to these influences
and others, poetry became the chosen
medium to process my own stories
as well as the stories that have
been passed down to and shared with
me by family and friends. Through
the poems that I write, I seek to
forge a path in the wilderness of
the human experience, to discover
ways to build upon the long-standing,
diverse tradition of African-American
poetry and to develop an individualized
poetic voice in the process.
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