Providence Journal Features Rhode Island's First Youth Poetry Ambassador

Rhode Island poet laureate Tina Cane introduces the state's first deputy youth poetry ambassador, Kiani Pope, in a feature published at Providence Journal. Pope writes, "I don’t write poetry. I write about the things in my life that are already poetry. They are already beautiful without me having to write it down or explain why. The poeticism comes from the thing I’m writing itself, not me." From there: 

Poetry has been the love of my life before I even knew that there was a name for it. My earliest memory of a poem takes place around the second grade. I wrote a poem for my best friend about her family, and how cool they were, and recited it to her on the phone. One hand holding the house phone up to my ear, the other holding the paper, trembling, and my voice straining from trying not to cry. I wanted that community she had. I wanted a brother and sister and two parents, too. I wanted her pretty fair skin and eyes and hair. I wanted to be her, but I couldn’t be. So I wrote about it.

I grew up an only child in a single-father home. I went to a predominantly white school. Poetry was my way of having someone to talk to without actually having someone, and when I got older and started writing outside of my own narrative, I began to see poetry every place I looked.

Poetry became home. Home became the subtle nuances I’d see within poetry. Poetry is poetry because every detail matters, going beyond the words. I’ve found solace in the empty title spaces of Emily Dickinson’s work, found refuge in James Baldwin’s courageous approach to challenging America. I found comfort in the fact that everything in this world of words could be interpreted in whatever way someone wanted, and that interpretation could be easily changed by word choice, or page format.

Read more at Providence Journal.