NPR Books Features Poets With an Eye to Identity

Wrapping up National Poetry Month, Natalie Brennan of NPR Books brings together a group of poets whose work centers around themes of identity. "To celebrate National Poetry Month — which wraps up today — All Things Considered spoke with three poets, Hanif Abdurraqib, Yanyi, and Franny Choi about what inspires them to write, and how they use poetry to express identity." More: 

To kick off the series, Hanif Abdurraqib read his poem "Glamour On The West Streets, Silver Over Everything" from his upcoming book A Fortune For Your Disaster. "When I think about the things I'm most interested in writing in my poems, it's always about the kind of interior condition that comes with some type of anguish or heartbreak," he says.

"And in this particular run of poems, I was so interested in writing a book that examined what it looks like to learn to trust yourself again and learn to trust your attempts to be a whole and good person," he adds. The Ohio native came to poetry in what he calls an atypical way — he'd been a music critic, and he was frequently criticized for being too poetic. "And so I thought if I was going to be criticized for using poetic language, I should find some poetry to dive into."

For Yanyi, poetry has become a way to become closer to his body. "Creating a writing practice around my own desires and my own interests was crucial to me discovering what I desired about my gender and about my queerness that I eventually incorporated into my own life," he says. Yanyi's work explores a sense of emergency he thinks many feel in our current political atmosphere.

"One of the things that poetry is really good for is accepting what you're not able to do and to notice and believe that there are other people in the world who are doing very small things that will ultimately be able to move things at a scale that you can't even imagine right now," he says. 

Listen to the poets read their poems at NPR Books.