I Am This Space My Body Believes

My Great-grandfather Melvin Had Been A Carpenter - So Was My Father - And They Taught Me The Value Of Tools: Saws, Hammers, Chisels, Files And Rulers. It All Dealt With Conciseness And Precision. It Eliminated Guesswork. One Has To Know His Tools, So He Doesn't Work Against Himself.

I Excavate History. I Look At Lives Buried Under Too Much Silence. Periods Of Time, Like Slavery, Have To Be Revisited, Reimagined, So We Can Move Through Them.

It Wasn't A Deliberate Decision To Become A Poet. It Was Something I Found Myself Doing - And Loving. Language Became An Addiction.

I Originally Wanted To Embrace The Imagery And Forthrightness Of Rap Music. There Are Some Interesting, Dynamic Voices In Rap. But I Find Most Of It Irresponsible In Its Overt Violence And Commercialization Of Anger. As Artists, We Believe We Can Will Action Through Language. If That's The Case, We Have To Take Responsibility For What We Say.

Poetry Is A Process Of Getting Back To The Unconscious. Hence, I Am Always Writing-even When I'm Not Facing The White Space. I Feel Writers Are Like Reservoirs Of Images. We Take In What Is Around Us.