Jason Reynolds / “Reading rap lyrics made me realise that poetry could be for me”

Jason Reynolds

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Jason Reynolds: “Reading rap lyrics made me realise that poetry could be for me”

The American YA author on discovering Stephen King, growing into Toni Morrison – and the perfect novel

Jason Reynolds
Friday 12 November 2021

My earliest reading memory
I remember Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are being read to me when I was five, by my kindergarten teacher. There are certain words in that book that stick with you, such as “rumpus” and “mischief”. If I look back on it now I can see it was lighting up certain sensory stimuli in my brain, which means that my love for language was showing itself early.

My favourite book growing up
Books weren’t really my thing as a child. I didn’t read on my own until I was 17 or 18. It just wasn’t my life.

The book that changed me as a teenager
The first one I picked up to read on my own was Black Boy by Richard Wright. It changed me just because it felt familiar. And also the excitement of it starts at the outset. By page two or three the house is on fire. I think it’s always about which book meets you at the right time. It just clicked. And I was off to the races after that.

The book that made me want to be a writer
That’s tricky, because I don’t think it was a book. When I was young, I would go to the music store, and I would buy rap cassettes. And I would open them up and read the liner notes. And reading rap lyrics was the beginning of my entry into writing, because I wanted to be able to do what my favourite rappers were doing. I realised that poetry was something that could be for me, because these rappers were doing it. I still think the poetic devices they were using are completely underrated. So really it was Black Reign by Queen Latifah that began my love for writing.

The book or author I came back to
Toni Morrison. Her work is like a suit that one has to grow into. I first read her books when I was 19, at college, and I didn’t understand a word. But when I was 30, I read Sula, and I thought: “Oh, this is beautiful.”

The book I reread
I read Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward about once a year. I’ve probably read it 15 times. To my palate, it’s the closest thing to a perfect novel.

The book I could never read again
Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State. I couldn’t stomach it twice because so much of it is about sexual violence. But the love story that’s woven into it is brilliantly rendered. I had never read a book that existed at such polar ends of the spectrum, from absolute violence to absolute euphoria – I thought it was genius.

The book I discovered later in life
I read Stephen King’s novella The Body [on which the film Stand By Me was based] recently and it is amazing. It’s so slight – 190 pages. I think the best of us know how to say a whole lot with a few words. And that book is pretty incredible.

The book I am currently reading
Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle. It’s great. I think it’s hard to argue against the view that he is the best living American male author. He’s consistent – and it feels like he’s still just having a good time. With this novel, he’s saying: “Alright, I did some serious works back to back. Now I’m going to take a turn and do something a little pulpy.” And I think we should all be so lucky to feel that free. Gosh, that’s inspiring to a young writer like myself.

My comfort read
Any of James Baldwin’s books. If you’re black in America, Baldwin is the guy who tells you that you’re right for feeling how you feel. So he’s super comforting for me.

THE GUARDIAN

The dream and hope of the slave

Maya Angelou

The dream and hope of the slave

May 29, 2014 by Roberta Clarke

Maya Angelou lived a long, lovely life, full of daring, accomplishment and acclaim. I did not know that her grandfather was a Trinidadian.

Still I Rise was the first poem in my under-educated literary life that moved me with its direct relevance to my own life  as a descendant of enslaved peoples and perhaps more so, because it so expressed the exuberant defiance which black women need (ed) to leap over sexism and marginalisation. It has that poem of its time resonance,  full of  black feminist power vibes.

Lost and Found: Children’s Poet Kaneko Misuzu

Kaneko Misuzu: Finding God in a Little Bee

Yazaki Setsuo 

April 8, 2021

Kaneko Misuzu’s flights of imagination took her everywhere: from small things invisible to the human eye to the open skies and the vast cosmos beyond. At the same time, she was able to describe human emotions in language that was memorable and easy to understand, based on her keen observations of everyday life. An exploration of the humility and generosity of spirit that make Misuzu and her work so appealing.

Constantine Kavafy

Book of the day

Review

Alexandrian Sphinx by Peter Jeffreys and Gregory Jusdanis review – the mysterious life of Constantine Cavafy

This article is more than 4 months old

The enigmatic queer poet admired by EM Forster and Jackie Onassis takes centre stage in this unconventional biography

Michael Nott

11 August 2025

 

The second floor of 10 Rue Lepsius, tucked away in the old Greek quarter of Alexandria above a brothel, was, for three decades, the literary focal point of the city. Entering the apartment, out of the Mediterranean sun, visitors would need a minute to adjust to the dimness, gradually perceiving faded curtains and heavy furniture, every surface covered with antiques and whimsical objects. There was no electricity, only candlelight. The host, proffering morsels of bread and cheese from the shadows, was an older man with “enigmatic eyes” beneath round spectacles – the poet Constantine Cavafy.

Lost and Found: Children’s Poet Kaneko Misuzu

Kaneko Misuzu: Rediscovering the Life and Work of Japan’s Poet for Children

Yazaki Setsuo 

March 10, 2021

Yazaki Setsuo remembers the fateful encounter he had with the writing of children’s poet Kaneko Misuzu and the long search that helped to bring her work back into the light after it had been forgotten for half a century.

A Fateful Encounter

The beginnings of serious Japanese writing for children date back to the early decades of the twentieth century. The fashion for writing dōyō, poetry and nursery rhymes that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike, is often dated to the publication of Akai tori (Red Bird), a children’s magazine, in July 1918. One young woman in particular shot across the scene at the height of the movement, producing numerous verses that earned her the praise of the poet Saijō Yaso as “the brightest star among all the young writers of poetry for children.” That woman was Kaneko Misuzu.

Navel Moon by Raúl Gómez Jattin

 

Navel Moon

By Raúl Gómez Jattin

Raúl Gómez Jattin / Ombligo de luna

I sketch your outline from the lighthouse down to the city walls

Your iron eyes are glow hallucinated

Sea skips over stones and my soul’s got it wrong

Sun sinks into water and water is pure fire

You’re almost like a dream   Almost a stone in time’s swaying

A tender archetype solid in these dim days

your way of soothing my tears

Letting loose your body against mine   Mad

like a foal in prairie fire

Spilling your words on my knowledge 

like a poison to heal absence

Recalling things used and forgotten

with a bright wondrous flight

It’s getting late my love   Sea brings storms

A pale moon recalls your naval

And a few clouds light and slow like your hands

drink thirstily   Like when I die up against your mouth

Raúl Gómez Jattin / A probable Constantine Cavafy at 19

 

A PROBABLE CONSTANTINE CAVAFY AT 19

by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Tonight he will attend three dangerous ceremonies
Love between men
Smoking marijuana
and writing poems

Tomorrow he will get up past noon
His lips will be parched
His eyes red
and another sheet of enemy paper

His lips will hurt from so many kisses
His eyes will smart like burning cigarette butts
And neither will that poem express his crying

 

The Collected Poems of Li He

trans. J. D. Frodsham

(NYRB, March 2017)

POETS OF THE LATE TANG DYNASTY

January 15, 2019
by Matt Turner

Most American readers of Chinese poetry come to it through classic translations by Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, Burton Watson, and a few others. With some notable exceptions, those translations have tended to focus on the poetic triumvirate of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE): Li Bai (Li Po), Du Fu (Tu Fu), and Wang Wei. The literary context in which those three Tang poets are placed—in China as well as the U.S.—is part of a long, ascendant tradition in Chinese letters, beginning to certain degree with the early anthology that Confucius assembled: the Shijing, better known in English as the Book of Odes or the Book of Songs (Pound translated it as Shih-Ching: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius). The poems of the Shijing, which often seem little more than folk ditties, span seven centuries during the fabled Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE)—the time, according to Confucius in his Analects, when politics and society were ordered as they should be. In China, the Zhou and Tang periods are acknowledged as two golden ages, exemplars of what is best in the Chinese tradition. A trajectory of one to the other is easily assumed.

Poetics by Juan Manuel Roca

Poetics

• by Juan Manuel Roca

After writing on paper the word coyote
You must watch out that the meat-craving word
Does not take over the page,
Does not manage to hide
Behind the word jacaranda
To wait for the word hare to pass by
And then tear it apart.
In order to prevent it,
To sound the alarm
When the coyote stealthily
Prepares its ambush,
Some old masters
Who know the spells of language
Recommend tracing the word match
Rubbing it against the word stone
And lighting up the word fire
To scare it away.
There is no coyote or jackal, no hyena or jaguar,
No puma or wolf thar won’t flee
When fire converses with air.

***

• Juan Manuel Roca

Juan Manuel Roca (Medellín, Colombia, 1946) is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. He served for ten years as coordinator and then director of the "Magazín Dominical" of the newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá. For twenty-five years (1986-2011) he was director of the Casa Silva poetry workshop. He has received numerous awards for his work, both in Colombia and internationally. His verse collections include Lunca de ciegos, Los ladrones nocturnos, País secreto, Ciudadano de la noche, La farmacia del ángel, Las hipótesis de nadie, Testamentos, Biblia de pobres, Temporada de estatuas, Pasaporte del apátrida, and No es prudente recibir caballos de madera de parte de un griego. In 2016, he published his complete poetry, with the title Silabario del camino. He currently directs the poetry specialization of the Master's program in Creative Writing at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

LALT

Álvaro Mutis on Himself

 

King Juan Carlos of Spain with Colombian writer Álvaro Mutis at the 2002 Cervantes Prize ceremony. Photoshop by Andrea Comas

Álvaro Mutis on Himself

• by Álvaro Mutis

• 
  
  August, 2021

I was born in Bogotá on August 25, 1923, the feast day of Saint Louis, king of France. I cannot deny the influence of my patron saint on my devotion to monarchies. I completed early studies in Brussels, then returned to Colombia for periods that were at first vacations, and, later—as they became more and more extended—I lived on a coffee and sugar plantation that my maternal grandfather had founded. It was called “Coello” and was located in the foothills of the Central Highlands. All that I have written is destined to celebrate and perpetuate that corner of the tierra calientefrom which emanates the very substance of my dreams, my nostalgias, my terrors, and my fortunes. There is not a single line of my work that is not connected, in a secret or explicit way, to the limitless world that for me is that corner of the region of Tolima in Colombia.

The Voice of Sheila Chandra by Kazim Ali

 

The Voice of Sheila Chandra
by Kazim Ali
(Alice James Books, Oct. 2020)

Reviewed by AM Ringwalt

KAZIM ALI’S THE VOICE OF SHEILA CHANDRA

April 20, 2021
by AM Ringwalt

The Voice of Sheila Chandra, the latest collection of poems from the U.S.-based author Kazim Ali, concludes in question: “Do you remember / Which question / Needs answer.” In a book with form blown open by subtle and sustained interrogation, the relationship between audience and performer surpasses static binary. This final question functions as a verbal haunt: who is its intended recipient? In The Voice of Sheila Chandra, the reader must comb through the text’s intersecting questions and answers—spanning three expansive poems and four hymn-like interludes. Ali is consumed by his sonic influences, so much so that his documented acts of listening generate distinct performances on the page. These poems are mediums for his listening, his embodied mortality. He writes: “To hear is to make real.”