Apparently, I have no musicians or artists as friends. That surprises me. I’m sure I remember having a few friends at least holding a guitar. I couldn’t find them, though. Instead, a random memory of me sitting next to an aspiring rapper in English class from high school came to mind. I can’t really recall what he used to rap about expect that it would weird me out a little. Anyhow, I may not know any musicians but I do know some poets. One of them happens to be me.
I have been writing poetry for a couple of years now. I remember dabbling with it starting the second year of high school. What made me interested in poetry, I can’t exactly pinpoint. Having close to no knowledge about poetry, I only immortalized my teenage angst (as you do when you’re young). Over the years, I read Plath, Neruda, and Billy Collins on my own. In the beginning of college year, I read all the classical poets (including Tupac somehow) and for the most part, hated it. I didn’t see myself in any of the poems and none of them represented me. Dickinson was cool though. I think I liked that she wrote on envelopes more than I appreciated her poetry. I began to realize that most of my poetry was terrible because my heart wasn’t in it and because I didn’t know what to talk about.
I eventually found a small number of underground poets on Tumblr and watched slam poetry on youtube for days. I discovered poets like Warsan Shire who was just becoming Tumblr famous. She wrote about her country, the immigrant experience, about mothers and daughters and families and men. A lot of it resonated with me and I realized that there’s an audience for this. As a South-Asian Muslim female, I’ve gone through similar experiences and can talk about my own experiences. Now in 2016, Shire has collaborated with Beyonce on the album Lemonade, which is like, #goals for people like me. It makes me happy to see poetry coincide besides music that’s not just hip-hop.
For the final assignment of my Women and Media class this semester, I created a mock-up poetry chapbook which you can see here. You can also listen to a dramatic reading of one of my poems below.
Got A Million Rhymes 