Danez Smith

like, once you put the two poems together, you can... see the conversation and that was so fascinating

yeah shout out to Danez shout out to Danez Smith very very also a very impactful person on my career um just like their influence I got like all three of their books um at the crib I think they got four so I'm mad I gotta get the fourth one I'm gonna go to letters after this um but I think what you said was like that conversation, right? And so I was like, what did I want to do? Well, I took my favorite poem ever, talked through my favorite poems ever, and I took it and I was just like, wow, this means a lot to me.

And it's very important because when you do an after poem, you walk a fine line of like, It's like, you know, Luther Vandross is, like, he's, like, famous for doing covers, but, like, a lot of people back in his day was like, nigga, why you remixing my shit? Like, I'm still alive.

Yeah.

i think it was like a thing of like just making sure that like it was like of course like giving it like a because i think i think the poem was like 10 years old yeah um so it was like a thing of like okay jordan peele you know he's been doing crazy stuff with like the you know the uh at that point he had done like get out no all of those right and so it's like who would direct this movie now

probably probably jordan peele um

maybe you know i'm saying like i don't know um and and the crazy part is too I don't know how Danez Smith would feel about this poem, right? I've never asked him, like, yo, like, is it cool that I, like, did this? You know what I'm saying? Because I...

that is its own separate thing, but it was just important for me to, like, pull in my own references, right? Like, that Angela Bassett, you know, reference with, like, the, you know, I'm thinking about the scene from Waiting to Exhale, you know, when she go out to the car and she burn on it, like, you know, so that, you know, and, you know, Malcolm X, like, you know, so it was just important for me to, like, go do my own research and, like, imagine what I would want to see that movie as and still respect the work that existed that allowed me to, but this is also the only after poem that I've ever had published.

Again, @theasiaproject on Instagram.

And you can visit his website, theasiaproject.com. Again, theasiaproject.com. And then the third poem that you heard is entitled Waiting On You To Die So I Can Be Myself, and that was performed by Danez Smith.

You can follow Danez on Instagram @danez_smith.

Again, @danez_smith on Instagram.

pretty much all of it up and so um which is you know the job of a fiction writer but people uh there's so much auto fiction in the world these days that like no one no one expects a novelist to make their stories up um so big man you know he's come from you know my experience more recently living in east london and observing you know life there and also um you know looking ahead to middle age i'm the character of Big Man's 49, about to turn 50, and he's having a bit of a midlife crisis.

So he's, you know, a middle-aged black gay man living in London, living a middle-class life, but coming from a working-class background and kind of not feeling like he's made... much of his life like he's got to a place of being comfortable but he doesn't think he's like made a mark on the world or done anything you know really worthwhile and so it's kind of an everyman kind of story in some respects I've used a quote at the front of the book from Danez Smith which says I'm not revolutionary I'm regular and it's kind of like what is it to be a regular but person these days you know like what does that look like um is it just about you know paying your bills and and kind of just the nine to five grind or or you know like because we're also online as well big is also looking at like people he's known from his younger years that are now doing these great things and wondering like well i've not not done anything great like and he says of himself i feel like i'm a great man in a small life um so it's kind of about that feeling of like not having followed your dreams or taken many risks uh or chances to do something bigger um not that you have to um but if you want to maybe try you know and um big is in that position of like is it too late or is there still time and obviously there's still time for him and um yeah that's his kind of impetus and catalyst he's about to turn 50 and he's kind of like what am i going to make of my life

Did you have to like switch your brain when you're writing for an adult audience than a kind of children or young adult or poetry audience? Are you using a different bit of it?

I'm just taking the filter and the guardrails off.