Tariq Luthun : part three

How important is music to your poetry?

I think music is vital to my poetry. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of my poetry starts aloud in conversations with myself. However, those conversations aren’t monologues. In most cases, I’m singing out loud and really allowing the words and the tones my body creates to guide me and my thinking.

I recall a time when Terrance Hayes was asked something similar, and the idea of instrumental collaboration came up. He shared how he’s often asked about making this pairing, but would rebuff those asks. To him, his poetry was – in and of itself – music, and it made no sense to him to pit music amidst music in that way.

I don’t know where he stands on that now, but I have always loved that distinction. It makes a lot of sense for me as someone who is just as meticulous about how the poems sound in the mind as they do in the air. Poetry is music, and so I try to approach it with that impulse in-mind.