The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been observing March 21 as World Poetry Day since 1999, and this seems like the perfect occasion to recommend a book of poetry that has meant much to me. Instead of writing about how educators could use it as a resource with the students in their classrooms, I prefer to share what it has done for me. I hope this sharing will encourage others to pick up the book and let it speak to them.
American poet Danez Smith’s book homie (2020) is a love song for friends and family. It is an open declaration of the creed that some poetry is written for one’s own people, and entry is strictly by invitation. This is not a closet but a private chamber where wounds can be aired and caressed without the indignity of patronizing glances from faces that look like question marks. It is a place to mourn, curse, and laugh, without fear or apology.
Others may partake but from a distance, with the knowledge that the poet is not going to wait on them and make comprehensible what can only be felt in one’s bones. This is the poet’s home turf where comfort is felt in the touch of skin, the memory of ancestors, and flavours that soothe when the street is a conflict zone. It is ground that is made sacred by speaking one’s longings loud and clear.
Published by Chatto and Windus, an imprint of Vintage, the book opens with a “note on the title” where the poet clarifies: “this book was titled homie because I don’t want non-black people to say my nig out loud.” The history of racism encoded in the n-word is well-known, so it is substituted with one that is less fraught but intimate enough to sound welcome. The craft and the heart are inseparable here.
In a poem titled ‘say it with your whole black mouth’, Smith writes: “i did not come to preach of peace/ for that’s not the hunted’s duty. / i came here to say what i can’t say/ without my name being added to a list/ what my mother fears i will say/ what she wishes to say herself.” These words channel the hurt of generations of Black people who are maimed on the regular, then asked to protest in polite and palatable ways.
All of the poet’s identities – Black, non-binary, queer, HIV-positive, and performer – are seen and celebrated in this book that grew out of a deep personal tragedy. Smith lost one of their close friends, and writing this poetry became a gesture to honour their friendship. It is a quiet and meditative book, angry too, but the anger is not one that seeks a stage. It asks only for the company of those who are bound by joy and sorrow.
Smith uses two epigraphs in homie to acknowledge the community of literary beloveds they belong to. The first one (“Yes, each man is a tower of birds, I write my friends/ into earth, into earth, into earth”) is by poet Ilya Kaminsky, who is also a teacher, critic and translator. The second one (“Lost some real niggas I knew from a long time ago/ But heaven or hell I hopin’ that they be where I’mma go”) is by hip-hop artist Lil Wayne, who is also a rapper, songwriter and actor.
This book is a homily “for the dead homie” who was a “swagged-out Jesus” but had to turn “into dust” just like everyone else. It is a homage to “the flower who bloomed thru the fence in grandmama’s yard” and to “the trans girl making songs in her closet, spinning the dark/ into a booming dress.” It is a homecoming for the boy who came out at summer camp and, thankfully, “no one made a big deal.”
It would be wrong to imagine that home is idyllic and uncomplicated. In a poem titled ‘on faggotness’, Smith writes of encountering the word ‘faggot’ without realizing what it meant. It signaled a difference at first, and then a revulsion. It was couched in the language of disapproval and shame that men bequeath to boys, hoping that they will learn to throttle their desires under the cloak of respectability and matrimony.
The tools to chip away at this legacy of learnt disgust were sharpened over time to claim their queerness in art and in life, in the bedroom and the public square. Smith tracks the physical (“particular walk. particular wrist. particular speech. particular clothes”), emotional (“particular beast. particular cage. particular freedoms”), and political (“particular shade. particular bliss. particular deeds. particular punishments”) contours of this journey that was both miraculous and painful.
The book is also a confession, an outpouring of vulnerability, a testimony of regret. In a poem titled ‘sometimes i wish i felt the side effects,” the poet writes: “it doesn’t feel good to know/ your need outweighed your fear./ i braved the stupidest ocean. a man./ i waded in his stupid waters./ i took his stupid salt & let it/ brine my skin, took his stupid/ fish into my stupid hands & bit into it/ like a stupid flapping plum. i kissed at/ his stupid coral & stupid algae./ it was stupid. silly really. i knew nothing/ that easy to get & good to feel/ isn’t also trying to eat you.”
This is not the cutesy queerness of rainbow capitalism and workplace diversity training. This is not meant to serve the ones scavenging for hope in the art made of someone else’s blood and breath. This is sadness tying your shoelaces, and frustration buttering your toast, morning after morning. This is written for those who have the stomach to listen, and the wisdom to hold a body that is strong but unpredictable.
The depth of feeling in Smith’s poetry comes from the burden of history, not a perverse desire to hate. In the poem ‘white niggas’, the poet remarks, “you run around scared of the idea of me, I run away/ from your actual you with your actual instruments/ of my end: badge, bullet, post, gas, rope, opinion./ you have murdered me for centuries & still i fix/ my mouth to say love is possible. it is. it is? if you/ come to my door thirsty, i’ll turn the faucet & fill/ the glass. if i come to your stoop, don’t shoot.”
The bar is so low because it seems unrealistic to expect more. The poet’s energy is better spent in reaching across the “great distance” that separates people of colour from each other. Though they often struggle to see beyond their “own pain, past black/ & white,” they recognize the suffering of “browns” who also have to fight to make space, to exist and to thrive.
(Chintan Girish Modi is a Mumbai-based poet, journalist, educator and peacebuilder who may be reached at chintan.writing@gmail.com or @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.)
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