I don't know why I said that, but I've tried to keep up with it. I said, OK, I'm going to write a poem every day this year. But, you know, I took on a challenge for myself. But it was really hard for me to claw my way back into language and figure out, OK, what is my poetry now that my life is less people than it's ever been? It was hard for me to understand what poetry was without the abundance of people in my life. This year we're where we become so touch starved and so longing for community even as we're losing community rapidly sometimes, I've lost several family members to COVID.

They co-host the 'VS' podcast and published a celebrated collection of poems last year called 'Homie.' When we spoke, Smith told me they briefly stopped writing poetry at the start of the pandemic, but explained what it's been like to return to it this year.ĭANEZ SMITH: So much of my poetry, I think, is about interacting with other people, whether it be witnessing other people living their lives or mishearing things or eavesdropping on folks or just living my life amongst my people, my family, my lovers and then going back to the page to report that. So to help us out, we called poet Danez Smith. This got us thinking about poetry and how it can be used to understand or work through complex emotions.

With the pandemic raging due to the omicron variant, slow economic recovery and increased isolation, a lot of people might be feeling grief, frustration or even cautious optimism. As the year comes to an end, we don't want to lose sight of the fact that it's been a difficult one for a lot of people.

Homie by Danez Smith