Danez Smith wants to say ‘hello to people of colour’ with his new book
Spoken word artist Danez Smith was born into a devout Baptist household in Minnesota, US. Smith’s grandmother still lives there, in one of only two black households on a street that was mixed but is becoming increasingly white. Smith grew up, on this border between the blacker areas and the white middle-class enclaves of the city, as a black, queer, Godfearing child.
It was the rousing oration during Sunday church which opened Smith up to the world of writing and performance. “The first writing I ever loved was the Sunday sermon,” Smith says.
For the last decade Smith — who is non-binary and uses the pronouns them/they — has been letting the spirit take over. Three books of brazenly queer and political poetry have made them one of the most discussed poets of their generation, and placed them at the vanguard of an African American movement that has seen spoken word artists move from stages and backrooms to book deals and awards success.
Smith’s 2014 debut — [insert] boy — marked the arrival of a new voice; their 2017 collection Don’t Call Us Dead confronted issues raging in the US as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, while touching on Smith’s own HIV diagnosis. It was a finalist for the National book award in the US, and at 29, Smith became the youngest ever winner of the Forward best collection prize.
While Don’t Call Us Dead was a collection that spoke truth to white power, Smith’s new book Homie is different.
“This book does not care about white people. It’s about saying hello to the people of colour in the room,” Smith says bluntly.
“With Homie I stopped asking myself: ‘What should I do with the white gaze?’ I realised I wasn’t interested in it. I asked myself: ‘Why am I spending so much time worried about this gaze?’ I think white people can learn a lot from the poems, but that’s not who I’m writing for,” they say.