MacArthur Genius Fellow Poet Terrance Hayes visited SUNY Old Westbury to offer a presentation from his latest book American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. The presentation was held in recognition of Black History Month sponsored by the English Department along with the additional support from the American Studies Department, Office of First-Year Experience, and Office of Student Affairs.
During his session, Hayes read many of his sonnets from his book and offered insights on his creative process and thoughts on his poems. The book is a collection of sonnets that raises the societal and political issues of racism, politics, and violence. The poems are a response to President Donald Trump after he won the 2016 US Election.
Hayes explained the process of put- ting together his book by first being inspired by the late female poet, Wanda Coleman and her collection of poets. He wrote a few poems to send to Coleman shortly before she passed in 2013. He read a few of her poems to the audience before moving on to read his own.
Throughout reading his poems, he explained that when writing these poems, he is asking questions where there may not be answers. “I’m searching for definitive answers to questions that might not be able to be answered.” He continued, “But I don’t see myself answering big questions or speaking for any population in general because I only know individuals.”
There was a Q&A session for stu- dents to ask Hayes questions as well as a book signing. During the Q&A session, Hayes touched upon the importance of practicing writing his poems while playing for Division II basketball in college.
“I just started thinking about what I really liked in college was practice, even more than the games,” he said. “There is so much more time in practice, and you need to fail in practice. I don’t talk about inspiration — I talk about practice. You need to work on your form and some days that might only mean one sentence, and I’ll take that because I’m just practicing for a different kind of game that will come later when I release my work.”
Hayes won many prestigious awards and honors such as The National Book Award for Poetry, Poetry Foundation’s 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism as well as the MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2014. His writings solely focus on race, gender, politics, and music. His recent works also include To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight.
He currently serves as a professor at New York University as well as a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.
