Darius Stewart

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Writespace Rowan Intern Jacob Myers sat down with poet Darius Stewart to talk about Intimacies in Borrowed Light, his 2022 book of poetry published through EastOver Press. Darius is also the author of Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir (Belt Publishing 2024). His poetry and creative nonfiction essays appear or are forthcoming in Arkansas International, Brink, The Brooklyn Review, Callaloo, Cimarron Review, Fourth Genre, Gargoyle, Meridian, The Potomac Review, Salamander, storySouth, Verse Daily and others. Darius received an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin (2007) and an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa (2020). In 2021, the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame honored him with the inaugural Emerging Writer Award. He is currently a Lulu “Merle” Johnson Doctoral Fellow in English at the University of Iowa.

We promised you rockstars, didn't we? Darius gave such a deep and insightful interview. We know you're going to love it. 

We've got some time stamps for you to find some of our favorite parts of this conversation, but trust us, this whole interview is a generous author sharing his wisdom on writing and the writing journey! 

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Interview Timestamps and Highlights

9:03 - Darius Introduction

12:13 - First Question: Why poetry specifically?

• 14:30 - 16:30: Origin of Darius’ poetry journey
• 17:21 - 22:31: Finding your own voice19:13: “You feel a resistance . . . we’ll be reading, for instance, and we have to put it down to start writing. But we still have that author’s voice in our heads, right? But once we start writing, because we’re so inspired, our own voice will kick in - we may even try to do the same thing we’ve just been reading, but when you know your voice, you start to feel a resistance to what you’ve been reading.”

22:30: Second Question: Any advice for aspiring writers?

• 24:24: “As a matter of fact, sometimes it can be to your detriment to be published going into an MFA program . . .”

27:22 Third Question: Navigating mental health while writing trauma?

• 30:44: “Particularly with the substance abuse, I was abusing the substances whileI was writing those poems, so I didn’t quite feel traumatized . . .”
• 31:16: Darius’ opportunities as a free-verse poet vs. adhering to form
• 34:10: Writing in the middle of substance abuse

​34:50 Fourth Question: Can you talk about the difference between sexual vs. sensual?

• 35:44: “Sensual, for me, provides texture for the sexual . . .”
• 38:13: “But there’s something that’s natural in all that, the genetic predisposition to alcoholism is natural . . . How can these occurrences provide substance for the written word?”
• 39:16: “I’m kind of struggling with how the sensual can be so erotically charged that it kind of breaches the boundaries of what is considered literary and what is considered obscene . . .”
• 39:55: “I’m negotiating how sensuality as its tethered to the sexual as I’ve been writing throughout my career, how it’s entering less stable waters. . .”

41:24 Fifth Question: Producing the illustrations in your book?

• 43:56: “. . . is usually a response to art. This time, the art is in response to the poem . . .”

48:00 Sixth Question: Sexuality and the criminal justice system

• 53:50: “I like to begin in one place and end in another. . .”

57:36 Seventh Question: How does shame precede questions of sexuality?

• 1:00:54: The cyclical nature of sexuality. “The speaker’s experience as a queer individual precedes. . .”
• 1:03:12: “There’s a fetishization of the black masculine body . . . That is, you know, on display, that’s on the auction block, while ironically that’s the same black masculine body that has also been the source, or the precipitator for the racialized terror, particularly against black men, historically.”
• 1:06:02: "But particularly this poem, I wanted it to be, you know, you're in this gay club, there's all this night life happening, and there's so much to be unpacked and here are the superficial avatars for all of these different ideas that can be taken away from when you witness a scene like this."

1:07:00 Eighth Question: Recognizing relationships through vices?

• 1:12:40: "You're saying something very simply but you're saying it in a way that's trying to elevate it into something completely different. At the same time, I felt like I could obscure that sentiment a little less . . ."

1:13:29 Ninth Question: How does geography help shape the implication of an image?

• 1:16:57: "Because I'm not talking about the literal liquor store because to talk about the literal liquor store means I would have to write the poem in a different way. And this is part of what happens in creative nonfiction, too. The facts are not necessarily what's important, it's the truth that is trying to be arrived at that's important."

1:20:20 Tenth Question: Craftsmanship of an image

• 1:21:15: "Anytime I think about craft, a lot of times I'm thinking about the deliberate choices one makes. The intentionality that can seem, not necessarily obvious, in a pejorative sense, but something that one can sit with and hopefully be impressed upon to think about what this means."

1:24:40 Eleventh Question: The Unsolvable Riddle?

• 1:28:40: "What do we mean by being true to one's sexuality? Sexuality is a social construct. How is an individual supposed to be lying to themselves about their sexuality, when it's something that someone else has said, 'this is what sexuality is'."
• 1:29:20: "In this since, when I wrote In Defense of the Closet, it is again, one of those instances where it's like this Unsolvable Riddle, what is it that you're trying to solve, exactly? And the riddle isn't necessarily the riddle of this person's sexuality, but what in the hell is it that you're trying to do? That's the riddle, for me."

​1:42:15 - Darius conclusion and promotion, Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir

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