An Interview With Tony Keith, Jr.

In this episode, Charles sat down with poet, author, and hip-hop scholar Tony Keith, Jr.

They discussed the themes of identity, love, and representation in Tony's poetry collection Knucklehead, the importance of creating positive narratives for young black boys, the black, gay man as a positive role model for youth, their shared love of hip-hop, and so much more!

LEARN MORE ABOUT Tony Keith, Jr.

GET YOUR COPY OF "Knucklehead"

--
Visit our Linktree

-- Please Subscribe and Give Us A Review (5 stars or more, preferably!) 

SUPPORT US ON PATREON

Check out Medway Pride Radio  

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Barbary Lane. Welcome to another episode of Full Circle the podcast.
I am your host, Charles Tyson Jr. And today I
am delighted to be sitting with our guest, Tony Keith Jr.
Tony is a wonderful poet, spoken word artist, hip hop

(00:37):
educational leader from Washington, d C. So you know we're
going to have an interesting conversation today. We're going to
be talking about Tony's collection of poems called Knucklehead, and
I would really love to get into this. Tony Keith Junior,
Welcome to the Full Circle Table.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thank you so much, Thank you so much, y'all.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Glad to be here, Glad to have you here. First
of all, I love I love your writing style.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I do.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Like I can hear I couldn't hear your voice because
I ain't at you yet, but I could definitely hear
the warmth of the author's voice in the poems.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
I'm so curious, did you find yourself speaking some of
the poems.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Out loud a little bit, or if not speaking like
kind of moving with it?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Ah, you were moving with it. Okay. I love getting
this reaction because even my mom called me yesterday. She's
a son. You know, I'm reading through your book and
I just came across one of my favorite poems that
I've heard you, you know, perform in public. And she goes,
this is what you say, and she goes, you know,
I was saying it out loud. I had to keep
myself quiet because she was like in an office environment
or something. And so just the fact that the collection

(01:49):
is sort of evoking these like reactions from people to
either say them out loud or to move their body
to me like that just brings me a lot of
joy because there's a hip hop connection there.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
So oh, okay, which makes complete sense.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
If it ain't if it ain't something, ain'tap your foot,
ain't tapping your head, not bobbing, it's not hippie.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I know that's right, So talk to me a little bit.
First of all, the title knucklehead, Where does that come from?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Title knucklehead comes from? I believe two places. One is
just I really am just sort of attached to kind
of really cool book titles, and I thought knucklehead just
kind of sounds great, But then also realized that subconsciously
that was just sort of me advancing language that I
had heard since I was a little kid. I was
always known as a little knucklehead. Which the way that

(02:34):
I understood that, I mean, it was a couple of ways.
In my community. It meant a very It was like
a term of endearment. It was affectionate, it was a
joyful thing, like your a little knucklehead. Yeah, you might
have a little bit of an attitude problem, but you are sweet.
You know, you're unlovable as opposed to the traditional you
know narrative that you know knuckleheads or black boys, even
girls who are like misunderstood or unheard, or they're stereotyped

(02:56):
or they're judge. I was like, we gotta have another
way of thinking of us, and then knucklehead actually write
you know, I say something about you know, their knucklehead.
We don't all call ourselves we know that we're not blasphemous, ignorant,
or dangerous, although we don't call ourselves intelligent, ambitious, or courageous. Right,
just sort of this idea, like I wanted us knuckleheads

(03:17):
to just think about ourselves in loving ways.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, that it definitely comes as a term of endearment. Yeah, No,
like came here a little knucklehead, let me tell you
about yourself.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, you know, And again I thank you for that,
because I think that what I'm realizing is I'm feeling
a lot more affirmed lately because I was so concerned
that the term knucklehead might be completely misinterpreted. And so
a lot of readers, and you can just people in general,
especially black and brown folks, are like, I know what
a knucklehead is. I'm gonna get this book to a
couple of knuckleheads that I know, and I'm like, Okay,
this language makes sense. These are the communities that I

(03:52):
care about.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, this is what I wanted right right, right, So
it comes to me like you talk to different kinds
of knuckleheads in these poems, like talk to me about
that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, when I started, well, I mean, there's so much
more to the story. But the first nucklehead that I'm
writing to is myself, And so the world just probably
needs to know that Knucklehead is a collection of poems
where most of them are poems that I've been writing
to myself over the last thirty years, right, and just
dealing with my world as a black gay man in
America and in my very first book, How the Boogeyman

(04:26):
Became a Poet, I sort of tell this story about
how I discovered writing poetry as a way to just
kind of protect and preserve myself and my sanity touring
times of stress and anger and confusion, and you know,
and I still practice that. And so the poems in
that book are essentially poems that I was writing to myself,
just dealing with my world, but also reflecting on the
different contexts in which I've seen black masculinity show up.

(04:50):
And so I write about jails and prisons. I write
about playgrounds. I write about what it's like to sort
of play sports. I write about what it's like to
fall in love. I write about education, I write about
police brutality, but all these different sort of places in
which I've experienced myself in my world as a black

(05:11):
gay man in America. And then add the additional layer
that I'm also gay, right, So like there's this an
additional thing to it, and so that collection is me
really just kind of how I wrestle with it. And
then the very last part is just their you know poems,
you know, about being in pursuit of your passion, you
know about you know, I talked in the book, I
use this metaphor of the very first letter is, you know,

(05:33):
Darren Knucklehead, you know, have you ever had a planet
lodged in your belly? And for me, the planet represents purpose, right,
And so part of it is just sort of like
that book is also like have you ever just felt like,
you know, the world is misunderstanding you, but you know
you got a purpose and you might be gay? You know,
It's sort of like what it was like those things.
So that's what I was aiming for with this collection,

(05:53):
which I think I probably answered way too many questions.
I mean things in that answer, but anyway, there.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Is no such thing as too many. I want it all. Yeah,
thank you, Yeah, I love I love your use of language.
And you know, I felt like this was coming from
someone I knew, you know, because you know, hopefully when
we are young, coming up, gay people, gay black people,

(06:23):
hopefully we have a few figures in our life that
are there to like help bring us up and show
us the way. And and your voice called to that.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Oh, I really appreciate that, because Charles, something that I
think so much about is if only I had a
book like this when I was a kid, Oh my god,
how seen? You know, I would have like felt and
although I was reading this is what's interesting is you know,
I was reading Lens and Hughes as a kid, but
nobody was talking to me about Lens and Hughes and
his sexuality or his masculine like I was. No one

(06:58):
was saying to me that, Tony, you're reading the works
of queer writers gay like I didn't know then, right,
And then of course, you know, I grew up in
the era where I was reading, at least in college
literary works by Elan Harris, you know, and so right,
so I remember, like literature got me through you. Okay,
So I'm thinking about like I remember sort of discovering

(07:20):
black gay court authors, I guess sort of in my twenties,
but like what about my like teens in middle school years?
Like where were they? And all I keep thinking about
is like right now, in this moment, I'm like, I
really want these young black boys, whether they're queer, gay
or not, are questioning or whoever, to like to know
that they exist, like right now, like here's a book
for young adults, Like here's something written for you specifically

(07:42):
for you. Yeah, I really, yeah, I really wanted that.
I was like, this is the book that I needed.
The poems that would have been like, oh, this makes.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Sense, right, yeah, because you know, there's so many stereotypes
that are put on us as when we're young, when
we're black, when we're queer, not to mention putting all
that together, and you know we also grow up with

(08:11):
again hopefully our family telling us you can do and
be whatever you want to be if you put your
mind to it. But at the same time, the world
is telling you the opposite, yes, if you make it, Yes.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yes, this is the thing. I love that you said that,
because this is what I continue to get more clarity about.
I go to poetry for clarity. You know, someone said
the other day Tony, a lot of your poems about
you know, being between things, like you know, between this
thing and that thing, darkness and light and sadness and
joy and all this other kind of stuff. And I
think so much about like how for me, like poetry
is trying to kind of feel that space in between.

(08:45):
And I'm like, yo, I'm hearing all of these narratives
in the mainstream world that I am not lovable, right,
legislation is thank you and I'm not lovable. Policy is
saying I'm not lovable. There's certain you know, I'm just
like that. There's narratives that exist within religious places that
say that I'm not lovable. And then there are the

(09:06):
people in the world who I don't know, who do
love me, who are like, nah, you are lovable, you
are a wonderful person, you do have a person. And
so I'm thinking about, like, how do we filter out
that noise? Like how do we completely turn off the
mess that we've been hearing? And so I think so
much about like I'll be forty four years old this year,
and I'm like, I've got forty four years old noise

(09:27):
that I'm still filtering through. And I'm like, oh, if
I can create better noise for a kid who's fourteen
right now or thirteen, or maybe the questioning adult whatever,
But I think like now is the time to insert
more positive affirmations, like now's the time. And so I
appreciate what you to say, because I'm like, yeah, we
keep hearing all this stuff about us that we're unlovable,
and yet we know that we really are because people.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Tell us exactly it's like, And how do we find
joy and optimism when essentially the world is basically saying,
why are you still here?

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yes? Yes, and you probably see I wrestle with that
even and knucklehead, because you know, in this book also
write about poem, I mean their poem. There's a poem
in there that I wrote when I was fifteen years
old that I slightly edited a little bit. And then
there are poems that I wrote, like when I was forty, right,
and being married to my husband and writing about love
and conflict and you know, all this stuff because I

(10:21):
just think there's I was going somewhere with some point.
What was it? I get so lost in my thoughts.
Oh got it? Yeah. But the idea that you know,
when we are absorbing this as gay queer men, we
are absorbing these negative narratives, and then we meet love.
We fall in love, romantic love, and you're in romantic
love with someone who's also been hearing the same mess

(10:42):
right that they're unlovable, and then the two of you
get together and y'all trying to figure out what love like,
what really loving each other looks like when the world
was telling you that you can't right, so like even
trying to figure out what love looks like between two
gay married men is something that I also wrestled within
this book because I'm like, I want I didn't. I
was like, I didn't have any books like this. I
had no All I had was my imagination, and honestly,

(11:03):
it wasn't until Robert Jones Junior wrote the Prophets. It's
an incredible novel. If people don't know essentially it's it's fiction,
of course, but it's about essentially gay enslaved men. And
I thought to myself, like, what a wonderful story to
tell because we only can rely on our imagination because
there were no documented stories of this at least that

(11:24):
you know, written like what that experience was like, but
of course that were gay and queer enslaved Africa, like
of course. And so for me when I write, when
I'm writing my books, I'm like, if anything, I want
to awaken the imagination of the questioning of the little
black boys who might be like, yah, I wonder what
it's like to be in love with another man. I
wonder what it's like to get married. I wonder just

(11:44):
so they can wonder, you know, mm hmmmm hmm.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, that's fascinating because yeah, there's examples of drag and
elements of ball culture in enslaved times. So yeah, yes,
they try to act like, you know, this shit just
came out fifteen years.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Ago, yes, but now we have literally been around forever.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Since, been since been, yeah, forever.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
And actually, you know, relatedly, I even write about in
my first book, how the Boogeyman Become a poet I
reflect on.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
I love that title, by the way.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh thanks, Oh I could even probably talk about that
too if there's time. But because, yeah, because how the
Boogeyman Became a poet. So, first of all, to listeners
and readers, it is a young adult memoir and it's
all written in verse, so every page is sort of
structured like poems and formatted with stanzas and a literation
and rhyme and fun stuff. Anyway, but it's about three things.

(12:38):
It's how did I become the first person in my
family to go to college, how did I start coming
out the closet is gay? And how I discovered poetry
sort of is this thing that I continue doing well
into my adulthood, right, And so inside this book, it's
really cool because there are hand copies of I mean
copies of the actual handwritten poems I wrote as a kid.
I kept them, and so some of them are in

(12:58):
that book. But anyway, but I tell this story about
how I remember growing up as a kid in the
you know, late eighties and early nineties, hearing about an uncle.
I have an uncle. He passed away. In the book,
I call him ut he passed away in the early nineties.
And I just remember, I say in the book, how
I remember him being, you know, soft, I just remember

(13:18):
him being a little soft, a little just a little
I don't know, light on his feet. I don't know
how to describe it other than that. And then little sweet,
a little sweet. And then you know, he dies of
complications of AIDS and like the mid nineties, and that
is it probably is, you know, at the time, well
the height of the narrative and the epidemic that this
is a gay disease. And I'm processing his death in

(13:40):
an interesting way because I'm like, well, I don't understand
how he got this thing, because he wasn't gay. He's
got a son, you know, and I know that he
had a girlfriend. It's like, I know, look, there was
sort of this confusing anyway, So my point is later
on many many years, many many many years later, you know,
the family begins to start discussing, and then later comes
out them uncle was indeed gay, or at least by

(14:00):
but certainly he was not straight. And I have a
there's a picture that I reflect on in the book
where it's in my grandmother's photo album, and it's a
picture of my uncle and he's literally kind of like
hugged up with like another man in this picture. And
I remember as a kid asking my family, I was like,
who is that man? And all they would say, and
this is gay queer people. Oh, that's your uncle's friend.

(14:21):
And I'm doing hair quotes for people, that's your uncle's friend,
and you know what I mean. So I think so
much about, like how even the concept all we had
in our imagination was a friend, you know. And I'm like, nah,
we need something more concrete for people nowadays. But I'm like,
that way, we don't. I'm not hiding, you know, I'm
not my uncle, you know, But I'm like, oh, what
story he probably could have told me about what was
going on with me because I was so confused. Nobody

(14:43):
I knew was openly gay, Nobody in the nineties that
I knew was openly nobody.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, I mean we hadn't met yet.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Right, right, Literally, I knew at least that was at
least my age that was like a teenager.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Or yeah, because you said you're forty four. Yeah, yeah, okay,
so I got just five years on you.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
But oh right now, hey look but.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, like that's when I came out the nineties. Oh wowee,
so I was.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
While you were in college. Yeah, I had the same thing.
I waited until college. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah. And you know, there is that whole we're in
the height of. You know, AIDS is a very prevalent topic,
and it permeates everything you know, you have to It's
there when you're going out, it's there when you're meeting someone,
it's there when you you know what I'm saying. And

(15:41):
that's why I was grateful to have older people that
had been around that could tell me stories. Yes, and
you know, think about yeah, so many people with so
many stories that never really got told because we the
people around them, didn't have the wherewithal or the courage
or the knowledge that they could have questions answered.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Something that I've been really I've been
reflecting on a lot lately, is I get invited to
do a lot of like youth book events and author
talks and really cool places. And I was just at
the North Texas Teen Book Conference and it's thirteen or
twelve thousand young people all from the state of Texas. Right,

(16:25):
it was a wild was wild. And what I started
noticing was that even a lot of most like a
lot of the white students is I'm going to say
this for a very particular reason, would come up to
me and show so much love, and I'd be confused

(16:47):
by sort of their reactions, right because and my point
is read I'm saying this is what I realized is
I'm so openly gay and free with who I am
that white kids come to me and tell me they're gay,
like they're coming out to this white kids and then
black kids too. I mean that's also it's sort of
like there's this reaction from people and I'm trying to
sort this out. In what I realized is like, oh
my gosh, none of these kids have ever met and

(17:11):
openly gave black man before, you know what I mean,
they've let alone a poet, alone an author, you know
what I mean. Like they've never and so they come
up to me with sort of this like, wonder this
not fascination because I don't think it's like you know,
in the book, I write about romanticized voyeurism, like when
white people look at me, that's racial microaggressions. What we
could talk about later. But I think there's something we

(17:32):
said about, like you've just shown me something about yourself,
you know, And I even think about. Last thing I'll
say is because these thoughts will connect is last year,
my husband and I we had a kid, a little
black boy come to stay with us from the Child
Family Services, right who's placed with us? He needed to be.
That's I don't know. I can't get in too much

(17:53):
of the details, but we are sincely a kid from
foster care, six years old, and it's crystal clear that
he had never he didn't underst and that two black
gay men were sort of taking care of him. And
so the short story is one evening he goes, hey,
mister Tony, you know, where do you live? And I said,
do I live in this house?

Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know?

Speaker 2 (18:11):
And he goes, oh, where do you sleep? And I say, why,
I sleep in the room with mister Harry. He goes, huh.
I said, well, yeah, He says why do you do that?
And I was like, well, we're married. He goes, you're married.
You married to him? That's not right, and he's six,
and I said, yes it is. He says, oh okay,
and had no questions about that other than the next
day he said, mister Tony, you kissed mister Harry before

(18:34):
and I said yeah. He goes, oh okay. But you
saw the way his little mind was sort of figuring
something out. And I think so much about these kids
who I'm meeting at these conferences again, who they've just
said have never seen or understood a different narrative, so,
you know, and so I don't know. I sort of
see myself in my book doing those kinds of things.
It's like awakening a little bit of a possibility in someone,

(18:55):
you know.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, and that is so necessary. It's always been necessary
to have examples of you know, different lives, different occupations,
different ways of being, especially now, like thank goodness you
are in the literary field because you know, yes, providing

(19:20):
anything in the written word is so vital now, Yes,
and kids don't know what they don't know because so
much is being taken from them and hidden from them.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yes, yes, and you know what relatedly too, is and
I write about this in Knucklehead, is you know, my
enslaved African ancestors weren't given access to the rich and
word when you know, they needed this spoken word, Like
that was literally how they figured out how to communicate
with each other across languages on a slave, you know,
like that's how they figured out how to decipher American

(19:52):
Standard English. They needed the oral tradition. And so what
I want to offer to you know listeners also is
that yo, I self narrated both audiobooks, the audiobook for
How the Boogeyman Became a Poet and Knucklehead, so you
can also listen to this book so you get it
in the traditional oral tradition style because I speak it
exactly how I speak. So for those of you who

(20:13):
are interested in what my performances are, like, listen to
these audio books and I just do a quick little
flex is How the Boogeyman Became a Poet recently won
an Odyssey Award from the American Library Association, which essentially
means I have one of the top audiobooks for young
adults in the country right now. And so these audiobooks
get busy, so you know. So we've got the written

(20:35):
and the spoken. So yeah, you're right. I'm like for me,
I'm like, now it's preserved. Now this is preserved. It's
curated in the memory of the world. At this point,
there's nothing no one can do. It's it's written and
it's spoken. Done.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Come on, grio. Okay, Well, since we're in that vein,
would you be so kind as to read a book
of what is one of my favorite poems and poetry,
Coming to the Rescue.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
I love poetry Coming to the Rescue.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
It spoke to me, as you know, for a couple
decades and some change, I was a professional performer, choreographer
and you know, essentially Hasla and this poem spoke to
the soul of that.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Oh wow, oh thank you. This is one of my
favorite poems. And the listeners should know that typically when
I do have like a spoken or poetry feature, I
usually open with this. It's usually like my opening poem.
I wrote this though in two thousand and five or
two thousand and six, And listeners should also know that
in this book are also illustrations. The illustrations were created

(21:46):
by an artist, Julian Aiden Alexander, who read the book
and created his illustrations on his own. So there's a
picture in this book of a little poet superhero with
a cape.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
You got that love?

Speaker 2 (21:59):
I read some It says poetry comeing to the rescue.
You can save someone from drowning. And my daddy, who
is a minister, says, son, if your sermon is good,
you can save someone's soul. Well, I've never really been
the kind of person to ask for help, but if
I needed some saving, trust me, you would know. But
I wouldn't be sending out an SOS message or interrupting

(22:22):
your regularly scheduled programs. I wouldn't be sending it in
an email, a text, a DM, or posting anything on Facebook, TikTok,
Snapchat or Instagram. Instead, you'd find me on the stage,
usually with a piece of paper in my left and
a pin in my right. My mouth would be wide
open and a vein poking out of my neck. My
eyes would be shut tight as I focus on every

(22:44):
single breath, just to make sure that my lungs have
enough capacity to create words that defy the laws of
gravity and that swirl up into a vortex of knowledge,
causing supernatural catastrophes. And why my poem ain't no tragedy there.
This might be some casualties. If you're not prepared to

(23:05):
battle me. You want me to keep going, oh I,
But if you're feeling froggy, then jump. Because my poems
are not for tricks, and they certainly aren't for chumps.
I do this for a reason. I write this for
those of you with terminal diseases. I write this for
those of you who want to have sex, but your
parents are preachers. I write this for those of you
who want to learn, but you lack of loving mentors

(23:25):
and teachers. I write this for those of you who
love your mama, but all she does is scream at you.
I write this for those of you who love your daddy,
although his eyes have never seen you. I write this
for those of you who miss getting a good night's sleep.
I have to hear in your grandma sing the sweet
song to you. I write this for those of you
with negative energy and so like a magnet, bullshit just

(23:45):
clings to you. I write this for you. I write
this for those of you whose sexuality is unacceptable until
it's received some societal stamp of approval. I write this
for those of you who work so hard to create change.
You get frustrated, but you still may. I write this
for those of you who don't have answers, yet one
is always being forced from you. I've learned that sometimes

(24:07):
saying I don't know is a lie, and that's sometimes
saying I don't know is the truth. I write this
for those of you who want to earn love but
don't know that it's already been given to you. I
write this for you've been battling poetry into my ink
bleeds black and blue. I'm just a superhero with a
cape made of metaphors, trying to use my words to
simply save you. And yes, some of the words and

(24:29):
my poems do rhyme, but I've been doing it for
a while, so it just happened sometimes. And yes, memorizing
a poem would make any performance good. But if I could,
I would pick up this book and read my words,
just to make sure that my messages are never misunderstood.
I do this for a reason, and this gift is
not temporary. It's not changed with the seasons, which means
I can spit fire while the sky is hot, or

(24:51):
I can cool it down while the water is freezing.
And if words having power isn't something that you believe in.
Then I can spit on my fingertips, reach my poems
and turn these written words on pages into a spoken
altar call, and I can start saving all of you
heathens because I care about your futures. I care about
your destinies, I care about your legacies. And I want

(25:12):
y'all to know my name. I want y'all to look
up in the sky and scream out. And if this
was an open mic, I say, is that a bird?
And they would say, is that a bird? And I say,
is that a plane? Is that a plane? And I'll
be flying by shouting No. It is poetry. And I'm
a poet, a social agent of change, piecing letters to words,
and words to sentences, and sentences to sounds. I can

(25:32):
leap over metaphors with a single bound. I am powerful
enough to spark protests for equality, and ghetto communities talk
slicker than silly politicians, creating policies that grant rich folks immunities. See,
I didn't choose to be saved by poetry. Poetry chose me.
Poetry crept up inside my mama's wounb and poetry started
tickling me, I've been speaking in rhythmic pattern since I

(25:54):
was in grade three. I'll just continue till I'm through.
So who am I? Well, I'm just a simple souper
with a kate native metaphors, trying to use my words
to save you. Oh yeah, thank you, thank you. Also
a quick thing for listeners, y'all should also know I
mentioned you know, I've been speaking in rhythm patters since
I was in grade three. And how the Boogeyman became

(26:15):
a poet? I write the story about how I wrote
my first poem in third grade and emceeded at a
school event. So since grade three. The two books are
in conversation, the little nuggets that kind of go on both.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
But yeah, which answers my question. I was going to ask,
how did you approach writing and being a writer since
grade three?

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah? Since grade three? And I can and I don't
know how much time we have, but I'd be happy
to even sort of way that these books came about.
It's a I'm trying to make it really really short,
but I'm good, Okay, cool. So what happened was this
is the truth? Spring twenty nineteen, I get laid off
from my full time You've developed a nonprofit job in Washington, DC,

(26:58):
doing work in DC High scho while also working on
my dissertation. And my husband, who I had just gotten
married to a year before, he had just got laid
off from his job too, and this was like We're
living in this tiny, little two bedroom apartment in northeast
washingt DC. And the only way that I knew how
to make money was on the side. I was always

(27:19):
performing poems or featuring someway or getting I was gigging,
if that makes sense, and gigging and also doing some
kind of consulting I do working. Like it's funny because
I have to now say, well, I can't say DEI anymore.
But that's kind of the world that I was in,
and that anyway, it was in that world you can
say whenever you want you right, Dan, Right, I was
in that world. I was in that belonging equity and
shit in education, right, And so I'm in that space,

(27:40):
and so like, I just kind of go heavy on
doing that, and I start writing grants and fellowships and like,
I just figured out a way to survive twenty nineteen
on just the poems, and thankfully my husband found a
job later that fall, and I defended my dissertation successfully
that fall. But I entered a job market in Washington,
d C. And no one wants wanted to hire someone

(28:01):
like me. My PhD is in education leadership, and I
focus on hip hop and spoken word and poets who
do work in education and anyway, there was just no
place that was looking for someone with my particular kind
of skill set. And so then so I'm like, well, whatever.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
I'm are you saying positive black people aren't marketable?

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Is that okay? You know? I'm just like academia is
just like dude, like you move in a weird way.
Because although my PhDs in education, the world should know,
I've never been a traditional classroom teacher ever. I've never
been taught in K through twelve. I've done college courses,
but I've always been like nonprofit community spaces, after school programs.
I always moved in that space as an educational leader,

(28:38):
and so I knew that I wasn't the only one.
So that's what my dissertation is all about. So I
entered this world with this PhD, and I don't want
to be a principal. I don't want to be a superintendent.
I don't want to be a chancellor of schools, like
I want to run a bureaucrat, and like I don't
want to do that, and so, and I also am
not fully sure I want to be like a full
time assistant professor. So anyway, so I go heavy with
applying for jobs, and right now poetry is paying the way.

(29:01):
And so in February of twenty twenty, I'm at the
University of South Carolina, Charlotte. I mean, I keep saying
that I'm at the University of South Carolina in Columbia,
South Carolina, Okay, And I'm there for a writer's retreat
for some young people with my friend and fellow author,
Jason Reynolds. So the world would certainly know the name

(29:21):
Jason Reynolds if you're into young adult literature. He is
a beast to be working with, but also one of
my very dear friends. Love him very much. Anyway, twenty twenty,
and he's talking about his life as a young adult writer.
So being someone who writes on the page, he's also
a poet on the page, but I am a poet
on the stage. I'm performing. So we're talking about our
careers in that regard. And after every event, there was
always a book signing for Jason and because he's got

(29:43):
tons of books, and I'm used to sitting at this
table with Jay because and he's my friend. So it's nothing.
And I'm in my phone just doing nothing, typing something,
and this little black boy gets out of one of
Jason's get out of the Jason's line with this black
woman and they walk right up to me. And this
little boy says, mister Tony, where's your book? And I
was like, book, I don't. I don't have a I

(30:04):
don't have a book. And it is twenty nineteen. I don't.
I don't have a twenty twenty. I mean like, I
don't have a book. I don't write. I don't write books,
you know, I write academic papers I published on the page.
I say something silly, and he sort of looked a
little disappointed and was like okay. And I think that
his mom or the lady he was with might have
said something like, well, let us know when you write one.
And I remember going back to my hotel room that night,

(30:25):
like what up, you know, Like, what in the world
are they talking about? And I decided in that moment,
I was like, I'm going to write a young adult
version of my dissertation. That's word. That's I was like that.
I was, I'm gonna translate this big old academic thing,
and I'm boom, I'm gonna write this thing. Yeah, And
I get so excited about this, right. I put five

(30:46):
hundred words down on the page that night, and I
go tell Jason the next morning, I'm, yo, Jay, I
think I'm gonna write a book, bruh. And He's like, Okay,
Tony sure, and I'm not serious. I think I'm write
a book. So we fly back to Washington, DC, and
then March twenty twenty hits and COVID boom. So education
landscape changes, the art spaces changed, like everything changed. My

(31:08):
economic reality changed significantly, right, I was like, oh my gosh.
And so that's when I was like, Yo, the only
thing that I know I might be able to do
to get some money down the line is I gotta
probably work on seriously publishing this book. So I'm writing
for more grants and I decide to write this book.
So I write this manuscript that I think is a
young adult version of my dissertation. And I learned that

(31:29):
what I got to do is get a literary agent,
and I learned how to query a literary agent, and
I got an agent within like two months, which apparently
is unheard of in the industry. I got a literary
agent very very fast, and so I got someone willing
to represent me. But she said, this is how I'm
going to connect the dots, Tony. The thing that you
are writing is not a young adult version of your dissertation.

(31:50):
The thing that you are writing is there's something you
want to tell, a story about yourself, about you being
this little gay black boy. Because apparently I didn't realize,
but I had woven that narrative into what I thought
was my young adult book, like I was somehow embedding
the story about me in the story about my dissertation.
I don't know why, but my brain was doing that.

(32:11):
So she helped me tease all that stuff out. And
what came out, of course, was how the Boogeyman became
a poet. And so what happened was so anyway, So
while I'm trying to figure out how to write how
the Boogeyman became a poet, I'm also still writing poetry.
And so my agent, after about a year and a
half of working with her, She was like, Tony, look,
it's been a while. It seems like you're still trying

(32:32):
to figure out this memoir thing you want to write.
Why don't we just go with the poetry collection. Publishers
in a young adult space don't really you know, buy
poetry collections, but you know, we can just get your
feet wet. We'll see. I say, okay, So I put
together the collection Knucklehead. I was like, I got these
poems that I've been writing to myself for the last
couple of years. We can go with this. She goes, okay,

(32:52):
But in my book proposal, I say, I'm also working
on this memoir and I think it's going to be
a memoir written in verse called How the Boogeyman Became
a Poet and I'll tell you by that title in
a second. And so we send this out to publishers.
Publishers then right back sort of quickly, and they're like,
wait a minute, this Knucklehead collection is interesting, but what
is this memoir thing? What is that? Right? And so

(33:13):
my agent was like, Tony, yo, how fast can you
try to put something together? And I think I locked
myself in my office for three days straight and just
wrote as much as I possibly could, and I think
I got like the first thirty or forty pages or
something out of something that I thought would be the
memoir How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, and HarperCollins bought
both and they said, but Tony, the publishing world does

(33:34):
not know you. Your memoir needs to come first first, yeah,
and then your poetry collection. And I'm so glad it
worked out that way, because after I wrote How the
Boogeyman Became a Poet, I didn't realize how I wanted
to format a Knucklehead. So listeners should know that Knucklehead
is not a traditional poetry collection in the sense that
there's not a table of contents, and it's not like
there's like a themed section. It's not like, oh, I

(33:55):
want to read the love poems, let me go to
I mean, it kind of is that way, but not really.
It's something that you are. It's not design for you
to recover the cover. So the titles of the poems
sort of are like transitions in the story of the poems,
if that makes sense, and How the Boogeyman Became a
Poet flows the same exact way the titles in the
book flow as transitions throughout the entire book. And so

(34:18):
that's sort of like my writing style and the last
thing I want to share because I think this is
all important in this story, because this is how I
knew I was gonna be a writer and how it's
gonna be connected with the poem. It's also in twenty
nineteen or twenty twenty, when all this turbulence is going on.
I'm enrolled in therapy. Okay, here we go. I'm enrolled
in therapy, and I am because I'm going through all

(34:39):
kinds of things and I don't and I write about
this and knucklehead, I'm fussing at my husband about stuff
that I got none to do with him, and he's
telling me like, look, I don't know what's going on
with you, but you need to figure this figure this
shit out, like you know what I mean. And this
is okay because I don't know what it is, but
it's not me that you whatever. And so I'm in
therapy and my therapist is like, yo, Tony, and this
is talk space, so I'm typing to someone right and

(35:01):
my therapist is like, yo, Tony, it sounds to me
like you have a lot of repressed anger and sadness
and confused like it, and you're projecting this. It seems
to be probably on your partner, and so you need
to figure out where this comes from. He says, didn't
you tell me you were a poet? I say yeah.
He said, how long you've been writing poetry? I was like,
since I was a kid. He's like, you got any
kid poems? I'm like, yeah, I got tons of them.

(35:23):
I kept them. And so what readers need to know
and listeners need to know is I had a box
of poems that I've been hoarding around since I was
a kid, and I write about this and how the
Boogeyman became a poet. It was blue and blah blah blah.
But I took the lid off and I spent a
weekend reading through those poems I wrote myself as a kid.
Some of them made me cry, some of them made
me very angry. A couple of them I set on fire.

(35:45):
But it became this spiritual practice because I realized that
as a kid, I was using poetry to filter out
the noise. I was writing stuff about what the world
was telling me about myself. But then I was also
writing positive things, and so what the world needs to
know is that I those are the hand copies poems
that are in how the Bookman became a poet, And

(36:05):
so that same process that I was using as a
kid is the same process that I use now as
an adult, which is how the poems and Knucklehead came
to be. So that's how these things sort of flow together.
And that's how I knew I was gonna be a writer.
Was when I realized, like I was meant to be
a poet. My planet in my belly is to be
a poet. This is the thing, and I'm gonna keep
pushing with it, and readers should know. The last poem
in Knucklehead is about what it's like being someone who's

(36:28):
sole living is on his poems. That's the only thing
I've been doing for the last six years. I never
got another full time job except for the one I've
created for myself.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Work. You were just you had no choice but to
be an artist.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
I had no choice, and like, literally, I feel like
the God or the universe squeeze it, like squeeze it
out of me. It was like, look, here's your moment
and matter. And the last thing I'll say is I'm
even thinking about this right now because the company I
wound up creating a company off of my dissertation, which
wound up winning a lot of awards. It's called EDMC Academy,
and we do education, tsulting, and a lot of us
are poets, spoken word artists, rappers and MC's ed MC's

(37:04):
educational MC's we move crowds and education YadA YadA, YadA, right,
or as we say, master conditions for student Learning and Engagement. Well,
a lot of our work was around DEI and so
what's happening now is a lot of our contracts that
I'm used to us getting have now been canceled right right,
And so I'm sort of back in this position. Back
in like twenty nineteen, it was like, well, brouh, what

(37:26):
else you're gonna do? You know what I mean? And
I'm like, I got these books and so the world
should know. Yeah, I'm thinking about writing another book.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
You know.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
I'm like, because I'm like, the universe is letting me know.
Now is the time you got to squeeze another one
out of you?

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Bro?

Speaker 2 (37:38):
This is one of those moments where you gotta there's
something you gotta now is the is your window? And
you know these conditions because I write a nup overhead
about how difficult it could be sometimes it be in
heavy pursuit of your purpose, and like there will be
all these distractions to try to convince you otherwise, and
it's like, nah, you, I'm like, I know this territory.
I'd have been here before child Trump child okay, lost

(38:03):
the contract child Like. I'm like, you know, someone called
my husband a faggot not too long a child Like.
I'm just thinking to myself, like get out the way,
you know, just moves to me.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Because I'm right, and a phrase that I have taken
the heart, especially now that I work in the field
of recovery. Obstacles are just there to weed out the
people who really mean it, who really want it, you know,
like if you don't really want it, Oh, that's an obstacle,

(38:35):
all right, I guess I have to stop now.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yeah. I love them because I also write about in
How the Boogeyman Become a Poet and in Knucklehead. My
father dealt with addictions when I was a kid, and
so he was absent for the most part. He's fine now.
My father's been sober for I think thirty years. I
don't even know how long at this point. An amazing
man always gives me lots of positive affirmations. But I
think so much about even how I had to write

(38:58):
poetry to sort of be even understand his relationship with
his addiction and his relationship with me. And so in Knucklehead,
you know their poems and I write about my dad
and you know all that kind of stuff. But I
think so much about your point about just even like
connecting health, mental health, your physical health, your spiritual health
sort of with these positive nerrors that we need. And

(39:20):
so yeah, but you mentioned, you know, sobriety addiction. I
meanly thought about, like y'all write about that too.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, you know you are what I like to refer
to as an artivist. Oh wow, I received that, like
just we we need what you're doing. And hearing you,
hearing you read the one work, like you lapsed into
this cadence that was giving me, like, if not specifically MLK, yeah,

(39:56):
like you're on a podium in front of a crowd.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
I really really dig this because even within Knucklehead, there's
an illustration that is a picture of doctor King's head,
and there's a poement that I talk about you know,
being at a microphone sort of like screaming out poems,
just trying to you know, awaken people, just to the
idea that we've always been liberated, like we need to
just literally wake up around how great and amazing we are.

(40:22):
But I am a performer all day. And the other
thing is, you know, because you mentioned like sort of
being high up in Doctor King another doc that I
want to connect this and I've said this in several interviews,
but poetry I understand this, I really really do now,
Like it is a it's a spiritual exercise. It really
is like sometimes a download from ancestor sometimes it's a
real thing that sort of happens, and with that download

(40:45):
comes a rhythm sometimes. And this is why I tell
people that I'm a poet, but I'm not a rapper.
And don't be wrong, most rappers are poets, or at
least should be, because rap ain't nothing but poetry spoken
over time beat that must rhyme, and a lot of
rap know about poet anyway. But I'm like, yo, because
for me, what comes first, Like if I'm feeling heavy
about a thing that I just need to write something,

(41:06):
what comes first for me of the words right, I'll
just like write words down and then I'll read. I'll
read what I've been writing, and then there's like a
natural rhythm that just kind of happens. And so each
poem and Knucklehead kind of has its own rhythm and cadence.
There's a someone was telling me the other day there's
a musicality in my poems, almost like Langton Hughes and
you know, and I think so much about like yeah,

(41:27):
I'm like, I don't know where it comes from, but
there is a rhythm. And so when you said that,
I'm like, yeah, when I read my work, this is
this is what's new for me is so many poems
in Knucklehead are ones that turned into spoken word poems.
So I'm used to performing them and so holding the
book while reading them, and even in the book they've
been edited just for more clarity for the reader, you know.
So even having to like read my book is now

(41:49):
become a different kind of performance for me, you know.
And so to hear that, you know, it's still resonating.
That's kind of a cool experience for me because I'm
used to this no book on a mic, just going
and so now to have something and then to read it.
It's just a different way of experiencing the work.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
When you perform your work, do you ever, is there
ever a musical component to it?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Never a musical component. And it's actually a funny running
joke in my close friends. So I have a lot
of close friends who are singers here in the Washington,
DC area, like fire singers, and I'm whenever there's like
an event, I'm always like the one featured poet and
sometimes well you know, we'll get on stage together or whatever.
And so sometimes I've tried to perform with like a
piano behind me or of like drums behind me, and

(42:31):
it always throws me off. And so there was one
time my friends made a joke where I'd like literally
turned around and told the band. I was like, can
y'all just stop playing?

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Like this is cute and all?

Speaker 2 (42:44):
But yeah, because you know, because for me again, because
it's so much about transcendence for me, I'm like, yo, y'all,
reckon my flow. Let me let me do my thing. Now.
What I will say is cool is when you I've
not fully listened to it all the way yet. But
because I sell narrated this audiobook and HarperCollins audio. They
especially with How the Boogeyman became a poet. They add

(43:06):
in production and stuff, and so how the Boogeyman became
a poet by the way turned out, and I was
so surprised by all the things that they did. And
I've now been listening to Knucklehead and the way that
they've incorporated music in the background, the way that they've
incorporated almost like typewriter sounds. They have somehow connected musicality

(43:28):
and I think in a really really cool way, something
that I would not have known that I would have
been able to do. But yeah, yeah, yeah, you got
to check out the audiobook.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
It's like it's already on my list. I still have
a credit and audible, so.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah, yeah. And I got to say, you know, one
of the reasons why I'm so slow to listen to it,
and I was the same way with How the Boogeyman
Became a poet is because it's just interesting to hear
myself read out loud to myself stuff about myself. Like
it's like a such a multi layered experience, you know,
it's like, oh wow, like this is okay, Tony.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Like how hard is it to not judge yourself?

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Yeah, yeah, because I definitely am like, oh I didn't
say that part right, or that didn't go so well,
Like I find my and sometimes I find myself like
cringing it, like I can't believe I read this poem
out loud, Like I can't believe myself, you know. So
there's this, and so I'm experiencing Knucklehead in a really
interesting way where I'm like, ah, I'm too scared to
finish listening to it.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Right, But yeah, and it takes a while to learn
to tolerate the sound of your own voice. Yeah, yeah,
Like I'm so grateful to have a podcast with almost
two hundred well not quite quite, but knocking on two
hundred episodes, like okay, knocking on one hundred and fifty.

(44:46):
But but yeah, it takes a while to like get
past oh my god, that's mean to being able to
hear yourself. And if you're like me, which I think
you are, when you perform, you say and do things
on stage that you.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Would never do. Yes, yes, for sure. And there's because
it's a performance for me. And so I'm like standing microphone.
I'm not a I'm not the kind of poet that
once like a stool it's a sit and you know,
I'm like, I am like high energy crazy and sometimes
there's even an improvisation. And so that's the other thing
that's really interesting with Knucklehead is, you know, I'm so

(45:26):
used to us spoken like a live audience where there's
call and response, right, And so for me, it was
so cool listening to you just do it. M h
m hmm, right, because I'm like, that's what I you know,
I'm used to hearing that. But when this book gets
in the hands of readers, I may never hear their response, right,
you know. And so for me it's an interesting thing.
And I'm just like, oh, I hope, if anything, I

(45:47):
hope they hear my call, you know. I hope they
hear my call, you know. And if anything, and hope
they hope they know. I want to hear your response
right right, right right, you know, or I hope you're
responding whatever that might mean, you know, writing in the
margin or doing something you.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Know, which I mean I did. So you have this
passion for hip hop, Yeah, that filters through your work.
Do you ever listen to music while you're writing?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Oh? Yeah, great, way to discuss this. So for me,
whenever I think about hip hop. And I say this
a lot to young people and learners and listeners in
particular readers, is that I understand I only understand hip
hop to be culture culture meaning attitudes, philosophies, beliefs, music, food, dance,
all that kind of stuff. When I was a kid,
I was wearing my hat to the back and rocking

(46:38):
baggy jeans and same words like dope, fresh and fly.
I was absorbing culture. Hip hop. Culture's music is rap music, right,
And so I like to make that distinction because I'm like, yo,
Whenever I think about hip hop, I think about the
culture of hip hop, and it's about peace, love, unity,
having fun and joy. And when I was coming up,
it was about socially conscious music and knowing who you

(46:58):
are and the fifth and the hip hop is knowledge
of self and all the way. So I do consider
myself an MC meaning I can move a crowd, don't sleep.
I'm just not a rapper. So for me, like when
I think about hip hop, and I just want to
say so to people, just to know that when I'm
writing about hip hop and I'm talking about hip hop,
I'm talking about the philosophy of it, you know, beyond
the music. But yes, but what I listened to is

(47:20):
a hip hop instrumentals because I'm listening to other words,
it'll throw me off, but I do. I bob my
head while I'm writing. Yeah. Matter of fact, before I
hopped his interview, I was working on something and I
got my hip hop beats music instrumentals playing. But yeah, yeah,
but I listened to a lot of non mainstream artists
people probably wouldn't well, people do know about. But I

(47:43):
listened to a lot of j I d or Jed.
I listened to of course Doci. I listened to Lula Fiasco,
Tyler the Creator, you know. I listened to sometimes Rico Nasty,
I like Rhapsody. But a lot of artists I listened
to most people probably wouldn't here on mainstream radio, and
I'm okay with that. But I like, I'm into lyricists.
I like good lyrics. I still listen to Lauren Hill

(48:03):
and Missy Elliott mc queen Latifah. I'm still very much
into nineties hip hop.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Sweet quests, yeah, trual and my soul. Oh that's the thing.
Like in the nineties with hip hop, like it was
cool to be black and intelligent. Yes, and that's what
I was steeped in.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
I missed that shit, yes, And and then because of
hip hop philosopher me, I can't help it, I'm like.
And then, you know, mainstream broadcast channels and such media
entertainment industry realizes how much money could be made when
people are promoting misogyny and violence and materialism, and so
let's just go ahead and sell that. And now we're
going to sell this mainstream narrative that hip hop is

(48:46):
about that, and it's not. Hip hop is not about that.
Hip hop is all about community and coming together. Hip
Hop culture was created because black and brown kids needed
an outlet to deal with racism and oppression and poverty,
and you know, gay people needed to deal with you know, homophobia,
and trans folks deal with like these things were happening.
So they created poems and they performed those poems as

(49:07):
rap music. You know what I mean. I'm like, people
understand where it came from. My enslaved African ancest has
already had rhythm and drum right where they were a slave.
Let's be clear, hip hop has always been about freedom
and black people's joy. It's never been about shoot them up.
It's never been about.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
That, right you know. And and that's the thing because
like you know, that genre started off as you know,
we are trapped in this environment and no one is
listening to us. So I'm going to put my story
to music. Yes, but all that was heard was gun
should kill.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yeah, and that became let's that's the thing, let's do it,
let's grab it. You know. It's funny when I, you know,
listen to you you know, I go to schools and
I talk to young people. Now I have to explain
to them that I'm like, you know, about my consumption
of hip hop, because they always like, who's your favorite artist?
Or they want to, you know, want me to get
into the debates about Kendrick and Drake, which I will engage.
I love a good debate, right you know. But then
when and they ask me who's some my favorite artists
are the only ones that I know they recognize is

(50:04):
Laurence Hill. And sometimes I'm always wondering, you know, what
it is, but they specifically always know when I say
Lauren Hill. When I mentioned others, they don't, And I
tell them, I'm like, y'all gotta understand that doctor Keith
is about to be forty four years old and I
just don't listen to the same music y'all are listening
to right now. And I was like, I'm officially at
that age where I get to say, yeah, I say
things like I don't know what these little kids listen
to it to, you know, but I don't judge you,

(50:26):
you know what I mean. I'm like, but I'm not
judging y'all. Hip hop is always going to be a
youth created culture, and so y'all are the ones moving
it forward. I just want to remind you. I'll let
you know the history of the culture so that you
also can filter out some of the noise and maybe
create something that's counter you know what I mean. Just
know that, you know. So I'm like, I'll never judge you,
but I don't know little YACHTI I don't know a
little baby. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
All the babies and the young and can't.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Help them, like and I don't even feel bad about it.
I own it. I'm like, oh, no, I don't know, y'all,
I don't know what you're listening to.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
I got nothing out't the number of if I had
a nickel for every time I said it's just not
for me.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
It's just not like I got nothing.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
And you know, I love me a good ratchet anthem
every now and again.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Oh yeah, I just listen to Ranchet anthem if I
need to hear something. He is definitely into, like he
definitely went the whole like city girls phase, and my
Harry is very much into all the hood rat ratchets,
you know what, Live your life baby Like.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
When we do a quote unquote regular episode of the podcast,
we have a segment called the fifteen minute Fave, and
the fifteen minute Fave is something I started years ago.
It's like, this song was my favorite song on the
planet for the fifteen minutes I was paying attention and
sometimes I preface it with now, this one's a low ratchet,

(51:46):
but it's so good.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
We need you know what. But I think the beauty
about that though, is I think about this too, especially
within the context of hip hop culture and the music
that we had and we were coming up, is there
was just more balance, right, And I'm there was just
slooping more balance because I was like, yo, don't sleep
when I heard don't you know pop that Doodle Brown? What?
But I'm like, yeah, like you know, I'm getting it. Popping.

(52:09):
You know, I'm also listening to you know, Tupac was also,
you know, someone who wrote from sort of multiple sides
of himself. So I'm thinking to myself, like, there was
at least some balance. You know, we could still party
and maybe shoot them up a little bit, be ratchet,
but there was also social consciousness. And I think that
for me, I'm like, I just missed the balance. I
just missed the balance. And I also I'm so curious

(52:30):
about the spaces in which black gay men find themselves
within the context of hip hop. I think about this
quite a bit. Within hip hop, I wouldn't be loved musically,
but within the hip hop context of education, I'm loved greatly.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
That's why I love like every now and again when
Bob and Drag Queen decides that she's a rapper and
that's not shade, like, well, we'll give a platform to
a handful of the queer rappers that out there, and
like the song I'm thinking about in particularly gay bars
like and that's how I discovered, you know, like all

(53:07):
the like Ocean Kelly, you know, and these folks that
are like, oh damn.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yeah, and and who have bars, and that's the thing
who And that's the thing because I'm like, it's I
always well, I don't want to like separate mcs from
rappers because I don't want to be one of those
people who like draws lines and saying about hip hop.
But I do believe there's people who can absolutely like
write raps and can probably wrap in a studio. And
then there are people who can you know, write raps
if they are writing their raps, who can like perform

(53:35):
live and like move a crowd, who can MC like
I think I think about I sort of always make
a bit of these distinctions, and so for me, I
would love to like be because I'm like, yo, gay people,
we some of the best mcs when you think about
ballroom culture is the one who's literally moving that entire crowd,

(53:55):
right but with the rhythm and you know, I'm just
have so many something.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
He was a young black man I follow on social
media whose name is escaping right now, and I hate it,
but he's a ballroom commentator. But and he does videos
where like he'll take mainstream songs like Broadway songs or whatever,
and he'll like give it the ballroom chance, yes, and
it's so feared. Yeah, yeah, and he did this like

(54:20):
flow chart that took the elements of hip hop and
the elements of ballroom and talked about how it's the
same shit what I'm talking about. I'm gonna find it
and I'm gonna send it to you.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Please do, please do, because I'm like, I want to
start consuming that kind of work because I'm just, I
just I have so many questions. I'm just And also
I've actually never been to a ball I would love
to go to a ball It's so funny to think
that I'm a gay black man America has never ever
ever been to a ball.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
There was like five seconds like they were trying to
get me to to to walk for the House of Ebony,
and I got scared. But at the same time, I
then became obsessed with ballroom. So it's like I know
it from peripherally, but never from the inside. It's it's amazing.

(55:06):
It's this whole culture and everything magical in the world
just comes from ballroom. Yes, and everyone will like try
and fight tooth and nail and say that's not true.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah. Absolutely. And relatedly, because I don't know how we
got into this wonderful well, no that you brought it
up but I'm thinking about hip hop culture because I'm like,
with a hip hop culture, we have ciphers. Right, you
get in you know, you get in a circle when
you battle, and the best one wins. Right. This is
like that idea that we know what it's like to
be in a battle. We know what it's like to battle.

(55:36):
You know. There's somebody's said about that that is triumphant
about us.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
And one thing I love about gay rappers, gay male
rappers in particular, is when they rap about men the
way their straight counterparts rap about women.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
The world uncomfortable. It makes the world. That's why it
makes the world so uncomfortable. You know. There's a poem
and Knucklehead where I tried to It's funny because I
do remember writing this poem. But I but once I
started writing Knucklehead, I knew that I wanted to play
on the imagery a little bit and the metaphor. But
one of the last poems and Knucklehead is called we

(56:16):
made It colon Love so right, so it could be
read as we made love. It could also be read
as well, we made it love. Like there's a bunch
of different things, and so within the imagery is you know,
two black men, Me and my husband were floating in
the skies, and then all of a sudden there's you know,

(56:36):
things blowing in the breeze, and then there's a lifting
of public and private parts. And then I'll give you
this nugget because I think this is a wonderful Easter egg.
Because I'm a lyricist, I believe in embedding things and poems,
and so there's a stanza in that poem that's called
we Made It Love, and I know his thing. I
know that honestly, like very few people will get this

(56:57):
unless I start saying this exists, or they might. But
in the one two I guess it'd be the third stanza.
And we made Love, I say, where our breath became
versus written into the breeze, and so we hang glided
across the tops of tall trees, suspending ourselves high above
the bottom of sturdy bridges that were built on nothing

(57:18):
but trust alone. In that stanza, I use verse top bottom.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
I can't with you. Oh my god, I love that.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
I was like, I just want to know who might
catch this. I'm just so kind of curious. And also
in how the Bully Man became a poet, a lot
of the white teachers, the white women teachers. They're named
after the Golden Girls, So it's like miss Born.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
And you're Golden Girls fan to see.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
That's what I mean. Like that, I just wanted to
make sure that, like, in addition to writing this, but
I'm like, yo, there are these little things and i
just want to assert so that certain kind of readers
might be.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
Like, I love that. So you clever them.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Trying to make an engaging for the readers.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
You know, well, doctor Tony, Yes, great, I could sit
and talk to you forever.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
That means we have the more to converse about this.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Got exactly. Oh, I've already decided this is not the
last time we're gonna sit and have a chitch.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
So where is the best place? What's your favorite place
for people to go and purchase your work?

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Oh that's a really great question. I am a huge
fan of indie bookstores. This is the truth. I love them,
and so I would highly recommend that if you have
access to a local bookstore, feel free to stop. Buy
yours go to ww dot bookshop dot org. But if
you're just looking for general ways to buy my book,
go to my website. Go to Tony Keith Junior dot com.
You click on the link for my books and it
will take you to all your options for online retailers.

(58:45):
We can do Barns and Nobles of course as Amazon,
and you can also get it at your a lot
of local public local like neighborhood public libraries. You can
get it Enkindle. It's available in audiobook and yeah, so
those are love it?

Speaker 1 (59:00):
I love it? And where can we follow you?

Speaker 2 (59:02):
You can follow me at Tony Keith Junior on all things. Actually,
I'm really only on Instagram my Twitter, I don wanna
use that. It's not even Twitter. Facebook is really only
for like my older family members. But anyway, but I'm
Instagram for sure.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Definitely. We're gonna put all of that into the notes
of this episode. Tony Keith Jr. Thank you so much
for sitting and sharing.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
I've had such a blast hanging out with you today.
I got nothing of you up next.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Oh yeah, all right, all right, thank you so much,
Thank you, Please take care. Full Circle is a Never
Skurreed Productions podcast hosted by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal,
produced and edited by Never Scured Executive Produced by Charles
Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal. Our theme in music is
by the jingle Berries. All names, pictures, music, audio, and

(59:53):
video clips are registered trademarks and or copyrights of their
respective copyright holders.