Black Joy! Poet Darryl Foto Visits The Day With Trae
Watch full interview below
Last week on The Day with Trae, guest host Deaunte Damper sat down with Seattle-based poet and author Darryl Foto to discuss his career and showcase Foto's poetry in a live studio performance. Foto also talked about his work at A Space Inside, where he hosts Poetry and Sip, a spoken word and poetry open mic held on the last Friday of every month.
"For me, it's been a saving grace in a lot of ways. Coming out of the pandemic, one of the things I was desperately feigning for was community, regardless if it was poets or not. I just needed people. To walk into A Space Inside and literally feel, "Take your shoes off and get comfortable with a whole bunch of strangers," Foto said. "I left that room feeling amazing, feeling connected, feeling family. To be able to host an open mic in space that does that for me has been one of the greatest blessings."
Foto has been a storyteller since his childhood.
"It Started off with just writing essays for school," Foto said.
After experiencing racism on a trip to a Safeway, combined with a growing interest in slam poetry, Foto wrote his first poem: "My name isn't Toby."
"I was going through a lot just in terms of embracing my blackness and accepting what that means within the society I live in. It was a lot of pressure to be the respectable black man, the super humble, super calm, and I'm not that guy," Foto said. "I'm calm, I'm humble, but I can't deal with the respectability politic in that sense."
Since then, Foto has published his first book, a collection of free-form poetry titled "Lessons in Chasing Paper Cuts," which you can purchase here.
"The concept was, at the time, writing felt like reopening wounds. At the time, it was catharsis, but it hurt to realize that my life, my perception of my reality, and everything wasn't necessarily what I thought it was," Foto said. "Every time I was writing a poem, it was like a paper cut. I'm hurting myself to get this out, but at the end, it ended up being this beautiful compilation of scars that I'm so proud of."
Reach out and get your copy of "Lessons in Chasing Paper Cuts” here and make sure to watch Foto perform "An Ode to Black Joy" on The Day with Trae, airing every Monday -Friday at 11 am.
