2022-01-06
1 小时 0 分钟You're always going to touch someone by being as honest as you possibly can.
Whatever, whatever that truth is, whatever that truth is is valid and will set somebody free.
You know, starting with yourself.
It will travel and it will be powerful.
I think.
My guest today Yrsa Daily Ward is an author, actor, model and screenwriter of mixed jamaican and nigerian heritage.
And growing up in northwest of England, she found herself quickly exited from her home.
Being raised by her grandparents parents at the age of six and struggling in many ways to understand what had just happened.
Reading and writing became a bit of a salvation for her, a more introverted kid raised in a strict religious family than in a tradition that no one outside the family shared.
Being vegetarian, the only black person in her school who also happened to stand nearly a foot above her peers.
By her early teens, she just yearned to fit in, to not stand out.
She didn't want to be different.
And yet something in the order of magic happened when her teacher noticed Yrsa's gift for language and asked her to begin sharing her poems before the class as spoken word, she came alive.
It was like she stepped outside herself and all was as it should be and that very feeling, though stifled for some time, would come roaring back to life.
Years later, when living in Cape Town, South Africa, she stumbled into this weekly poetry group and following one of the weekly prompts, Yrsa wrote a poem entitled mental illness, then performed it from the stage and the response, it just took her breath away.
And in that moment she knew this would be her life.
And it has become just that now, three books and many stages in having cultivated a giant global community on Instagram, co written Beyonce's musical, film and visual album Black is King.
Her work has appeared in Vogue, Elle, harp, as bazaar and so many other outlets, and it draws from her own experiences and larger issues affecting our behavior, culture and life.
Fusing poetry with theater, music and storytelling while sharing universal, often hard but honest and real experiences in verse in a way that draws you in and makes you feel less alone.
Yursa's newest book, the how, was written entirely during the pandemic, and we talk about her journey to this moment, explore some of the poems and ideas from that book, and also dive into what it was like to create work that is so close to the bone at a moment like this.