​1. When did you start writing?
"I’ve always been a writer. I’ve kept journals and written poetry since I was pretty young, maybe 3rd or 4th grade. Then of course, when tumblr poetry was popular, I hopped on that trend for a while and continued to write poetry more frequently. But I didn’t know that I wanted to be a poet, to pursue it as a career. When I started undergrad, I started as a fiction writer because I loved telling stories. But I found my way back to poems during my Masters, and now here I am, exactly where I’m meant to be."

2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"For me, it’s a combination of iPhone notes and the computer. In every day life, I’m collecting ideas, images, and phrases in the notes app on my phone and I just let them accumulate. Then as they build, some things start to connect or I start to see some things living within the same poem. Once that starts to happen I tend to get an urge to sit down and get a first draft out. I’ll open a new Word Document and throw those phrases into the document and then I work on building the connective tissues between them. I feel like an engineer or a surgeon even, the way I write those first drafts. I think writing that way is also what makes the writing exciting, I always manage to make things some sort of puzzle to solve." 

3. How did BLOODWARM come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? 
"Interestingly enough, BLOODWARM used to be a part of a much earlier draft of my first full-length collection. But I started to slowly realize that there seemed to be two separate projects existing in that manuscript. I remember actually asking Twitter if I should just put all of these poems about race into a chapbook, and so many people were really supportive of the idea. So I took the poems in BLOODWARM from that full-length manuscript and organized them into a chapbook, and I was really fortunate for it to find such a fantastic home so soon. I’m glad I gave them their own space to inhabit, because I think in the full-length they were being buried a little bit. I’m really proud of this project and how the poems in this chapbook are speaking to one another (and how they will hopefully speak to my readers)." 

4. What drew you to write form poetry?
"I fell in love with form poetry first reading Erica Dawson. I think a lot of people’s introduction to formal work is through the Shakespearean sonnet, and while those sonnets are important, the language and form of them can feel stuffy or stiff. Erica Dawson’s formal poems were so smooth that you didn’t realize they were formal until after you’d already read them. And her poems gave me permission to bend form to what I needed it to do. I realized I could write formal poems about Blackness, about my life, about every day experiences in form. Her poems helped me to unlearn all of the untrue things I’d internalized about form; that the content of them had to be 'serious,' that the language couldn’t be accessible, that writing formal poetry couldn’t be fun." 

5. Where do you draw inspiration?
"I draw inspiration from just living. I would say I draw the most inspiration from reading. When I’m not reading, I’ve found that it’s much harder to write. When I’m reading more, I’m constantly changing the landscape of how I’m thinking about poems. It also helps to refresh my vocabulary as well. Joy Priest, a dear friend of mine, once told me that I write from a feeling. And I think that’s very true about my writing. At the heart of every poem I write is a feeling that I’m trying to work through, exorcise even. Feeling is both the first inspiration and priority of anything that I write."

6. You are currently pursuing a PhD in poetry at the University of Cincinnati. What brought that about?
"In a lot of ways, the PhD was a natural progression after the MA. There are more practical reasons for getting the PhD, such as being more competitive on the job market and having the time and resources to develop as both a writer and academic scholar. I also wanted to be in a program that still had a significant emphasis on academic/scholarly research, as I have a deep interest in slave narratives and the history of written resistance by Black women poets. It’s been such a gift to be in a space where my academic work influences my creative work and vice versa. It’s brought me to places in my poetry that I never would have reached otherwise, and has allowed me to grow and evolve in surprising and wonderful ways."

7. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"I hope people always leave my work with a greater understanding of what it’s like to be a Black woman in this world, in this country. With BLOODWARM specifically, the chapbook is all about race, and I hope the poems tackle it in a new and unique way. I hope Black youth read those poems and feel seen and understood. I hope my Black peers read these poems and feel a sense of community. I hope non-Black people read this book and feel inspired to do something differently, to teach those around them, to be better allies to oppressed people in this country."

8. What other project(s) do you hope to take on someday?
"I hope to write YA sometime soon! Maybe a short story collection or a novel in verse. Maybe both! I love narrative projects and I think I’d really excel with a YA audience. But we shall see!"

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"Hmm, I think a lot of prescriptive writing advice can be useless, as writers are all different and what may work for one person may be completely useless for someone else. I think we should just want people to find what works for them and to encourage them to do those things to the best of their ability."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I actually love painting, and I don’t talk about it enough OR do it enough. Years ago in undergrad, I practically painting all of the art for the entire apartment I was living in at that time, and was even taking commissions and selling some art pieces at that time. Hopefully, as I enter a less hectic part of my PhD program, I can work painting back into my schedule for good!"



Watch Taylor read her poem "My Twitter Feed Becomes Too Much" via Variant Literature. It is from her forthcoming chapbook, Bloodwarm. The poem first appeared in Frontier Poetry.


​Taylor Byas is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is now a third year PhD student and Yates scholar at the University of Cincinnati, and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She was the 1st place winner of both the Poetry Super Highway and the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and a finalist for the Frontier OPEN Prize. Her chapbook, Bloodwarm, is forthcoming from Variant Lit this summer, and her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in Spring of 2023. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency.

1. Why did you start writing?
"I started writing when I was really young, too young to remember a clear reason for doing it. I also read a lot. Voraciously, as kids do, in plenty of genres. I think I started because I wanted to imitate what my favourite authors could do for me, which was to create a world that felt not only like a place you could live in, but a place you wanted to live in. So I started writing prose. I actually spent a long, long time only writing prose, mostly fanfiction and a couple of novels. I unearthed some middle school attempts at poetry last year, which were laughably bad, as you can probably imagine, but that wasn’t really the focus for me back then. I rediscovered my motivation to write poetry in the summer of 2020 and I started it again as a way to express my feelings and work through the mess of my mind. I used to do that in fiction too, but more obliquely; it’s weird to think of poetry as more direct, but in fiction I often projected and muddled through my issues more subtly. With poetry I want to take my pain and joy and confusion and make it...if not pretty, then at least worth looking at."

2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"I used to only write on my computer but I’ve actually been branching out lately! I do also write on my phone, but not really full poems, just ideas for lines or titles in a huge note that’s been with me for ages. For a long time I would do everything on my computer, from a doc with (more) ideas for lines to the actual poem draft. It’s easier to get the initial ideas onto a computer document for me than onto physical paper, mostly because I’ve learned to type really quickly and so I’m kind of ahead of my conscious brain when I do it. Drafting on paper doesn’t do that for me. It slows me down, makes me think, to the point where the writing gets impacted. But that makes physical notepads really useful for revising. These days I use legal pads to revise. I copy out the draft in blue pen first, which lets me start to think about word choice or clunky phrases. If there’s an issue with flow, writing it out by hand often warns you about it. Then I use a black pen to reread and make edits or comments, usually while reading it out loud to myself, which is partly because I’m dramatic but also because hearing it helps me think about the rhythm. This is what works best for me right now, but I used to write a lot of prose drafts on paper, so maybe I’ll change my process in the future." 

3. How do you know when a poem is done?
"I’ve heard a lot of people say you don’t really know when it’s done, and I agree that completion is a nebulous concept when it comes to creative work. But I also do have a gut feeling when I’m drafting or revising that this is where the piece ends, you know? A lot of the time there’s a little volta or a rhetorical question. The rhetorical question is a device that I’ve loved ever since I was a kid, so I find I end on them a lot. While writing, I can feel the end as I approach it. Sometimes I know that it has to have a specific rhythm, or that it has to end on a certain sound. I once spent a while trying to find a word that ended in '-one' for the penultimate line of a piece because I just felt like the sound was needed there and my initial version, which had 'bone', didn’t make sense. I ended up swapping it for a phrase ending on 'stone'. I’m not really sure why I decided on that specific sound, but once I fixed that second-last line the whole piece fell into place for me. And then sometimes there are pieces that I know could be extended or different but I also want to leave the way they are. So they’re done, in that I’m not working on it anymore, but they don’t have to be done."

4. You mentioned on your author page that you love a good prose poem. What got you interested in prose poetry?
"I think I got hooked on prose poetry because of how approachable it felt. I know prose. I write in prose at school, to friends, in my daily journal. While I love and appreciate many poets who work with unconventional forms or write lineated poetry, actually using those forms intimidated me when I started transitioning from prose to poetry. The prose poem, which I think I discovered through another young poet’s work on Tumblr (I am so sorry to this person – I can’t remember who it was!), sort of blew my mind. It was poetry, with poetic devices and a poem’s complicated relationship with the truth, but it was also a lot less scary. It fit the work I was producing at the time too, these breathless, confessional, almost epistolary pieces. A lot of my prose poems are essentially love letters or rants or journal entries, forms that are pretty prose-based. I write lineated pieces too these days, and I’ve been slowly experimenting a little more with form, but I still appreciate the prose poem’s ability to riff on other genres and convey this sense of breathless urgency, which the line break, with its imperative to pause, can sometimes hinder."

5. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on?
"I’ve got a chapbook out on submission right now that I’m really excited about! It’s called 'how to construct a breakup poem' and I touch on themes of love as a form of self-destruction, love as performance, and a lot of the sad stuff that you might have seen in the work that I’ve published so far. While I was putting that chapbook together I had to cut a handful of poems that I really loved because they were about a different kind of toxicity; about wanting someone to break you, about both loving and hating someone for being too comfortable, too easy. Those poems (and a few others!) are now being collected into what I think will be a microchap, but it’s still up in the air." 

6. Where do you draw inspiration?
"I draw inspiration from anything I encounter, but I do have some things that prove to be more fruitful for me. I think music is really useful; it sets the mood for a piece and I’ve thought of plenty of poems thanks to a good playlist and a long walk. Other people’s poetry is also really inspiring. When I’ve been struggling to find a way into a new piece, I like to take a break and read some poems I love and it gets me back into the right headspace. But other than music and existing poetry, I’m most inspired by conversations. I have two younger brothers who fight and shoot the breeze all the time while I’m in my room reading or texting or doing something alone, and the things they say to each other often become kernels of a later line. This is also true of random people talking or my friends chatting or social media posts; it’s just that my brothers are around me all the time so I hear more from them. There’s a playfulness and willingness to innovate with language when children are speaking to each other, especially children who grow up multilingual, that I think is great to have in the background when you’re a poet."

7. What do you hope people take away from your work?
"I guess it varies from poem to poem, but generally I want someone to finish reading the piece and have to take a moment before they go on with the rest of their day. I want a line to hit them in the chest, or for there to be something unexpected at the end that makes them think, or for them to realize that I’ve expressed a feeling they’ve had for a long time. The worst thing a poem can do is fail to make any kind of impact on you. Whether it’s to make you cry, laugh, think, or just admire the beauty of the language, I want my poems to have an emotional effect on the reader. A good one, not 'wow this poem was bad'. I want the poem to be meaningful to someone other than me."

8. What else do you hope to take on someday?
"Honestly, I don’t really know. I feel really new to the world of poetry and I’m definitely exploring myself as a writer right now. Maybe I’ll try prose again and write some short stories, or even attempt some CNF, but for now I just want to enjoy myself and work on my poems. I wrote my first tanka a little while ago and I want to try a few traditional forms. It would also be really cool to curate a special issue of a journal – if anyone wants to do a Formula One pop-up or a Chinese historical drama themed issue or like...an issue about teenage angst for some reason, hit me up. Mags in need of a guest editor, I would be down."

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"I’ve been lucky enough so far to have only encountered advice that was at least partly useful! Or if it wasn’t useful to me then I’ve just forgotten about it by now, but I think most things you hear have some merit to them. Admonitions to avoid certain subjects or placing line breaks in certain places are generally helpful, although even tricky things can be done well. But on the topic of advice, I find that it works best when you’re not overly attached to following it. I’ve taken people’s advice and ignored it if it didn’t work for me, and that’s probably the best way to go about it."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I do talk about this a little bit (and I have a poem about this coming in November!) but I’m an avid Formula One fan. One of my friends introduced F1 to me when lockdown started in Canada and now I watch the races every weekend, except for the ones that are at impossible times because of the time difference (sorry, Japan and Australia). The vagaries of F1 are too much for this interview, but suffice to say that all you need to know is that there are 20 drivers, that Drive to Survive is a horrifyingly inaccurate depiction of the actual season, that Alex Albon deserved better, and that Nikita Mazepin shouldn’t be on the grid. I’m a huge Alex Albon fan and I’m still holding out for him to have a seat next season. Please pray for me." 


Hear Joyce​​ read her poem "and somehow i still do."

June Lin is a young poet from Canada. She got her driver's license last fall but is still scared of the highway. More of her work can be found in released and forthcoming issues of perhappened mag, Gone Lawn, and Vagabond City.

​1. Why did you start writing? 
"In sixth grade, my friend promised me $20 if I would write a One Direction fan fiction for her. She said she wanted to read something someone else wrote for her, because it was too much effort for her to do herself. Of course, I’ll do most things for $20, so I made a Wattpad account that day and started writing. It was bad. Very bad. Werewolf AU bad. But I stuck with it, got a decent amount of grounding in the fan fiction scene, and then I grew up. Eventually. Abandoned the fan fiction thing for completely original work, and I haven’t stopped yet." 

2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"I’m very much a computer person—I tried the notebook thing for a while before I realized I had more near-empty notebooks than thoughts in my head. Instead I have a Google Docs specifically for my writing that trails all the way back to 2015. I’ve also found that brain-mapping apps like MindNode and Trello really help me organize my chaos into something halfway coherent." 

3. How do you know when a poem is done?
"The second my hands start lingering over the keys, I stop. It’s difficult for me to start writing a poem/story and then come back to actually finish it later. Unless it’s longer prose, I just write until my brain stops working. Then I’ll come back an hour or so later to see if I’m happy with it—maybe tweak a bit, play with the formatting—but about 95% of the finished product comes from that first sit-down. Otherwise, I tend to over-edit, and it’s not fun for anyone involved." 

4. How did LITTLE ROOMS WITH BAD LIGHTING come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? 
"The title came far before the book. About eight months ago, I wanted to write an essay about how the pandemic affected my relationships with my family, but essays are not my thing by any means. Then I wrote one of the first pieces of the chap ('from Matt Hammond'), and after showing it to one of my friends, they recommended I turn it into a micro-chap for Ghost City. The concept morphed from how the pandemic affected my family, and became a sort of catalog of core memories from each place I’ve lived—some good, some bad, all necessary to shape me into who I am now." 

5. You are the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Southchild Lit. Why did you decide to establish your own magazine?
"To be honest, the idea initially came to me spitefully after a very tough rejection from my university’s magazine. I’d been submitting (in hindsight, objectively bad) work to publications since 2019 and hadn’t gotten a single acceptance. Most of the form rejects were along the lines of, 'Oh, this just isn’t the right home for it.' I mean, it didn’t belong anywhere, but still. Ninety percent of those pieces have been dramatically reworked (and published!) since then. 

I wanted to make a space with an emphasis on the work that’s been wandering around for a while looking for the 'right home.' And for a lot of people, I’m very proud to say that Southchild has been just that—the right home. I started working on the logistics of the magazine in August 2020, but I didn’t want to launch until I got my very first acceptance. In December, Ample Remains accepted one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written, and Southchild launched later that week." 

6. Where do you draw inspiration?
"I have a special section in the notes of my phone for little things I notice just in my everyday, even if it’s something like 'this dude’s mustache is longer on one side than the other.' I also work at a family law firm, so I spend a third of each day watching people tread the line between moral correctness and personal success. It’s definitely interesting to surround myself with people who, generally, are hated—I get to see both sides of the coin and draw from that to create complex, double- or triple-edged characters." 

7. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"From LITTLE ROOMS specifically, and with a lot of my other work, I want people to walk away realizing that home—no matter what shape, size, or place—plays such an important role in shaping and forming you as a human being. The walls that surround you hold in so much that you don’t often get to take with you into the rest of your life. And while yes, a lot of negative memories and trauma start to surface, there are some positives that you can’t help but take into account." 

8. What other project(s) do you hope to take on someday? 
"Although it’s not at the forefront of my priorities right now, I’m (very slowly) working on a YA fantasy novel! Basic pitch: lesbian pirate captain is kidnapped by sirens, and her motley crew of adopted younger siblings band together to save her. It’s totally different from my usual online persona and writing, but I’m pulling from my Dungeons & Dragons comfort zone to make something that, if nothing else, I really enjoy. 

Also! I’m collaborating with one of my non-writer friends on a short story right now that we’re both extremely excited about. I know it’s not a big project, but working together with someone on the same chaotically creative wavelength as me has been refreshing, enlightening, and just so much fun in general. I can’t wait for the world to read it (and for Sidd to get all the love and validation he deserves)." 

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"The worst advice I’ve ever received is that a main character needs to be 'relatable' for readers to enjoy them. I’ve always thought that the most interesting, the most dynamic characters come from divergence from the norm. Generally relatable characters have always come across as bland to me, because everyone is so different and so unique. Play with perspectives that don’t quite match your own. Make grey main characters! Unlikeable ones! Unique ones! As long as you’re not romanticizing or glorifying bad behavior, I think it’s okay for your readers to observe as an outsider, studying the character for all that they embody."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I’ve always loved classic literature and am actually majoring in it in college! Since my sophomore year of high school, I’ve been collecting dusty, old books. I go thrifting once every few months and run straight to the book section, snatching up every title I recognize. I have a personal collection of over three hundred now, from Oscar Wilde to Jane Austen to Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Kawabata, et cetera et cetera. My favorites are an old clothbound version of Macbeth printed in the early 50s, scrawled all over with notes, annotations, and alphanumeric phone numbers; my also-clothbound volumes of War and Peace, which I finally finished reading last summer; and my copy of George Orwell’s 1984 that was actually printed in 1984. That one in particular had a note written in it on the last page, in beautiful cursive, that simply stated 'Holy sh-t.' I love getting books secondhand especially for this reason—the more beat-up a book looks, the more it was probably loved by its previous owners." 


 Hear Magi​​ read their poem "From Matt Hammond."

Magi Sumpter drafts divorce papers by day and eats them with spinach artichoke dip by night. They are the Editor-in-Chief of Southchild Lit and a July Cancer. Follow them on Twitter @MagiSumpter.