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Speaker 1: Hello, this is Tony Keith Junior. I'm looking for Arrow.

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Speaker 2: Tony, you found him. I am looking forward to sharing

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a conversation with you again, sir.

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Speaker 1: How are you? I am fantastic. When Anna said that

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I was gonna be speaking to you again, I was like,

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great energy, how are you fantastic?

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Speaker 2: And I'm so excited that you've released another book of

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verses because I brag about you so much, because I'll

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tell people, especially with the younger adults, I go, you

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need to go read what he's got here and understand

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that you can do it too. Just be open with

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your emotions.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what it's about. That's what it's about.

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It is the very vulnerable.

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Speaker 2: But you know what's really interesting, though, Tony, this time

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aroud because when I saw the title of the book,

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instantly I was shot back to my childhood because when

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my dad called me a knucklehead, I knew I did

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something kind of stupid.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really really thought about that when

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it came to the title of this book, Arrow, Seriously

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I thought about I thought about a couple of things,

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but one is I.

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Speaker 4: Immediately just started thinking so much about the kind of

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poems that were going to be in this collection, and

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so many of them were just about me, just sort

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of being a black gay man in America and sort

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of writing reflections on that and poems connected to that.

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But I just kept thinking so much about when I

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was a kid, I also was called a knucklehead. But

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it was never in like a negative sense. It was

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always sort of this like, you, lovable, little black boy.

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You might be a little you know, you might be

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a little silly, you know, maybe a little hard headed,

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you know what I mean, but you are you know.

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I just always received it as like something really positive.

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And so I thought about, Yo, what would be a

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cool title for this book, And I was like, Oh,

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this is all the little knuckleheads out there, and all

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the little all the little not just black boys. It

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could be any person who's misunderstood, or a person who

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might feel like they might not have a voice, or

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someone who understands what it's like to maybe be bullied

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or to be shunned right, or to be oppressed right.

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And so when I wrote Knucklehead, it was like, nah,

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we're going to throw some positive affirmations in here. So

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there are poems about joy and purpose and falling in

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love and you know freedom, which are exactly the kinds

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of things that we need to be hearing right now.

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Speaker 1: Yes we do, Yes, we do.

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Speaker 2: You say that when you set out to write this book,

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were these poems already in motion or is it there?

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You said, Okay, I'm going to write a book and

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then I'm going to create the poetry.

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Speaker 1: This is super great.

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Speaker 4: So the truth is the poems already existed even before

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how the Boogieman became a poet did so, just like

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in Boogieman became a poet, I share that I used

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to write poetry to.

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Speaker 1: Myself as a kid. I still do that to this day.

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Speaker 4: Arrow, And so the poems that are in Knucklehead are

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poems that I've been writing to myself over the last

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thirty years. There's a poem in Knucklehead that I wrote

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when I was probably like.

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Speaker 1: Fifteen or sixteen. I still love that poem.

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Speaker 4: And then there's some that I wrote in like two

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thousand and five, some in twenty ten, some a couple

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of years ago. But they're a collection of that. So, yeah,

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I still I still believe in that practice of poetry,

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to discover poetry, to liberate poetry, to find freedom. Yeah,

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it's still a jam. So those poems are already done.

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It's just that when I wrote How the Boogeyman Became

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a Poet, and I learned so much about my readers

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and my audience, I was like, oh, I think I

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now know how I want to adjust Knucklehead so that

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it looks different. So which is why it structured in

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a series of love letters. So they're like five love

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letters inside of Knucklehead that encapsulate the poetry collection. But

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I write two little knucklehead. You know, when I sat

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down thinking about this poetry collection, I was like, I

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gotta put together piece of the I gotta do I

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can do this, I can do this. The last thing

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I say about that is the cover. It says knucklehead,

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but there's the letter E and has like a little ye.

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So's here's the thing with the E. People should know.

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This is a couple of years ago. I was doing

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workshops with around masculinity and hip hop with a group

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of high school black boys from washing DC. It was

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a summer program there in at Howard University, and I

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told him I wrote this book called How the Bully

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Man Became a Poet. But then the next year I

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got this book coming up on knucklehead, right, So I

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write knucklehead on the board, but I misspell it. I

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forget the letter E and go back to the whiteboard

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to go in there.

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Speaker 1: I know.

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Speaker 4: The fella's like, nah, man, keep it like that, Keep

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it like that. And I thought to myself, like, this

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would be a great tribute, a great shot to love.

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So the E that's on the cover is messed up

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on purpose, and it's because it's a little knucklehead.

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Speaker 1: It told me to keep it back.

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Speaker 2: That explains the symbol beneath it that you need to

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put this in here.

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Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. The means is the means something deep in

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the book. I'm like, well, it's not that. No, it's not.

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Speaker 4: You won't find the E like the book, but the cover,

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you know. So I think for me, that's what it

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was about representation. It was like, Yo, I hear you,

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I see you. I see you so much that I'm

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willing to even keep mistakes I made, you.

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Speaker 1: Know, on my book cover, you know.

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Speaker 2: So, yeah, the book that I want to read from

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you one day. It goes along with what my first

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book was. And because I set out to write a

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thousand pieces of poetry, and call it one man's twenty

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one thoughts. My problem was when I went back in

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there to get the poetry, it was the stuff around

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the poetry where I was explaining it that became the storyline.

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So I would love to read a book that you

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explain to us what this poetry is about, because I'll

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bet you go deep, dude.

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Speaker 1: I do.

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Speaker 4: I don't because my shout outs to my agent, Anny Waying,

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and I should hand and he's amazing. She told me,

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She says, told me, you know, it's almost like Boogieyman

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is like the flesh, and Knucklehead is the bones, right,

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and so if you were to read Boogeyman, you'll see.

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So these two books they work in conversation. I should

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have mentioned that these two go together. So there are

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there are stories and how the Boogeyman became a poet

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about be being bullied, about me dealing with love, about

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my father, about you know, relationships, those there are poems

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that show up in Knucklehead that directly connected some of

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those moments. So you know, I talk about being bullied

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in playgrounds in Boogieman, there's poems and Knucklehead about being

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bullied on playgrounds. So Essentially you kind of get that

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with Boogieman. If you read Boogieman, you'll see the context

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for all of the poems with the Knucklehead, not all

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of them, but most of them. Some of the ones

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in Knucklehead also now deal with the fact that I'm

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now married gay black man in America. So I have

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love poems about me and my husband and there. So

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that's probably a story to write at some point too.

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But yeah, you know, I think explaining the poetry for me,

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it's just a matter of I just need readers to

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know that these poems were not written honestly for the

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sake of public hed. I wasn't trying to publish a

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book with these poems. These poems were how I was

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just dealing with my world, how I was trying to

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understand what's happening, how I feel. You know, when people

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say the word sagged and get like just like how

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it affects me.

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Speaker 2: You know, you know one of the things that that

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I love about your writing, and kudos to your editor.

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Mark Twain wrote in his one hundredth anniversary of the

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of his autobiography, We've got to get to our original

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and authentic accent as writers and you are authentic in

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this book.

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Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you that I appreciate that I'm there,

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because that was a bit of a challenge. It's something

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that I've often wrestled with, especially as an academic, you know,

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dear world. Yes, I have a PhD, so I can

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do all the academic peer of writing.

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Speaker 1: Things, but I don't. I don't speak like that existly.

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Speaker 4: So it's like, yeah, So it's like it's a matter

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of like, how do I write something that is palatable

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to a bunch of different kinds of readers, but also

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that affirms the variations of black speech. And you know,

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I write a knucklehead. I mean, I write a bookyman,

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about how teachers would you know, get White teachers mostly

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would get on.

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Speaker 1: Me and say to you need to learn to speak,

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speak better, enunciate, write better.

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Speaker 4: And I was like, you know, for knucklehead, Nah, I'm

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gona Nope, I'm gonna.

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Speaker 1: Write this exactly how I speak.

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Speaker 2: You know, Like that's wow, Oh my god, Tony, you

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gotta come back to this show anytime in the future.

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Speaker 1: You know that door is going to be opening arrow seriously, anytime,

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please do man. You know I love you, dude, I

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do love you back, I really do.

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Speaker 2: Will you be brilliant today?

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Speaker 1: Okay sir? All right you too. You take Carol. Thanks peace,