How To Make Time for Poetry Every Day, According to a Philly-Born Poet

April is National Poetry Month. What better time is there to appreciate the beauty of language?

Major Jackson is an expert on the power of words. He’s an award-winning poet, a professor, and the host of “The Slowdown,” a daily poetry podcast.

Jackson lives in Nashville now — but he was born in Philadelphia, attended Temple University, worked at the Painted Bride, and got his start as a writer covering hip-hop and literature for publications like The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia City Paper.

City Cast Philly podcast host Trenae Nuri spoke with Jackson last April about his approach to poetry and his Philly roots.

Nuri: How do you make time for poetry every day?

Jackson: “I think so many people really have made reading poetry a part of their life. It may not be daily. People like to read poems either in the morning to start their day, or at the end to get some sort of perspective.

“If you’re like me, [and] your mind is kind of scattered, then reading a poem becomes an ordered way to approach the world and approach topics that feel either too large or daunting.”

Right … life be lifin’. I’m really in this fast-paced motion some days. For someone like me, how should I approach poetry?

“As a reader, start with your local library or independent bookstore. Go to the poetry section during National Poetry Month, and pick out a few books, and read the very first poem … I normally like to say the first poem or the last poem, because whoever wrote that book put a lot of thought into how you enter into a book or exit a book.”

How did you transition into writing, and then poetry?

“I feel like I got lucky in several moments in my life, and to be in Philadelphia during that time when there was such a vibrant and rich efflorescence of art … this would've been about ’92, ’93. I wanted to just bear witness to what I saw happening in galleries and streets and the clubs.

“Amidst my day job at the Painted Bride and all the writing that I was doing for these publications … I needed that necessary pause, and writing a poem gave me that. So poetry at first was adjacent to my very busy life, and then it became central through connections with local poets.”

🎧 Hear more of this conversation — and listen to Jackson read a poem — on the City Cast Philly podcast.