In its pages, you hear the sprawling echoes of students, siblings, lovers, new parents, athletes, entertainers, scientists, and more –all sharing a deep appreciation for the power of storytelling. A celebration of the past, a balm for the present, and a blueprint for the future, Respect the Mic offers a tender, intimate portrait of American life, and conveys how in a world increasingly defined by separation, poetry has the capacity to bind us together.

First and foremost, for the publication of this interview, how would you like to be identified? What are your preferred pronouns?

Peter works great.  He/him pronouns.

Finish the sentence: Poetry is_______________________________________

Poetry is a souped-up word engine that transforms lives.

Please tell me a little bit about yourself and how you arrived at writing for and co-editing the Respect the Mic anthology.

I am a high school English teacher and Spoken Word educator finishing up my career at Oak Park and River Forest High School, just west of Chicago.  After working in social services in Chicago, I began teaching at OPRFHS in 1994.  I founded our Spoken Word Club in 1999 and created the role of Spoken Word educator in 2003 after a two year stint teaching and developing poetry projects in London, England. 

We were able to include over twenty students and alumni in The Golden Shovel Anthology:  New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, which I edited with Ravi Shankar and Patricia Smith. As we approached the twentieth anniversary of our club, I began thinking about creating an anthology to showcase some of the amazing talent that had come through the program. The prior editing experience gave me the confidence that Respect the Mic could become a reality.  My co-editors coming on board and then finding an amazing agent—Hannah Brattesani at Friedrich Agency—took that confidence to a new level. Hannah was able to successfully pitch the concept to Penguin Workshop, and with the enthusiastic support of Rachel Sonis and others there we’ve been able to make the anthology a reality.  

Prior to diving into this anthology, what should readers know about the OPRF Spoken Word Club?

We have been very fortunate to have the widespread support of our teachers, administrators, school board and community. I have been fortunate to have learned from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (UK) founders’/leaders’ Malika Booker, Roger Robinson, Jacob Sam-La Rose, and Nick Makoha, as well as from Afaa Michael Weaver, Terrance Hayes, Mark Doty, Baron Wormser, and Bill Patrick, among others. There has been a profound trickle-down impact from what they taught me, along with what we learned from visiting writers such as Patricia Smith, Tyehimba Jess, Tim Seibles, Raymond Antrobus, Adrian Matejka, Kaveh Akbar, Rachel Long, Kwame Dawes, Adrian Matejka, Carmen Giménez Smith, José Olivarez, Sandra Beasley, Christian Campbell, my co-editors, and many others. As a result, we’ve had a National Youth Poet Laureate and two National Student Poets; have won a variety of student writing competitions; and have been published in Poetry magazine on multiple occasions. Most importantly, the club has built a long-standing pay-it-forward community, with dozens of alumni helping out each year, and has transformed thousands of lives. 

You are both a teacher and a poet. What is your writing process and does it differ from the craft and structure you teach to students? 

My writing process is quite aligned with the approach to the craft that I espouse to my students.  I typically write personal narrative poems and use examples/create prompts that elicit personal narratives. We stress originality, surprise and a grounding in “specific incident,” a term I first learned from Roger Robinson (who learned it from Kwame Dawes). 

The anthology is broken into 5 sections: “Notes from Here,” “Coming of Age,” “Monsters at Home,” “Welcomes, Farewells and Odes,” and “Survival Tactics.” Where did these titles come from and why are they significant to the poetry featured?

Co-editor Franny Choi came up with the structure/titles, with the help of our publisher Rachel Sonis and one of our contributors, Asia Calcagno. Asia was in the final semester of her MFA program and was getting great guidance on her own manuscript from Major Jackson, Carmen Giménez Smith, Ed Ochester, and Jenny Boully, so she was in a perfect mindset to help curate the order of the poems. The titles are intended to provide some thematic structure to help guide the reader.

This might be a tough question, but do you have some favorites from the anthology? What made these poems stand out to you?

This is definitely the most difficult question! On any given reading, I could give you other favorites, but this go around, I’ll say: Cailynn Stewart’s “Birth,” Camara Brown’s “Taking Down a Confederate Flag in Lincoln Park on June 27th, 2018,” William Walden’s “An Open Letter to Mozart,” and Jalen Daniels’ “Ethic.” I love Cailynn’s poem because of her imagery and word choices; Camara’s poem for the timeliness and how vivid the specific incident is; Williams’ because it’s such a unique take on a father-son relationship; and Jalen’s because it cleverly crafts how many high school students feel.

Can you share a line or stanza from one of your all-time favorite poems and discuss its significance? 

I’m going to go with an all-time favorite book: Suitcase. It’s the first poetry collection by Malika’s Poetry Kitchen co-founder/ T.S. Eliot award winner Roger Robinson. 

Surprisingly, I don’t enjoy reading poetry. Suitcase was the first and only book I read cover-to-cover in one sitting (A. Van Jordan’s MacNolia is also right up there.) The book opens with a heart-wrenching poem, “Song for Angela,” a tribute to his mother’s twin who died of cancer. I remember Roger singing the poem’s chorus during a reading of that poem for my students and then for a private reading for my parents. In each instance, tears everywhere. Good poetry can do that. Suitcase also has poems like “Gift” and “Mango Juice,” which made us laugh out loud.  Good poetry can do that, too. Finally, it has poems like “Beached” that begins with laughter and joy, as Roger recounts a childhood trip with his sister and father to Maracas Beach, burying their father in the sand:

We’d run into the sea and look

at him.  His head like a dot

on brown paper.  We’d shout

to him to come in the sea,

and he’d shout that he was stuck.

 And then, the turn:

Twenty years later I talk

to my sister on the phone;

she hasn’t heard from him either.

She hopes the next time we see him

won’t be to lower him in the ground.

Visibility and voice can be powerful tools for students struggling with the many intersections of identity. What is one thing you hope students discover about themselves, each other and the world after reading this anthology?

​​I hope that students can see themselves in these poems, and that they encounter poetry as more accessible than they imagined, while also marveling at the craft. As a result, I hope they are emboldened and inspired to poetically share their own stories and experiences with their teachers, classmates and the wider world. 

Is there a question I did not ask, but you’d love to answer?

How does someone who doesn’t enjoy reading poetry teach it for a living? 

While I prefer reading and teaching novels, I have seen a profound and unparalleled impact of getting students to read, write, share and listen to poetry. It builds classroom community and provides insights for teachers to better understand and connect with their students.

Post publication, what’s next? 

Covid-permitting, we have several readings lined up:

Feb. 19th (in-person and virtual) at Gramercy Books, Columbus, Ohio

April 7th (in-person) at the Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL

We are also working hard to make the anthology a sensation that propels teachers and administrators to invest more in student voice after seeing the remarkable impact of students’ reading/writing/sharing poems. 

Bonus wondering: Will there be any supplemental classroom materials to go with this anthology? How do you imagine teachers integrating it into their curriculum?

We have created a website (thanks to the wonderful Ellington Bramwell) that includes an array of free supplementary materials to make the anthology a living document for teachers to utilize (particularly those reticent to incorporate poetry writing into the curriculum). We’re working on some direct connections to Poetry Out Loud poems, as well.