There is a quiet strength in Taiyo Na’s voice—an urgency softened by compassion, sharpened by clarity. For decades, his work has lived at the intersection of music, poetry, and activism, where rhythm becomes ritual and language is both inheritance and resistance. From Lovely to Me (Immigrant Mother) to Weeks in the Womb, Taiyo’s body of work is less about crafting linear narratives and more about holding space—space for grief, for memory, for intergenerational dialogue, for joy that refuses to be erased.
In this conversation, we speak about what it means to write with ancestors instead of about them, to hold joy and pain in the same breath, and to honor softness in a world that worships grind culture. Taiyo reflects on the radical vulnerability he’s brought into hip hop spaces, the spiritual labor of “trusting the rhythm” before the words, and the healing power of consistency, community, and presence.
This interview is a meditation on legacy—on lineage, liberation, and the freedom that can only emerge through tenderness. It’s a call to young poets and artists of color to hold tight to their people, to trust their process, and to keep building honest, imperfect, beautiful worlds with language as both anchor and offering. What follows is not just a conversation, but a communion. A moment of remembering. A prayer spoken in rhythm.
Darius Phelps: Your work—especially Lovely to Me (Immigrant Mother) and Weeks in the Womb—feels like a prayer between generations. What does it mean to write with your ancestors rather than just about them? How do you navigate that spiritual intimacy?
Taiyo Na: Damn, wow! Starting off with a big one.
Yeah, I mean—Lovely to Me was so long ago. It came out in 2008, but I started writing it in 2006. That feels like a real long time ago. Almost twenty years. I think Weeks in the Womb and other more recent writings really dig into that intergenerational dialogue more deeply.
That conversation with ancestors—it’s always with me. It’s always what’s on my mind. So much about being a person of color, part of a diaspora, being displaced and finding yourself in the wilderness that is America... it’s about grappling with the loss of heritage. The loss of what our ancestors brought us. And at the same time, trying to re-remember, reconnect, and sustain the best of what they wanted to pass on.
To me, that’s a central theme in all my work: honoring the dead. Honoring ancestors, both young and old. Being an educator has shown me how young people, too, become ancestors—how we must hold elders and the youth in the same conversation. I ask myself: How do we dignify and keep them alive through the life we’re living right now?
DP: In both your artistic and educational work, you model vulnerability as strength. How has being transparent—especially as an Asian American male artist—opened doors for deeper dialogue? And what challenges has it brought?
TN: I spent a lot of my twenties in music and hip hop spaces, and I knew early on that I wanted to subvert the dominant narratives about masculinity and vulnerability. I remember deliberately breaking the “feel” of a room—interrupting the vibe to rap about my mom’s struggles, about my family, our pain.
And that wasn’t always the norm. That was the intention I set: to be vulnerable in spaces where it wasn’t necessarily welcomed. I was raised by poets—Beau Sia, Ishle Yi Park, Suheir Hammad, Willie Perdomo, Lemon Andersen, Staceyann Chin—these were the folks shaping my poetic world in New York in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Even before that, people like Tupac, Mos Def and Common. They modeled that vulnerability in a way that was raw and necessary.
And now, I see the radical softness that Black feminist voices, and queer and trans artists, are bringing into the conversation. Their work is a reminder that living in America under capitalism conditions us toward hardness, toward grind culture. But healing? That comes from leaning into softness. From presence. And that’s been a model for me.
DP: Whether you’re performing poetry or crafting songs, there’s a rhythm in your work that feels both meditative and urgent. How does your background in music inform your writing process? Do you hear the piece before you write it?
TN: Absolutely. The poetry and music that transformed me—Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Amiri Baraka—they came through the oral tradition. Even reading them on the page, I knew those words were meant to be spoken aloud in a room. When I was coming up in spoken word spaces, the poets I mentioned earlier would electrify the air. Their vibration made the words real. That delivery, that presence—that’s what changed me. So yes, I always hear it before I write it. Not just the words, but the rhythm, the tone, the delivery. It’s an energy. That’s what guides the writing. And I’ll always be accountable to that living tradition before any literary framework. I come from that lineage—poets like Fay Chiang, Jessica Hagedorn are mentors, poets like Audre Lorde and Maya Angelou. That’s the tradition I intend to be in right relation with.
DP: In a world that often demands our pain but rarely holds space for our joy—what does healing look like when it’s still in process? And what are the small, sacred moments you’re holding onto—the quiet acts of joy that sustain you?
TN: Healing is ongoing. And poetry and art can absolutely be part of that. But healing, for me, is about being in the right relationship—with yourself, your chosen family, your friends, your community. It’s the everyday acts. The people you build intimacy with. That’s where healing happens. Not always in grand declarations, but in consistency. In presence. In showing up.
DP:I know you’re working on a forthcoming poetry collection. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
TN: The Ones You Need to Know: Poems & Dreams is a collection of poems testifying to the triumphs and tragedies of laboring with and for young people as both a parent and an educator. The grief of the pandemic, masculinity, inner and outer violence, and the gyres of race, oppression and history all collide with poems of wonder and revelation as the narrator witnesses childhood, adolescence and the work of mourning and cultivating community through the most necessary of parables. The centerpiece of the collection is a choreopoem entitled Dream Song about the imagined afterlives of a young person, an elder and a distant ancestor in intimate conversation.
DP: Last question—for emerging poets, especially artists of color navigating systems that weren’t built for them: What would you say to your younger self, trying to make sense of language, lineage, and liberation?
TN: I’d say the same thing I was told: Find your people. Find your tribe of like-minded poets and creatives. That’s what sustained me 25–30 years ago, and that’s what still sustains me now. Community isn’t perfect. People come and go, life happens. But I still maintain relationships with folks I met decades ago. Because we’re still in it. Still writing. Still trying to build something honest. It’s all about relationships. Cherish them. Nurture them. That’s how we keep going. That’s how we carry each other forward.
Darius Phelps is a poet, educator, and scholar whose work explores grief, identity, and liberation through poetic inquiry. He is a Poetry Co-Editor at Matter, Associate Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, and the author of My God’s Been Silent.
Taiyo Na is a writer of poems, songs, stories and curricula who lives on unceded Lenape land (Queens, NY) and whose writing has appeared in Kweli Journal, Poets House and in the anthology We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word (Haymarket Books, 2024). He is the author of the forthcoming God of Water (Pali Press), which was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and Clay Reynolds Novella Prize.
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