Isaiah Quinn, author of ‘Yours Truly’ is one of the poets who have gained traction across social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok for those videos or spoken word pieces that always seem to resonate. I sat down with him to discuss why the written word can feel so intimate, and as the ice is broken and typical interview nerves are set to the side, we speak about love, grief and capturing moments in words.
He even tells me he’s got a new book in the pipeline due to be out later this year.
So how did you get into poetry and writing poetry and the written word?
I got into poetry at a very young age, to be honest. back in fourth or fifth grade, so, around the age of 10- 12, around that age. My school would do an annual fine arts day for the parents, and the kids could either sing a song, do a skit, recite a poem, etc.
It was Shell Silverstein’s ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ poem that I found around that age and was really drawn to illustrations but also the way that everything was composed. I feel like that initiated my love for just language the way that you can kind of bend and shape words to kind of convey a message, that’s the earliest stages, that’s kind of where poetry found me.
How do you think intimacy kind of exists in the words left unsaid that are on the page?
I feel like the intimacy that’s left on the page is often like the image or the symbol of just a goodbye, like the closing of something.
And it’s like a bittersweet thing, but that’s part of the sweetness of it. It’s a ‘something happened here that was worth noting’, a time in your life, a moment shared with another person and so on. It kind of acts as that placeholder of this was something that we both experienced. Like I was here and I lived regardless of the outcomes, and I feel like there’s something intimate about that in itself, regardless of how it all plays out.
Where does your inspiration come from for a lot of your pieces, is it like your own personal experiences?
I think earlier in my social media presence it was definitely coming from a lot of personal stuff because I needed something to post and I was like this is pretty much all I have to talk about just my own personal life.
I think as I’ve moved into it as a more business mindset and as a full-time career, I definitely draw inspiration from just everything around me, whether I’m the speaker in it or not. So that way I can present it to people and have them relate to it wherever they’re at, even if I’m not in that season directly myself.
So for your book Yours Truly, I wanted to ask where the inspiration for that come from and how does yearning feature throughout it?
Funnily enough, a lot of people message me and say this person must be so lucky because all these grand words are being said about them but I actually wrote this book while I was single and in a lot of solitude.
It was kind of just a love letter to myself, that’s the main relationship that I’m really trying to nurture. It also serves as a reminder to myself that a love like this exists because I’ve experienced it before, and I’ve been in it before, and I’m deserving of it.
I feel like I went on a strange path of just feeling unsure and I had to remind myself this is what you love, everyone loves love, and you’re capable and deserving of it. I wanted to share that message with people. So that’s how the book came about.
The yearning features in the book as I was able to pull from past relationships and reflect on my yearning there. Since I was coming from a place where I was wanting to be deserving of love, I think it was just an ultimate yearning for love itself, and just its presence in my life.
What kind of human experiences/emotions do you write about the most?
I definitely blame ’90s romcoms for my obsession with this, like I’m a real sucker for a good happy ending type thing. Because I write about love a lot, I find myself writing about grief a lot, which I feel is the coin flip of that, if you have the capacity to feel so deeply with love, you have the capacity to feel grief like that.
I feel like in my natural state that’s not that I’m a sad person but I feel like I was put in this world to speak to grief, at my core I feel this and so to be the voice of it.
Do you find vulnerability easier to write than to speak?
I noticed, and more so just in my earlier stages of writing, I did save a bulk of my feelings and emotions for the pen and paper. not necessarily because I feel like it was easier, but it was the greedy version of the greed in me. This is good stuff, so I need to save this.
As I’ve gotten a little bit older, I just feel like it may not be the healthiest way to just go about life. I want to have the fullness of my feelings with my relationships and then carry it on to the page. It’s more of a feeling life to just experience the fullness of what it is with your relationship and then carry on to the page as long as consent’s there and stuff like that.
What do you think it is about the written word that feels so personal and intimate to people?
I think because you can process that it’s a conversation being had, but since you’re doing it by yourself, it’s easy to kind of plug yourself into it, at least that’s how I feel when I’m reading books. I read a lot of essays, short stories, stuff like that. That’s kind of like my jam outside of poetry.
So I’m aware that I’m having this conversation with the author, but at the same time, it’s easy to just plug myself into it because they’re not present. You’re secluded mostly having time with yourself, and so it’s intimate in that way, just that you’re by yourself, but also, you have the chance to see someone else’s perspective.
So, can poetry almost make us feel kind of understood in a way by people that we’ve never actually even met?
Definitely 100%. And I feel like that’s the job of the poet, one of my personal mottos is to provide the words you don’t have for the feelings that you do, and it’s definitely something that’s achievable nine times out of 10 with poetry.
Why do you think people turn to poems during times of grief, heartbreak or change or love or things like that?
I feel like that’s when it’s easiest to have it there accessible for you, so let me run to these things because they’re going to be able to help me navigate like how it is that I’m feeling.
I feel like we all collectively brush across topics that are just really kind of pressing, such as grief or just uncertainty, especially, like being in your 20’s. I think there’s a good understanding of that and a collective effort to keep that there, so that way, as we’re scrolling, it’s a nice relationship between the consumer and the person creating the art.
How does your poetry then flow into spoken word?
I never really have to change things from their written form, I put myself in the mode as I’m creating, so it takes the shape naturally as I’m writing. When I’m doing the spoken word piece, I can kind of hear myself narrating it as I’m writing it.
And finally, what’s next for you?
I’m actually in the process of working on a new book, it’s untitled at the moment, but it’s due to be out around late September to early October!
