"For me, it’s about writing a good poem. The questions of page and performance come later. My first allegiance is with what the poem wants to be, in terms of how it looks. The question of performance is something I ask myself at a later date once the poem is finished, when I ask myself, ‘can I read this to an audience one time through and be able to make them feel something?’ Some poems are just easier to translate to a space of performance than others…"
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On choosing which poems are ideal for performances in “INTERVIEW WITH DANEZ SMITH” in The White Review (June 2018)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Danez_Smith
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Danez Smith
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