Leila Mottley's Debut Poetry Collection

Summary

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All Of It (WNYC): Leila Mottley’s Debut Poetry Collection

Air Date: April 23, 2024
Host: Kusha Navadar (in for Alison Stewart)
Guest: Leila Motley

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Episode Overview

In a thoughtful, reflective conversation, Kusha Navadar interviews 21-year-old author and former Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, Leila Motley, about her debut poetry collection, Woke Up No Light. The episode, recorded in honor of National Poetry Month, explores Motley's evolution as a writer, how her poetry and prose intersect, the influence of form and history in her work, and the emotional terrain she traverses as both a poet and novelist. Motley shares and discusses several poems, offering listeners rare insights into the creative process and her personal, historical, and cultural inspirations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction to Leila Motley and Her Work [00:40-02:03]

• Motley’s debut poetry collection, Woke Up No Light, follows the much-acclaimed novel Nightcrawling.
• The host highlights Motley's early start as a writer and her numerous accolades (Oprah’s Book Club pick, Booker Prize longlist at age 20).

Motley's Poetic Themes and Artistic Evolution [02:03-05:29]

• Motley reads "How to Love a Woman Sailing the Sky" [02:10-03:11]
• Themes of change, desire, and coming-of-age:
  • The collection reflects Motley's journey “through childhood and into adulthood and all of the change and turmoil that comes with growing up.” [03:21]
  • The poems stem from various periods in her life, some dating back to age 15 or 16.
  • Reflects on writing style changes: “When you’re a teenager, everything’s heightened... a lot of scribbling. And now, like, I’ll take my time with it... more contemplative.” [04:44-05:09]

Poetry’s Relationship with Prose [05:29-07:55]

• Motley began writing poetry at age six and novels at 14, always seeing both forms as separate but intertwined.
• She emphasizes the mutual influence of prose and poetry: “My fiction kind of shows up in my poetry at times. And my poetry definitely shows up in the way that I write prose.” [05:58]

The Insular Nature and Power of Poetry [07:55-09:01]

• Motley describes poetry as “insular” and “kinetic,” a medium to quickly convey complexity and emotional intensity.
• She highlights poetry's suitability to contemporary attention spans while maintaining depth: “In a TikTok world… we need to consume something and understand it emotionally in a short period of time. And poetry allows us to do that, and it doesn’t reduce its complexity either.” [08:15]

Historical Recovery and Form: Erasure Poetry [09:01-13:11]

• Motley reads "My Greatest Grandmother’s Will," an erasure poem [09:01-09:55]
• Erasure poetry is explained as a process of creating a new text from existing material by blacking out words.
• Motley traced her ancestor through enslaver records: “The archive doesn’t allow a lot of space for really any information about... Black people, black enslaved people.” [10:43]
• Intention: To grant ancestral voices “the ability to speak through time” and restore humanity to dehumanized historical records. [11:11]
• Discusses playing with poetic form: scattering words, columns, and visual distribution to reflect gaps and visibility in the archive: “We need to be able to see the invisible space in order to understand what it means to occupy it.” [13:04]

The Influence of Jazz, Improvisation, and Tradition [13:28-16:22]

• Motley frames poetry’s unpredictability as essential, akin to jazz improvisation.
• Influence of writers such as Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, and the concept that in poetry, “there are no limits... you get to really do whatever you want.” [14:38]
• Motley discusses the need to know conventions before breaking them: “You have to know the convention to break it, right?” She emphasizes being a reader, an audience, and absorbing emotional resonance as key fundamentals. [15:36-16:22]

Poetry in Practice: Writing, Form, and Personal History [16:22-20:36]

• Motley reads "On Starting Over" [16:30-18:35]
• The poem captures the tension of beginning anew while haunted by the past; built from merging two separate poem fragments for a “worlds colliding” effect. [18:54-19:36]
• Reflects on the autobiographical inspiration for this poem—moving and feeling discomfort in unfamiliarity, a metaphor for growing up: “Every time I move... you almost feel like you don’t know where you are that first night that you're in a new place. And I think that's a lot of what growing up is, is like being in this world and realizing there is no other home and the kind of out-of-body experience that that is.” [20:36]

Building Community and Poetic Lineage [21:04-22:27]

• Motley cites current influences: Mahogany L. Browne, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Eve Ewing. [21:22]
• The communal dimension of poetry: “Poetry especially is a communal art form. If you’ve ever gone to any poetry event, like it’s an experience...” [21:59]
• The unique experience of sharing poetry live: “You really get to sit in the space and feel everything in a way that you can’t from the page itself.” [21:59]

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Notable Quotes

• On artistic growth:
  “When you’re a teenager, everything’s heightened... it was a lot of scribbling. And now, like, I’ll take my time with it. I feel like I have more time to... really soak in and sink into the work and think about it in its dualities.”
  — Leila Motley [05:09]

• On the collection’s purpose:
  “This collection was a way for me to kind of capture my entire journey through childhood and into adulthood and show all of the change and turmoil that comes with growing up.”
  — Leila Motley [03:21]

• On poetry’s power:
  “Poetry is more insular... kinetic and it’s vibrational and we feel it... poetry allows us to [feel something emotionally in a short period of time], and it doesn’t reduce its complexity either.”
  — Leila Motley [08:15]

• On erasure poetry and historical records:
  “The archive doesn’t allow a lot of space for really any information about Black people, black enslaved people. So I went to the enslaver’s records and found my ancestor’s name in it and took that will and created this poem to give her kind of an ability to speak from the past.”
  — Leila Motley [10:44]

• On poetic form and visibility:
  “We need to be able to see the invisible space in order to understand what it means to occupy it.”
  — Leila Motley [13:04]

• On breaking form:
  “You have to know the convention to break it, right? ...To do that, you have to understand... what it means to be the audience and to be the listener and to be the reader and to have a feeling brought up in you.”
  — Leila Motley [15:36]

• On poetry and community:
  “Poetry especially is a communal art form. If you’ve ever gone to any poetry event, like it’s an experience. It’s fun, especially during poetry month.”
  — Leila Motley [21:59]

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Poems Read & Discussed

• "How to Love a Woman Sailing the Sky" [02:10-03:11]
  Echoes change, desire, and the journey to trust and love.

• "My Greatest Grandmother's Will" (erasure poem) [09:01-09:55]
  Constructs ancestral voice from the enslaver’s records, addressing erasure in history and archives.

• "On Starting Over" [16:30-18:35]
  Explores reinvention, the residues of the past, and the emotional experience of moving forward while carrying what came before.

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Additional Highlights & Resources

• Motley is featured in a live Poetry Night with Tatiana Johnson Borea at Books Are Magic (Brooklyn) [Reference: 00:40, 06:34, 22:27].
• She reflects on influential poets (Mahogany L. Browne, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Eve Ewing) [21:22].
• The episode offers rare, extended readings and thoughtful process commentary for poetry enthusiasts and newcomers alike.

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This episode is rich in introspection, literary craft, and cultural resonance, making it both a celebration of poetry and an intimate glimpse into Leila Motley’s emergent and powerful voice.

Transcript

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[Kusha Navadar]

This is all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. We're wrapping up today's show with a little poetry in honor of National Poetry Month, let's talk about a debut poetry collection from 21 year old New York Times best selling author and former youth poet laureate from Oakland, California, Leila Motley. Her new book is full of hymns and rhythmic pieces that reckon with themes like reparation, restitution and desire. The poetry collection is a follow up to her highly acclaimed third novel, Nightcrawling, which follows a young sex worker in Oakland who's embroiled in a police scandal. She started writing the novel a month before she turned 17 and later it became Oprah's book club pick and long listed for the 2022 Booker Prize. That made her the youngest person ever nominated for the award, which is super cool. Layla's new poetry collection is titled Woke up no Light and it's out now and quick plug. Tomorrow night at 7pm Layla's going to be at Poetry Night along with the writer Tatiana Johnson Borea at Books Are Magic on Montag street in Brooklyn. And right now Layla is here with us to talk about her new collections and maybe share some poems if we're lucky. Layla, hi. Welcome to all of it.

[Layla Motley]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[Kusha Navadar]

Absolutely. Would you start us off by reading the poem how to Love a Woman Sailing the Sky?

[Layla Motley]

Yes.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

How to Love a Woman sailing the Sky. The only thing that surprised me more than all the ocean soaked in salt was the day after all my chasing, all your running, you stopped, twirled around and touched your fingertips to the crescent of my collarbone. I have been a woman sailing the sky. I have been a girl clung tight to the branches I have been a daughter splayed out on a boat of ice.

[Layla Motley]

And then I was yours.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

I was born to floating people who.

[Layla Motley]

Drank from the clouds that held them.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Until there was nothing but blue and one spectacular drop. I searched for something solid so long I forgot my body itself was not made of mist or malice. You reached out your hand, I flinched until you showed me you were not reaching through me but for me. And then I Was yours.

[Kusha Navadar]

So much about that poem, and maybe this whole collection feels like it echoes themes of change and of desire. Does that resonate with you, that characterization?

[Layla Motley]

Absolutely. Yeah. I think this collection was a way for me to kind of capture my entire journey through childhood and into adulthood and show kind of all of the change and turmoil that comes with growing up.

[Kusha Navadar]

And were these poems that you had developed over that period, or are these more like retrospective that you're writing recently?

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Both.

[Layla Motley]

There are a couple that were from when I was 15 or 16, and then there are a lot of them that are kind of over the past few years of my life as I've kind of reflected back and grown into this new version of myself and kind of looking at how do we live in a world and grow into a world that is often feels like it's on the brink of destruction?

[Kusha Navadar]

And so this one that we just heard, how to Love a Woman Sailing the Sky. Do you remember when you started that, how old you were?

[Layla Motley]

Yeah, that's one of the last poems that entered the collection as I was thinking about, like, what does it mean to trust and to wholly enter love and life when you've come from a past of distrust?

[Kusha Navadar]

And so, you know, when you come from a past of distrust is such a heavy term. And I think about how your writing must change over time. This one you wrote recently, there are some, you said from when you were 15. Can you see differences in your writing style? How would you describe it?

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Absolutely.

[Layla Motley]

I mean, when you're a teenager, everything's heightened. So I think a lot of the poetry then was very highly emotional and intense and tended to be, like, longer and more spoken word based. And then some of my poetry now, it tends to be a little bit slower and more contemplative.

[Kusha Navadar]

How does slow and fast show up in the writing? Is that, like, the rhythm of how you would choose?

[Layla Motley]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I. I write by hand mostly when I'm writing poetry, but I think that when I was younger, like, it was a lot of scribbling. And now, like, I'll take my time with it. I feel like I have more time to. To really soak in and sink into the work and think about it in its dualities.

[Kusha Navadar]

Oh, interesting listeners. If you're just joining us, we're lucky to have Layla Motley here with us in studio. Her debut poetry collection, Wok no Light Is out right now. You know, I'm thinking about before this book, you were a New York Times bestselling author. You served as the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, what sparked your interest in poetry? And when did you decide? Hey, you know, since I'm 15, I've got these poems. I want to put them into a collection.

[Layla Motley]

I've been writing poetry and fiction for as long as I can remember. I started writing poetry when I was six, and then I started writing novels when I was 14. And so the two have kind of always coincided for me, but taken their own separate lanes. And I wanted to be able to do both at once for the first time in my life. I think that they have such influence on each other on, like, my fiction kind of shows up in my poetry at times. And my poetry definitely shows up in the way that I write prose. And being able to, like, have them both exist at the same time, I think allows me more freedom in my work.

[Kusha Navadar]

Oh, wonderful. You know, listeners, I just want to put out something. I made a mistake in the way that I pronounced Montague street in Brooklyn. So I'm sorry about that. So just to make sure everyone is aware, for the quick plug, Tomorrow night at 7pm Laila's gonna be at the Poetry Night with writer Tatiana Johnson Borea at Books Are Magic on Montague Street. My bad. It's in Brooklyn. Be sure that you check it out. You know, I'm thinking about the similarities between this collection of poems and your most recent novel, Nightcrawler. You mentioned that your prose influences your poetry in both ways around. Can you dive into that a little bit? What do you mean?

[Layla Motley]

Yeah, I mean, I think in the tradition of a lot of black women writers, I think language needs to kind of be able to move boundlessly. And in the way that I write fiction, I kind of infuse it with poetry. And thinking about how we rarely get to see black women, black girls, interior lives as the kind of poetic things that they can be and are. And so I think it's kind of integral to the way that I write fiction that poetry be a method of being able to process a world that is so hard to live in tangibly and viscerally. And the ways that we, like, cope through language.

[Kusha Navadar]

You know, it reminds me of this interview you did for the San Francisco Chronicle. You mentioned returning to poetry after publishing Nightcrawler. And you said that, quote, poetry itself is more insular. Which I thought, can you talk to me more about insularity? And maybe. What does poetry write? What does poetry. Poetry offer you as a form of expression?

[Layla Motley]

I mean, I think a lot of us grow up writing poetry as kind of a journalistic way of expressing ourselves and understanding Ourselves. And I definitely did. I think that there's something about poetry that is like, kinetic and it's vibrational and we feel it and. And I think, especially in age, where we have shorter attention spans in a TikTok world, like, I think that a lot of the times we need to be able to, like, consume something and understand it and it emotionally in a short period of time. And poetry allows us to do that, and it doesn't reduce its complexity either.

[Kusha Navadar]

You know, I think that you have another poem for us, My greatest grandmother's will. Would you be able to share that one with us?

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Yeah.

[Layla Motley]

This is an erasure poem.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

In the name of state of body, memory and knowing now being one on the watery river of 300 Negroes called.

[Layla Motley]

Nan, horses and cattle and life, I.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Give my youngest boy one will and the negroes shall descend the lawful heirs of my body not to be sold away. One plantation, 100 acres bounding myself, my daughter, one Negro woman called, one Negro girl called I rose with wine. It is my will that one child die that so losing shall entitle one of my children to forever I give unto my beloved girl. This last day of 1790.

[Kusha Navadar]

You mentioned that this was an erasure poem, and it's from the last will and testament of Nan Payne's enslaver. Can you talk a little bit? What is an erasure poem?

[Layla Motley]

An erasure poem is where you take a pre existing text and you essentially use like a sharpie and you block out words and you create a new text out of it. And this one in particular, I traced my genealogy back to one of my oldest ancestors and then found her enslaver. And the thing about ancestral records is that the archive doesn't allow a lot of space for really any information about.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Black people, black enslaved people.

[Layla Motley]

And so I went to the enslaver's records and found my ancestor's name in it and took that will and created this poem to give her kind of an ability to speak from the past.

[Kusha Navadar]

Is this written from this perspective of her or from you? Talk to me about that.

[Layla Motley]

Yeah, I mean, I think poetry, it has layers. Right. This one I wanted to be able to add to the archive. And I think a lot of the times what the archive lacks is humanity and story. And so this one, I wanted to give my great grandmother the ability to speak through time.

[Kusha Navadar]

Yeah. And through form too, I think, which is really interesting, because a lot of the most striking poems were the ones that played with form. And I'm thinking of this poem, listeners, you'll see this, when you open the book, this poem, the words are spread out and scattered on the page. And I'm also thinking of the poem Wet Nurse, which is earlier on here, in which you have two columns of short stand is down the page. And I don't know if I was reading this right, but I felt like I could read the poem either up or down or side to side. And it is, for me, such an interesting way of playing with language. But I don't mean playing as, like, a juvenile thing. I mean it as, like looking through form as well. Can you tell me, for this one with the words splayed across the page, how does that form affect the writing for you? What were you trying to do here?

[Layla Motley]

It changes everything because you're working from a text that exists and recreating it. I think the archive demands us to be creative with it, to create history and knowledge where it, like, doesn't exist and where there are these major gaps. And so in a lot of the, like, more historical poems, the poems that are meant to kind of fill those gaps, I looked at how I could use form in an inventive way to. To really think about the way that we see and the. That we look at things and what it means to be visible and what it means to be invisible.

[Kusha Navadar]

And so for this one, why go with this particular format? What was it about having the words so disparate from each other almost? It seems.

[Layla Motley]

I mean, I think we need to be able to see the invisible space in order to understand what it means to occupy it.

[Kusha Navadar]

Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Layla Motley. Her debut poetry collection, Woke up, no Light Is out right now. I'd love to talk a little bit about the writing process for you. How did you learn to write poetry?

[Layla Motley]

I sat down with a pen around when I first learned to write, and I think I found words and language incredibly fascinating from a young age. And I've always been a reader, so I think poetry came out naturally almost. And then I started reading a lot of poetry. And over my life, I've always been kind of drawn to poetry as a form that. That can span so much. Like, it's unpredictable, and that's kind of the point of it.

[Kusha Navadar]

What's unpredictable about it?

[Layla Motley]

I mean, poetry, particularly, like, contemporary poetry, is partially born out of, like, the tradition of jazz and what it means to improvise and what it means to deal with rhythm and with sound and with words in a way that, like, we don't typically see them to break convention. Is the entire point. And I think that that allows us to have fun and to play and also to find things where I think they're often lacking and missing.

[Kusha Navadar]

Do you use other art forms to inform it? Because you mentioned it's like jazz. Do you listen to jazz? Are there other elements? I do, yeah.

[Layla Motley]

I do listen to jazz. Yeah. I grew up listening to jazz. My dad is really into jazz, so I definitely think that that has had an influence on my poetry. I also, like, grew up reading a lot of Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, who are both poets that use language and kind of just take new words, create new words. And I think that reading when I was young allowed me to kind of understand that there are no limits to poetry. And I think the minute that you learn that, you don't need to be confined in this art form, you get to really do whatever you want with it.

[Kusha Navadar]

I want to nerd out with you for a second here, because I hear that, and as somebody who plays jazz, I think, yes, that's absolutely true. Simultaneously, when you learn how to improvise, for instance, first you have to learn chords. You have to learn. And I feel like prose might be that, but you're the expert here, so. So what is it? What are the fundamentals? What are the carrots and the. The broccoli that you have to do as a poet to really be able to break form?

[Layla Motley]

Well, I think you have to know the convention to break it, right? So I think understanding the way that form has been used in the past, understanding the, like, origins of different forms, understanding why you break it and what it does to subvert a standard. And especially when you're. When you're talking about, like, free verse poetry, like, there are no rules. And we're also trying to conjure feeling. And to. To do that, you have to understand, like, what it means to. To, like, soak it up, what it means to be the audience and to be the listener and to be the reader and. And to have a feeling brought up in you and to understand why language does that and how language does that.

[Kusha Navadar]

I would love here to listen to one more poem, if you've got it, and maybe apply that and see how it works out. I think you've got one more. On start.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Yeah.

[Layla Motley]

On starting over.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

I rent an apartment where I can smell the lake For a reminder of all the past lives that have sunk to the bottom of this city I open my windows just to air out the shadows of this place Cozy up on my mattress straight from the box and don't even feel the pee beneath the bed. On the first morning of the first day of my new life, a seagull flies through my window and stains my.

[Layla Motley]

Carpet in bleach white feces.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

The seagull knows the color of the walls before I paint them, knows the color of the inside of my stomach from the shine of my window glass and remorse is a humid tornado consuming. I am not saying I couldn't have closed the window. I'm saying I did not. And now there is a flock inside the bedroom I thought would be the first thing I called my own. After all those years spent packed body to body yearning for an exit. It, a new beginning is only as shiny as the window shattered just to walk through. You will always find glass in the cracks of your floorboards, your bloodstream. I freedom fury. I whine and war and wrestle. I fold and cut an orange picked.

[Layla Motley]

From a tree I pretend is mine.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

Reinvent yourself enough times and you won't know whose hands wrap around your throat. I rent an apartment and think it can erase me.

[Layla Motley]

Me.

[Layla Motley (Reading Poems)]

I rent a new rib cage and think it can protect me from everything that has already ruptured. When you find seeds inside your orange slice, you spit them out, not because they cannot be eaten, but because you are craving sweet and they are bitter. You have plans to fly across the city and there is now a seagull by your side. And what cannot kill may choke a shattered rib. Broken glass. Regret is unholy, not unnatural. If I want my seeds back, I will cut another orange. You cannot reverse. You can only revise. Open the window. Let your past selves flock at your bedside. Let the citrus absorb and become you.

[Kusha Navadar]

You know, I'm listening to it and I'm reading it right now at the same time with my version of your collection. And you talked earlier about rhythm and how things feel slower for you writing. But I read this and I see it, and it's quite, quite fast. It's very punctuated. Can you tell me about the inspiration in here, what you're trying to say in this piece?

[Layla Motley]

Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of us, like, in. In adulthood, we're trying to start fresh and we're trying to figure out how to invent ourselves. But we can't escape our pasts either, right? We. We live with the remnants of who we've been. And so this poem was like, kind of created in fragments. And I wrote it in, like, these different fragments and then kind of put them together in a way that I think ends up conjuring like the feeling of starting over and then of being pulled backwards.

[Kusha Navadar]

Is there anything about this piece to go back to what we were talking about before with breaking form, that you tried to do a challenge or an element that you wanted to challenge yourself with in it?

[Layla Motley]

Yeah, I think this poem takes different images and kind of combines them despite them not necessarily going together. It had started with two separate poems. And then I started to think of like, what does it mean for worlds to collide? And then I created this poem out of it where we have both this idea of like citrus and what it means to like, want something and then to regret something. And then this idea of these seagulls and glass and home and all of these things kind of colliding together in one poem.

[Kusha Navadar]

That line really sticks out to me. I fold and cut an orange picked from a tree I pretend is mine. That's very striking. It sounds like change, sounds like discomfort. Can you. Is there a moment in your life that you felt like you were outside of your comfort zone that inspired this piece?

[Layla Motley]

I think every time I move, if you've ever moved, it's a stressful process and you almost feel like you don't know where you are that first night that you're in a new place. And I think that's a lot of what growing up is, is like being in this world and realizing like there is no other home and, and the kind of out of body experience that that is.

[Kusha Navadar]

You know, it's funny that the last time that I moved is actually from your neck of the woods over here, from the Bay Area to New York, back to New York City, which is wonderful. And I'm sure a lot of listeners can commiserate with that, that, that, that, that challenge that you're talking about. Who are the, who are some of the poets that you have your eye on right now, folks that you admire?

[Layla Motley]

Where you're getting inspiration from Mahogany L. Brown, this incredible poet, Danez Smith. Their, their second fourth collection, I don't know, they've done a million, is coming out this year. So I'm thrilled for that. Ocean Vuong, Eve Ewing. There are so many incredible poet out.

[Kusha Navadar]

There and you know you're looking to be at a poetry night coming up and I just want to plug it one more time. You're probably gonna see a lot of folks when you're there that enjoy your pieces. How does it feel to be in community after you've written these pieces?

[Layla Motley]

I think poetry especially is a communal art form. If you've ever gone to any poetry event like it's an experience. It's fun, especially during poetry month. Like you really get to sit in the space and feel everything in a way that like you can't from the page itself. So I think it's always special to get to be with people and kind of feel the reaction in the moment.

[Kusha Navadar]

Well, listeners, listen if you want to be able to share in that and be in community with Layla. Tomorrow night at 7pm it's going to be poetry night and she's going to be there along with writer Tatiana Johnson Berea. And it's going to be at Books Are Magic on Montague street in Brooklyn. We've been talking to Layla Motley. Her new poetry collection is out now. It's titled Woke up no Light. She's been here, shared some stories, shared some poetry. Layla, thank you so much.

[Layla Motley]

Thanks for having me.

[Kusha Navadar]

Absolutely.

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