Bethesda is a collection of poems that moves through faith, pain, identity, womanhood, and longing with a voice that is raw and unguarded. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?

I would have to say that my inspiration came from Christ and the state of the Church. I remember watching someone preach online and the topic of the sermon was John 5: 1-12 in the Bible. As I watched, the name “Bethesda” came to me, and it was in these moments that I knew the title/subject matter of a new collection would be Bethesda. This was back in 2021, and the work was about 4 years in the making. At the time before seeing the sermon, I had been experiencing a dry season and hit a bit of a writer’s block. When the concept for the new work came, the inspiration to write set in, and the drought lifted. Along the way, life happened, and the writing stopped for a little while. There was, however, a time in 2024 when revisiting the work that I had done, and this is when I decided to follow through on compiling the pieces, writing two-thirds of the work to completion. Looking back, I understand that it took me that long to live through the questions I had been carrying. It took time to build the resolve to have the confidence to be honest and forthcoming in the pieces.

I was also inspired by my heroes – those that I know in real life, like my mother, my father, my siblings, my elder cousin, and members of my church community. I was inspired by how they handled pain, discouragement, stagnation, and defeat. Using my own observations about how these folks managed life’s struggles, I was able to paint the picture of a speaker who was a conglomerate of these figures, including myself. This force moved through the pieces on a journey of redemption to liberation. Dr. Maya Angelou’s work, life, and testimonies were also places I frequented during this excavation of soul. I am truly standing on her shoulders as I work to become a better writer and person in this existence. If I can dare to be so unguarded in my work, it is because she paved the way and showed first that there was nothing to fear – that if anything, it was the world that should fear the storm within me.

How did you decide on the themes that run throughout your poetry book?

It was twofold, really. For the most part, in the first drafts of the collection, I just wrote about what was important to me and what I saw being issues in mankind. I turned to sermons that I had attended, in person and online, over the years, as well as to topics/issues that were socially and culturally relevant. I wanted the work to be encompassing, inclusive, and reflective of the journey a person takes when contemplating a walk with Christ in this modern day.

As the narrative builds through the pieces of the work, different themes become apparent in the topics the speaker decides to pursue: themes of wrestling with God, despair, redemption, heartbreak, self-loathing, longing, faith, belief, the dismal state of the world, and God’s saving grace. The middle of the work is dedicated to exposing and fleshing out issues with which the speaker must face a confrontation, like heartbreak and longing. The ending of the work is dedicated to the resolve that comes with the acceptance of God’s saving grace and confrontation.

The messages transferred on a Sunday morning inspired me to be reflective about the current soul condition of mankind, and the urgency communicated, instilled, and awakened within me, inspired the stark honesty in the lines. I wanted the collection to be a gathering place for those who did not quite have it right yet but were still unrelentingly trying. The themes came together on their own, really, as I set out with the intention to have the reader confront themselves in the lines. I knew a transformative collection meant that I had to be vulnerable if I wanted the Lord to shine through my testimonies.

Did you write these poems with a specific audience in mind, or was it a more personal endeavor?

My intention with these poems was to be as inclusive as possible. I wanted to appeal to the heart, soul, and conscience of the reader. The journey was simultaneously a personal endeavor and one that ambitioned the collective, universal heart.

I found that the transformation that I had experienced through confrontation and deconstruction for the
sake of these pieces (and for my own sake, if I’m honest) would be made available to the reader as they
journeyed from the beginning of the work to its end. This made it even more imperative to be honest and
unrelenting because there is a lot at stake: being an example of the power of the Grace of God and
exemplifying the transformative power of faith. I strongly believe that the audience will reveal themselves to be those who are open to letting the Lord into their problem areas and those who are searching for and
genuinely seeking a relationship with the Most High.

Bethesda, this house of Grace built by words, was constructed to be a gathering place for those who find
themselves ill at ease in today’s world order. Under its covering, one may find the opportunity to secure their redemption and begin the process of true liberation. At the crux of Bethesda is a journey to the increased intimacy with God that results from a genuinely contrite heart looking for God. Walking through the shadow of doubt, the reader is a witness to the perils of the world and the bravery of faith that comes as a result of persisting through the questions.

How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?

I really had to fight with myself to believe that the reader would care about the issues I was bringing to light. I had to push myself to be what I requested of the reader: vulnerable. And then came the question of impact: how would the audience be affected?

These battles forced me to come to terms with the power of testimony. Using the example of testimonies I experienced in the Church, I saw firsthand that people may or may not see themselves in my story. The power comes in that somewhere in existence, my act of daring to be true and sharing would take our collective soul to another level of liberation in the current scheme of universal oppression gripping the heart of mankind. I walked so that someone else can run, even if that is just one person, and even if they have never heard of my book(s). It is a testament, testimony, and witness to the Grace of God on a whole other level, and I realized that these are things that matter most to me.

Though I abstracted and amplified certain things in the pieces, I had to evolve to a place where my own journey and past and present and all the things don’t shame me anymore. In full transparency, it’s a journey that I am still on, but I was obedient to the call to model what I saw to have transformative power in the world/Church. Bravery really does look different in the eyes of the brave.

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