When people open up and share their stories, you have a responsibility to tell these truths truthfully and with the same quest for grace and beauty that you see in them.

For me, reggae music and its aesthetic are touchstones in both simple and complex ways. Reggae's capacity to be a folk music that is created in a wholly modern context of the recording studio (and sometimes that is the sole performance space) is riddled with the kinds of contradictory impulses that we have come to expect from the post-modern. I revel in this, for it gives me, shall I say, permission.

One of the blessings and curses of my life is that I carry so many projects at the same time.

I think that the kinds of stereotypes that people have about Haitians or about HIV sufferers exist because we don't realize that these are our brothers, our sisters, our aunts and uncles, our neighbors. They are us. And I don't mean that in some metaphorical sense. They are literally us.

I have dear friends in South Carolina, folks who made my life there wonderful and meaningful. Two of my children were born there. South Carolina's governor awarded me the highest award for the arts in the state. I was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. I have lived and worked among the folks in Sumter, South Carolina, for so many years. South Carolina has been home, and to be honest, it was easier for me to define myself as a South Carolinian than even as an American.

When people open up and share their stories, you have a responsibility to tell these truths truthfully and with the same quest for grace and beauty that you see in them.

Maybe that is the power of poetry. It somehow transcends news cycles, and becomes a part of our collective imagination. That is the beauty of the art form I like to play with.