Jericho Brown, a poet who has been published in The New Yorker and has published two books, talked to Oswego State students about how his poems came about.

At Monday’s Living Writers Series talk, Brown started off by reading a few of his favorite poems, one of them was “Suicide’s Note” by Langston Hughes.

Then Brown told Oswego State students about what inspires people to write and some of the best ways to write.

“No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader,” Brown said. “You can only use that which you care about.”

He used this as a way to tell young writers they need to care about what they write about and put emotion in their writing.

One of the main ways Brown creates his poems is by writing continuously until he reaches something he likes. Then he gets rid of most of what he has and adds more to it. Brown said he does this over and over until he finally gets something he likes.

When putting together multiple poems for a book, Brown said he just starts off writing multiple poems with no theme.

“What you care about right now will come through in your writing,” Brown said.

Instead of building the poems around the theme of his books, he builds the theme around the poems.

Brown said this is how he picks his titles too. He reads backward through his poems and looks for a phrase that supports the poem well. That is how “To Be Seen” and “What The Holy Do” were named.

“Jericho continued to keep people engaged the entire time because he had such a positive energy,” Oswego State student Collette Delisle said. “His speech really inspired me, just sitting in the crowd made me want to start writing my own pieces.”

One of the things Brown discussed was a poet who began writing at age 18. Since a lot of the audience was in their early 20s, this hit home for his audience.

“The most interesting part of his speech was his response essay to the poem ‘Suicide’s Note’” student Joel Collard said. “I had a very different idea of what the poem meant, but hearing his explanation, it made me really think of all the different possibilities there are when interpreting poetry.”

Everyone interprets poetry differently, Brown said. He said sometimes when people ask if their interpretations are right, they may not be what he had in mind but he gets to hear very different views and all of them are appreciated.

“When looking at a tree, you don’t look at two branches and think ‘How are they related?” Brown said.

Brown said students who say they hate poetry should give it another chance.

“There are songs that you hate but you don’t hate music,” Brown said. “So why since you read a few poems and didn’t like them do you say you hate all poetry?”