Interview Excerpt
Tyree Daye, with Southern Cultures Poetry Editor Gaby Calvocoressi
Gaby Calvocoressi: Hi, I’m Gaby Calvocoressi. Welcome to poetry at Southern Cultures. I’ve got Tyree Daye here with us today. We’re super excited. Tyree, you are the first poet to have a poem in Southern Cultures magazine just as I’ve become the poetry editor.
Tyree Daye: Nice, nice. Yeah.
GC: And I was so excited to have Tyree give us a poem. I first encountered Tyree’s work when I was reading for the Honickman First Book Prize through the American Poetry Review. I read so many manuscripts and Tyree’s poems just completely stuck out to me. And then it turned out—out of the blue—that we did not live far from each other. So, this seems like an amazing way to start my tenure here at the Love House with Southern Cultures—this idea of a poet I loved who turned out to be my neighbor. And we’re really hoping to bring poems to you both in the journal and also at “Poetry on the Porch,” our new reading series, that feel really surprising and also familiar to you in ways that I hope we all get to talk about.
Hey, Tyree.
TD: Hello.
GC: Where are you from?
TD: I’m from a little town called Youngsville—Youngsville, North Carolina. It’s in Franklin County, northeastern North Carolina.
GC: What’s it like?
TD: It’s small, very rural, tobacco, like your standard North Carolina tobacco town.
GC: Did you write your poems when you were there?
TD: No, I didn’t really. I say that I didn’t really get serious about writing until like my junior year of college when I really was like, This is what I want to do. That’s when I started going back and started writing about, you know, these past experiences.
GC: Yeah, it’s interesting, one of the things that we have in common—one of the many things it turns out we have in common—is we both live near rivers. We both grew up near rivers. What was it like growing up near a river, and how did that go from just being a place you live near to a place you wrote about?
TD: When I was little, I definitely, you know, we played near rivers all the time, and I took it for granted, right? This was a playground. This is what we did. But I think, for me, I got older and I was like, Oh, I miss those times. And I was like, Oh, maybe I’ll start exploring this river. You know, of course, if you explore a river, magical things are going to happen.
