BEST AUTHOR BEST : REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS [2]

 

.-  Making books available to prisoners changed your life. What does the Future of Freedom Reads look like now?

For a long time I was just looking to find work. Freedom Reads has allowed me to find joy.

To bring beautifully handcrafted bookcases and a specially curated 500-book collection into the everyday lives of folks in prison.

And to have a team of people who have loved ones in prison, have taught in prison, to have served time in prison making the work happen.

It's humbling ; the future looks like us putting a Freedom Library in every cellblock in every prison in the United States.

.-  Any second thoughts about titling your book '' Doggerel '' ?

It's me thinking about what it means to learn something about the world from Taylor, a Jack Russell terrier who joined my family during the pandemic - and how that first dog helped me see so many things anew.

But also, the title, it means garbage poetry - and I wanted it to be tongue in cheek. To say that these are poems that speak to everyone, that pun and riff and make fun of themselves a bit as they reveal something about the world.

.-  Did the dog make appearances in your poems one by one, or did you set out to write about loyalty and companionship?

Once, this guy stops me while I'm walking Taylor. It's 6 a.m. and he pulls his car off the road.

He yells, I have TWO and pulls out his phone to show me his Jack Russell terriers. The days became wild in that way, and the dogs showed up in that way.

.-  Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Favorite antihero or villain?

Tracker from Marlon James's, '' Black Leopard, Red Wolf.'' Wildly enough, Tracker is really all three. And maybe that's the point.

So much of life is imagining that you are in the '' right, '' and often you very well may be, but what James reveals is that there is never a single story, and sadly sometimes we are all three - hero, antihero and villain - and we are all three unwittingly, no matter how earnest and sincere we are in this world.

.-  What books are on your night stand?

'' Joyful!,'' by Ingrid Fetell Lee ; '' Don't read poetry,'' by Stephanie Burt; and 

'' Figures of speech,'' by Arthur Quinn.

'' Joyful '' is really dope - making the case for how beauty, which is what we bring to folks in prison with our Freedom Libraries, brings joy to people on the inside.

.-  You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive do you invite?

Lucille Clinton, Harold Bloom, Toni Morrison.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.