In this episode of HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life, poet Hayes Davis hosts poet, playwright and rap artist Nate Marshall. The two poets discuss the way Covid changed the writing process, coming-of-age poems, fatherhood, and the nature of poetry. Marshall reads “Recycling,” from his first book, The Wild Hundreds, and “Nate Marshall is a white supremacist from Colorado or Nate Marshall is a poet from the South Side of Chicago or I love you Nate Marshall,” from Finna. “Poetry is the noticing discipline,” Marshall said, and then called into the room the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who was also from the South Side. “Miss Brooks said ‘poetry is life distilled.’ It’s getting down to a thing’s core elements.” Marshall appeared for HoCoPoLitSo and Howard Community College at the Blackbird Poetry Festival April 25, 2024. For more information about HoCoPoLitSo’s live programming, visit www.hocopolitso.org. Trigger warning: This video contains a racial slur in one of the poetry readings.