NMU’s English department hosted a visiting writers series featuring Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet, essayist and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio on Thursday, Feb. 20. Abdurraqib’s poetry, essays and music criticism has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, The New York Times and many other publications.
“He takes these bits of subject matter, a song or one moment in a song, or one particular shot in a basketball game, and uses that as this kernel,” said Matthew Frank, NMU English professor, “and he keeps scratching, scratching, and scratching at that seemingly mundane thing, that maybe we all have seen, until its inner holiness and/or horror begins to leak out.”
Abdurraqib kept his audience engaged through his use of vivid imagery and descriptions as well as humor to tell his personal experiences. He kicked off the event by introducing his new poem collection that will be coming out in 2026. Then he read some of his poems that reflected on personal struggles with faith, the human condition and the cyclical nature of suffering and hope.
He read a passage from one of his works that was inspired by Toni Morrison and other writers he admires. The audience laughed, sympathized or related to each word he spoke. Abdurraqib had the audience enveloped in his words.
“It’s very important to know what you’re good at,” Abdurraqib said. “I preach this all the time to writers who are younger than I am, because early on, it was so important for me to find out what I was good at, not so I could overuse it or abuse it, but so that I knew how to take risks with it, how to expand upon it, how to use it, and how to make a firm structure for those other things that I might be uncertain about in my craft. If the structure is firm for me, I think that leads to a real expansiveness, freedom and playfulness.”
Abdurraqib noted that he does not struggle with writer’s block and explained how to deal with the anxiety that comes with being a published writer.
“You have to identify a few things before you identify as a writer,” Abdurraqib said. “That’s good for your writing health, but that’s also good for your life health because if you’re like, ‘I’m a writer first, and that is my identity,’ what happens when the book doesn’t get published for multiple years? What happens when the book gets published, and no one reads it? What happens when the poetry journal doesn’t accept your submission? Then you would be like, ‘my identity is fractured.’”
This led Abdurraqib to further explore how writer’s block occurs when a person has not fulfilled other aspects of their identity that come before their identity as a writer.
“Real talk, none of us are going to live forever,” he said. “Therefore, if you say, ‘how can I better set my day that does not punish myself for not producing but enhances my ability to return to the page tomorrow renewed,’ it enhances the version of yourself that is always having the page just waiting to write, waiting for something to ignite.”
The event concluded in a book signing, causing a hum of eager people waiting in line, clutching his books to be signed.
Visit the Hub to find more information on NMU’s visiting writers series.
