SOURCE: "The Physicality of Poetry: An Interview with Etheridge Knight," in New Letters, Vol. 52, Nos. 2-3, Winter-Spring, 1986, pp. 167-76.

In the following interview, Knight discusses major themes of and influences on his poetry, as well as his relationship with his audience.

[New Letters]: Etheridge, you often speak of an "inverted sensibility" characteristic of prisoners, the way they are shaped by the cages that keep them. In "To Make A Poem In Prison" you write:

 It is hard
to make a poem in prison.
The air lends itself not
to the singer.
(Poems From Prison) 

And with "Belly Song" you develop this theme into a kind of leitmotif:

In a letter you subsequently used as the introduction to Belly Song And Other Poems, you write of your upcoming parole: "I'll soon be with my woman and children in the larger outside prison." What begins in a specific place in...