—Arshia Simkin, The Underline
Gideon Young wears many hats: he’s a father, a writer, a poet, an educator (he’s an A+ fellow with the North Carolina Arts Council), and an engaged civic citizen who is a member the Carolina African American Writers Collective, the Carrboro Poets Council, and the Orange County Arts Commission advisory board.
Young is also a 2025-2026 North Carolina Poetry Society Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the eastern region: as such, he will mentor poets of all ages in a mentorship program aimed at helping poets develop their craft. Young said that he is excited to “help people chisel their voice, find their voice, explore a new voice—those are some of my very favorite things to do.”
Thematically, Young’s poems explore parenthood, nature, gardening, the act of teaching; some of his poems touch on politics—“being an American—what it’s like being Black in America”; and ecopoetry—“what kind of world are we leaving?” Young said. His book of haikus, my hands full of light (Backbone Press) draws its title from a haiku that evokes the joy, apprehensions, and possibilities of being a parent.
The themes that Young is interested in exploring are especially conducive to the form of haiku: “Being a stay-at-home dad, it’s a busy life—I can remember a few lines of a poem to kind of work on or sculpt in my head,” Young said. He also highlighted the form’s focus on nature and how it allows for juxtaposition; “I’m often trying to look at things in two ways,” Young noted. To keep engaged with the form, Young has been writing haiku every day since November 2020: “I love haiku—it’s a way of life,” he said. (Read a chronicle of Young’s daily writing practice in Walter Magazine.)
Young recently attended and presented at the decennial Furious Flower Poetry Festival in Virginia—a festival aimed at celebrating Black poetry—which inspired him to start putting together a collection of poems about being a teacher. “I could have done this years ago, but it took being in this space and feeling inspired and like an ‘I can’ sort of attitude by being surrounded by positivity and love and hope,” Young said. For Young, community and poetry are inextricable: he credits the Carolina African American Writers Collective as being a major source of inspiration for him that has provided camaraderie, accountability, and helped him hone his dedication to the craft. “The events that we’ve had, the publications that I’ve been a part of—it’s a constant drive for me and I’m thankful for their support and to be among them as friends and mentors.”
Similarly, he finds the creative energy of North Carolina to be particularly conducive to poetry: “the harmonies and the tensions” present in the urban and rural parts of the state; the unique and historical connection to the land; even the movement of people from the mountains to the beach creates a kind of “strumming across the strings,” Young mused.
Young recalled a formative moment in his poetic life: his realization that poets were simply people too. At the time, Young had just graduated from college and was living at Soul Mountain Retreat—a writer’s colony in Connecticut; the founder was his former teacher and acclaimed poet, Marilyn Nelson. He recalled an evening when she and other poets “had been writing all day and I was working at a museum at the time, and I came home to make dinner and they were watching Futurama and I was like ‘oh poets can watch Futurama!’” Young said, with a laugh.
For aspiring artists, Young urges them to plug into the rich artistic communities around them: “The best thing is to go to events, meet people in person, to get up to the microphone—even if you’re scared,” he said.
- Learn more about Gideon Young on his website https://gideonyoung.com/ ; Young will be a poet in COALESCE 2025 at the Eno Arts Mill on January 3, 2025.
