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Black at Rice: Tamaz Young narrates life experiences through poetry

Tamaz Young didn’t begin writing with the intention of becoming a poet, let alone publishing a poetry collection. Instead, Young said that writing served as a way to release his emotions.

“It started out as a coping mechanism for different things that I was dealing with,” Young, a Wiess College sophomore, said. “But I knew that the best way to release them was to write them down.”

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Young said that his family’s encouragement helped him share his work with others, breaking the boundary of writing in private.

“For a while, I didn’t share [my poems] with anybody,” Young said “This shift came [and] I shared a couple [with] my mom, who had actually also written poetry when she was in high school, which I didn’t know.”

Because of the personal connection that poetry creates between the writer and the art, Young cites poetry as a unique medium for self-expression.

“There are a lot of people who like to write poems and don’t share anything at all, but they still hold some value to that person,” Young said. “So for me, it was just a way to translate an experience.”

Young also finds performing, particularly with spoken word, as a rewarding experience.

I love being on stage and performing poems, and that’s what makes it addictive,” Young said. “You get three minutes [to] spit a poem. It’s impactful, it’s powerful. That’s something you can’t do with a lot of other genres.”

Through his writing, Young has focused on emphasizing issues surrounding the Black experience in the

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