Jamila Woods

I read this book when I was young. It's about a black girl growing up in Heaven, Ohio. The cover has a black girl with clouds behind her. It was the first book cover I ever saw with a girl that looked like me.

I'm nearsighted, in part, because I would read past my bedtime in the dark. I didn't want my mom to see that I was still awake.

I always loved singing because I grew up in a very musical family. My mom wasn't able to do music professionally because her parents wanted her to get a 'real job,' but she played guitar.

Naming something, putting it on record, in a lyric, feels like affirming people. Ideally, that's what politicians should want to do: to put laws or policies in place that speak to people's experiences, to make them feel heard.

I think of music as creating a space. I like to put things in that are comforting to me and are nostalgic. To me, that's what sampling does in songs; it's making deeper layers for people who know where it comes from, but also referencing another part of my history and my memory or a memory that I have.

I love how music and chants were used in the Civil Rights movement to help people keep marching. How songs were both a balm and a call to action.

The beach is still a public place, and that's an amazing grace about Chicago. We have so many problems, but the water always stays. That inspires me and keeps me inspired about the city and keeps me hopeful.

My art gets called political, as opposed to my intending it to be political. I think that's something that happens with black artists or marginalized voices trying to speak truth. Because there are things in the status quo to speak out against, speaking out against them will inherently be political.

It's important to immerse myself in one thing at a time to do it well, but I could never do one thing only. I will always be a poet and a singer, because I'm interested in bending genres and pushing boundaries of what is considered a poem, what is considered a song.

There is so much talent in Milwaukee, and such diversity.

I'm interested in figuring out what freedom songs would sound like in 2016.

With lyrics, being a poet gave me a different approach than other people.