Local poet confronts trauma in her first book
By Arelia Jones
For the St. Louis American
“I started writing at age 12, after my father passed away,” says Tiffani Naté Taylor.
“My father was killed, and unfortunately I witnessed it; I was there when he was murdered.”
After enduring a number of childhood traumas and struggling through adolescence, Tiffani has reached the point where she can speak on her personal matters unflinchingly.
She owes her current strength in large part to her faith in God and to her poetry. Now 25, Tiffani has published her first book, Poems in a Glass House, a collection of more than 50 poems.
She says the title is about having perspective on her life’s experiences. Early on, Tiffani’s life gave her plenty of experiences to overcome.
“Rape” is a poem Tiffani wrote about learning to forgive her mother for choosing a man over her daughter. At age two, Tiffani was put in foster care in Detroit, Mich. The toddler had been molested by her mother’s boyfriend. Tiffani’s father won custody of her when she was five, and she went to live with him and his wife in Kansas City, Mo.
A year later, her father and stepmother had divorced. Tiffani says, “My father was a single parent for a very long time. He worked a lot. I don’t know if the pressure of being a single parent had just taken a toll on him to where he took it out on me.”
When Tiffani was 11, her father went to answer the door, and a man shot him multiple times. She watched him dying at their home. As she writes in her poem “Caught Up,” there were “no suspects” and “no justice.” Her father was gone.
Tiffani was again shuffled among foster homes and relatives. Eventually, she was placed with her stepmother. During this time she skipped school and turned to drugs and alcohol. “I was very depressed, and I was looking for love,” she says.
Tiffani found poetry through a book of poems by African-American authors. Her favorites were Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. After seeing the movie Poetic Justice, she admired how Maya Angelou put words together, and the depth and soulfulness of her poetry.
“You can look in a mirror, and you can see flaws, but if you walk away from that mirror, and you don’t correct what you are seeing – what is the whole purpose of a mirror?” Tiffani says.
“That’s how I look at poetry, as being a mirror; it’s sending a message.”
It was a while before she believed in her own ability as a writer. Yet she knew it was the outlet she needed to get rid of the hurt and pain of her father’s death and the abuse.
“Now I’m not so angry,” she says. “I’m not always blaming people for stuff that I do.”
She wants her writing to help others the way it has helped her to heal. “I write for other people,” she says. “I always have in mind that someone else will read it.”
Tiffani learned about Publish America, the publisher of Poems in a Glass House, after speaking to another author. She contacted them, and they asked for at least 50 poems. She had thrown away the poems she’d written in high school – she says they were “depressing” – and she had stopped writing at age 20, because she needed a break. So, at age 24, she began all new poems.
She credits God with telling her, “Tiffani, you have a ministry.” She had to discipline herself to sit down and write every day. Within nine months, her first book was published.
“Speechless” sends a message against children growing up without role models or chances. The work was printed in the International Library of Poetry publication Timeless Voices in October. Tiffani also earned the Genesis First Annual Excellence in Poetry Award 2006 from the Alumni House of UMSL.
She is now working on her second book of poems. She wants people to see the growth of her writing. She says this book will be “different because it’s more spiritual and coming across with wisdom, showing prosperity, because after the suffering I’m seeing the blessing.”
Poems in a Glass House is on sale at Knowing Books & Cafe and at Waldenbooks, both in Jamestown Mall. The book is also available from the publisher’s website at www.publishamerica.com. Tiffani occasionally does readings at churches, and has read at her stepmother’s church, New Macedonian Missionary Baptist Church (1354 Semple).
She invites readers or anyone interested in a talk or a reading to contact her at her e-mail address, tiffaninate@yahoo.com.