2019 Poet Project winner Kevin Wiggins in The Washington Blade and Bidwell Hollow

Kevin Wiggins (Photo by Danny Sax for Brink Media)

2019 DC Poet Project winner Kevin Wiggins was interviewed by The Washington Blade and Bidwell Hollow about his new book, Port of Exit, published October 15, 2019.

Read the full interviews on The Washington Blade and Bidwell Hollow and excerpts below.

From the Blade:

Kevin Wiggins started writing poetry at age 6 and credits his interest to a lot of time spent alone in his room where he also learned to sing and write music.

“I feel that poetry chose me and I’m glad it did because it’s saved me in many instances,” the Baltimore native says. “It’s been my therapy when I didn’t know I was in need or too stubborn to ask for help.”

He won the D.C. Poet Project earlier this year in a field of 50 contestants with a work called “Can I borrow your inequities?” He has now collected his poems in a book called “Port of Exit,” based on a phrase from one of his poems that focuses on toxic masculinity.

From Bidwell Hollow:

When did you start performing your poems, and how did that come about?

I started performing in my early 20’s. The guy that I was dating at the time was a poet as well. He and I would go out to open mic’s, and I would encourage him to get on stage, but I didn’t have the confidence to do it myself.

When we broke up, I started signing up on the open mic lists and I would get on stage with a binder full of poetry reading my work and quickly rushing off the stage. I took a year away from the scene and I came back when I was around 24 years old,  as someone who was serious and secure in his craft.