This conversation with Safiya Sinclair was sublime; it almost left me speechless. She was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica and has written a dazzling new memoir How To Say Babylon, about her family, education and resilience. But she is first and foremost an exquisite poet, who penned and published a poetry collection Cannibal and won a Whiting Writers' Award in 2016. We spoke about her Rastafari upbringing – especially what it was like to be a Rasta girl – why her mother has been pivotal to her writing career, her personal father-daughter story of redemption, the difference between poetry and prose, writing from safe spaces and since she's currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University, I also asked her about what makes a good piece of writing.  Buy Safiya's new memoir How To Say Babylon. Buy Safiya's poetry collection Cannibal. Follow Safiya on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Yolanthe on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Black Prose on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe to the Black Prose Podcast newsletter on Substack. Produced by New Strange. Artwork by Matt Munday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices