a poet, I try to always remember the roots of poetry are in song, are in ritual, are in prayer, are in magic.

- [Pamela] Rhode Island's new poet laureate, Colin Channer, believes there is a mystical connection to such words.

- When we say we're enchanted by something, there's the idea of the incantation in that.

How is it that we can listen to a song in a language that we cannot speak, yet be moved by that song?

- [Pamela] The author of two collections of poetry, Channer says verse gives power to the micro-moments of life.

- We have mirrors and we have windows, right?

The mirrors are the elements of a piece of writing that make you see yourself.

And the windows are the aspects that give you a view into different worlds.

And so as a public poet in the role of the poet laureate, I'm in a position to present poetry that will do both.

- [Pamela] Channer is bringing both worlds to his role in Rhode Island.

He was born and raised in Jamaica where his mother declared he was lucky.

- I think that's part of my good fortune.

I describe myself as a weird kid with a strong mother, who was influenced so much by the music of Jamaica he didn't realize he was learning the art of poetry through the lyrics of people like Bob Marley.

- [Pamela] His father, a police officer, died when he was just 12 years old.

His mother, a pharmacist, was his major influence and a storyteller.

- I would listen to her and her friends on the veranda in Kingston, Jamaica, laughing and telling stories.

She spoke her mind.

She never hesitated, you know?

She would use quite colorful language, and she would often declare, "I'm no lady," you know?

(both laughing) She would say, "I am no lady.

A lot of the ladies come to me for Valium because they can't speak their minds."

(laughs) - [Pamela] Channer eventually moved to New York and became an associate professor of literary arts at Brown University in 2016, where he continues composing poetry today.

- There's sometimes where I feel a poem is on me, and it feels like a kind of haunting where I know that I am rising a little bit out of the every day.

It's a calling, and it's a practice.

It's kind of funny when you look through and see drafts of poems because some of them are just scraps that didn't make it.

I have very different processes.

Sometimes an idea comes, sometimes a line comes, sometimes I overhear things.

- [Pamela] He is following in the footsteps of late Brown professors Michael Harper and C.D.

Wright.

Channer is the state's seventh poet laureate, a position generated by the General Assembly in 1987.

The appointment is for five years with $1000 stipend for each.

The poet laureate has free reign as a literary arts advocate in the Ocean State.

Channer reveals he wants to create something special.

- I would love to see a literary festival in the state on the scale of the Newport Jazz Festival, right?

We have some of the greatest institutions of learning in the country here in Rhode Island, and we also have a beautiful landscape.

You know, when I go to the state beaches, I just keep thinking, every boardwalk is a stage.

And imagine if there were these events down on the state beaches, right, where you could bring your blanket, right, and you could hear the world's greatest authors and the region's greatest authors and the greatest local authors right there as the sun is going down behind you, right?

It would be so marvelous.

- [Pamela] That marvelous experience is one Channer has already co-created, the Calabash Literary Festival in his native Jamaica.

- The way in which the ocean is never far in Rhode Island, you know, that reminds me a lot of the Caribbean, but also, too, the way in which people here are vocal.

Rhode Islanders are not quiet people.

(both laughing) - So you felt like you fit right in?

- I fit right in.

Rhode Island people are expressive and they like food.

The cultural admixture as well, you know, Portuguese, Italian, Irish, African American, right, Cambodian.

It has that kind of complex mixture, which is a presumption in the Caribbean.

So it's that twinness of belonging and exploration that, I think, are part of who I am as a poet and as a person.

- And yet you didn't start writing until you were in your 30s.

- Yeah.

- [Pamela] Which people might find unusual.

- Yeah, my first book came out when I was 35.

My first poetry book came out when I was in my 50s.

- And that's surprising.

- It is, (laughs), it is surprising, and it's completely not recommended.

(both laughing) But also, too, I think a kind of openness and a kind of curiosity about what's possible is something that has always driven me, and so I was curious about what it would mean to write poetry seriously, and I kind of did it on a lark.

- [Pamela] That spur-of-the-moment decision has taken flight.

In his most recent collection of poems, Channer was inspired to write about Rhode Island's stormy past after viewing photos of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Carol in '54 and the Hurricane of '38.

It's titled "Eye."

- "Mist and drizzles turn to buffets, then all normal snaps from roots, havoc sent to ravage wave to wave.

So it was for Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Niantic, Pequot, Narragansett, deluge-colonizing, gust insults, bodies shook like canoes in crosscuts, pneumonic fear, and the drowned boy's last view, the eye, what stillness.

One new god's promise.

Peace."

We often think of a hurricane as a destructive force, and it is, right?

But so was colonization.

And so I imagine in this poem the hurricane as this force that comes from offshore onto land, the way in which colonizers came from the ocean and came on the land, right?

And what it might have been, felt like for, you know, Native Americans.

- When people read your poetry, what do you want them to come away with?

What feeling?

- It's not so much a word but a sound.

I want them to come away with some version of "Mm."

Beyond words.