By Ryan Vasquez | Reporter
Readers Meet the Author concluded its final meeting of the 2025-26 school year with a discussion of poetry and persona from Associate Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies Dr. Ryan Sharp on Wednesday at Moody Memorial Library.
Introduced by Vice President and Provost Dr. Nancy Brickhouse, Sharp sat down with Vice Provost for Community Engagement and Belonging Coretta Pittman to discuss his book, “Another Throat: 21st Century Black U.S. Persona Poetry and the Archive.”
Sharp said his introduction to poetry came through his older brothers, who watched televised slam poetry. While slam poetry tied into his love for music, Sharp never pursued spoken word himself and instead focused on written poetry.
Sharp’s book focuses on the phenomenon of poets creating work from the perspective, or “persona,” of others. Sharp said each poet presents the poem from the perspective of the persona being portrayed.
Separate from his remarks to the many faculty members in attendance, Sharp discussed what he hopes students take from his book.
“I hope what my book is doing is helping give them tools for being able to read more critically,” Sharp said. “For instance, you could read some of the poems I take up, the persona poems I take up, and enjoy them. But what I try to do is really kind of develop and unfold some of their complexity, the different layers that they have going on.”
Pearland senior Olivia Chhlang said Sharp’s talk was enlightening and interested her in the complexities of poetry.
“I learned a lot about the unknown of poetry and knowledge, and I found his point interesting about how you can go your whole life without knowing about a topic and then you just stumble upon it one day,” Chhlang said.
Sharp also highlighted the historical importance of poetry alongside its artistic value.
“I’m hoping that there’s a sort of interdisciplinary thing happening,” Sharp said. “That students are engaging with not only poetry, but history, culture, race — all sorts of things that are being taken up in being able to read about the subjects and read the poems, and now they’re being spoken.”
Similarly, Chhlang addressed the topic of diversity and its relation to poetry and Sharp’s talk.
“Connection to diversity, I think, is important because it may be a people, group or poet that you’ve never heard of before, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been existing all this time,” Chhlang said.
