Matthew Charles, The Weeping Prophet

Photo by Ian Kpachavi

By Dave Riser, Prose Editor

The past weeks have been characterized by civil disruption, from COVID-19’s effect on day-to-day living, to the Black Lives Matter protests being brutalized by police. The world is a changing, difficult to navigate place. Change is possible, although the news cycle and the powers-that-be want us to stay demoralized and separate. When considering the future, listening to the voices of others is an important way to stay connected, and to dream of a better world. Poetry has long been a protest medium, and even more than that, a way to share resilience, pain, and perspective with a wider community.

Matthew Charles’ upcoming book, “You Cannot Burn the Sun” is a collection of poems focusing on the city of Madison in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. While it does cover the protests, with several poems taking place on State Street and Library Mall, the book overall focuses on the Black experience in Madison in all forms, both rest and unrest. 

Charles, who graciously agreed to be interviewed, describes his rate of creation as “overflowing”. He shares, “I wrote 24 poems in one sitting.” The book started out as part of a smaller collection, bLACK, on his Instagram, @matthewcharlespoet, until the sheer volume of poems suggested that a collection might be a better format. 

When he isn’t writing, Charles works with a local nonprofit and is a budding businessman. “You Cannot Burn the Sun”, self-published, has already met and exceeded its funding goal. When discussing his decision to publish a book, Charles observes, “The cultural moment is seeking Black voices.” Indeed, the pre-order demand for “You Cannot Burn the Sun” has been so successful as to be logistically difficult, the best kind of difficult. 

Photo by Ian Kpachavi

Charles has a great deal with the logistically difficult. He began his creative journey as a performer, rapping at age thirteen, until he literally lost his voice, due to several complications, and began writing. This period of silence was a difficult time for him; he shares that for about two months after losing his voice, he didn’t write anything. He was ready to give up on art, but the poems wouldn’t stop, and since then, neither has he. 

A frequent theme in Charles’ work is theology. He grew up in a small, intensely Christian (and intensely white) town in the state of Oregon. His father was a pastor father his mother was a nun. It’s not surprising that Charles incorporates themes of faith and Christian imagery. He tells me about having to find his own relationship to Christianity outside of and different from predominantly white cultural Christianity. In this discovery, Charles states that he is an artist before anything else. He names Jay Electronica, rapper, producer, and songwriter, as a thematic inspiration, particularly the way Jay Electronica writes about his Islamic faith. 

When asked about other inspirations, Charles names musician B.O.B. for the way that his work doesn’t confine itself to expectations of Black music, along with rapper Lupe Fiasco, and 13th century mystic and Persian poet, Hafiz. Charles says that he’s drawn to artists who defy conventions and are deft with double and triple entendres, an inspiration that is clearly reflected in his own work.

During our interview, Charles reads one of his pieces, “Red Body”, to me. He is absolutely captivating, even when briefly interrupted by an acquaintance on Library Mall, he loses none of his momentum. Hearing his poetry even just once, I’m struck by the cascade of meaning, and chilled by the ties Charles makes from the structural racism and anti-Blackness of today to the colonialist, genocidal origin of our country, all in a handful of words. A video of him performing this piece can be found on his Instagram page, along with several other performances.

Another one of his pieces, “This Darkness is Holy”, questions the connotations of darkness. The poem imagines Blackness and Black bodies, as well as the complicated desires inherent in revolution, as a divine event. Internal ‘darkness’: pain and rage towards injustice, the desire to see that injustice addressed. These feelings are holy too. The lines “but i am trying / trying / to envision my darkness like a solar eclipse / darkness- blackness at the center / wearing a halo of the light of the sun” seem like they were made to be read aloud, conversational and heartrending all at once. I can’t help but remember that Biblically, angels are the warriors of God, beautifully incompressible, although the traditional cultural ‘halo’ imagery is yet another layer of the marriage of the human and the divine prevalent in “This Darkness is Holy”.

Matthew Charles’ voice is one that everyone should be listening to. In uncertain times, it is art that reminds us what we must work toward. Poetry keeps us tethered to each other and to ideas of faith, in whatever form that finds you, while creating space to imagine how we can change our society, starting with our community in the city of Madison, to be a better place for everyone in it. 

To find out how to order “You Cannot Burn the Sun” follow him on Instagram at @matthewcharlespoet