Goucher’s Kratz Writing Center had the honor and privilege to have poet and essayist Taylor Byas as part of the fall 2024 Blueprint Reading Series on October 14th. She presented her poetry book, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. Poetry workshop classes, such as WRT415 had the honor to read through her book and appreciate her experimentations with form and style in poetry. The atmosphere in the Kratz center was calm and peaceful as everyone listened to Byas’ powerful voice.
I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times relates to themes of the 1978 musical The Wiz as it focuses on finding home. The book focuses on Byas’ experience living in Chicago before moving to Alabama. Each poem reflects on how Byas expresses her identity as she writes about confronting her adulthood experience.
Byas connects I Done Clicked My Heels to the The Wiz by showing that they share the theme of finding home. There is a similar narrative to the Wiz and Byas as she deals with finding a new home and reconnects her identity from her previous household. She confirms, “The Wiz has always been important to me. It connects to my family, and the book is about home. This project has already been about home, leaving home, and having to figure out who you are. I think there were ways where I was going through a similar journey.” Byas decides to bring in references of The Wiz to I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times because the book connects Byas’ situation of finding a home and identity to the main plot in The Wiz.
I Done Click My Heels Three Times carries powerful and dark topics of alcoholism and abuse as it carries themes of home, womanhood, and sexuality. The difference with the forms in her poems construct how each narrative poem is planned by Byas. From educational and personal experience, she uses her writing as a tactic to connect with other readers who have experienced similar situations to understand that they are not the only ones going through hardships, bringing connection and a sense of belonging through writing narrative poems.
Her upcoming poetry book, Resting Bitch Face was announced during the reading event. She continues to work with a small, independent publisher, Soft Skull Press to edit and publish Resting Bitch Face. Taylor is very excited to publish her next coming book. She gives details for her fans about the upcoming book, saying “It’s a feisty book! There are some formal poems in it, but it’s a heavily prose poem book, which is very different from I Done Click My Heels.” Goucher readers cannot wait for the public release of Resting Bitch Face!
By Kristen Wheeler ’25
