I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My

“I didn’t start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me.” Thus speaks Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer whose pen has shaped the conscience of his age. In these words, he reveals the duality of his calling: the discipline of journalism, rooted in fact and argument, and the soaring of poetry, rooted in vision and music. Though the demands of the world drew him into reporting, the voice of the poet—the inner flame of imagination and truth—remained within him, shaping everything he wrote.

The meaning of this saying lies in the truth that all writing, whether journalism, history, or memoir, is deepened when touched by the spirit of poetry. Journalism demands clarity, precision, and attention to fact; poetry demands rhythm, depth, and attention to the soul. Coates admits that while his profession became journalism, he never lost the voice of the poet. This voice guided his sentences, made them lyrical, imbued his arguments with beauty, and gave his reports the weight of song. The poet in him never died; it simply found a new vessel.

The origin of Coates’s journey rests in the tradition of Black writers in America, many of whom walked the same dual path. Think of Langston Hughes, who wrote poems that sang of Harlem but also produced essays and articles that chronicled the lives of his people. Think of James Baldwin, whose journalism cut to the bone of America’s conscience, yet whose sentences always bore the rhythm of sermons and psalms. Coates, too, stands in this lineage, where the poet’s fire is carried into the journalist’s labor, ensuring that facts are not dry, but alive with moral urgency.

Consider also the story of Ernest Hemingway, who, though remembered as a novelist and journalist, began as a writer of poems and carried their concision into his prose. His short, sharp sentences were forged by the economy of verse, where no word can be wasted. Hemingway, like Coates, proves that the poet’s training leaves an indelible mark: it teaches a writer to listen, to distill, to find power in simplicity. This is what Coates means when he says the poet’s voice never fled from him—it remained as the secret architecture of his craft.

The lesson here is profound: never abandon the first voice that calls you, even if life leads you into other fields. The early love of poetry, of song, of imagination, will continue to guide you, even if your work takes a different form. The poet within you need not vanish when you become an engineer, a teacher, a scientist, or a journalist. Instead, let that inner voice infuse your work with creativity, rhythm, and vision. The gifts of poetry are not confined to poems; they shape every kind of labor.

Practically, this means we must cultivate our inner voices alongside our outer duties. If you work with numbers, let poetry teach you to see beauty in patterns. If you teach, let poetry guide your words so they reach not only the mind but the heart. And if you write, let the poet’s voice remind you that clarity is not enough—you must also move the soul. Return often to poetry, even if you no longer “practice” it outwardly, for its echoes will strengthen all that you do.

Thus the teaching endures: Coates reminds us that while careers may shift and responsibilities may change, the voice of poetry, once awakened, never leaves. It is the companion of the soul, whispering beauty into labor, truth into fact, and rhythm into prose. To honor that voice is to remain whole. For poetry is not only a practice; it is a way of seeing, and once it has taught you to see, you will carry its vision into every word you ever write.