Enzo Silon Surin is the most recent guest on ‘A Matter of Faith’
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
Enzo Silon Surin
LOUISVILLE — Haitian-born poet, educator and advocate Enzo Silon Surin shared aspects of his remarkable experiences of healing and growth during the most recent edition of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” which can be heard here.
Surin told hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe that his family left Haiti for Queens, New York, during the 1980s, when Surin was a boy. It was there the child who spoke no English first encountered anti-Haitian sentiment. “The only thing I excelled at was math, the universal language,” he recalled. “I kept leaning on my faith. I went to church and didn’t understand what they were saying, but I understood what they were doing.”
As he grew older, he decided to leave behind his Catholic faith community “because I couldn’t ask questions. But poetry is all about questions,” he said. His parents could see the local parish from their apartment window, and Surin would dress for the Sunday service and wave toward the window to his parents as they checked his progress. But he’d pass up the church, sit on a wall near the local high school — and just listen to his ruminating.
“The more I’d sit there, the more I thought about things and explored things, which in a lot of ways is what a poet does,” he said. “In that moment, I built a personal relationship with God, and it’s something that’s lasted until today.”
“I wasn’t a rebel by any means,” he said. “Social injustice became an important part of the conversation for me because I saw a lot of injustice,” not just in his native Haiti but in his Queens neighborhood as well. “I started writing stories about what I saw in the neighborhood. I used my classmates’ names as character names. People would tell me they were interested in the stories, and when I asked why, they said, ‘This happens in my neighborhood all the time, but we don’t get to read about it.’”
“Here I am, writing about my own experiences,” he said, “but I’m able to connect and help them heal.”
When we talk about how best to preach the gospel, “a lot of it is not spitting Scripture at people. It is living the gospel, meaning, how does faith inform who you are as a person, and how do you pass that along?” he said. “I felt like poetry was going to be my way of navigating my way through this world because it was a gift.”
Through poetry, “I can ask any sort of question and I won’t be judged or chastised,” Surin said. “I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I feel a sense of freedom that I can explore that, because my foundation is that strong and I don’t think it can be shaken.”
At one point growing up, Surin thought he might become a priest. “But then I realized there are other ways to reach people,” he told Catoe and Doong. “Poetry was one way, and I have never looked back since.”
For Surin, a poem “starts with rumination or asking a question or summarizing something or giving my take on something. I’m not a Poet with a capital ‘P’ until something is complete, and a lot of my work doesn’t get out there. It’s not for a wider audience; it’s for me to get an understanding about something I or someone else was going through.”
To date, Surin has published two books of poetry: “When My Body Was A Clenched Fist” in 2020 and “American Scapegoat” in 2023. The best feedback he ever received on one of his poems came during middle school, when a classmate read a poem of his, then walked away and began crying.
“I thought, oh my gosh, it’s so bad I’ve driven her to tears,” Surin said. Once she’d stopped crying, the girl “came back and told me, ‘This is exactly what my experience was like. I didn’t have the words, but you wrote it down and I don’t know how you did it.’”
“I could be vulnerable, but I do it because it helps other people. It’s an energy exchange,” Surin told the hosts. When he’s selecting which poems to read publicly, “I’m structured when I read my poems, but I always leave a lot to inspiration. I leave room for God to speak to me about what I need to do today. … I’m mild-mannered in real life, but when I’m performing, I put on a performance, because that’s what it is, to get a message out there.”
“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” with the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong drops each Thursday.
Surin acknowledged he uses a lot of wordplay in his poetry.
“When I write poems, I’m almost like a mad scientist. Is that a real word?” he’ll ask himself. “The beauty is you never know what’s going to happen. I may have the rhythm, but I have no idea what the poem is about. The cadence and the rhythm lead me on the path. Other times, I may have a theme in mind.”
A time for prayer opens each writing session. “I started out one poem with, ‘Not everyone on their knees is praying,’” he said. “It had to do with atonement and supplication. Injustice happens, and it’s not OK. We have to own certain things.”
Before the hosts could thank him, Surin thanked them for giving him the opportunity to appear on the podcast.
“I don’t often get the chance to talk about faith, identity, social justice and poetry, and a lot of my work is fueled by that,” he said. “I don’t hide my faith by any means. I do it in the name of love always, to foster deeper conversations, to say, ‘This is going to be uncomfortable, but can we come together to talk about it, because we can’t fix it on our own.”
New installments of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop each Thursday. Listen to previous episodes here.
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