How to Be Drawn
How to Be Drawn is a poetry collection by Terrance Hayes, published in 2015 by Penguin. It has 112 pages and looks at race, prejudice, and personal loss in everyday life. The poems focus on how people see themselves and how others see them, and they pay attention to self-care and hardship.
The poems are written in free verse, with a conversational voice and lots of wordplay. Hayes draws ideas from art, music, and literature. For example, in How to Be Drawn to Trouble, he uses James Brown lyrics to show pressures in family life. In How to Draw an Invisible Man, he explores what it means to be invisible and visible in America. Critics note that the collection speaks to race relations in the U.S.
How to Be Drawn was a finalist for several major awards and won the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:03 (CET).