Poetry was not Logan Toluwalase Akinwale’s first love—music was. Born in 1999, they grew up around a variety of music. Then, when they were 16, a friend asked them for help with an assignment on the American writer Sylvia Plath. They read two of her collections, The Colossus and Ariel. “I was very confused, but I was fascinated,” they tell Open Country Mag in late December. “Plath definitely was someone who made me feel like I could write my own poems.”