←

Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: cultural identity

  • A Heart That Echoes in Another Language | Global Music Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece started as something simple—a list of music I love.

    But somewhere along the way, it stopped being about songs and became something closer to identity.

    It turned into a love letter to the sounds that shaped me.

    The music we grow up with—or stumble into—doesn’t stay in our headphones. It starts shaping how we feel, how we remember, how we move through the world. Over time, those sounds stop belonging to “other places” and start becoming part of our internal geography.

    This poem moves through four countries because that’s the path my ears—and honestly, my heart—took growing up. These artists weren’t just background noise; they were cultural touchpoints that expanded my worldview long before I ever had the chance to travel.

    I’ve never lived in the places referenced here. But I’ve visited them in the only way I knew how: through sound.

    The references in this poem aren’t meant to claim ownership of any culture, genre, or community. They’re acknowledgments—expressions of gratitude for the music that helped me understand myself, broaden my empathy, and feel connected to places far beyond my own borders.

    What surprised me while writing this was realizing that I don’t experience those influences as separate anymore. They’ve blended into something personal. Something translated. Something re‑owned in the act of listening and feeling.

    This poem is about that transformation.

    About how a heart can echo across languages and still sound like itself.

    Every name, every lyric nod, every language shift is part of the map of how I became who I am.

    This isn’t a history lesson or a ranking of influences.
    It’s simply the story of how music taught me to feel at home in more than one place.

    — Rowan Evans

    Glowing world map formed from sound waves connecting Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines with floating musical elements in a dreamlike sky.
    Where sound becomes geography, and music becomes memory.

    A Heart That Echoes in Another Language
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I sit in the colors of Japan,
    red and white, as heavenly6 hits—
    it’s the melody that drifts
    under paper moons.

    It’s the beauty I see
    in the filth around me,
    THE GAZETTE resounding—

    but still I say Hi Hi when we meet,
    it’s the sounds of Tokyo
    that make me move my feet—

    Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura
    shaped my global empathy,
    that’s one thing I’m sure of.

    하루하루—
    I drifted,
    my mental shifted
    as I moved across
    the East Sea.

    BIGBANG made it easy.

    The Kings of K-Pop,
    guided me deeper
    into that scene.

    It was all brand new—
    it was SHINee.

    And that’s when I fell for
    Brown Eyed Girls—
    it was like magic.

    Abracadabra.

    Pause.

    Now, if you think this is
    the full story, you’re wrong.

    This is just a Highlight
    of when I was a BEAST
    for new sounds.

    Then we shift again—
    MandoPop and Canto, too,
    Chinese R&B will make you move.

    Guess you can call me,
    Kuzco—
    the way China gave me
    a brand new groove.

    With each new song,
    I found a G.E.M.—
    a sound that will
    Get Everyone Moving.

    Nine Chen hit me
    right in the chest—
    a different kind of ache.

    So when it’s time to go,
    and it’s hard to leave—
    I say “Bai Twice,”

    before I catch my
    sonic flight,
    ride the sound waves
    to a different place—

    to different streets,
    where their beats
    reverberate in different ways—

    where I land next is a place
    that feels like home—
    a sound that speaks
    in warmth and gold.

    Musika taught me
    something important—

    that a heart can echo
    in another language.

    Dionela wrapped me
    in a softness
    I didn’t know I needed.

    And G22 showed me
    that power can be
    a kind of prayer—

    a chorus you carry
    in your bones.

    Across four nations,
    I followed melodies
    like constellations—

    each song a compass,
    each rhythm a road.

    And somewhere between
    the beats and borders,
    I learned that home
    isn’t a place you find—

    it’s a sound
    you grow into.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [The Soil Won’t Write Me]
    Sometimes survival looks like disappearing into art long enough to find yourself again. “The Soil Won’t Write Me” is a confessional free verse poem about displacement, mental noise, rootlessness, and using writing as a way to stay afloat.

    [The Needle Doesn’t Point North]
    “The Needle Doesn’t Point North” is a deeply personal free verse poem about displacement, identity, and spending a lifetime feeling emotionally disconnected from the place you were born while being drawn toward distant shores.

    [Weather in My Chest]
    “Weather in My Chest” is a free verse poem about emotional hyperawareness, social tension, and the quiet experience of carrying internal storms into rooms that react before a singl[e word is spoken.

    [Sound as a Vessel]
    “Sound as a Vessel” is a free verse poem about music as emotional architecture, exploring how international artists and soundscapes shaped identity, creativity, memory, and poetic voice.

    [Just Knowing You Has Been Enough]
    “Just Knowing You Has Been Enough” is a deeply vulnerable free verse poem about unspoken love, emotional fear, coded confessions, and the quiet truth of caring for someone without needing perfection in return.

    [The Streets I Walk When I Sleep]
    “The Streets I Walk When I Sleep” is a deeply intimate free verse poem about recurring dreams, emotional connection, longing across distance, and the strange feeling of remembering places and moments that have never happened in waking life.

    [Memories From a Life Yet to Come]
    Some dreams feel less like fantasy and more like memory. “Memories From a Life Yet to Come” is a reflective free verse poem about longing, displacement, emotional alignment, and the strange comfort of recognizing yourself more clearly in dreams than in waking life

    [Separate Timelines]
    “Separate Timelines” is a surreal and deeply introspective free verse poem about emotional distance, time zones, vulnerability, and the fear of losing a connection that already feels meaningful before the words are ever spoken aloud.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]

  • Of No Single Nation – A Poem About Identity, Belonging, and Life Beyond Borders

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I’ve never felt fully defined by where I’m from.

    Not in a rejection of place—but in a quiet understanding that identity doesn’t always root itself in geography. That sometimes, belonging isn’t tied to land, language, or nationality… but to connection.

    To the people who make you feel understood. To the moments where distance doesn’t matter as much as recognition.

    This piece comes from that perspective.

    From existing in between—carrying pieces of different cultures, different influences, different ways of seeing the world, without feeling the need to choose just one.

    Not unrooted.

    Just… rooted differently.

    — Rowan Evans

    Person standing between blended landscapes with fading borders symbolizing identity beyond nations.
    Some people aren’t rooted in places—they’re rooted in connection.

    Of No Single Nation
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I am of global mind—
    I claim no nation as mine.

    My empathy stretches
    beyond borders,
    past the fences people build
    to feel safe.

    Because I learned early
    that home is not a place
    you inherit.

    It’s something you find
    in the people
    who make your chest
    feel less heavy.

    I was never meant
    to fit inside a flag.

    My heart speaks
    in borrowed languages,
    my belonging scattered
    across timelines
    and skylines
    I haven’t touched yet.

    I will continue
    reaching for anyone
    who feels unrooted,
    unclaimed,
    unbelonging.

    Maybe that’s why
    I recognize myself
    in strangers
    more than in the soil
    I was born on.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]

  • Slim & Shady X: Bloodline & Ashes – Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece is born from anger, from frustration, and from the long ache of being rootless in a nation that demands assimilation while erasing everything else. Bloodline & Ashes is me tearing through the lies of “American culture,” the sanitized history fed to us, and the violence hidden behind flags and fireworks. It’s a reclamation of voice—for the erased, the silenced, the forgotten. Every line is a hammer, every rhyme a torch, and every syllable a refusal to kneel to hollow traditions. This is not just poetry; it’s bloodline and fire, forged into truth.

    A fiery throne of ashes with ghostly silhouettes, symbolizing erased ancestors and reclaimed bloodline.
    “From ashes and silence, a voice rises—bloodline reclaimed, truth ignited.”

    Slim & Shady X: Bloodline & Ashes
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Man, they say—“Remember where you came from,”
    I say, fuck that, I’m diggin’ through the marrow, the numb.
    Books lied, TV lied, history sanitized,
    Whitewashed heroes built on bodies they despised.

    America? That’s a facade, a plastic masquerade,
    Freedom sold in chains, in wars we never played.
    Your culture’s fast food, fireworks over graves,
    Pride wrapped in guns, in lies your teachers praise.

    I spit venom in the mirror of your “melting pot,”
    I see ghosts of ancestors, their stories forgot.
    Candles in temples, voices carried on air,
    I got the silence of a nation that don’t care.

    White skin ain’t a story, it’s a cage with bars,
    I’m built from forgotten names, the ghosts in the scars.
    You think pigment defines me? Nah, I redefine,
    Every vein a library, every heartbeat a shrine.

    You celebrate Columbus, I mourn what he stole,
    You cheer for your heroes, I spit for the soul.
    Every “freedom” you flaunt is stolen from the meek,
    Every star on your flag hides the blood on the street.

    I’m the rootless kid, pilgrim in my own skin,
    I walk through the fire where your “culture” begins.
    I craft rituals from rage, rewrite your fables,
    I’m the voice of the erased, the shadow in the tables.

    Slavery, genocide, erasure, repeat,
    Your “history” a lie, a sanitized deceit.
    I spit for the stolen, the silenced, the erased,
    I raise my fist for the lost, in fury and grace.

    I don’t kneel to your holidays, your hollow cheers,
    I spit for the ancestors erased by the years.
    I build my own temples from ashes and bones,
    Every verse a hammer, every bar a throne.

    I refuse your melting pot, your consumerist lies,
    I see through the glitter, the flags, the disguise.
    I am fire in the cold, blood in the concrete,
    I am truth in a land built on deceit.

    White? I am more, I am lineage unknown,
    I am the scream of the rootless, the fury I own.
    You sold me nothing but chains and confusion,
    I craft culture from silence, from anger, illusion.

    I spit internal rhymes, half-time, full rage,
    Every syllable a weapon, every line a cage.
    I spit fast as Ez Mil, raw as Shady at dawn,
    I tear down your monuments while the people yawn.

    Your “heroes” were villains, your history a crime,
    I flip every narrative, one bar at a time.
    I spit for the rootless, the unclaimed, the unseen,
    I am the bloodline reborn, the rage in between.

    I write my own epics, my own sacred lore,
    From the ashes of silence, from the pain I bore.
    I build from the ruins, I craft my own rite,
    I am the rootless, the forgotten, the light.

    I don’t need your holidays, your parades, your fake praise,
    I spit in your face, I set the silence ablaze.
    I am blood, I am bone, I am fire and steel,
    I am the storm in the calm, the wound that will heal.

    Every bar a confession, every line a war cry,
    I carry the ancestors you left to die.
    I spit for the voiceless, the erased, the unclaimed,
    I am the culture reborn, untamed, unashamed.

    I am history they forgot, I am blood they denied,
    I am the rootless rage, the truth they can’t hide.
    I am beyond skin, beyond the lies you tell,
    I am my own damn culture—and I wear it well.

    If you are interested in reading the whole series, find it here: The Slim & Shady Series

    And if you just want to read more of my work, you can find that here: The Library of Ashes

  • Drifting Without Roots: A Poem on Cultural Identity and Longing

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I have been struggling with my lack of cultural identity for a long time. Growing up in the United States, I was told it was a “melting pot,” but it never felt that way. Instead, it seemed like people were forced to abandon their heritage in order to fit into an identity that doesn’t exist. When I ask what “American culture” is, the answers I hear are hamburgers, hot dogs, the 4th of July, and the military. None of that feels like culture to me—only consumerism and violence.

    I envy those who have songs, dances, rituals, languages, and stories passed down through generations. I don’t want to take anyone else’s story. I only want to feel the presence of my own. But too often I feel like a ghost wandering through borrowed traditions, searching for a home that doesn’t exist.

    This poem is my confession of that ache.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure holding a lantern, roots dissolving into mist, symbolizing cultural disconnection and longing.
    “Searching for roots in the fog of identity.”

    Invocation

    Come closer, reader—
    into the hollow where heritage should dwell.
    Hear the echo of silence,
    the yearning for roots that never took hold.
    Witness the ache of a soul
    adrift in a country that mistook conquest for culture,
    violence for pride.
    Step gently—
    this confession is not just grief,
    but a longing for home that has no name.

    Inheritance of Nothing
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I envy the ones
    whose blood carries stories—
    whose tongues remember
    what their ancestors sang
    in the shadow of temples,
    at the mouth of rivers.

    I watch their rituals unfold,
    candles passed from hand to hand,
    dances older than empires,
    words carved in a language
    I will never taste.
    And I ache—
    not because they have it,
    but because I don’t.

    What was left to me?
    Fast food wrapped in plastic,
    holidays gutted of holiness,
    flags worshipped instead of gods.
    I was taught to pledge allegiance
    to violence,
    to wars I never wanted,
    to victories built on graves.

    My culture is gunfire.
    My anthem is grief.
    My inheritance—
    silence where a song should be.

    I drift between borrowed myths,
    a pilgrim without a shrine,
    longing for a history
    that does not dissolve into slogans,
    or rot under the weight
    of conquest and forgetting.

    I do not want to steal another’s story.
    I only want to touch my own—
    to feel it burn in my chest,
    to know the names of my dead
    and what they carried for me.

    Instead, I stand at the threshold,
    watching others feast at a table
    laden with memory and meaning,
    while I starve on scraps
    of hamburgers and hot dogs—
    a parody of belonging.

    Tell me,
    how do I rise from soil
    that has no roots?
    How do I call myself home
    when my home was built
    on erasure?

    Benediction

    May those who carry deep roots
    cherish them with reverence.
    May those who wander rootless
    know they are not alone in the ache.
    And may we who inherit silence
    still find ways to sing—
    to build new rituals
    from longing,
    to craft belonging
    from the ruins.

    If you would like to check out more of my work, you can find it here… The Library of Ashes