An Evening with Clarence Cryer

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Speak. Be seen, heard, and understood.
In Their Own Words is a powerful collection of poems speaking from the margins—voices often silenced or ignored. These are not just stories; they are confessions, outcries, and quiet resistances from the edges of trauma, injustice, and unseen survival.
Clarence Cryer brings a journalist’s ear and a poet’s soul to this intimate portrait of suffering and spirit. Each piece pulses with lived experience and quiet fire, giving form to grief, dignity to struggle, and voice to those left unheard.
These poems are not his alone. They belong to those who never had the chance to speak.
This is more than a collection of poems. These are stories that were almost never told—truths that lived in silence, behind closed doors, behind forced smiles, behind the kind of pain that doesn’t always have words. Some people carry burdens quietly while the world moves on. Some survive the weight in silence. Others are never given the chance. This book is for them., the ones whose voices are softened by grief, quieted by shame, or silenced by fear. These poems don’t offer answers. They offer echoes— of resilience, of sorrow, of lives lived in the margins. Glimpses into what people carry when no one’s watching

Clarence Cryer was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and raised in Miami, Florida. His first published work, In Their Own Words: Poems on Suffering, Silence and Survival, is now available at Books and Books. Clarence spent his childhood summers in Louisiana which is the inspiration for his most recent work. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from Southern University. He did an internship at South Dade News Leader in Homestead, FL and WLVE – 94 FM in North Miami, FL, was an Investigative Reporter for the Miami Times, a researcher for the Miami Herald and attended West Laboratory Elementary School in Coral Gables, FL. He currently resides in Mt. Hermon, Louisiana.

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