In Delali Adjoa’s The Free Verse Society, music, poetry and young love meet in a story about two teenagers trying to find their footing after loss. Jae Afenyo moves to Delray Beach to live with her uncle after placing her baby for adoption, hoping for a fresh start. At Eastwood High, she finds an unexpected sense of belonging in the poetry club.

There, she meets Derek Patel, a troubled student dealing with the death of his father and his mother’s struggle with addiction. As they work together to organise the club’s end-of-semester poetry reading, Jae and Derek must reckon with their grief, their guardedness and the possibility of letting someone else in.

A story about grief, second chances, belonging and the vulnerability of falling in love, The Free Verse Society explores what it means to begin again when so much has already been lost.

For Sonic Pages, Adjoa discusses the music that accompanied her writing process and the songs she associates with the novel’s characters and their experiences. From Mandy Moore’s “Only Hope” to Sara Bareilles and John Legend’s “A Safe Place to Land”, she takes us through the songs that helped shape the emotional landscape of The Free Verse Society.

 

Brittle Paper

What was the first song that came to you while writing The Free Verse Society? Was there a particular scene or character it helped you imagine?

Delali Adjoa

The soundtrack for A Walk to Remember played in my mind as I wrote the earlier scenes of The Free Verse Society. It was supposed to be a practice book, a book to draft quickly, so I borrowed the bones from one of my favourite movies, in which a troubled teen commits a crime and is sent to a school club instead of community service. 

He then falls in love with the quiet girl who has secrets of her own. Beyond those bones the stories differ, but I was humming Only Hope by Mandy Moore for quite some time into that project.

 

Brittle Paper

If Eastwood High had an unofficial anthem, what song would the students claim as their own, and why?

Delali Adjoa

I think Meet Me at Our Spot by The Anxiety, Willow, and Tyler Cole would be their unofficial anthem. Where we congregate says a lot about who we are and who we’re allowed to be, and for the students at Eastwood, they’re all trying to find their place of belonging.

 

Brittle Paper

The poetry club becomes an important meeting point for Jae and Derek. What song captures the feeling of finding a place where you finally belong?

Delali Adjoa

When I heard A Safe Place to Land by Sara Bareilles and John Legend, I immediately thought of Jae and Derek. It’s a song about seeking shelter when “the ocean is wild and over your head.” It describes their inner worlds, the feeling of being inundated with grief. When everything falls apart for them, the poetry club becomes that safe place to land.

 

Brittle Paper

Jae and Derek are both carrying things they would rather keep hidden. What song do you associate with each character, and why?

Delali Adjoa

After placing her baby for adoption, Jae moves to Delray Beach to live with her uncle for a fresh start. She’s trying to regain her uncle’s trust and regain trust in herself, so when she realises the depth of her attraction to Derek, she builds her walls up higher. Ready by Alessia Cara captures her resolve to keep Derek at a distance until he proves himself worthy.

Derek’s song is Sweet Heat Lightning by Gregory Alan Isakov. It embodies the sense of isolation he feels as he’s grappling with grief after the loss of his father, the loss of their family wealth, and his mother’s steep fall into addiction. One line reads, “Moon’s out, my mother’s house is empty / Come and find me now.”

 

Brittle Paper

The book explores loss, starting over, and the struggle to let people see you as you really are. What song captures one of these themes in a way that feels particularly close to the heart of the story?

Delali Adjoa

Before I even knew how the plot of the book would unfold, I knew it would be an exploration of grief and loss. I wanted to answer the question: Who do we become when what we love is no longer ours?

For Jae, her father left years ago to live with his other family, her relationship with her mother is broken, and she had to place her baby in adoption when she wanted to keep her. Derek’s loss was not only his father’s death but also how his mother disappeared inside her own grief, leaving him to carry the emotional weight alone.

Two songs by Jung Kook, Too Sad to Dance and Shot Glass of Tears, capture the pain of being in the midst of grief and loneliness.

 

Brittle Paper

Poetry is central to the book, both as a creative outlet and as a way for its characters to express what they cannot say aloud. What song feels like a poem to you, whether because of its lyrics, imagery, or storytelling?

Delali Adjoa

I can’t listen to Otherside by Beyoncé without getting tearful. It’s not only poetic; it’s prayerful, a declaration that death can’t separate us from the people we love. The imagery in Beyonce’s video also parallels the imagery Jae uses in her poem to the daughter she had to lose.

 

Brittle Paper

If you could put three songs directly into The Free Verse Society’s fictional soundtrack, which three would make the cut, and why?

Delali Adjoa

The Free Verse Society soundtrack would be dark and moody with beautiful melodies and a thread of hope. Some of the songs I already named would be on the soundtrack, but a few more would be:

Out of Love by Alessia Cara – The chorus of this song sounds like a dreamy waltz, but she’s in fact singing about heartbreak and abandonment. This dance with uncertainty, with insecurity, is unfortunately part of every human relationship.

Falling by Harry Styles – This song captures how Derek grapples with feelings of unworthiness. “What am I now? / What if I’m someone I don’t want around?”

Everything Hallelujah by Justin Bieber – This song is about a love that’s past the newness of butterflies. It’s a love that’s settled and sure. It’s the kind of love I’d want Jae and Derek to have years into the future. It would be the last song on their soundtrack.

 

Listen to The Free Verse Society here.