How did you first get into poetry?
Okay, so I think it was 2023, that I saw the Grub Street writing fellowship, and it came up on like an Instagram ad or something like that. To be honest, I saw the stipend, and I was very enticed, but I had been writing all my life, so it just seemed like a no brainer, and I never really took it seriously before that point. Honestly, I was a little bit resistant. My parents were very excited about it, so I submitted a lot of stuff that I didn’t really care a lot about that I had written for school, and by some miracle, I got in. That turned things around for me. The artists that I was working with were Otto Vock and Anthony Febo. Febo went on to take, like, a large role at Mass poetry. He said, I think you should come to SW@MP. I think that SW@MP would be a really good opportunity for you after the fellowship ended. I jumped on it. I was like, yes, of course. So that’s really how I started with Mass Poetry, and also started taking writing seriously. I saw Febo and I saw Otto, and I was like, that’s what I want to do. And before that, I don’t think, like any type of career path really spoke to me and I was sort of told that if I wanted to be a writer, there’s very specific avenues that you have to go down. So, you could be a journalist, like write for a paper and I didn’t want to do any of that. So they really, like changed my perspective on that.
Is there anything in particular that inspires you to write?
As a society, we’ve lost visceral emotion really heavily. I think that short form content makes it so we experience all of these very intense emotions in very fast periods. We’ve learned how to desensitize ourselves to each of those emotions, like while scrolling you see like the greatest tragedies in the world, and also something that reminds you of this, like deep seated trauma. We have to get used to only letting that emotion live within us for those 15 seconds, and then scrolling past it and pretending that didn’t happen or not holding that impact with us. I think that makes it really difficult to expect humanity out of people. What is it to let yourself be consumed on that level? Be consumed by an emotion or a feeling or a moment? And have that not be wrong. There doesn’t have to be a distraction. There doesn’t have to be a cure or something to fix. So I think that’s what it is. I think my main goal with writing is to bring back that held visceral emotion for people, and because that’s what writing did for me. I think being in a room when you’re hearing a poem and just not wanting it to stop, and then when it you just can’t let go of that feeling right? And there is a resolution, but there’s not a resolution right? Internally, I think that’s the most special feeling in the world. That’s what made me want to write. So if I could give that to someone else, that’s just, that’s amazing.
What has your experience with Mass Poetry been like?
I think that Mass Poetry genuinely became my family. When I started SW@MP, it was Crystal Valentine and Anthony Febo and I call them my surrogate parents, as a joke, but that’s genuinely how it is. I don’t think that I have seen a single person pass through SW@MP without being deeply affected. I know that regardless if they stay or not, whether they’re there for like, three months, six months a year, you know. Like me and some of the closest artists that I worked with there, Maria, Zaki, and Parker, and Salva, we just wanted to do everything that Mass Poetry had to offer and just soak up every single thing they had to say. I think that’s what makes it different. I think the people at Mass Poetry are a game changer. I’ve never met teaching artists like that. I’ve never met teaching artists that care so vastly about the individual well-being of students and their personal well-being beyond writing. I came to mass poetry when I was feeling like the best ever, and then I also would show up during some of the worst, most tumultuous periods of my life. And it was always the answer. There were times that I was out of work, I wasn’t in school, and I would still make the point of showing up every week, because I knew that it was something I wanted, it was something I always wanted, and it was always going to be helpful to my current situation.
How do you think creativity is fostered at Mass Poetry?
It’s just this feeling of, I can say anything in this space, I can throw around any idea and see what sticks. It really just allowed me to be. I knew that there was no judgment in the space, and therefore I could be, fully the artist, come into the artist that I wanted to be, have as big of aspirations as I ever wanted to, and they weren’t crazy. I think that’s what it is. I think that you were never made to feel crazy about your ideas. You were never made to feel like you had said the wrong thing. There was no wrong answer. That specifically, and also just the abundance of support, if it were not for the abundant support in SW@MP, I would never have tried out for the BB team. My first year at Brave New Voices was life changing drastically, and that was because of Mass Poetry. When they brought me there, I was like, I want to be a poet, there’s no other choice. At the first BB, that’s where First Wave met me. So Mass poetry is single handedly responsible for all of that, and for making me realize I want to be a poet, and the endless support. There was constructive criticism, I wanted to hear the honesty and the truth about my writing, and that was always given in a way that allowed me to expand, instead of regress or have to refine.
What was your reaction when you first heard that you were going to become a First Wave Scholar?
Oh, my goodness, I actually freaked out. I got a phone call that I missed because I have a 608 number, I lived in Madison when I was little, and so I get spam calls from 608. So, I immediately hung up, and then I got a voicemail, and it said, we have a very special announcement for you. So I called them back so quickly, and they told me, and I literally remember just sitting on the stairs, just crumbling. I was like, oh my goodness, I cannot. Like, this means it’s actually possible, and I actually did it. So, yeah, I was freaking out. I think I didn’t even call my mom or dad. My first call was Febo. I was freaking out. I was sobbing, I was screaming. I was like, Thank you. You did this for me.
What has your experience been like as being a First Wave Scholar?
I think First Wave is incredibly unique, but I think actually the experience of being here is incredibly unique as well. I think it fosters this environment where I think a lot of times people, like artists, are made to feel like they cannot experiment because doing so would make their craft cringy or something. They formulated this space where you can just do anything and try anything, and with a bunch of people that don’t even necessarily know your craft, and that’s okay. So, I mean, it’s amazing, like, we have my cohort, we’re 12 people, we’re a little bit smaller than previous years, but we have hip-hop dancers, we have rappers, we have poets, we have drummers, we have classical violinists. It’s so sick to be around so many different media. I think it’s so special to spend your whole life perfecting one medium, or so many years perfecting one medium, and then be so willing to throw that to the wind and say, I will try anything or I want to engage with whatever art is put in front of me, right? I think that’s just amazing. Being able to experience all of these different art forms that I wouldn’t otherwise experience or get to engage with has been so impactful, especially for my writing. It’s like I am so much more able, now more than ever, to see what I want from my writing, and what my writing will never be able to accomplish. With emotion like how dance does, but how we can incorporate that together to give the audience that feeling. It widened my perspective on what my art is trying to do, as well what I’m trying to do with my art, and how I can get there. It just reinforced the idea of, this is your family, this is your artistic community and you can try anything here, we will celebrate your wins.