How To Be A… Poet: Elizabeth Acevedo

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Having been able to turn a love for poetry into a full-fledged career, Elizabeth Acevedo shares how she overcame her fears and bulldozed through any barriers presented to her, sharing that her skin color, gender, and ethnic upbringing have made for valuable writing material.

Stats

Name: Elizabeth Acevedo

Age:  28

Location: Washington DC

Profession: Writer, Performer, & Educator

 

Work

Why poetry?

I’ve always loved that a poem can be carried in the body. That unlike a novel, or a song that might require musical accompaniment, reciting a poem needs nothing but a willing voice. Not even a microphone, or clapping, or a melody. It can travel with you, it resides in you.  I was raised by storytellers, and bolero and hip-hop, and the city sounds fused with my mother’s memories of Dominican campos. My origin is somewhere in that mixture of genres and language. As far back as I can remember I was making up rhymes and singing. When I was twelve I decided I wasn’t a good singer and so I wanted to be a rapper and that morphed into performed poetry and now I am a writer in all the forms that title encompasses.

What were three of the key steps you took once you decided to become a poet?

I’ve been writing and performing poetry over half my life. So it’s hard for me to pinpoint the exact moment I made a decision to become something I already was. I did, however, unintentionally make moves that I look back at now and realize were taking steps towards making my dream of being an artist a reality.

  1. I found and continue to surround myself with mentors. Women of color who are writers and poets, in advanced stages of their career who I can call upon or look to for guidance.
  2. I dedicated myself fully to the craft. I took creative writing classes, I established a peer group I trust with critiquing my work, I applied for fellowships to learn and be exposed to different techniques.
  3. I realized that this is a job. It’s art, it’s fulfilling, it makes me happy. But it’s also a job. I need to keep good records of my time and my money. I need to ensure I show up to shows on time and submit work when deadlines are due. And that I needed to handle the business ends of things in addition to the art. Not to monetize the work, but to ensure that I could actually live off of being a poet.

Hope you don’t mind me asking, but is it possible to make a living as a poet?

Yes, ma’am. It’s definitely a hustle and there are different ways that poets do it. Some decide to tour and perform, some decide to become professors, some take on teaching artist gigs with flexible schedules. I don’t believe in the starving artist myth or rather, archetype, at least not for myself. I work hard every day on my writing, I produce work I’m proud of, and I demand just compensation for my craft. So it’s possible.

 
 

Why slam poetry in particular?

Hmm. I dedicate myself to a lot of forms of writing. I have a book coming out in the fall that has hardly any poems I perform. I’ve been working on a Young Adult fiction manuscript. And I also perform, but I don’t actually slam often. The competition is fun and it sharpens skills, and forces me to write new poems that can be performed, but I don’t consider myself a slam poet or even a slam veteran. I’m a poet who slams every now and then.

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It’s one thing to craft the words of a poem; how do you shape the sound or how it’s delivered?

I grew up with music being a large part of my daily living experience. The Spanish language, which is all we spoke at home, is very musical. I think that sounds naturally come out in my poetry because it’s what I know. The delivery is craft just like the writing is craft. I took a lot of theater and dance classes in college in the hope of incorporating those skills into my work. So I’m highly aware of projection, pace, gesturing, silence. I continue to study what makes a good performance and rehearse with those lessons in mind.

 
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What’s an average day like?

Everyday is really different for me. Right now I’m on tour so I’m traveling or performing most days. While traveling, I read a lot on flights and at airports and after or before shows I spend time doing the logistical work of booking transportation and hotels, responding to emails, connecting with individuals who’ve reached out to me. And I try to make sure that everyday I take two hours to work on writing. I have different projects that are always ongoing and so I make sure to give time to those projects.

You’ve been touring… all over the world, how did you make that happen?

Most of my tour is comprised of colleges and universities who have seen a video of mine or who have seen me perform and reached out to my agents. The international work is made up of my applying for grants to travel, or from organizations who have heard me speak or watched me teach and want me to do the same in their country. This year I’ve been or will be going to: France, Spain, Belgium, Kosovo, and the Dominican Republic using poetry as a way to teach empowerment and empathy. I think the whole point of art is to drive home empathy. It’s to say, stand in my place for a second. I think this act of empathy when engaging with art makes us better, and kinder human beings.

Biggest challenge so far?

I have to conquer my own fears every day. Every single day. It’s not easy. I show up to schools that have very few people who look like me or who might be able to relate to me and I perform work that could be considered highly controversial. It’s scary. But I still show up and do the poems I need to do. Every day I sit down at the page and wonder if what I’m writing absolutely sucks. If I’m wasting my time. If anyone even cares. And I keep writing anyway. Every day I have to face myself and say: You’re enough. You deserve to be here. Now do the work.

 
 

Your greatest achievement so far?

Every time a young person says that I inspired them to write, or that I was telling their story…this is it for me. That’s all I could ever want my work to do. Make people feel seen and heard.

Why do you do it? 

I write because there are so many stories I’ve wanted to read that don’t exist. I write because when my mother dies, her stories will die with her unless I tell them. I write because I come from people and communities who would be forgotten or marginalized unless pushed to the forefront. And I write because I know no other way to say: I am here. We are here. We exist.

What is one thing an aspiring poet can do today to get started?
Read a lot. Attend open mics. Join a craft class. Find other poets of their same level and establish a peer group. Write, write, write. All the time.

Let’s Get Deep

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How might the experiences of Dominican and African American women be similar? Different?

I certainly think there are a lot of similar experiences often attached to gender, beauty standards, intersectionality. Living our lives as afro-diasporic women inherently holds similarities (and I know not all Dominicans are Afro-disaporic, but 80% of the Dominican population is afro-descendant so I’m generalizing here). And there are certainly contextual differences based off of each country’s history with race and gender. The Dominican Republic does not really have a public discourse on race in the same way that the United States has very specific, and clear dichotomies of where people belong. It’s less blatant in the Dominican Republic and I think you see this in how people think of themselves along national and ethnic lines instead of racial lines.

In your interview with PBS you said “We need to change the way men approach women. We need to change the conversation of consent, of objectifying women’s bodies.” Who’s the ‘we’ in that statement? If it’s everyone, how are you or how can you contribute to that effort? How can our readers help make that change?
 
The “we” in that sentence is an optimistic and very communal “we.” As in, all of us who share a country and planet. I think we can all contribute to the effort of dismantling rape culture by having more open conversations with kids, with family members, with community members about the topic of consent, of coercion, of agency. I don’t know that my mom ever talked to my brothers about rape. But she certainly talked to me about her fears if I was alone, or if I put my drink down at a party, or if I was too flirtatious. I was brought up hyper-sensitive and aware of how sexual assault was perpetrated and manifested, how rape culture was ever present even within those conversations with my mother. But my father never brought it up to me. We live in a society where rape is a woman’s problem. And so it is a collective “we” that is in charge of dismantling that notion. I think it has to begin with conversation and education.
 
An important part of South American and the Caribbean’s history (I’m generalizing here) has been the erasure of Blackness through ‘metissage’ (mixing of races, in this case lighter with darker until the dark is ‘washed’ out). So you literally have generations of people that in a way were born out of white supremacy. How can we even begin to course correct this…? It’s not just in the culture/environment but is a part of one’s identity.
 
I think we’re already starting to see the “course correction.” Communities all over the world have access to information in ways they never have before. They have access to images of people who look like them being celebrated, and considered beautiful, and I think that knowledge of self is starting to take on momentum. Although the “whitening of race” or “blanquear la raza” is a very real practice and ideology, I think we often speak less of the Pan-African movements and Black Power movements that have existed in Latin America for generations. We are seeing it in Mexico where Afro-Mexicans have demanded to be counted in the census. We’re seeing it in Brazil where they have the first ever Natural Hair Parade. We’re seeing it in the Dominican Republic with salons like Miss Rizo that celebrate natural hair, and with organizations like La Mariposa Foundation, who are bringing me in to do work on empowering girls of Afro-descent. The desire to love oneself and one’s blackness I think has always been there, but now that it’s a global conversation, folks have been able to feel less solitary in the pursuit of that understanding.

What might be next for you?  

Shameless plug! My poetry collection Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths will be published by Yes Yes Books in October 15 2016 and it grapples with a lot of the topics we’ve talked about today. I’m currently working on a manuscript for a Young Adult verse novel (!). And I will be visiting over 70 colleges, universities, and poetry venues this year while on my poetry tour. Many interesting projects on the way!

 

Let’s Talk Hair

What are your top 5 go-to hair tips?

  1. I only wash once a week so my hair doesn’t get as dried out.
  2. I mainly use all natural and organic products so I’m not sneaking drying agents into my hair.
  3. Every three weeks I do a deep conditioning using egg, mayo, and olive oil.
  4. I create a spritzer using whatever anti-frizz product I have on hand and some water. This allows me to refresh my curls without adding too much product every day and creating build up.
  5. I try new things all the time! I think frizz grows resistant to certain products so I’m always switching it up and giving my curls some new products to chill with.
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Ellen Haile
Ellen Haile

My hair falls between the 4A to 4C category, so I’m always looking for the best manageable styles. I live for big, stretched hair, so I often keep it blow dried and call it a day.

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