In 2011, the arts community began to take notice to the booming Windy City creatives generating an online buzz in various forms of expression. Ranging from recording artists to authors, Chicago is demanding the attention of anyone who will listen. This is certainly the case with powerhouse poet Steven Willis! After earning a spot on the legendary Nuyorican Slam team and being a featured performer at All Def Poetry, the world can’t get enough of Steven Willis.
I had the opportunity to catch up the Chicago native to talk about his project HisHeirness, his run on the Nuyorican Slam team and more. Check out the full interview below!
The wave of entertainers rising out of Chicago (Tink, Chance the Rapper, Chief Keef & more) have roots in drill music. What made you go the scenic route and choose poetry? When did you develop your love of poetry?
Well I am undoubtedly influenced by the musical explosion of my city. So many of our great successes such as Chance the Rapper, Saba of Pivot and Mick Jenkins were my artistic contemporaries, as we frequented places like You Media and Young Chicago Authors 4 and 5 years ago. Now granted I was an emcee first and took my cracks at the booth but ultimately poetry provided me the space to express my eclectic thoughts with out the restrictions of 16 bars or the need of a beat or musical equipment. Just me, my thoughts a pen, a pad, and my voice. I also think my temperament played a role. I’m a homebody, a peculiar kid, who would much rather watch a documentary than hit the club. I don’t think I could have ever lived up to the interesting persona needed to be a rapper.
Chicago was once considered to be one of Black America’s most respected cities but in 2016 the city is often referred to as a battle zone, coined Chiraq. A lot of your work speaks to the struggles of the city like mass incarceration. I would imagine that it might be easier to write love poems. Is it difficult to be so honest with your work? Have you ever received backlash for one of your pieces?
You know I prefer the honesty of my work. Ultimately, I feel my job is to tell the truth! I’m such a paradoxical thinker and avoid black and white absolutes. I often look at my city and what plagues it and feel immense grief. I live in NY now so I see how people reference my home and it strikes me how misunderstood our plight really is. So often times I feel the need to write to provide people with a new realm of understanding by giving a full view; the good and the bad. The background of why these environments exist, how they are breed, and how they are perpetuated via phobias or ideologies etc. I just hope for Chicago they hear their stories and begin to heal. I’ve never received any backlash but there are lines in poems that seem to trigger people. I undoubtedly get a scolding whenever I perform [my piece] County Cousins and I say my Grandmother’s quote of “better he be in county than casket”. No one wants to hear the ultimatum the black male faces.
With so much going on in the world, it’s impossible for you to write about every issue. How do you pick your topics? Can tell me about your writing/creative process?
I’m Christian. So I tell people all the time that my poems are given to me by God. If it was up to me all my poems would be about my momma, Michael Jordan and Jesus. Usually, the idea of a poem will sit on my heart for a while, enough time for me to experience the world with the question that will guide the poem on my mind. When writing “How The Hood Loves You Back” I asked myself “how do we grieve” and for 7 months I just watched. That’s how most of my process works! I ask myself a question and from there process begins to take over my mind until I feel I have an answer. Notice I said an answer and not the answer. I believe the truth can change and grow as we do and accept the fact that the answer will be different for all us, but if I do my job right as an artist you will be overwhelmed with empathy.
On social media, you’ve began to document your performances with the title “1 year, 100 venues”. What was the inspiration behind the 1 year, 100 venues tour?
Well in 2013, I created something called the Follow Your Dream campaign to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King gave his famous I Have a Dream Speech. The plan was to do 100 spoken word performances in 1 year. I had not slammed in 2 years and was just trying to jump back into it. I knew nothing about the NY poetry scene but I knew if I was going to accomplish anything I would have to be ambitious. I didn’t make the 100 I peaked at 81, but what I did do was grow immensely, make new contacts, new friends and became an all around better poet. My career has changed drastically since then. I’ve been on Button Poetry, Huffington Post and countless blogs. So in my choice to redo the Follow Your Dream campaign this year was to reestablish the hunger I had when I first started, but this time I’m attempting to do 100 different venues which is much harder. 100 different crowds. 100 different places. I’m at 71 with it ending soon so I probably won’t meet my 100, but to accomplish this with no agent, no financial backing, just a dream is pretty remarkable.
You recently made the transition from Chicago to Brooklyn. I’m sure there was a culture shock. What made you leave Chicago for New York? Can you talk about the difference or similarities of the Chi-Town poetry scene versus the New York City region?
I moved to New York in 2011 after getting a full ride to Manhattanville College in Westchester, so believe it or not I didn’t spend much time in the city at all. It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I started attending the Nuyorican Poets Café frequently in an attempt to reach my 100 performances. I lost every slam I did for over a year from August 2013 to November 2014, but never gave up. I made the team in 2015 and the day after graduation I was living on my best friend Anthony’s floor in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, gearing up for what would be an intense summer preparing for the national poetry slam which that year was in Oakland. It was never the plan to stay in New York this long. I was supposed to move to Providence, Rhode Island and take a job in City Year. There was another time after a bad few weeks at a coffee shop I was working that I decided I’d just move back home and help my mother financially. But people like Mahogany L. Browne, Jive Poetic and Jennifer Falu wouldn’t let me give up on my dream of being a full-time spoken word artist. Their encouragement along with my religious tenacity allowed me to make it through the rough times. The New York scene and Chicago scene are very different. Though Chicago is the home of slam, it doesn’t have a large slam culture. Chicagoans would much rather put on the show for you, you know lights, elegant clothing maybe customs, and a themed set centered around maybe love, sex or activism. Though Marc Smith, the creator of slam, still runs Uptown Slam at the Green Mill he will be the first to tell you how little he cares for competition and would rather his audience just have a good time while he puts on a good show. For New Yorkers the slam is the show. The city’s love for competition breathes even through it’s literary communities. It’s always a packed house in the Nuyorican and rival slams like Brooklyn, Bowery and Union Square Slam have the best poets in the city battling for spots and slam politics almost always dictates who will try out for which team and when. The result is having one of the most respected and hated cities in Slam. While Chicago is most know for the quirky, witty, and detailed writing styles of its poets but this doesn’t always result to wins.
You’ve performed all around the country even competing on the Nuyorican Slam team and completing a residency at the legendary venue! How did the partnership with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe come about? Does it (your significant accomplishments) ever feel real?
My friends in Chicago may scold me for saying this, but I do believe that the Nuyorican Poets Cafe is the mecca of spoken word poetry. When I think about how name “The Nuyorican” resonates even in the ear of people who know nothing about spoken word I think it is a testament to its importance. It has survived 8 presidents and gentrification and remains a cultural phenomenon a former safe haven for political protest and art for Puerto Rican play rights, poets and authors and now all marginalized people. To be able to be a part of the Nuyo Community is one of the most coveted things anyone can say, but this affiliation wasn’t given it was earned. The Nuyo is the hardest team to make in the entire country. You have to win, a lot! You have to stand outside at 7:45 pm for doors to open at 9:00 pm to go against 19 other poets and if you win you go to a night prelim Friday night. If you win that you go to semis. If you win semis you go to finals then you get to make it to grand slam finals. This could be tough because if you lose any of the slams you fall right back to the bottom and have to start over. The process is rigorous but once you make it you are brought into a wonderful family and a wonderful community that will last forever. I sometimes forget how having this accomplishment matters to so many people until I drop that name or tell them that I’ve done a residency there or they see that I could walk into the building without paying and how it makes me sort of a celebrity to people.
What’s next for you? Any new projects slated to be released?
I released my first album HisHeirness last December it is available for stream on my personal Soundcloud page. My upcoming album STILL is extremely important to me! Each poem on the album will be coupled with its own personal video. I’m on my Beyoncé shit! But most importantly I’m currently a Mentor in Residence at Urban Word NYC, a promotional arts program. So my focus has been to be a better teacher, a better advocate for young people of color and better organizer for the for creation of safe spaces.
Stay connected with Steven Willis on Twitter, Instagram or his official website www.hisheirnesspoetry.tumblr.com. Take a listen to Willis’ poetry project HisHeirness and be sure to let us know what you think in the comment section down below.
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