Look and Listen

Biography

I started writing when my mother bought me my first journal at age 10. I am inspired by love and the good and bad of life. I grew up wanting to be a little of everything. Perhaps the correct term for me was a "Renaissance Woman". I wanted to study rocks and gems, dinousaurs, anthropology, write books, sing, dance, style hair and makeup. As a child, I got to sample many of these things, but what stuck was being a musician (I play the violin), and writing songs and poetry as well as short stories. I began my poetic journey as a competitor in the National Forensics League poetic and dramatic interpretation categories. I read, studied and then worked on perfecting the way I wanted the works to be heard. I excelled in this and was awarded a Degree of Excellence in forensics. I am glad I moved on to performing my own poems and I would be honored if my poems are used by teens and college students in competitions across the United States.

Inspiration

Some of the ladies that have influenced me are Jessica Care Moore (“Sweetest Revolutionary”, “Black Girl Juice”), Sarah Jones (“Blood”), Jewel Kilcher (A Night Without Armor), Jaha Zainabu (“Jeans”), Jill Scott (“Love Rain”), Alice Walker (“Never Offer Your Heart to Someone who Eats Hearts”), Nikki Giovanni (“Ego Tripping”), Ursula Rucker, Sonia Sanchez, Sylvia Plath, Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun), Helene Johnson (This Waiting for Love), Demetria Martinez (Breathing Between the Lines). Catherine Sasanov (Traditions of Bread and Violence), Gjertrud Schnackenberg (Intermezzo), Clarissa LeVonne Bolding (Life is a Song worth Singing), Alicia Keys (Tears for Water: Songbook of Poems and Lyrics), Eryka Badu, Ashanti (Foolish/ Unfoolish: Reflections on Love), the movie “Love Jones” and Maya Angelou (Phenomenal Woman, I Rise, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings).