NIA

Basement: What does the experience of performing your poetry live feel like?

Nia: Performing poetry is a wild thing. Connecting with an audience is a wild thing. I love that my poetry allows me to connect with people in literally the span of 3+ minutes. Ms.Walker told me one time that performing poetry is like opening your chest and letting the audience see your beating heart. That is the best way I can describe it. It takes a certain level of vulnerability to do it over and over again. It's exhausting sometimes honestly. I have one poem that consistently makes me cry. It's about my friend that died. When I perform that one, I can feel my chest being opened and it hurts but I do it anyways. There are some poems that probably won’t make it out of my notebook because of the emotions that come with them. And i'm fine with that. Performing is being okay with being vulnerable. I had someone I really care about tell me to embrace vulnerability once and this year especially I leaned into that and my poems embody that. Sometimes I break on stage. Sometimes I bend. But poems are like the glue for me I think. 

Basement: How would you describe yourself as an artist?

Nia: I am a poet. I am a lover of humanity. I actually don’t know. I know I'm a poet. That is in my blood. And I'm pretty convinced that poetry is my purpose in life (which is funny because I'm in school for engineering) but I would describe myself as just someone who is trying to figure out life and art just happens to be my way of doing it.

Basement: Who and what inspires your work?

Nia: Everything inspires me. But mainly the things I read. Or significant events in my life. Honestly lately I’ve only been able to write about myself or dying things. I'm still trying to make sense of the death of a friend so that is consuming my writing right now. I wrote something a few weeks ago: “Now all my poems seem like i’m coughing up coffins” I think i'm working through giving life back to dead things or people. I'm still trying to figure out what life looks like for me and the people I love. It's weird because as a black person I am considered to be an object so writing about what life looks like for me is a type of personification if that makes sense? Giving life to black objects? It's an interesting concept. So maybe the concept of life inspires me. The possibility of life. The lack of life. All of it. My work is me trying to claim my body. Claim my life. I'm trying to convince myself that I am not an object I guess.

“I want my audience to find their own humanity by seeing me write about mine.”

Basement: Why poetry?

Nia: So language right?  its purpose is to communicate and articulate thought, right? However, for my black, queer, masc presenting body, language limits me in some ways. This language erases me in some ways as well. In all seriousness, people like me are not supposed to exist. So I am left trying to figure out how to take this language that tells me that I am not supposed to exist and then personify myself right? However, with poetry, I can use language that is supposed to limit me and craft it into a way to explain the “unexplainable”.

Also considering that I am, in the grand scheme of things, seen as an object. I am seen as nothingness. My being is not tangible. I used to write for other people. I used to wish to be the best and receive 10’s at slams but recently I have had a change in thought. Slams don’t give me joy anymore. It's funny because I use poetry to make myself human again and slams then turn that poem into a quantity. I don’t like that anymore. I want to know what true life without fear feels like. And when I write and perform I'm not scared. It's a wild feeling to not be scared. 

Basement: What narratives do you hope come across to your audience?

Nia: I know my art can be interpreted in many ways but at the very least I want everyone to feel something. Feeling is what makes us human and if I can make the audience feel a little bit more human after hearing my words then I have accomplished my goal. 

“I do poetry because it allows me to free myself. I am trying to free myself… and maybe I free other people in the process.”

Basement: How has Chicago impacted you as an artist?

Nia: Chicago is full of soooooo much talent. Like I love that city forreal. Being surrounded by so much talent forced me to get better. I had no choice but to match the talent because I’m not a fan of being left behind. I remember competing in LTAB and being like “okay bet so next year I need to do this to get better” and then going to open mics in the city being like “okay people are doing this let me see how I can incorporate this into my work” I am always learning from the creatives in Chicago. And being surrounded by other artists; photography, painters, musicians, dancers etc, pushed me even harder.  Even the Evanston community, people like you and Leah (Brieva) and Emma (Baretto) and Liana (Wallace) and Devea (McKay) and soooo many others really push me to give all I have to the craft. I think we all in a way built each other. Even though I haven’t known you long, your photography goes nuts and inspires me in many ways. Devea just sent me a new poem and it inspired me. Leah and her art go nuts. We are all building each other into the artist we are becoming whether we are aware of it or not. Chicago feeds into it because we are so close to it and have no choice but to keep up. 

“I just want to create and make people feel things. That is my only goal so anything that allows me to do so at what I will be doing later on in life.”

Basement: Where do you see yourself down the line as a creator?

Nia: I want to write books maybe? I have so many ideas for books but not enough poems so I should probably get to writing. I want to create space for young people to write. I was given so many opportunities and spaces to find my voice and I want to do the same for the folx coming behind me. I hosted open mics last summer for the community and it was amazing. Like I had the vision to start a weekly open mic and made it happen and all the folx that came really enjoyed it and I enjoyed the fact that they liked it. We all ended up becoming a family by the end of the summer. I plan to do that when I come back for summer break this year if I have time. Growing up can become so time-consuming. I'm actually scared that one day I will stop creating because life gets so busy. But I know I need to write for my survival…

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