Local poet strives to amplify the voices of black women

Through years of writing and a dedication to poetry, Waltham-based artist and “recovering journalist” Joyce Jellison has found freedom, passion and an unvarnished voice. Now, through her Write Out Loud workshops, her mission is to work to help other black women find their own unique way of expressing themselves. (Photo courtesy of Anh Dao Kolbe/ADK Photography)

Talia Whyte -Bay State Banner Jan 8, 2009

Joyce Angela Jellison says she has always had a big mouth.

The Waltham-based poet and author has an independent spirit and no problem sharing her feelings. It’s a trait she wants all black women to share.

For the last few years, Jellison has run Write Out Loud, a nonprofit organization that facilitates workshops for women of color who want to learn how to express themselves better. The new year promises to be busy for Write Out Loud — in addition to a new workshop starting up next month at the Cambridge Women’s Center, Jellison recently announced the launch of a new project, titled “Voices Carry,” focusing on women incarcerated in Massachusetts prisons.

Scheduled to start in May, the project aims “to empower these women through words and have them document [where] they are now emotionally, spiritually and physically,” Jellison wrote in an e-mail. “Those without power often [turn] this helplessness and perceived lack of power onto themselves … It is the goal of the Voices Carry project to heighten awareness of these and other issues that face women in prison.”

Jellison said the project was inspired by her experience with a relative in prison who died — a fact that Jellison didn’t know “until over a year had passed,” she said.

“It was like, this person went away and there was just silence. Where had this life gone?” she told the Banner in an interview. “What would he have shared if given the opportunity? I am about encouraging all voices [and] narratives to be documented — even those that are not close to us.”

Voices Carry exemplifies Jellison’s commitment to helping black women sharpen the skill of self-expression — because in order to combat the negative images all-too-frequently disseminated in the media and pop culture, she says, black women need to start writing down their own truths.

“I have found my voice, and now I want to help others find theirs,” she said.

Jellison said that many past participants in the Write Out Loud workshops have come away with the attitude that they can control their images and their lives, not only on paper, but also online.

“We need to be blogging more because blogs have created a space outside of the corporate media paradigm to talk about their feelings,” she said.

Even when those feelings might not be very popular.

Take last summer, for example. Jellison says she got into many heated debates with other African Americans over whether or not Barack Obama would be an effective president. While Jellison said she voted for Obama, she also said she thinks that Americans can’t expect the president-elect to “change” the country’s problems and circumstances all by himself.

“The revolution will not be led by Obama,” she said. “You can wear all the Obama buttons all day long, but America is still going to have the same problems on Jan. 20 [after Obama’s inauguration]. All of us have to lead the revolution to bring change to this country.”

It may not have been a trendy viewpoint in the run-up to Election Day, but for Jellison, voicing the opinion was all about keeping it real — and with Obama about to enter the White House, it’s now about speaking truth to power.

Jellison traces her commitment to honest discussion back to her roots in Philadelphia.

The youngest of four children, Jellison says she grew up surrounded by artistic and politically active family members. The thoughts and writings of poets like Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka and others from the Black Arts Movement were regular topics up for kitchen table discussion. In fact, Jellison says, her middle name pays homage to Angela Davis, the former Black Panther famous for taking unconventional positions.

Jellison also cited role models like reggae icon Bob Marley, celebrated African American authors Alice Walker and James Baldwin, and even Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer who challenged the Catholic Church on its restrictions on civil liberties during the 18th century.

“There are so many people who get censored because they have the audacity to speak out,” she said.

Before writing poetry, Jellison was a reporter for newspapers in Pennsylvania and North Carolina — during the mid-’90s, she even had a brief stint as a freelancer with the Banner. But she grew tired of the profession, and now, as what she calls a “recovering journalist,” she has turned to poetry, publishing two collections to date.

Her second book, “Black Apple,” was released in the summer of 2008. It looks at the state of race, class and sexuality through the eyes of Michael, a gay black man who is married to a white woman.

“‘Black Apple’ is my discovery of my inner feminist,” Jellison said. “I use Michael to talk about my own feelings of being black and female in this world. My book goes more in-depth into discussing black womanhood than what you would see on [television shows like] ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘Flavor of Love.’”

Enhancing such discussion is important to Jellison, who said she is very concerned about how black women are portrayed in popular culture. She specifically cited the troubling portrayals in “ghetto lit,” a genre of self-published chronicles of urban life written by young black authors who say they are — as Jellison advocates — speaking their own truth.

Despite the genre’s popularity among black readers, Jellison finds this new form of writing “trashy,” due to its explicit violent and sexist imagery. She also said the form sets back “legitimate” black literature.

“I don’t mean to sound elitist, but ghetto lit is crap,” she said. “Everyone says that at least ghetto lit gets black people reading. I say no. Black people used to read W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright and others who could speak about what was going on during their times without being degrading to black people. What happened?”

Along the road to raising her own voice and empowering others, Jellison said, she recently came to a landmark: She met Sonia Sanchez, one of the heroes of her youth, at a book reading at Simmons College.

As Jellison recalls, she started crying — not because she was meeting one of her idols, but because Sanchez actually asked for her autograph.

“Women like Sonia are the reason I switched [to] writing poetry more regularly,” she said. “Black women need to communicate their feelings by putting it down on paper.”

For more information about Jellison and Write Out Loud, visit writeoutloud.synthasite.com.

Local author publishes a 'poetic documentary'

Photos

Contributed

Joyce Jellison

By Matt Perkins/Daily News staff

GHS

Posted May 14, 2007 @ 12:42 AM

Waltham —

Five years ago Joyce Jellison's novel "The Gathering Song," was in a sense repossessed.

The only copy of her 300-page book that took two years to write slipped from her fingers, as it was in her car that was repossessed while she was staying with a relative in Virginia.

The incident frustrated Jellison, but eventually the story took on a different form.

"It was probably just supposed to be a poem," said Jellison, a Waltham resident and a providers services specialist for Tufts Health Plan. "It's much better as a poem. You can tell a story just as beautifully in a poem."

"The Gathering Song," now a five-stanza poem is one of several piece featured in her recently published book, "Where Everything Fits Beautifully."

The book's title, Jellison said, originally derived from a conversation she had with a friend at the Tavalon Tea Bar in New York City, after expressing her frustrations with her inability to fit within it all the writing she had wanted.

"He said, 'You'll never find a place in life where everything fits beautifully,' " Jellison recalled.

The statement, she said, hit her right away. It inspired her to make it so that everything she had wanted to include made it.

"Every line, every period, every grammatical error, it does fit beautifully," she said. "It's my way of saying to him that I found a place where everything fits beautifully."

Jellison dubs the 90-page collection of poems a "poetic documentary," as she writes about sights and experiences from day to day life.

"To me that's a documentary," she said. "It's poetic, it's set in stanza. I don't have a camera."

Jellison's poems touch upon such topics as motherhood, current issues in Africa, and even female circumcision. She said she tries to keep herself out of her poems and writes only about things she sees. The book only has one love poem.

Jellison said she's an editor's worst nightmare, as she sees a consistent need to improve the cleaning up of her grammar.

"In some ways I'm able to tame myself, and other ways I'm not, and editors don't want to be grammar janitors," she said.

Jellison, 37, originally from Philadelphia, said she's been writing poetry for about 25 years. She earned her associate's degree in general studies from the Urban College of Boston in 1999 and entered the newsroom. Her experience as a reporter for several newspapers in North Carolina strengthened prose, according to Jellison.

She eventually moved back to the Boston area in 2005 where she performs in slam poetry readings, a style of live original poetry performed and judged by audience members. Her first slam reading was at Cambridge's Lizard Lounge in February 2006, and said while some poets improvise on stage, she comes to the scene with her poems fresh on her mind.

"I personally prepare mine before hand," she said. "I know my work pretty well before I get up there."

But the idea of spontaneity tends to follow Jellison wherever she goes. She's said after handing her card out to people, she's been asked to read her poems on the spot, in the street, or in a store.

Jellison prefers it that way, and likening herself to the Pied Piper, said she tends to get listeners to follow her act, as it's the best way to get her name out there.

"We do have to be like Pied Pipers," she said of poets everywhere. "We do have to get on any mic(rophone) that's available."

Jellison will be performing at More than Words Bookstore on Moody Street on June 26. Her book, "Where Everything Fits Beautifully," can be purchased though Amazon.com, Borders.com, or Booksurge.com.

Photo by Jennifer LaJoie

Joyce Jellison/wordpimp

Yup, that's her own term: wordpimp. "I'm taking words to the street," says Joyce, a former newspaper reporter and Army soldier who can be found selling her own books of poems in Coolidge Corner and Harvard Square when she's not doing readings. She's also taking words to the kids, teaching poetry in a Waltham middle school. This is a pivotal time for Joyce to ponder resolutions, as she turns 40 in 2009.

"I resolve …

Resolve
That place
separating
Probable and improbable
The faint negotiating point between tangible and intangible

We manipulate time
In order to rearrange discontent
Move it into another corner of the room like worn furniture
But only temporarily

This year
I will become weightless
Having stepped outside of my skin
Shaking the dust from past lovers from my spirit
Before I reenter
I will wash secrets
From my dreadlocks
Causing memory to blur and time to slow

Resolution
The fragile home of good intentions…"

~Alison, editor

WRITE OUT LOUD

Local author publishes a 'poetic documentary'

Joyce Jellison/wordpimp