An Interview With Local Poet Haleema Adly

How did you get started in poetry and performance? Where did you get the fire?

I’m a very expressive person and like talking a lot, so I write down a lot of my thoughts. My sophomore year in high school, I joined the creative writing club. My English teacher thought it was important to build up a community around writing, and I participated in school slam poetry. Junior year, a poetry group came to our school for Black History Month and exposed us to modern spoken word poetry. They really drove me toward poetry through the attitude and performance. I never felt artistic growing up.

I didn’t play an instrument or do theater, but when I saw spoken word performers I thought, “This is for me.”

What are your processes for writing and performing? Take us to the lab.

Firstly, it all comes from what makes me want to write. A lot of the time, I have another performer in mind and try to make my own version of their thing. Other times I focus on an emotion I’m feeling and try to write it down. Then, after I edit it a few times on the page, I feel like I can show it to other people. Editing is my favorite part of the process. I think other people find editing frustrating, but I like scratching things out and adding words in different colors. Seeing all the changes gives me a sense of satisfaction and improvement, and isn’t stagnant like only writing one draft. It’s a mess, but it’s my mess and I love it.

I’ve been performing my poetry for about four years now, so I have an idea of how I want certain poems to sound. I learned about poetry coaching, and there’s a local poet (JB) who helps us with our stances, fluctuating our voices, and emphasizing certain words so they have an effect on the audience. Writing poetry and performing are two vastly different things. How a person reads your poem is probably different from how you would perform it.

Performance requires just as much, thought, editing, and practice as writing.

Who are your mentors and inspirations? Any book recommendations?

Anna Howard and the Soda City Youth Slam were a big inspiration. I did so much writing my senior year. There were so many events and such a great community built around them. I’m appreciative of my roots and how they helped me channel all my thoughts and emotions in a way that’s fun to express and saying something I feel is important. It’s also just fun! Honestly, every English teacher I’ve ever had has been underpaid and underappreciated. They came out to my featured Poet Spotlight night for Soda City Youth Slam where I performed for 30 minutes, and it was so nice of them.

My absolute favorite poet is Andrea Gibson, author of Lord of the Butterflies. My English teacher introduced me to them, and their writing style is so unique and expressive. I try to have that much emotion in my own writing. Gibson is on Spotify, so you can read their poetry and then listen to them perform it in their beautifully unique way. I aspire to be like them.

Another favorite is Sam Sax. I read his book Madness and really enjoyed it. Sam Sax wrote my favorite poem, #Mania. I read that poem anytime I need to amp myself up before a performance or feel nervous in general. It has the raw emotion of feeling vulnerable and owning it. A lot of his poems dive into mental illness and struggles he’s faced, with all the beautiful language that poets use.

And just to be a literature geek, Emily Dickinson is amazing. You don’t have to be attached to one time period or style. There’s a lot of great poetry between today and back then! She’s still inspiring and there’s a lot to learn from her work. I wrote a whole paper on the significance of titling in poetry after reading her. Shel Silverstein and his silly books – I remember being in third grade hearing his poems. Now I read them to my younger brothers. I never want to lose that fun, whimsical style, even when he’s using precise language and inverse rhymes, really intricate stuff.

I found Derek Brown in an anthology of poems, and his poems have this way of creating multiple little vignettes that combine into a single story. I could never do that style of poetry, but I aspire to get to that level. I get stuck writing one long metaphor in a poem instead of lots of little pieces.

How are you staying active with poetry during college and the pandemic?

I was able to squeeze a creative writing minor with a focus on poetry into my college degree. I’m still writing poems, including in a workshop. What I like about the college aspect is meeting people who are academically inclined to talk about line breaks, lineation, and juxtaposition so you’re able to engage both sides of the writing brain between the emotional and intellectual reactions.

What is your advice for budding poets?

Write down everything! I carried around a pocket-sized journal throughout high school. Between classes, during class, anytime I heard a one-liner or got an idea for a couplet, I would write it down on the spot to expand on it later. You don’t want to lose those fleeting moments of creativity because something amazing could happen.

You have to become comfortable with sharing with others. You may not want to share everything you write, but someday you will have something you want to share, and the most universal part of writing and performance is the vulnerability the writer has. We the audience cannot know how hard it was to get to that point, not only to write it down but also to share it with others, until you get to that same point. Also, even if you don’t like what someone else has to say, if you’re going to integrate yourself with the poetry community, you have to open your ears and open your heart to other people.

Perseverance is big. There will be dry spells where you don’t write anything, and other times you put something out there and it gets shot down. It’s a process, and you’ll grow from it. If something wasn’t well received, try to learn from it. It’s okay to take a breather, look at what other people are doing and come back to improve your approach. Ask what motivated you to write that piece in the first place and keep growing.