We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ralonda Simmons. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ralonda below.

Alright, Ralonda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

When I was a lot younger, I inhaled books to the point that I worried my family. Whenever they needed me for something, I had my nose in a novel, hidden away from the world. This started when I was seven years old and I had no rationale for it.

Then one day, when I was twelve, I learned about poetry via haikus. To soothe myself during a difficult middle school tenure, I’d write as many haikus as I could to self-soothe, indirectly learning about what writing can do before I could name it. I started to learn that poetry saves lives.

When I was fourteen and navigating the mean streets of freshman year at Pacific High School, I started to write longer, angsty, confessional poems. At the time, I didn’t feel like I had a safe space to write what I honestly felt or knew outside of a white page with placid blue lines. My notebook became my best friend through future turmoil.

At the fifth high school I went to (shout out to Overland), I started to write even more, even joining the poetry club. I received a lot of support from my peers, which led to more writing.

After high school, a much longer story unfurled: I enrolled in college but left after a year; started working in jobs that didn’t fit me; and then, finally went back to school. Through it all, I coped by writing my poems; at that time, I could be seen anywhere, tapping a poem into my phone.

On the side, I kept writing and started to perform at open-mic poetry events. Since 2007, I’ve honed my craft as a spoken word poet, learning about stage presence and woodcraft the hard way. This led to a stint as a jazz singer, as well as a spot in Lady Wu-Tang, where I got to open for greats such as MC Lyte and Jean Grey, and other opportunities to perform with Ghostface and Raekwon.

Then, I decided to go back to school, and I didn’t joke around about it. I went in, declared English as my major, and set about learning all I could about composition, craft, style, and more. I had the choice of what I wanted to study, so I took classes that expanded my view on the possibilities of poetry and the craft of other forms of writing. During this period, I received a Reisher Scholarship and went to Ghana to study anthropology and the writings of various venerated African authors.

After that, of course, I wrote more. I graduated and wanted to be a writer but I discouraged myself from that because of cultural scripts about what one can do as an author (or any other type of artist). I wrote and worked myself into a master’s degree that isn’t related to poetry but can require a lot of writing.

Knowing what I now know, I would have started my first try at college by leaning more into what’s natural to me. I thought I wanted to be an accountant (no shade to them; I’m just not built for that work. Sometimes I wish I were). To speed up the process, I would own my interest in poetry much earlier, instead of trying to disavow it.

It’s something that I always come back to, or it always comes back to me. Learning craft elements and doing the work is important, but learning to share work with the community can lead to a lot of love and build one’s confidence. This wasn’t easy as an artist, but I’m so happy that I finally learned how to lean into it all.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Ralonda Simmons, and I’m someone with many passions, with a bottomless fascination with poetry and how it can change the world. I recently published a volume of poetry through World Stage Press named Whispers & Conversations.

I didn’t get into poetry, but it got into me. At an early age, I appreciated language, begging my mother to take me to the library in every town in which we lived. I’d walk out of them loaded with books, on the way home to soak up other writers’ command of English, not knowing how each would influence me in some way. This led to my attempts to string these words together for various purposes, leading to marvelous outcomes, which I outlined previously.

When Def Poetry Jam came out, I found another possible outlet: spoken word poetry. This show provided so many examples of how poetry could move people, which inadvertently led to my own career. I had to build confidence over seventeen years, and now, I can say that I’ve had enough experience to offer good and useful things to my community.

I provide books, poetry feature slots, workshops, classroom facilitation about various poetic topics, and lots of encouragement for others who want to be writers but think that they can’t because they never allowed themselves to be. I even emcee events.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I love that I can say I never gave up. Publishing my first book was truly a labor of love. I had to continuously advocate for it, even carrying the proof around to local events to read from and let audience members hold it if they wanted to. Letting audience members stand with me and read the poem I read on stage added some kind of magic that made me continue on the three-year journey of publishing.

Another rewarding part comes from supporting others to let their artistic impulses fly free; a certain light of realization shines from their eyes that gives me the idea that one more person has gained a tool for resilience.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Creating an infrastructure for artists to live and thrive in would be one of the first things our society needs to do. We’re all familiar with the archetype of the starving artist; working-class families seem to hold this image, persuading their children to be anything but. Becoming a doctor, lawyer, or accountant is a safer and more respectable bet, regardless if this is in alignment with a young artist’s inclinations. In some families, becoming an artist is the first step on the path to poverty.

Our society doesn’t value artists, even though some form of art decorates everything that makes life worth living here. We see it in all of the articles about useless majors (including English, which I chose). We hear it every time a family member hears about our majors and asks what we think we’re going to do with them. We stay quiet when they suggest teaching as a “safe” bet, even though it’s a necessary but underappreciated and poorly paid profession.

If society wants to have a thriving creative ecosystem, we have to figure out how to change this mindset; some changes have occurred, including the addition of art to STEM, and shifting it to STEAM. Artists also have to come forward and share our journeys, creating new mindsets about the possibilities for an artist’s life for adults and children alike. Enough of us serving as role models could tip the balance, which is part of the reason for this article. We can also show that art and more traditional jobs can be balanced; many past writers have had to hold down a full-time job while creating in their spare time. This work must continue to make necessary changes in supporting artists and creatives.

If that doesn’t work, bring back patrons.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/RalondaSimmons
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ralondatheepoet/