We were lucky to catch up with James C. Ellerbe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi James C., thanks for joining 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.

The art of poetry I learned as early as elementary school, but the art of spoken word didn’t come to me until my freshman year in college. I came across a flyer for a poetry event in Newark, NJ, and that changed how I saw poetry forever. I wanted to learn how to captivate an audience with my words, so I studied poets who were veterans in the community. I learned memorization skills in college, too. One of the most important elements is practicing taking yourself back to that emotion that you felt when you wrote the poem. What you feel the audience will feel. One of the things that I feel would have progressed my learning process more would have been to venture to different states more. I have only started to do this within the past 10 years, unfortunately, and I still want to travel more. The thing that always seems to get in the way is fear. “Fear is the mind killer,” is the truest quote I ever heard from the movie Dune. That quote appears in my poetry book, “Beyond the Event Horizon,” and fear has impeded me from plenty of opportunities to become better at my craft. You have to work past the fear.

James C., before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Currently, I reside in South Jersey with my wife, though I was actually born in North Jersey. Poetry introduced itself to me in early high school and has been a vehicle for exploration of my thoughts and inspirations through this artistic medium for a huge part of my life. My craft is spoken word, and it has afforded me the opportunity to establish my own small business, which was the platform to release my first poetry book, Beyond the Event Horizon, in 2015, and my spoken word music album, PULSAR, in 2018. My work also appears in the anthology, On the Verge: Poets of the Palisades III, in 2020, and the anthology, Silence Is Consent, in 2025. My subject matter tends to illustrate the Black experience, whether in life, politics, and in love, but expressing it from a unique angle or metaphor. I later realized that my work has the ability to connect with people from all different backgrounds. I love words and how they can transform people. I really believe this because they changed me by giving me true purpose in life. My motto is to find a way through words. Find a way to cope. Find a way to be inspired. Find a way to love. Find a way to see past your faults. Just find a way! That’s written on my website, and I strive to be a vehicle for people through my words.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Never set your expectations too low. My initial thought when releasing my 1st book of poetry was that I would have been happy if I sold 10 copies. I was told by other poets that poetry books do not sell. Not knowing that it’s not the actual genre being sold, but it’s my story behind the book that is being sold. The 1st day of my book launch, I sold 25 copies alone from my job. Imagine if I had believed in myself more and how many copies I would have sold then.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

“The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey,“EntreLeadership” by Dave Ramsey, and “Pitch, Close, Upsell, Repeat” by David Anderson have all been instrumental in shaping my business mindset.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.JamesCEllerbe.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/james.c.ellerbe
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JCEthePoet
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JamesCEllerbe
• Other: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jamescellerbe

Image Credits

Ameerah Shabazz