We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mr. Enlightenment. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mr. below.
Mr. Enlightenment, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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.
In college, I had to write a portfolio of poems for a creative writing poetry class. Over the years, I’ve listened, read, and watched other poets. I think the best way to speed up my learning process as a poet would be to write and perform more. I think writing poetry is all about trial and error. I also believe there is no one way to write. The more opportunities you have to get feedback from a crowd or your peers, the more growth you will have. I think the most important skill is creativity. There are only so many topics that you can write about. A poet’s creativity can take a basic topic and turn it into something magical. The biggest obstacle to my growth as a poet is the amount of time that I spend working on my craft. I am an elementary school teacher as my full time career, so I don’t have as much time as I would like to devote to poetry.
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?
I go by the name of Mr. Enlightenment. I’m a poet from Walterboro, SC that currently lives in Charleston, SC. My stage name stems from the fact that I’m an elementary school teacher and I use my words to shine on stage. After posting some poems on social media, I was contacted by a mutual friend about self-publishing some of my poetry. Through his company I released my first collection of poems in 2009 (Walletz & Pursez). I sold over 150 copies of the book through social media and his company’s website. I used the information from him and released two more projects. (L.I.G.H.T. in 2010 and A Poet’s Playground in 2011) I also have spoken word albums available on most streaming platforms (Worth My Weight in Watts and Summer Soulstice).
I’m most proud of the fact that my social media presence has grown over the last few years. I’ve been able to perform in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. I’ve also developed a fairly successful brand of light inspired apparel largely through word of mouth.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the feedback you receive from a person reading or hearing your words. It is difficult to write and perform about personal topics, but there’s no feeling like hearing that someone had been going through a similar situation and your words helped them become inspired or helped them heal.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
As I mentioned previously I posted my poems on social media. I started to receive positive feedback which gave me more confidence to share my work on stage. My advice to building a social media audience is to be consistent. I’d also suggest that you don’t get too discouraged by the amount of likes you receive. Even if you get a small amount of engagement, people are paying attention. Social media allows us to interact with people all over the world. People often forget the foundation is to be social. Don’t be afraid to interact with others.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.passdalight.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/kilowattpoet
- Facebook: facebook.com/passdalight
- Twitter: twitter.com/kilowattpoet
- Youtube: Mr. Enlightenment
- Other: Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/6F6VFAQlyKo2XLglqOny8k?si=p9dSNafAQ7WdgIermW2oUg Apple Music https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mr-enlightenment/1251530234 Bandcamp bandcamp.kilowattpoet.com