We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ash Raymond James a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ash, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
From the jump, I want to say this: there is always more to learn. There is a certain pessimistic tone to the phrase ‘you will never be at your best’, but creatively, you won’t be. Creativity is an endless evolution. You never stop getting better. I have been leaning heavily into the teaching side of poetry lately, and some of the best advice I have is always to be open to new information. Even if you’re a seasoned professional, take the beginners class because the likelihood is there is still something to learn if you are open enough to it. The act of hearing about another person’s process can alter your process and make you a better creator.
I always have a hunger to find a new way to phrase a sentence or format a poem. I adore discovering new titles that may become a trend. Hanif Abdurraqib made the ode popular in his format. I have been playing with after poems and hypotheticals a lot. Taking something that didn’t happen or will never happen and making a poem out of it. To learn any craft, you have to become a scientist. You have to figure out a way to become unafraid of blowing your laboratory to smithereens. Experimenting in any creative field is vital to learning. You have to take chances and realise that there is no such thing as failure because even your so-called failures are propelling you forward, teaching you something, and making you better.
I love open mics and workshops because I get to hear other people perform and use cadences I may never have considered. Listen closely to where people pause, to where they get loud and where they get quiet. Check out For Those Who Can Still Ride In Airplanes by Anis Mojgani, and then check out Love Poem by Jon Sands and just see how different people can sound. How you can lean on an accent and how important the way you project is. I don’t strive to be the best; I just want to be better than I was yesterday. Even if I only added one line to a poem or made sense of a metaphor, then those are celebration-worthy events. There is no fast track, and you cannot learn this as fast as you may want to, no matter who teaches you, but that is the exciting part. You get to go on this journey and discover new poems and let your discoveries pull you in a certain direction, and you get to find your unique voice through existing voices, and you get to write a poem that makes you want to fist-pump the air and then look back on it the next day and hate it. Welcome to being a poet. Then you get to rewrite that poem and make it even better, bond with it, and form a perpetual love. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to catch a chicken, but some days, that is what writing poetry is like. It is sometimes hard but always worth it. I mean, who doesn’t love cuddling chickens?
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.
Hello everybody, my name is Ash Raymond James. I am a writer with a passion for poetry. I love to perform poems, and I call a stage home. Lately, I have fallen into this role of teaching poetry, and I adore it. I do a great deal of coaching, whether that is for people who are looking to win slams, win contests, or just get better. I recently started a podcast on Spotify called ‘The Weird Table’ that is also a workshop aimed towards writing and those looking to get better at their craft. My favourite writing right now is on my substack, where I am writing weekly newsletters and offering insight and inspiration to people. It has been a long journey to get here. I have won multiple contests and slams on multiple hemispheres, but I am in love with long sets right now and, as I said teaching. I also love projects! By projects, I mean books and zines and finding new and exciting ways to bring poetry to people. I run a Graphic Design company ‘Savvy Bear Studios’ and it specialises in book design. I want to help present poetry in the best way possible. I am also trying to redefine it.
I want to take some of the seriousness associated with poetry away. We need more fun poems in the world, and we need more poems that aren’t really trying to do anything but make you smile. Poetry is obviously an incredible medium to push vital messages through, but it is also a very exciting and fun genre when we let it be. I only sometimes want to hear about what’s on fire; it is refreshing to listen to that person perform poetry about why they hate geese. There is a balance like all things, but I do wish people gave in to their silliness a little more. When I perform a set, I have poems that allow you to take a breath and recover. It isn’t a barrage of sadness, but gosh, don’t I have some sad poems. I believe there is an art in funny poems and an art in balancing a set. I pride myself on this ability.
Even from a young age, reading Sylvia Plath and Phillip Larkin, there was a glimmer of silliness within them. I have autism, and within autism, you have these things called special interests, which are essentially your obsessions. Poetry has been my special interest since I was a child. What got me into spoken word was a poet named ‘Neil Hilborn’ who went viral with his poem ‘OCD’ and from there, it snowballed, then it avalanched, and now it’s just a persistent ice age of poetry. I am forever learning more within this genre, and I hope I am always the student with another class to get to. Funnily enough, I now do a weekly workshop with Neil Hilborn in his class called ‘Writing Circle,’ and if you want to get better at creating poems, it is the place to be.
He turned me into an absolute poetry nerd. I watch poetry videos like people watch Netflix and listen to poetry audiobooks like people listen to Spotify. My phone is dangerously low on storage, but I have a video on there of this performance that was live-streamed in the Bell House in Brooklyn in 2023, where Hanif Abdurraqib, Anis Mojgani, Sarah Kay, and Clint Smith performed, and it is the best video. I downloaded it in case the internet ceased to exist or something equally catastrophic. If the apocalypse comes, then at least I have this video. It is my favourite movie. It is these sorts of performances that have shaped me into who I am today.
It’s hard to encapsulate what my poetry is. You got to read it or watch me perform it. I would need help explaining it. Chaos is probably accurate. A whirlwind in the kitchen section of an Ikea. It doesn’t sound particularly endearing, but I promise you’ll have a great time. I like to think I am pretty good at this. There is a strange stigma regarding ego, and admitting you’re good at something is almost frowned upon, but if I can tell you I’m terrible at building sheds and constructing salads, then surely I am allowed to say I am a good writer.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
My journey has evolved with me. Now, I just want to put on great shows and educate people on how to be their best at whatever craft they are involved with. There is nothing more rewarding than helping somebody achieve their impossible. To take what they class as unattainable and put it into their palms. I want to tour my poems, run workshops, have in-depth conversations with people, and breathe a new life into poetry. Outside of this genre, I want my essays to help people. I just started a new series called ‘What About Worry’ where I interviewed fifty people about their anxieties to spread awareness and lower loneliness. I am Autistic, have anxiety and ADHD, and I have depression so deep that if it were a movie, Paul Mescal would star in it. I know how hard mental health can be; I see the toll it takes. I want to help people by showing them fifty perspectives of worry from people all over the globe. Something one person does might help another. It is my most important and favourite work. I also want to show people how to take their struggles and use poetry as a tool to heal and express. I wrote a whole book about Autism called ‘Fourteen Thousand Ducks,’ and I want to get it published and put it into bookstores all over the world. Awareness of unknown things through a poetic scope is where it’s at. Poetry is dope, and I want to prove that.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Being on a stage and making people laugh or gasp is an incredible feeling. I took a personal experience and gave it to a room full of people, and now we are all enjoying the experience. I am a part of the escape from everyday life, and it is a fair exchange. They escape by watching me, and I escape by performing. There is even a good feeling in making people cry which sounds bad but being able to put my feelings through poetry and have somebody feel it that much is miraculous. I have already glanced over helping people achieve their goals through coaching, but it is also wonderful to be able to get people excited about poetry and show them each corner of it. I genuinely love the heck out of this thing. I am a poetry nerd through and through. To be able to share this passion and make a career from it is a blessing, and I won’t ever take it for granted. Everything in my life is a result of poetry. If I didn’t love Tyler Knott Gregson’s poetry, I would never have signed up for his course; I would never have met him or his wife Sarah, nor would I have met Sav (my fiance) and a bunch of lifelong friends. I am still determining how I ever survived without any of them. Also, do you know how crazy it is to have one of your favourite poets also be your best friend and send you all of their poems? It’s unbelievable. He’s one of the greats, hands down. I got his book ‘Wildly Into The Dark’ tattooed on my arm. I am putting out a book this year titled ‘Bears, Bears, Bears’ and if he doesn’t get a bear tattoo there will be trouble. Without poetry, I wouldn’t be where I am, I wouldn’t be who I am, and I wouldn’t have any idea what to do with myself. I took a left turn on this question, so let’s keep steering. If you are reading this and you don’t like poetry, give it a chance beyond the classics and the school curriculum stuff. There is a whole world of poetry out there, and I promise there is something for everybody. Everybody includes you.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ashraymondjames.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ashraymondjames
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAshraymondjames/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/ashraymonjames
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ashraymondjames?feature=shared