We recently connected with Barbara Fant and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Barbara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
When I was younger, I started writing poetry. I always say that I found poetry when I was really young, but poetry found me when I was a teenager. I lost my mother when I was 15 years old and was a really angry teenager. I started writing poetry as a way to release and as a form of prayer. It became a way of communicating for me and a way of processing my emotions. I used to submit my poetry online to try and get it published and would look up underground poetry battles online. One day, I was watching HBO Def Poetry Jam when I was in high school and I saw a poet online named Sunni Patterson. When I saw her perform, I said, “I don’t know exactly what she did, but whatever that it is, I want to do that for the rest of my life.” When I moved from Youngstown, Ohio to Columbus, Ohio for college, I found an open mic spot. I started visiting and eventually got onstage because of my mentor Is Said. I got onstage to perform a poem when I was 18 years old and I haven’t left the stage since that time.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Barbara Fant. I am a poet, writer, performer, and healer. I like to consider myself a bridge-builder, joy-keeper, and light-bearer. I am originally from Youngstown, Ohio. I was raised in a Baptist church and have been in Catholic schools since kindergarten, so that has had a really huge influence on me. After my mother passed, I had a challenging time communicating my emotions and my feelings, but I knew I needed to get them out. I would go to church and not necessarily understand what pastor was saying, so I would go to church and take notes, and I would come back home and take those notes and write them into a poem. That became my way of processing and of understanding. I use to write my prayers to God and they always would come out like poems. When I moved from Youngstown to Columbus, Ohio, I found an open mic. I got onstage to perform a poem, later started competing in slam and that turned into national competitions and performances across the US, and that has turned into over 15 years of writing and performing. I’m the author of two published poetry collections, “Paint, Inside Out” (2010) and “Mouths of Garden (2022), one self-published chapbook, “Aligning Waters and Bearing Stars” (2019), and a poetry devotional titled “The Joy Poetry Devotional” (2023).
Much of my work has been inside youth and adult correctional institutions, teaching art as a form of healing. When I was 19, one of my first jobs was working as an artist assistant for an organization that went into youth correctional facilities. It truly changed my life and unearthed a deep passion and a deep calling for me. For years, I have been working as an artist inside youth and adult institutions teaching art as a form of healing. I also went on to work with individuals in reentry, survivors of domestic violence, survivors of human trafficking, and individuals in active recovery.
I am most proud of being able to provide tools for people to tell their stories and to people live out their purpose. In April of 2020, I invited about fourteen Black and Brown women poets in Central Ohio to go on journey with me to write a poem a day. A year later, we became the Black Women Rise Poetry Collective. It is now a program of the newly formed nonprofit organization, the Bloom Life Foundation Inc. Our mission is to use healing-informed arts practices to help people live out their full purpose.
Bloom stands for Breathing Light Onto Other’s Midnights. That is my mission in life. My mission is to breathe light onto other’s midnights and to help them find healing and wholeness through the gift of poetry. I hope that people know that they can truly find healing in life. I strive to help people understand that they are called to something great, that there is purpose in who they are, and that no matter what they have been through in life, they can heal, they can blossom, they can bloom.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
One of the most rewarding aspects of being an artist or a creative is that we get the chance to share our hearts and our gifts with the world. I am really grateful and feel really blessed that I get to use the gifts that God has given me to help bring light and joy to the lives of other people, and I get be paid for that! To me, that is the greatest gift. It is not always easy, and as an artist, there are always constant struggles and battles that arise. However, to be able to be yourself fully and to give what is inside of you to the world, and to live out your life fully on and in purpose, is such a wonderful gift.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I believe that society can help support artists by continuing to uplift us and hire us. We of course need your financial support through tickets and merchandise sales, but we also would love the support online. Communities can help write reviews of books, albums, or other products and tell other people about the work. I believe something that would also be really helpful is for organizations to hire artists and creatives for their work and projects. They can commission us to do work for their annual events or programs or hire us as directors and leaders in their organizations. Many times, institutions are looking for new ways to stay relevant, creative, and on the cutting edge. Hiring artists and creatives to strategically plan and build is one way to do this. Of course, we also need the support of communities online and publicly. Please buy our work, share our, work, and when possible, sow a seed into our work. These are a few ways to help maintain a thriving creative ecosystem.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.barbarafant.com
- Instagram: @iambarbarafant
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbara.fant.127
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-fant-mfa-8114b633/
- Twitter: @iambarbarafant
- Youtube: @iambarbarafant
- Linktree: linktr.ee/barbarafant@barbarafant
Image Credits
Stephanie Matthews John Ray Blake Newton Julian Harris April Sunami (Artist for cover art)