We recently connected with Chev Guthrie and have shared our conversation below.

Chev, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

For as long as I can remember I could always rap and write really well but never took either seriously.

When I got to college I was looking for something to do that wasn’t party related and joined the poetry club.

The Club President thought I sounded pretty good and entered me in a slam they were having… I had no idea what a slam was. How does it work? What do you feed it? The day of the slam gets close and I am in a full panic. I haven’t wrote anything, I don’t know how to write a slam poem. I’m about to embarrass myself infront of the entire school. I had liked girls my whole life and they just recently started liking me back this was not the time to get embarrassed.

I get there, sign my name at the very bottom of the list so I could go last, I sit down (somehow I end up right next to my ex girlfriend but that’s another story). And I write a poem. And it was, TERRIBLE. Ok terrible to what I write now but at the time people thought I did ok

I ended up being one of the winners of the slam and getting sent to an event called CUPSI. (College Union Poetry Slam Invitational)

And I haven’t put poetry down since

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Chev, getting into my industry was the last thing in life I ever did by accident.

I am a professional spoken word artist, slam champion, event host, writing coach, and book editor.

I am absolutely phenomenal at describing anything but myself so you’ll probably have to check out a poem. .

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After my 3rd year of college I dropped out for financial reasons. I became homeless shortly after. I did poems on the same train I slept on to eat most days. On better days I entered poetry slams on the lower eastside of Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, the Bronx, Connecticut or anywhere else I could find my way to get to, to have enough money keep myself going. I kept it a secret from most of my friends for around 2 years. Some days I got so exhausted I’d fall asleep walking up the street in and would wake up cause my arm scraped against somebody’s gate. Through my art I was able to move, to sustain, to compete and connect nationally and now I host regularly at the most famous poetry venue in the state of Georgia.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Pay them. Pay them early. Pay them often. Pay them extra. The “starving artist” is a trope that should no longer exist. We surround ourselves with too much and consume too much art daily for it to go undervalued. When an artist is a necessity to a space they should be treated as such without hesitation. Culture allows for people to often throw events and think about equipment as a mandatory expense, security as a mandatory expense, venue space as a mandatory expense, but the artists who fill the space as optional. Because we do this for “love”. And I definitely do it for love. I do poems all my poems for free, the money just tells me where to do them.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: chev_toomuch
• Facebook: Chevon Guthrie
• Linkedin: Chevon Guthrie