D.C. Poet Brings Sustenance, Connection, and Humanity to the Spoken Word

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By Jailene Adorno

When Elizabeth Acevedo was growing up, she was fascinated by hip hop and storytelling, and nothing combines the two quite as well as slam poetry. You’ll connect with her words as she reflects on life and current events, recites the history of her people, and explains what it means to not only be a woman, but also a person of color in today’s world.

With each and every poem she writes, comes a story. And with these stories, she invites others in to see her life, her feelings, her thoughts. Each recitation comes with an undeniable truth that some of us are often too afraid to admit. That’s what’s so refreshing and genuine about Acevedo’s poetry—it’s real and it hits you hard. It makes you feel everything, all at once.

“I don’t want people to walk away thinking, ‘that poet is traumatized’ or ‘poetry is traumatizing,’” says Acevedo. “See the strength and vulnerability of it, get to know me well through it.”

Middle school was when Acevedo first started writing, high school was when she made her way toward slam poetry, and college was when she created her own major so that she could combine her love for writing, poetry, and the performing arts.

“I was in middle school writing my little raps in my notebook,” says Acevedo with a laugh. “Between twelve and fourteen, I was figuring out what it means to perform.”

Elizabeth Acevedo graduated from George Washington University as a Performing Arts major in 2010 and she later went on to receive her masters from the University of Maryland in Creative Writing. It was at the University of Maryland that she taught writing for three years.

While teaching and beginning to tour, Acevedo started holding workshops. Today her workshops, such as Identity Out Loud, What I Never Said, and A Small Needful Fact focus on culture, race, and feminism.

“It’s about identity, it’s about speaking back…it’s okay to talk at people,” says Acevedo. “But sometimes you need to let people unpack their own stuff. It makes it accessible for students to start their own writing.”

Acevedo’s work goes way beyond her performances and teachings. Her chapbook of poetry Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths was released in September of 2016. Come 2018, her young adult novel The Poet X will be published by HarperCollins. The Poet X will tell the story of a fifteen year old, Dominican-American girl who discovers the many wonders of slam poetry. As a result of this new exploration, she starts sneaking off to poetry slams and starts finding her voice.  

“I’ve always secretly wanted to be a novelist,” says Acevedo. “I had too many story ideas that were too big for poems. And I loved fiction in a way that was different from my love for poetry.”

Despite all of this success, Acevedo remains humble and continues to share her love of reading and writing with people from all over. She writes with the idea of trying to figure out what it is about her story that she doesn’t understand about herself.

“I don’t feel like I’ve reached a certain acclaim. I’m just keeping my head down and thinking of my next moves,” says Acevedo.

Over the years, she has received a lot of different advice about how to approach poetry, but there was one piece of advice in particular that really stuck with her.

“I had a professor in college who said not to get too excited about an idea, but about experiences,” Acevedo says.

In other words, sometimes having an idea isn’t enough—there needs to be more sustenance, connection, and humanity. Acevedo said that having that initial idea is great, but that from there you need to build on it, mold it into something real.

“Make sure that longevity is achieved by writing the work that moves you,” she says.
Be sure to check out Elizabeth Acevedo and her chapbook Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths.