Toronto Star Referrer

More than ‘fluff,’ this poetry club uses art to heal

DEVNA BOSE

N.C. Shane Manier remembers finding the coffee shop nearly empty — the ideal place 10 years ago to perform a poem she’d written about her own suicidal thoughts.

In the poem, called “Sitting Beside Death on the Fence with a Pack of Cigarettes,” Manier cast Death as a main character, who challenges her to reconsider. She’d just finished her turn at the Lincolnton, N.C., coffee shop’s open mic when an older man walked up to her.

They locked eyes, just for a second.

Then he threw his arms around her and started crying.

“He said he didn’t know there was going to be poetry there tonight,” she remembers. “He had just come to pick up some food, go home and take his own life.

“He told me he wasn’t going to do that, because he heard that poem.”

That moment, Manier realized how powerful poetry could be.

“I was just on fire for it after that,” she said. “I realized that poetry could not only heal me, but by sharing my story, it could heal others, too.

“It feels very much like real community when you share a piece you wrote that explores a deep, vulnerable part of yourself and to get a response back. That connection of our humanity that’s happening is so beautiful because we’re allowing ourselves not to be defined by any judgment.”

That same year, Manier founded Guerilla Poets, and the organization started performing poetry in flash mobs throughout Charlotte — eventually expanding to perform in classrooms and shelters and retirement centres. Over the past decade, Guerilla Poets has gone on to span continents and art forms, with 18 artists leading programs in the United States and 12 in the United Kingdom.

The non-profit wants to teach communities how to empower themselves through art — whether it’s poetry, painting or performance — especially marginalized communities.

Several organizations in Charlotte have partnerships and contracts with the group, including Time Out Youth, an LGBTQ+ youth community organization, and The Relatives, a crisis centre for homeless youth.

And the organization still performs their own poetry at open mics. The third anthology of the collective’s work will be available in February.

Typically, through a monthly program, members of the collective stop by and host workshops and performances, pairing an art form with a personal development skill, which can vary depending on the demographic they’re working with. And in addition to performing and teaching, they’ve held clothing and art drives around town.

Tarik Kiley, who grew up writing raps as a teenager, started performing poetry with the group years ago.

He said while leading those personal development workshops, he’s struck by how much the art brings out of the attendees.

“The kids say sometimes that they don’t want to participate,” he said. “I think they’re just trying to give me a hard time. I tell them they can stay for an hour and do nothing instead, and when they get engaged, their defence mechanisms disappear.

“They just talk about their lives.” Manier said the kids often walk in with their hoodies — and defences — up. And they leave the workshops changed.

“You can tell that they’ve just been waiting for a space to talk about what they’re going through,” she said. “And it’s really powerful to be able to see that in just one session.”

And art, she knows through personal experience, allows people to work through their trauma in healthy ways.

“What art does is it allows the body to get out of fight or flight. It’s such a powerful tool for someone who has experienced trauma,” she said. “A lot of the teams that I work with are violent because that’s the only way their body knows how to respond. If your body is trapped in trauma, that’s the only response you know how to do.

“It feels like you don’t have a choice … and so it feels like you’re constantly being punished for being traumatized. But if you can show them that they have the ability to change that, it can completely change the trajectory of their life.”

Poetry has been used throughout history as a means of protest.

It’s that power that Manier hopes to harness through Guerilla Poets, as well as equipping the community with other tools to sustain themselves. The group’s website includes a section with information on natural recipes and other street survival tips.

“In poetry, there’s a lot of activism … But usually there’s no call to action at the end of it,” she said. “You’re just left with a crowd that’s all energized, but they don’t know what to do with that energy. One thing we realized is that if you empower people with knowledge and inspiration, you’re empowering that individual to go forth and empower their community.”

Another longtime member Andi Porter said that many people view art as “fluff,” but it has the potential to be much more than that.

“It’s transformative. It’s healing,” she said. “It helps people to express themselves in ways that are sometimes too deep for words.”

Manier said the group knows the power that poetry and art has to change people’s lives. Their mission is spreading that message.

“One of the things that we have always wanted to do from the beginning is serve, uplift and inform,” she said. “We just want to leave the world a better place through our art forms.”

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You can tell that they’ve just been waiting for a space to talk about what they’re going through. And it’s really powerful to be able to see that in just one session.

SHANE MANIER FOUNDER OF GUERILLA POETS

CULTURE | LIFE

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2022-01-17T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-17T08:00:00.0000000Z

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