This interview has been edited and condensed.
For Poetess Jess, the road to being a spoken word artist wasn’t something she sought after, but rather, she merged with it after taking a chance at rap. Her gift of speaking and love of UK rap and grime music created space for her unique sound and style in the UK when spoken word poetry was uncommon.
This was a journey that started at a young age for Poetess Jess.
Growing up, going to church with her grandmother opened her eyes to the vibrant world of preaching and teaching. The act of sharing with others what she had learned played a major role in the Poetess Jess we know and see today. Writing and sharing with fervent conviction, Poetess Jess was one of the finalists for How Sweet The Sound UK.
Resolute Magazine had the chance to talk with the spoken word artist, getting into her start as a spoken word artist, her life in church, and the passion she has for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So, tell me a little bit about yourself. What was your upbringing like? How did you come to Christ?
So, my parents were not saved. But I used to go to church a lot with my grandmother. Her brother was a pastor of a church. We called it the old school church, I think those were the Windrush generation. When the church was in their houses, and they weren’t able to purchase buildings. They set up a small church called the Healing Church of God in Christ, and my grandmother, my Nan's brother, was the pastor of that church.
Even though my parents at the time were not Christians. We would go to church there. We were blessed there, and we were dedicated there. I grew up in that church with my grandma, and I used to love hearing the word. I just like how the word was dissected, it was really something for me. Later, I want to say 2021, my mom got saved. She went to a convention, and that was in South London. In 2003, my dad got saved, and that was a big thing because my dad was on drugs.
I remember when I was in school, I used to speak about God a lot. I would get told off a lot for talking a lot about Christ in schools. I used to talk about Revelation and Jesus coming back. It would scare people. When I got into High School, I argued with a teacher. And it was about the whole Adam and Eve, and he believed in evolution, and I believed in Adam and Eve. And he [told me] that I couldn’t come into his lesson and try to convince people that Adam and Eve were real without any proof. I got sent out of his class for that. A lot of the time, everywhere I went, I spoke about Christ. I wasn’t a poet, but I spoke about Christ. I had the gift of speaking.
So, in a Christian context, preaching and teaching in a way?
Yeah! You know what, back then I didn’t see it that way.
Yeah?
But now, looking back on it, you could say that. Yeah. I would just use to talk about God, and any debate I was involved in. Whether it would be about the Earth being flat or God not existing, I was always involved in that conversation. People would always bring the conversation to me. Don’t know what it was, but looking back, there was something there. We would say it was the Holy Spirit.
I wouldn’t say that, cause you asked, “When did I come to know Christ?” I think being little and being in that church community, you know. There’s a knowing. Although I knew, I can’t remember when I got up and said the prayer of salvation. When the church would say collectively, you just say it. Every Sunday, I’m always giving my life to God again.
What interested you in blending your style of preaching and teaching in your art form with grime music?
When I was in high school, my cousin was–and this is how the whole poetry gets into it––a grime artist. It’s a genre of UK underground rap. I would say the beat of it comes from garage music. It’s essentially UK rap. Have you watched “Top Boy”?
I had a real love for writing lyrics and writing songs as just to merge those two. I loved to write. Back in school, instead of searching for the lyrics online, I would handwrite them. There was something about writing lyrics, reading lyrics, and digesting it… We sing songs, and we like the melody, we like the instrumental, but we don’t know what the song is saying. Whereas I liked to know what the song was saying.
I haven’t watched it yet.
So, one of the main characters is my cousin. Growing up, when UK rap or grime music was hot, my cousin was part of that rise and the pioneering of grime music. Everybody knew, and I liked grime music. And what I liked about grime music was the breakdown of puns, the breakdown of wordplay, metaphors, and similes, and how it was used. And how people would skillfully use these literary devices to cross each other's mum’s or make fun of each other. I found it clever. And I was like, “This is hard!” So, I wanted to do that because in high school, it was mainly boys who did that. And what they would do is they would come together and have this instrumental beat, and they would go ‘round and they would, on the instrumental, spit bars… it would be a quick 8 bars that they would spit each. It would draw attention on the playground, on our break, or on our lunch break. And, I remember going home writing bars wanting to do what the guys were doing. And I said, I’m going to join you for one lunch break. And they were excited because my cousin, Kano, they knew he was my cousin, so they were like, Yeah, must run in the family.
I went home, I wrote my bars. I was practicing my bars. They would use different instrumentals. And this instrumental it was called “Ghetto Coyote”, and it had a unique sound to it. I remember that day, it was break time, and I said, Yeah, I’m ready. And all the guys were coming around, and they were bobbing their heads, and the instrumental was on, and everyone was [had their] gun fingers in the air, and we had this thing called “skanking” where you would kind of move to the beat of the instrumentals. So, gun fingers, skanking, everybody’s getting ready, heads are bobbing. We're going in a circle, and I’m a part of the circle. What happens is it draws attention, because when people use the wordplay and the puns, there’s excitement. So, you’ve gotta have the punchiest of lines. And I remember it got to me, and it flopped. Couldn’t do it on beat. I could not spit bars on beat. It was shameful. It was so shameful.
I remember going home, and I told my friend about it, and she laughed. I was like, you’re meant to be consoling me as a friend, and she laughed. And she sent me a link to, at the time, they were called P4CM. So, that was Ezekiel the Poet, and Iamgenetics (Janette…ikz). All of those guys. Poetry was not a UK thing. It was an American thing. So, in the UK, we did not write poetry. When we thought about poetry, we thought about Shakespeare. So, [America] had Def Jam, and there was nothing over here. We didn’t care for it. We weren’t about it. Our thing was UK grime.
So, when she sent me the link, I knew that there was poetry, but I didn’t know that there was poetry to that extent. Of the expression and bringing it to life. That’s when I learned it’s not poetry, it’s spoken word. Because I’ve heard poetry and I’ve read it from a book, but to bring it to life and to make it a story, and I was like, that’s exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. And that’s how I became, more or less, a poet. Even though at the time, I didn’t really feed into it.
I remember I wrote this one poem, and it sounded like UK rap, grime, poetry, preaching, all mixed together. It was called “When Jesus Shows Up”. And I had done that poem everywhere. It was like a one-hit wonder. One hit wonder ‘til one point some guy said to me, Haven’t you got anything else? It’s because I did the poem everywhere. And it’s because I didn’t exercise the gift, and I didn’t really care for the gift because I just thought I liked doing it. I didn’t take it seriously.
You’ve covered quite a bit of ground with your skill for spoken word poetry, from news coverage to award shows, fests, and tours. When you decided to go forward with spoken word, did you expect the world to open itself up to you the way it has?
No. In 2019, I was asked to do a spoken word cypher at the Black Magic Awards, and I accepted, but I wanted to give up. That was because I was comparing my beginning to people’s middles. I kept going, and I was seeing small breakthroughs. And I was like the effort that I’m putting in and what’s happening, it’s not [adding up]. Some people that I started out with in the spoken word scene were soaring.
I remember I was going to give up, and I remember at the show I was backstage with some of those who had done the spoken word cypher, and two of the boys I had done the MOBOs with, and said, This is going to be my last time I do spoken word. They were like, “What are you talking about?! Are you mad?! You can’t stop doing spoken word!” And I was like, yeah, no, it’s not happening. I was looking at numbers, followers, likes, and stuff like that.
About a week after that, I got a call that I was going to be on the MOBOs for 2020.
You went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. What was the road to being admitted into such a prestigious arts institution?
In 2014, I met a lady named Tanya Matthews, and Tanya was starting this ministry called T.I.A. T.I.A. stood for “The Inner Attitude,” and it was all about healing, self-worth, self-esteem, self-respect, and confidence… I was skeptical because, one, I know you, but I don’t know you. Two, what is the end goal?... I didn’t go because I thought I needed healing; I just went because I liked her.
Little did I know, there were things that my spirit became open to. Like, your character and the condition of the heart. And, guarding your heart ‘cause out of it flows the issues of life. Little things, and I was spotting things in my character like not being nice and the root of mommy issues, daddy issues, things like that. That the church don’t teach you. And where I was at the place with the church, it was like Oh! It’s starting to make sense why I acted this way. Or why I did this, and why I’d done that.
So, anyway,... she becomes a mentor. And Tanya now says she wants to put on a play. And she wants to put on a play in one of the theaters in London. Now, one of the things about Tanya and her ministry is that Tanya really listens to the Holy Spirit. At the time, we knew it was the prophetic, but we didn’t know how deep it was. Because in churches, we’re not really open to the prophetic, how Tanya was open to the prophetic.
She says she wants to do this piece called “Broken,” and she says that she’s going to recruit some women at different churches that she’s attended or worked with. And she’s asked me to write the play in spoken word. Now, I’m like, Look, I’ve got one poem. Why do you think that I have the ability to write a whole play? And then she sat me down.
It was me and another young lady who’s also a phenomenal spoken word artist. And she said, “Yeah, I believe you guys can do this.”
So, for me, it was hard. I had not exercised the gift of spoken word. My excuse was that, at the time, I can only write when God tells me to write. When people would say, Can you write this? Can you write that? I would say, No, I can only write when God tells me to write. I found it very hard to write, but I didn’t want to admit that I found it hard to write. So, every week, we would get together and rehearse the play. And in September 2015, we conjured the play called “Broken,” and it was about seven different women in the Bible who had a relatable story of pain, but it was used for purpose. And that was when I was like, Wow, I have the ability to write. Not just that, I had the ability to speak. I saw the gifting in myself.
Fast forward, I was in and out of America. I met a lady in 2013, also. I would stay with her in Indianapolis, learning about servanthood, and learning to serve really. I think that I carried a level of pride, and I think that a lot of that came from not thinking that I was better than anyone, but it was a guard. It was a mask to protect myself from people, church people, who had hurt me. I had to learn humility, servanthood.
I was in and out (of America and the UK) from 2014-2016. And in 2017, Tanya was like, I saw this course, and it's a creative course. A university course. I said to her, I'm not going to Uni. There's no way on God's green earth that I'm going to Uni. She was like, no, but it's a creative course and they're looking for spoken word artists.
We applied to the University. It was called the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I didn't know it was one of the top universities in the UK. We applied while still going to T.I.A. and still doing stuff for different churches as a group. And, I remember I got the email saying, "Congratulations! You have been selected to attend." It was on a conditional offer. And the condition was that I write an essay on identity, and I presented an artistic portfolio. I was like, hold on a second. We're talking about identity.
She set you up.
We had just done a show in one of London's biggest theaters. There's photos of me, videos of me. So, I have this artistic portfolio that was nonexistent prior. And you want me to write about identity, which I'm talking about currently… At the time, I didn't see it being God, but looking back, I'm like, That is divine alignment.
I went to Tanya to get pictures from the show and ask for help to write the essay. I put the artistic portfolio together, wrote the essay, and before I submitted it I sent it to Tanya. When I sent it to the school, during that time, they had invited me to an induction day. So, the induction was made up of two parts. The first part was for everyone that was selected, a group induction. The second part was an interview when I had to perform some work. Now, remember, I only had one poem. Now I've got multiple poems because I've done this [play] with Tanya.
I was like "Before he formed me in the belly, he knew me. Though I be born in sin and shaped in iniquity..." I'd done this poem. And there was a panel of 5 or 6 people. These were people who were in their field, known for what they do.
One of the guys, Jacob Sam-La Rose, whose books were being studied; his poems were being studied in exams, and another woman called Dinah Stab, who's on the TV over here in the UK. I remember I'd done the poem, and she goes, Now, that was amazing! But, I want you to do it again. In my mind, I'm thinking, if it was amazing, why am I doing it again? And she says, I want you to imagine it's just you and me in the room. Nobody else. And what I would do back then is that I also projected my voice and asserted my voice as a mask. So, she was like Just me and you and I remember I had redone the poem, and I just started to cry. She was like, That's what I wanted to see and I was like, I'm definitely not getting into this university. Who cries in their interview?! And then, it was just a waiting game.
I think it was a week before the University would start that I got the email saying You have been accepted onto the course.
How did you become involved with How Sweet The Sound?
I got a lot of rejection for being overqualified because of my gift. So, I thought there's nothing to lose. When I applied for How Sweet The Sound, I remember I sent in the wrong video, so I emailed them... not to say there was anything wrong with that video, I just wanted to show my best. At the time, I was like, This is the better video.
The announcement didn't come, and I was like, "Tanya, I didn't get through." Because I haven't received any announcement. I haven't received an email or anything. She [told me to] wait. And I was like, God, please let them announce who these finalists are.
Lo and behold, I got the email saying "Congratulations!" And I was like Oh my gosh! Wow!
Then, I had the interview, and I asked if they were able to say who the other spoken word artists are, and they weren’t. So, now I'm sweating because when I went to the Royal Albert Hall, [I had learned] that the line-up for spoken word was so good! So many people to choose from. Now I'm like, "Who can it be?"
I went to every Christian poet's [Instagram] that I knew to see if they would give some sort of hint. But nobody was giving hints. So, I thought because nobody's giving hints, I'm not giving hints.
So, I’ve got this wealth of information [that was] bugging me… then I found out who they were and I was like, “Yeah, this is gonna be a good show. A great show!
What would you say was the process for you in finding your voice as a spoken word artist?
When I started going to spoken word nights, I felt like people sounded the same. I felt like we, the UK, tried to copy Americans in terms of cadence. There wasn’t a uniqueness to us. There was a certain cadence that everyone was doing, and it kind of put me off going to open mics.
There was no authenticity, no originality. It was just “The birds, the bees, and the…” it was that sort of sound. And I was like, that’s so Def Jam Poetry. We’re in the UK. Why haven’t we got our own sound? So, because I’m influenced by grime music and I love hearing the Word, and I was into preaching and teaching, I don’t think I did it intentionally, but my poetry was [a mix of] rap, UK grime, preaching all merged.
Then, I looked at the influences of grime artists that I liked. I looked at the influences of preachers that I liked, and my own style, and I just tried to merge [them].
Who are the influences for you in your craft?
I took influence from people like Kano. From people like Bishop Nora Jones, Jackie McCullough, Sheryl Brady, Ghetts, D Doube E… I took all of these different influences, these different sounds, and I just sort of merged them into one to create my own sound.
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Writer Bio:
Shonette Reed is the editor of Resolute Magazine.
Photo courtesy of Poetess Jess’ team.