Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Cornelius.
Ashley, before we jump into specific questions about your organization, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in Colorado Springs and hardly ever say myself represented. As a black woman, the only person who looked like me was my mother so feeling like I belonged in the city, at school, even my neighborhood was never an easy fit for me. I graduated with degrees in Communications and Psychology and honestly had no idea what I wanted to do after college. I applied and was accepted to the El Pomar Foundation as a fellow and spent two years in their program learning about grants, nonprofit management, and developing as a young professional. My time at El Pomar was exceptional and I continued to lean heavily towards the arts in every aspect of my job. I began an externship with an arts organization, Art from Ashes, that provides creative empowerment programs for youth in Denver and upon my completion of the fellowship moved into the Program Manager position full time at Art from Ashes.
I loved the work I did and soon became Program Director, focused on facilitating workshops, selling contracts, and training and managing the featured artists and facilitators. There was no greater joy than working with youth and poetry. We would hire local poets and artists to perform and inspire the youth during the workshop and I drew so much strength and courage from these experiences and started performing poetry myself. I have always written poetry, but never took myself seriously in that arena.
Over time I noticed when the youth would write poetry and shared there was so much conveyed and offered in their poems. As a facilitator, our jobs were to hold space for youth and I realized I wanted to go a step further and provide therapy through artistic expressions for youth. I left my position at Art from Ashes and applied for grad school, and got into the International Disaster Psychology program at DU. During the summer before school started, I took a position in South Hadley, Massachusetts as a teaching counselor focused on poetry at Girls Leadership, a girls empowerment camp. During my time with this organization my love of womxn empowerment, social justice, and the power of loving and advocating for my identity blossomed. The act of teaching young campers the art of self-love, taking up space, and being bold bolstered my own personal journeys. I owe much of my poetic identity to the time I spend with Girls Leadership.
I returned home and started my master’s program and loved it! The focus on cultural humility and psychology provided new perspectives on how to help and support those going through mental health struggles while maintaining respect and reverence for a person’s culture. During my grad school experience, I had my practicum at Denver Health and studied under a music therapist on the adult and inpatient psychiatric units. I witnessed first hand the power music and creative modalities can have on mental health and wellness. It was a powerful tool that allowed patients another means of expression, communication, and healing. I continued my practicum for both years of my program and found poetry therapy as my therapeutic outlet. I focused on the adolescent unit and started providing poetry therapy interventions and truly felt a calling to this work. Upon completion of my master’s degree, I was hired full time at Denver Health on the Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatient Unit as an LPCC and provide poetry therapy interventions and psychotherapeutic groups and individual sessions. And I am in the process of becoming a registered poetry therapist. I am so honored and blessed to be able to mix my creative outlet with my career as a therapist.
While attending grad school I found my own poetry writing was an outlet I could really lean into. With the encouragement of my new partner, Christopher Beasley, I began competing in poetry slams and to my surprise, I won. I won four Hear Here slam poetry competition and was the Colorado Springs Womxn of the World Poetry Slam competition representative. I traveled to Dallas in 2018 and competed among 96 other poets. It was the experience of a lifetime and opened my mind to what poetry could hold for my life. After the competition, I began taking my poetry seriously and started performing at various events around Denver and Colorado Springs. I made my focus to speak about my identity as a black person, as a woman, as a woman of size, and speak honestly and frankly about how I interact with the world. I dedicated every time I spoke as a chance to speak for and with those who’s voices are regularly silenced. I am no on the Speakers Bureau for Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence, I’ve performed at the Colorado Springs Women’s March, Pikes Peak Community College, The Women of Influence award and many other events.
In the fall of 2018, my partner and I transformed Poetry719, a Facebook group founded in 2009 by Phillip J Curtis, into an event organization and began provided three to four poetry events with special focus on people of color and marginalized communities. We host events such as Black Voices Matter, Latinx Voices Matter, Queer People of Color, Listen to Womxn of Color, Disability Awareness to provide community members a chance to share their words in a space where they know they are welcome. Growing up I never saw my identity reflected and we want Poetry719 to be the place where you can come and see someone who looks like you, hear stories like yours and/or experiences and learn about people who are different. We are in our 2nd year as Poetry719 and are gearing up for our second annual poetry festival October 16-20 in Colorado Springs, a five day 17 event festival of all poetry-related events and experiences. And in 2018 we won the Pikes Peak Art Council award for “reoccurring poetry event” for Colorado Black Voices Matter. I am so proud to be the Co-Director of Poetry719 and help our arts community grow.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
This journey has definitely been a rollercoaster. I’ve always known that I want poetry to be apart of my life but it wasn’t easy to make it all come together. One of the biggest challenges was getting over the idea of becoming the dreaded “starving artist.” There’s such a big misconception about art as a career and as a way to make money. I blocked myself from a lot of opportunities because of this phrase, so it took a while to really allow myself to fully say and believe I’m a professional poet. As a fat, black, woman, there are a whole host of obstacles that come with this identity. Being taken seriously is one that has been hard to navigate. Although I have the experience, talent, and education, when I walk into a room there are thousands of stereotypes, biases, and perceptions and cloud who I am. I’ve found I have a short amount of time to prove or disrupt people’s expectations and there will be times when it won’t work.
There will be times when I won’t be able to change someone’s mind about who am I am then the work becomes doing my best despite knowing how people see me and my identity. My poetry directly addresses racism, sexism, prejudice, social justice, police brutality, rape, sex, pleasure and a variety of other taboo topics so many people have directly told me what I’m saying shouldn’t be said or isn’t real. Fighting to protect and assert my voice, especially when my poetry makes people uncomfortable because of the topics, is difficult. When it comes to being the co-director of Poetry719, the big obstacle is money, we are a grass-roots group that provides services to a community so finding ways to crowd-source money to put back in the community is a difficult but necessary obstacle. Since Peotry719 does events like Colorado Black Voices Matter we get tons of messages saying we are being racist, that all lives matter, that we should have an open mic just for black people so even creating spaces for people is met with anger, hostility and resistance. However, we’ve agreed to keep providing these spaces and opportunities despite the ignorance of others. We’re here for the community the black community, the trans community, the Asian community, the queer community, the disabled community and the list continues.
We’d love to hear more about your organization.
Poetry719 is a local poetry organization in Colorado Springs that provides community connection through events and poetry, with a focus to uplift the voices of marginalized communities and people of color. We were founded as a small Facebook group in 2009 by Phillip J Curtis and became an event and community engagement group in 2018. This transformation came largely from realizing there weren’t a lot of spaces for people of color to share their stories or to even be around other people with similar experiences. I am so proud that we are a black-run organization, with large people of color as volunteers and support and that we focus on communities that are often overlooked, but are vibrant and flourishing. Colorado Springs has a strong perception of being largely military, white, and conservative. We wanted to show that there is so much more to Colorado Springs in terms of culture, ethnicity, gender expression, sexuality, religion, politics, and more. We believe that everyone’s voice is valuable, important, and deserves to be heard.
We put on three to four events every month on various topics such as spirituality, womxn of color, grief and loss, as well as our longest-running event, Colorado Black Voices Matter started by Christopher Beasley, which won the “Recurring Poetry Event” award from the Pikes Peak Arts Council in 2018. Last year, we put together our first annual poetry festival and had 11 events across four days. This year, we have expanded to 17events over five days for our 2019 festival on October 16-20! Our call back is “We Do Stuff” because we just want to do stuff that’s fun, and joyful, and important, and valued. Our events span from Nerd Open Mics with costume contests to panels on toxic masculinity through the lens of men of color. We’re known to pay artists, our slogan is “Art Ain’t Free” as we believe art should be valued with money so we pay people who work for us, which is great for those who donate to know their money goes right back into the community.
We’ve all heard, this will be a great opportunity, or the exposure will be great when asked to perform or display our art, but we also have to recognize that art is labor and should be recognized and compensated in the same way as other forms of goods and services. Poetry719 is known for talking about real things and not shying away from topics or ideas. Poetry is revolutionary, it’s a way to have an opinion and we want people to feel safe and share about their journeys. We’re changing the narrative of poetry, it doesn’t have to rhyme it doesn’t have to be sad, or full of bright imagery, I believe poetry is anything you put meaning behind and there are so many ways that poetry can manifest. The most important thing about poetry is that it comes from you and is an extension of who you are. Finally, the community knows us for being a group that holds space for identities. I think it’s beautiful that identity is in the name of our events and that’s not something you always see, the intentional act of holding space for groups of people.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
As a professional poet, representing Colorado Springs at the Womxn of the World Poetry Slam, performing at the Women of Influence Award, hosting the Denim Day open mic which focused on sexual assault awareness, working with poetry therapy interventions daily with youth, and being able to be a model of possibility for other black girls whoever felt out of place like I did when I was younger.
As Poetry719 I am so proud that we put on a full festival in 2018 and are doing it again this year. We had a dream to provide an intensive look into poetry in the springs and we’ve made it happen with little money and immense support and donation from the community and our partners. Winning the Recurring Poetry Event” award from the Pikes Peak Arts Council in 2018 was incredible to be recognized at such a high level. I’m most proud of the poets we have seen flourish and grow across the events. Many people who started coming to our events have then become featured poets and gone on to create chapbooks and perform across the city. We also do fundraisers and drives for local nonprofits and I’m always so proud and happy that we can use our platform as a way to connect with the community and those in need. Overall, my proudest moment is just the fact that we exist. We were just three people who say a need and without any money or big clout started hosting events and the community supported us and has made it possible for us to hold events, pay artists, create a festival, and give back. I am continually humbled by how much our community has encouraged and been there as we grow and build.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.poetry719.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poetry719cos/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Poetry719/?view_public_for=2141029099471706
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Poetry7191
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