Today we’d like to introduce you to LaSpeaks Volumes.
LaSpeaks Volumes, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It’s still quite unreal that I’m even at this point. If you asked me ten years ago, I would have never seen myself on stage, I would have never seen my words and work influencing and impacting people’s lives. I started off writing for myself, expressing feelings I felt I couldn’t reveal to my family. I used it as therapy. Then my family would see I was writing all the time and asked me to write poems for my relative’s funerals. Even then, the only time I recited one of those poems in person was at my Godfather’s funeral. But it took my best friends to see my writing and see more in it than I saw for myself and they threw me on stage. The rush I got from the feeling of people being able to relate to me, it created a drive in me that made me want to continue to share my own and other people’s stories in my writing. I still sometimes find myself wanting to be in a shell because it’s my nature but I understand God gave me a gift and it’s not just for me, it’s for the people. It keeps me going.
Has it been a smooth road?
It hasn’t been the smoothest road, no. Like I said, I started off doing poetry for myself and grew to love it because of what my work did for other people. The struggles came in when people tried to capitalize off my gift and made me feel like that should also be a priority of mine. It made my vision clouded. I forgot my love for my craft and in forgetting why I started writing, it caused creative blocks that I thought I wouldn’t be able to overcome. I never started writing to make money but in becoming more solidified in my craft, I see God has attached those opportunities to feed my family and provide for myself to my gift. What I had to realize is that those opportunities come naturally and if it has to be forced and becomes the motivation for me to write, I don’t want to and won’t attach my name to that.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am a writer, an artist, a poet at her best. I’ve learned not to put my craft in a box because I’m actually thriving in different ways through not just limiting myself to doing poetry. But poetry is where I found myself, my best self and that is what I’m most proud of. I wrote my first published book, “Naked: A Woman’s Unfiltered Truth in Poetry & Testimony,” and the lives it’s touched and the way people have opened up to me, after reading the book, it’s made me become a better individual. It’s made me accountable for what I put out. After releasing my book, it just revealed how much my voice mattered and it turned me up a notch. I think that’s also what sets me apart from others, I’m completely selfless in my writing and I remain intentional because my work will outlive me and I want it to be known for the messages I put out and to be a true embodiment of my character, my humility. Humility is something I hold high, I never want to look at people as “following me,” or fans. I take the following aspect and switch it: for every follow, that’s another soul giving me the privilege to influence them. I take what I do as a responsibility.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I think our city, L.A., specifically where I’m from, the Crenshaw District, thrives and needs poets, messengers, and leaders. It is the best place to start, right in the heart of the people, listening to the streets so you can know what they need from you as an artist.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laspeaksvolumes/
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