february 15.2002 • Jaaft ML35
PEOPLE
.............. ▼..............
O
ne year ago Aisha Ayers was
walking around thinking, “1
^
3
Slam bang
So who has the answer to who god
is?
Aisha Ayers’ overnight journey
to slam poet champ and recording artist
know that I’m an artist, but 1 „
don’t really know what I’m
\
supposed to do.” She’s since figured ?
by L isa B radshaw
it out.
I
The 2001 Portland Poetry Slam *
Champion just released her first
CD, Letters to My Soul, a collection
of spoken-word poems.
Ayers moved to Portland from
her hometown of Sacramento,
Calif., with her then-girlfriend in
1998. Her plan was to study and
learn to make music. “O f course,
nothing ever turns out the way you
think it will, right F she smiles.
She soon gave up school and
embarked on a series of part-time
jobs, constantly musing about what
she really should be doing, all the
while “scribbling in my journal at
home.”
Aisha Ayers can write poetry anywhere
Early last year a friend con
vinced her to come along with her
to try out for the Portland Com mu
Then she realized she’d have to commit
nity College production of The
some of those scribbled poems in her journal to
Vagina Monologues. She was told one part was
memory. Which she did.
left— Dominatrix, the play’s most infamous
After that, she moved on to an all-women’s
role— which she landed, much to the delight
slam event, and an alarm went off. “1 was like,
of audiences.
‘Oh,’ ” she remembers. “It was good.” Good
“That’s how my life is,” the 23-year-old
enough to gamer her first place in last spring’s
explains. “1 don’t get into a play except 1 have
Poetry Slam.
to have all these orgasms onstage.”
From dazed and confused to slam champ in
Soon after, this same friend convinced Ayers
three months. It amazes the artist herself, and she
to perform at International Women’s Day. The
flashes a grin that lights up the world: “I’ve never
application asked, “What do you do?” Ayers
done this before. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
recalls. Dawing on that stage performance, “I
kind of shakily put, ‘spoken-word artist.’ ”
I think about it a lot.
My dad’s a preacher after all
And he taught me well about
what the
Bible said I teas supposed to be
when I grew up.
Unfortunately
l ended up running away from
home with a girlfriend
and finding my love and my god
through my writing
This is my art.
A
yers’ work is reflective of her
experience— being queer in a
straight world, black in a white
world and a woman in a man’s
world. It’s a lot of ground to cover,
and it’s highly personal ground.
That can be tough stuff to
expose, she admits, but “at the same
time, I don’t feel that this is my
choice completely. I’m not doing
this for any other reason except I
feel led to.”
She’s also convinced listeners are no fools.
“Mostly, I’m saying everything that everybody
else knows...they’re going through so many of
the [same] things.... For them I’ve almost kind
of read them instead of m e.... If anything, I
think the audience members might feel a little
more naked than I do,” she laughs.
My hands are inside your body
mastering your divide
I want to feel you lover
ride this out
Spread around my hands
123 — One finger for each deity in this trilogy
One for love, two for fear
and three for souls welded beyond intelligent
human control
A
yers can feel a little bogged down in all
those identities of hers. Dating white
women is sometimes challenging, particu
larly when a partner’s family has to deal with
“lesbian” as well as “interracial.”
This, too, becomes part of her makeup, part
of her work, and she has learned to embrace it.
“What else would I have to give.7” she questions.
“Because that’s your thing— whatever is your
struggle is your gift. My mom always says that ‘to
whom much is given, much is required.’ ’’
She and business partner Emily Huffman
started Venus RyTrack Records last year and
immediately released Letters to My Soul as their
first project. The two plan to record other multi
cultural women artists “because we’re under
represented,” Ayers insists. “We went to [see]
Medusa; she’s a hip-hop artist from Los Angeles,
and her show changed my life. ..we’re so starved
for this.. .1 want to find a hip-hop artist out there
who’s like some fierce little girl M.C. who
doesn’t have to worry about me hitting on her or
trying to get her to be a backup singer when she
needs to be frontin’ her own thing. I want some
body to have a chance to do it.” Amen. JH
L etters to M y S oul can be found at Music
Millennium, In Other Words, Reverb Records,
Reading Frenzy and It’s My Pleasure.
LlSA B radshaw is the Culture Editor of Just Out
and can be reached at lisa@justout.com.