Ebony Stewart

Ebony Stewart Kisses Fear on the Mouth
'Love Letters to Balled Fists' puts slam poetry on the printed page
By Amy Gentry, 11:11AM, Wed. Feb. 27
When Ebony Stewart wrote her first poem, she had barely spoken a word for almost a year. She was 8 years old, and her parents were going through a messy divorce. “I went to a psychiatrist and she handed me this composition journal and was like, 'Write whatever you want to say.'” The words gave her a voice, and she hasn’t stopped speaking – or writing – since.

So you could say a lot has gone into the award-winning slam poet’s debut book, Love Letters to Balled Fists (Timber Mouse, $15). The book release party, which Timber Mouse founder Kevin Burke calls "an extravaganza," will take place at 7:30pm this Thursday at the Spiderhouse Ballroom. Stewart, who started racking up awards in the Austin slam poetry scene shortly after graduating from Texas State University in 2007 and was named Best Slam Poet at the 2011 National Poetry Awards, will perform poems from the book, accompanied by live music and capoeira, a hybrid of Afro-Brazilian martial arts and dance. Slam poets Amir Safi, Jomar Valentin, and Lacey Roop, whose book And Then Came the Flood was Timber Mouse’s first release in January 2012, will be the opening acts.

Dubbed “Gully Princess” by fellow slam poets shortly after she started performing in 2007, Stewart says she has been a performer “almost as long as I’ve been a girl and been black.” She has described her own style as "beasty"; onstage, her commanding, magnetic stage presence belies her willowy frame. “I love to feel like a giant on stage," she says. "When I go to my mic check, I always tell the sound crew, 'Hey y'all, I like to sound like a giant.'" According to Burke, it works: “She can get up there and say something very calmly and quietly, but it is just as loud and hits you just as hard as somebody yelling something into a megaphone, into the biggest amplifier ever."

When asked why the name Gully Princess suits her, she thinks for a moment. “Well, I’m not a girly-girl, but I got some girly ways. Like, I think pink is an amazing color. Fuchsia is brilliant. But I’m also very red – like sit down, get out of my face.” She laughs. “I care about my hair. And then I have this really rugged, raggedy side, like, I don’t give a shit what I got on.”

This is the side of her that got her in trouble from time to time as a young woman growing up in the city of Baytown near Houston, where most of her family still lives. In the poem “Tomboy,” she recalls a neighborhood woman saying, “She got mo’ pants than she got dresses, gone forget she a girl.” In the poem, Stewart rebuts: “Wearin’ pants don’t make you a boy. / And they don’t hear you right when you got on a dress.”

Stewart almost always writes from her own life, crafting her words to resonate with audiences who may or may not have shared her background and experiences. Relationships are an ongoing theme in her work, whether she’s describing the tenderness of being freshly in love in the poem "Hands in Pockets" (“I’d like to be the bristled brush you use to lay down your waves”) or the complicated struggle of a woman to own her sexuality amid “the bonesface of misery and bending knees and yanked hair" in “A Human Being Lives Here."

Other poems explore complicated intersections of race and gender, as in the poem "Village," where she rails against a culture that romanticizes the entanglement of sex and violence: “Where was your village / when they gapped her wide, / left auto-tune residue on her thighs, / called her bitch, and poked her face?” In “Domestic,” she sends quietly damning messages to the community who unwittingly sustained her physical abuse by a boyfriend: “For the boy on the basketball court who started a fight with my ex-boyfriend and told him he hits like a girl, / to prove you wrong he now hits girls, too.”

The “balled fists” of the title appear in several poems, and Stewart vehemently defends her own anger: “Poets who think I don’t know how to be vulnerable, that want me to unball my fists, / I am protecting myself. / You should’ve seen what happened when I didn’t.” But above all, Stewart describes her spoken-word poetry as a fierce romance with life itself: “I gotta French kiss fear with this mouth.” This vulnerability renders her poems poignant even when they are vibrating with rage.

Determining the shape of the poem on the page – where to break lines, for example – can be new territory for a slam poet, even a practiced wordsmith like Stewart, who double-majored in English and communications. Accustomed to writing for her eyes only and letting the words come to life at the microphone, Stewart drew confidence from the fact that her editors at Timber Mouse were both friends and fellow performance poets. "I respect them and trust them enough to be like, 'OK, that's cool. If you think that's what it needs, let's do that.'"

As a publisher of spoken-word poetry, Burke - Austin Chronicle

Ebony Stewart Kisses Fear on the Mouth
'Love Letters to Balled Fists' puts slam poetry on the printed page
By Amy Gentry, 11:11AM, Wed. Feb. 27
When Ebony Stewart wrote her first poem, she had barely spoken a word for almost a year. She was 8 years old, and her parents were going through a messy divorce. “I went to a psychiatrist and she handed me this composition journal and was like, 'Write whatever you want to say.'” The words gave her a voice, and she hasn’t stopped speaking – or writing – since.

So you could say a lot has gone into the award-winning slam poet’s debut book, Love Letters to Balled Fists (Timber Mouse, $15). The book release party, which Timber Mouse founder Kevin Burke calls "an extravaganza," will take place at 7:30pm this Thursday at the Spiderhouse Ballroom. Stewart, who started racking up awards in the Austin slam poetry scene shortly after graduating from Texas State University in 2007 and was named Best Slam Poet at the 2011 National Poetry Awards, will perform poems from the book, accompanied by live music and capoeira, a hybrid of Afro-Brazilian martial arts and dance. Slam poets Amir Safi, Jomar Valentin, and Lacey Roop, whose book And Then Came the Flood was Timber Mouse’s first release in January 2012, will be the opening acts.

Dubbed “Gully Princess” by fellow slam poets shortly after she started performing in 2007, Stewart says she has been a performer “almost as long as I’ve been a girl and been black.” She has described her own style as "beasty"; onstage, her commanding, magnetic stage presence belies her willowy frame. “I love to feel like a giant on stage," she says. "When I go to my mic check, I always tell the sound crew, 'Hey y'all, I like to sound like a giant.'" According to Burke, it works: “She can get up there and say something very calmly and quietly, but it is just as loud and hits you just as hard as somebody yelling something into a megaphone, into the biggest amplifier ever."

When asked why the name Gully Princess suits her, she thinks for a moment. “Well, I’m not a girly-girl, but I got some girly ways. Like, I think pink is an amazing color. Fuchsia is brilliant. But I’m also very red – like sit down, get out of my face.” She laughs. “I care about my hair. And then I have this really rugged, raggedy side, like, I don’t give a shit what I got on.”

This is the side of her that got her in trouble from time to time as a young woman growing up in the city of Baytown near Houston, where most of her family still lives. In the poem “Tomboy,” she recalls a neighborhood woman saying, “She got mo’ pants than she got dresses, gone forget she a girl.” In the poem, Stewart rebuts: “Wearin’ pants don’t make you a boy. / And they don’t hear you right when you got on a dress.”

Stewart almost always writes from her own life, crafting her words to resonate with audiences who may or may not have shared her background and experiences. Relationships are an ongoing theme in her work, whether she’s describing the tenderness of being freshly in love in the poem "Hands in Pockets" (“I’d like to be the bristled brush you use to lay down your waves”) or the complicated struggle of a woman to own her sexuality amid “the bonesface of misery and bending knees and yanked hair" in “A Human Being Lives Here."

Other poems explore complicated intersections of race and gender, as in the poem "Village," where she rails against a culture that romanticizes the entanglement of sex and violence: “Where was your village / when they gapped her wide, / left auto-tune residue on her thighs, / called her bitch, and poked her face?” In “Domestic,” she sends quietly damning messages to the community who unwittingly sustained her physical abuse by a boyfriend: “For the boy on the basketball court who started a fight with my ex-boyfriend and told him he hits like a girl, / to prove you wrong he now hits girls, too.”

The “balled fists” of the title appear in several poems, and Stewart vehemently defends her own anger: “Poets who think I don’t know how to be vulnerable, that want me to unball my fists, / I am protecting myself. / You should’ve seen what happened when I didn’t.” But above all, Stewart describes her spoken-word poetry as a fierce romance with life itself: “I gotta French kiss fear with this mouth.” This vulnerability renders her poems poignant even when they are vibrating with rage.

Determining the shape of the poem on the page – where to break lines, for example – can be new territory for a slam poet, even a practiced wordsmith like Stewart, who double-majored in English and communications. Accustomed to writing for her eyes only and letting the words come to life at the microphone, Stewart drew confidence from the fact that her editors at Timber Mouse were both friends and fellow performance poets. "I respect them and trust them enough to be like, 'OK, that's cool. If you think that's what it needs, let's do that.'"

As a publisher of spoken-word poetry, Burke - Austin Chronicle

Resume contains performances at educational institutes and venues in the past 2 years. - Ebony Stewart

Resume contains performances at educational institutes and venues in the past 2 years. - Ebony Stewart

badass Ebony Stewart as the Lady in Red...give standout performances - Jillian Owens

badass Ebony Stewart as the Lady in Red...give standout performances - Jillian Owens

Ebony Stewart, the woman in red, brings plenty of sass and swagger to the role, walking on to the stage as if she owns it. One quickly realizes why this beauty won so many awards for her slam poetry, as she walks on stage with amazing confidence, shaping each of her speeches with intriguing skill.

Continue reading on Examiner.com For Colored Girls: Stellar choreography but uneven acting mark UpRise's latest - Austin Theater | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/review/for-colored-girls-stellar-choreography-but-uneven-acting-mark-uprise-s-latest#ixzz1snXIyuR3
- Ryan E. Johnson

Ebony Stewart, the woman in red, brings plenty of sass and swagger to the role, walking on to the stage as if she owns it. One quickly realizes why this beauty won so many awards for her slam poetry, as she walks on stage with amazing confidence, shaping each of her speeches with intriguing skill.

Continue reading on Examiner.com For Colored Girls: Stellar choreography but uneven acting mark UpRise's latest - Austin Theater | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/review/for-colored-girls-stellar-choreography-but-uneven-acting-mark-uprise-s-latest#ixzz1snXIyuR3
- Ryan E. Johnson

As the Lady in Red, slam poet and actress Ebony Stewart glides into the linguistic cadences of her monologues, mesmerizing us with her smooth and assertive recital. - Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

As the Lady in Red, slam poet and actress Ebony Stewart glides into the linguistic cadences of her monologues, mesmerizing us with her smooth and assertive recital. - Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

8) EBONY STEWART AS THE LADY IN RED IN 'FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF' (UpRise! Productions/Vortex Repertory Company) - Jillian Owens

8) EBONY STEWART AS THE LADY IN RED IN 'FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF' (UpRise! Productions/Vortex Repertory Company) - Jillian Owens