Channelling Through Poetry

way to describe Hooter. I met her at a march that I helped organize and EMC and someone sent me a video that she'd done online of her slam poetry and it was about domestic violence, and it just had me in a puddle of tears, and I just went, we need we need her, we need to get her. I want to meet her. And so ever since then, and I watched Hohoda perform at the march, and I'm pretty sure she literally said before she got up like that she was just it was improvised, like it was

just literally words from her soul. And then I watched her march in the street just literally just words coming out of her that just will like mad Well that it's poetry. It was magic. And ever since then I said, who do I need to get you on and I need to hear your story and like just learn about this trust that you have within yourself, in this connection that you have to language and anyway, so hoodah, thank you so much for joining me.

I was a poet. But like I think for me, my fascination with language started off as a child that also had no formal training, like no formal education, so like being like in Cairo, never going to school, I was like, the only thing I could really master was like my verbal communication with people, right, So I became fascinated with body language, with people's tone, and how do I get myself to be so very clearly understood, Like my fascination with art and poetry started as I really

don't like the outcomes of being misunderstood. Wow, so I'm going to master communication because I lived in a very very chaotic space in which feelings were always elevated due to the circumstances, which meant people were yelling out their reality and there was very little space for comprehension, right, because everybody just wanted to be heard and wanted to be to have their humanity validated. Right, So it started this fascination of like how can I improve my communication

with my mother? How can I improve my communication with the people around me, and how do I get that? Knowing that I can't read or write right so, and then coming into a school system a like ten eleven where I don't have like for example, at twenty nine right now, I still can't spell. I have no conception of like the English language, like in terms of like

writing and reading. I'm very verbally articulate. My vocab is high, but like writing was always very difficult for me because I was illiterate for a long period of my life. So language for me was about pew to peer communication and then connection and then community collectivism. And I knew that like at some point, like my grandmother when I was very little, had faith that I was going to be somebody really special and always valued education, and she

was like her voice should not be silenced. She let me be as loud as I wanted to be and to take up as much room as I wanted to be, so losing her, I felt like I had to re remind myself of why she had provided that much space for me to be that loud, right, Because contrary to believe, women are not supposed to be loud and audacious and spoken. So there was a lot of it that was like breaking the status quo and norm because I just didn't

know what other way to connect with people. It was like I don't go to school, so I can't make friends that way, right, Like I'm a foreigner, different country that's not my own, so I can't connect with people that way. So I had to come up with a way to connect. So it was humor a good communication and eloquence was my skill set. That's what I could do very very well. So there's that route of like

you know, growing and a people. It's a patriarchal family where my grandmother was the leader of the household and coming into a patriarchal system where people just wouldn't let me talk or kind of almost made it a joke out of it, like oh, you're so loud, And I was like, Okay, my mom is loud, my auntie's loud, my mother loud. What your point? You're just stating observations? Why does that sound like the butt of the I

don't get it, you know what I mean? So so there's there's there's that like element of culture and like like you know, my grandm would be like an elder, and then having people in my family that are like eldest that whole linguistics in like lineage, and then my grandmother who was basically like the town nurse. So my lineage comes from like audacious, out like outrageous women who just do whatever the hell they want to do. So like, and then I come into a world which like that's

not the prox that's not the rule. So poetry allowed me to exist in the reality that I know is common to me, which is like existing within my power and being as loud as I want to be. And then it was then it was a provided audience. And then there's like the other answer is like I was a master of ceremony at college and like I was always very well spoken, and then I met Anissa n Dala, who's an incredible comedian now also poet. Yeah, and she just like she was the first person to label what

I did poetry. She was like, oh, you're a poet, and I was like, I don't know about that. I think I'm well spoken, but I don't know about that. And she was my first she was the first person to give it a name. Wow. And then that started like an era of like three years of like freestyle improvised open minds that then turned into paid gigs and then it was like it was an interesting journey and

I could ramble on forever. But like, I then had a show I think at BMAC, which is so funny that I'm having this podcast interview with you today because I'm going back to be back for a show today. And at that same place I met probably was one of the most leading public speakers like and she is an African woman. And after I got off stage from performing, she asked me a question. She goes, you do this beautiful thing and you call it poetry, but like, why is it that you speak? Why do you feel the

need to do this right? And she's like, I think that's an important question while you hold this much power for you answer. And I don't think she knows how monumental that question was for me, because it changed the whole leaf of my career of like, I love this thing. I love being able to connect and tell stories and like them language to accommodate for whatever I wanted it

to be. And then there's this powerful elder who is like dressing African attire, who was a great public speaker and a great Worthmit that kind of took me back to my root, and she almost like put the word poet to the side and then was like, let's actually look at it outside of the framing that the world needs it to have for it to be comprehendible. What is it that you're doing. So there are a multitude of reasons. There's a multitude of origin stories and the

evolution of my poetry. So yeah, there's so many stories I can tell into how I fell into where I fell because I used to say I'm the accidental poet. There was no like I have a vision board that like you know eleven, I used to love reading books and like and then I kind of became a poet because I love like some famous author, Like none of those things are my story. I hate reading books. I have ADHD. It takes a lot for me to like a book, like a lot, because I can't focus for

that long. Yeah, I can't spell, like, none of those things of my reality. I'm not a literature head that can quote like a list of poets. This is my poetry is a conversation with my soul that I turned strangers into an audience for.

When you mentioned your grandma tears, when you mentioned that beautiful woman who like asked you why you're speaking tears because that's like and the fact that you can't, like you struggle to spell tears because it really and and it makes so much sense to me why I've and like why so many people are so drawn to you, but especially I guess as someone who I like to think of, I've always sort of myself as a communicator

as well. You know, I think everyone has their different gifts and their different abilities and like to like to me, I look at you, and you're a communicator, you know how to sort of like what you were saying about, how you connect with how you can take what's in your soul and sort of channel that into evoking something from within the strangers in the room, Like it's such it's like working on an energetic plane. Is that what

it feels like? Do you feel like it's almost like because I mean I asked you even before we jumped on, I said, you know, would you say that you're a spiritual person and you and you said that you you do think like you do feel like a spiritual person.

aligned with myself and in the room. So when I when I walk into a room with like three hundred people to do an improvised poem, I have to meditate in that room in my own way that's not obvious and not jarring to also the people because at the moment it's obvious, people then change how they move around the room, so I can't get a sense of what's actually happening, right, Like, so I have to be in

that space meditate. First of we'll pay my acknowledgment to the ancestral and the thousands of years that are already here. So there's already souls and spirits and stories and moments that have happened here that will continue to happen with or without me. So I have to acknowledge those people, and then I have to then go into my own self and be like, what at this point will fulfill me and enable me to connect with a stranger at the same time. Wow, And that's a lot of work.

I think I'm spiritual in the sentence of I have to believe in a higher power to be able to deliver something of such high frequency. Yeah, And I don't say that as ego, like I don't think I'm that special, but I do think I have something, yeah, that can resonate with people beyond my own comprehension sometimes because sometimes I don't know where the poem comes from.

until this year. I had to reevaluate my relationship with intimacy and love as I am now getting older and restructuring my relationship with my mother, right, because she's my first introduction to love, right, not romantic, but as almost like a dedication and a sense of loyalty to loving her and her loving me back and not being the

center of my epi world. Right. So it's like my poems sometimes start for my own age, like I have something to say and I need to unpack this in a way that makes sense to me, So poetry makes sense to me, and like and then other times I'll

meet people and it will like. For example, I think one of my favorite moments on stage, I have a collection of them, was I went to Byron Byron Writer's Festival, and I had just come off like being on regional tour on this bus, and I was supposed to, like I got in changed and I was supposed to be in front of like a couple hundred high school students in this festival. I'm not ready. I'm never like, I

don't know what the word ready means in poetry. So like, let's put that to the side, because I have no relationship with the wed Ring, right, I'm just I'm on go or I'm not on go. It's one of the two, right, Yeah, And maybe that's ready in its own way. But I got on stage and that day I had been like my grandmothers a reoccurring theme. So she's definitely a familiar story to tell. I don't ever tell the same story about her, who I don't tell the story the same

way about her twice? Right, there are different things that from my relationship with her, and I was I remember like being on stage and speaking, and it's very rare for me to cry on stage. It is like, very very rare, Like I can be lost within my own body, but crying tends to come after, like when I'm reflecting on the poem on my own. So I'm on stage and I'm speaking about my grandmother and I just like I feel myself because like getting lost in the poem, and I look up and I know I want to cry.

And I look up and there's this like beautiful black girl in front audience and she's bawling like tears that she is balling her and I'm just like, at this moment, everybody in that space stopped existing and I felt like me and her were having a conversation, right, And I got up and I got off stage, and I was I had to do an interview, so I was like ducking out. So I was like, hey, thank you guys

so much. I'm hugging people, like all these kids, and I stop, and she's crying and she's literally like holds my hand and she's she's still balling, and I'm just like she's like, I really want to be a poet, like I really want to write. And I was like, just decide, make a decision that this is who you are and this is your reality. Just make that decision. And the next time, I want to see you. I want you to have decided. Don't know her name. We spoke for like a few seconds that I had left.

Right the next day, I'm still in Byron, I'm eating sushi. I'm getting ready to go on stage in like an hour, and all I see is this like figure of her walking up to me. And she's walking up just holding a trophy. And mind you, I don't I wear glasses, so I can't see her well. So she walks up to me and she's like, oh my god, I won this big the you And she's like I just competed my first slam and I.

maybe that poem was said like that before. Because I disconnect, I'm in my own body that the words aren't really like so precise, and they're not all my poems are perfect. They're clumsy, and I don't always use the right word. But I'm in my body so much that I feel like that girl changed my life in that moment and reminded me of why being within my own poem is

so crucial for me, you know. So it's like when people ask where it comes from, sometimes it is a stranger in the audience who just needed me to say what I needed to say, and at that moment, I felt them in a way that I have no words for, Like I have no Like I've told stories of people that passed away and somebody was like, yo, I just came from a funeral, and you just shook my world. Like so there's no like I want to give you a linear answer of like this is where it comes.

I don't know. Sometimes it's people, sometimes it's me, other times it's nowhere. And sometimes the poems make no sense, and then I try the same subject again and it makes all the sense in.

How you keep talking about how like this this connection to yourself and your body is so important, because I feel that that is something that a lot of people are really missing within ourselves. Is this kind of like we're so disconnected from ourselves, so disconnected from our body. We have such a distrust in our body and in ourself, and like you just talking about that so much is

just such a just really reiterates that. The other thing that I find so beautiful is I often say to people a healer isn't just someone who you know does reiki or as a doctor, is chipractor or whatever, because like we are all healers, and we all have this ability to connect and to channel and to understand our own energy and the energy of others and how that sort of and how we kind of connect through that and kind of understand the ripple effect of each connection

that we have. And for some of us we can kind of understand it a little bit more like we're a bit more connected to what it all means, and like, as you say, like within those moments where you can like really just feel that sort of that connection within yourself and then the connection of people that are in the room, and then you know, like and you're like with what you're doing, Like you're getting up on stage and these words are just flowing out of you and

you're just like what someone like me would call that's what I call channeling when I do it, when I feel like I'm the channeling you know, from a higher version of myself for like well really myself or you know, different beings or whoever. It is where you really have to just trust yourself and trust like what's coming out of you. And it's just I think like for people who are listening, because often people go, yeah, but it's

not for me, I can't do it. I love like the idea of you know, being that connected and being able to do this and being able to do that.

But you know, I'm a graphic designer or I do this, or but I think like at our core we can all do this and this whole like what you're doing where you're able to just like really anchor into yourself and then understand what the world is needing from you and what you were needing from you in those moments, I think is so powerful, and that concept I think can be can be taken and used by everyone in whatever it is that they're doing.

So there is no performance that comes with this. There's no pre plan on how I'm going to show up because then that And I'm not saying that people don't need to do that, because I think basking is a form of self protection and preservation is important and you should care and maintain pain and refine so that you are safe. And I hate you, I get that, but as somebody who people are like, I'm a fan of your work. I'm like, plee, do not dehumanize me by putting me on a paddle store and not design you.

So when I say being within my body, I am unnecessarily deep conversations with my friends on a daily basis that are evaluated, And it's not about critiquing myself. Like I believe, perfection is an illusion. It's an a skewed way to look at life that really only gets people to self loath, right, it only makes people dislike themselves. The obsession with the mirror makes you want to cut out portions of yourself to look smaller in front of a mirror that was not designed for a small soul.

It's a disservice that does nothing fool you, you know what I'm saying. So when I say being within my body, it means I have a relationship with self that far out extends any relationship I have with anybody else. Yeah, there is no relationship outside of me that is greater. I love so many people intensely and deeply, but I know, at the end of the day, the profound feeling I have for myself has to exceed. I have to know

the sound of my own voice amongst the crowd. I have to know that because if I have a show and no one claps, like, poetry still means exactly the same thing. Yeah, it still has the exact volume and impact, right, because the impact the goal was not you ever, And I'm allowed to say that as an artist. Yeah, my obligation is to myself first, and then whatever comes as a residue of that. I am grateful that we are able to bask in whatever residue we have created together.

But that only happens with you giving yourself permission to be within this process too. So if I go to a show and I give you one hundred and fifty percent of me, and you show up with so many rules that you can't even climb them. Who am I to be upset on myself for your choices? Yeah, there was no space for us to have a bond. There was no synergy between us, right like, there's no there was no contine for this room to elevate, for to escalate, for it to be greater vibration, you know what I mean.

My obligation is to my true self and its authenticity comes from accepting that it's never going to be linear, that it's not about perfection. The one of my favorite quotes coming up when I was young was a great our deepacy is now that we are an adequate to Our deepest fear is that we are powerful, beyond measured. It is not our light. It is our light, not our dark that most frightens us. You playing small does not serve the world. I don't need that from you.

I'm Sometimes the fear is not that I'm not capable. Sometimes the fear is what if everything that I find out this SARMs everything that I know as a reality now, And that is a scary reality. So for people to channel you must have a relationship with yourself that our exceeds all the obsessions you have with the relationship with others. You have to be less obsessed with validation from other

people when you know people are not consistent enough. And that's not a dis to humans, that is an acknowledgment of reality. No matter how much you love me, you cannot show up for me every day in every given moment. I can't even guarantee you that I'm gonna tell you at every moment when I need you to show up for me. So we just create an unrealistic relationship with things that will bound to disappoint down to be fragile, because that's the beauty in them, right, is the capacity

to be raised and rebuilt and remolded. So when people are like, oh, you know yourself, I'm like, yeah, I spent a lot of time evaluating me, and I also have acknowledge. I have no desire to be liked by strangers. I have a desire for our humanity to have volition. I care about you as a human on a baseline. I don't need to know your name, or see you or hug you, or how do you like me? In response? I care about your humanity and your soul's work. I

want evolution and evolvement. I want peace, I want serenity, I want peace of mind. I pray for you without even knowing you. Yeah, but that does not mean I need you to like me. None of those are synonymous. None of those things carry that but volume for me. So it's like I'm at peace with the fact that I'm insignificant but also so significant in my own world that I matter.

And if I read my if I opened my chest and have and let everything that is in there that has been resting until I get to it completely out and then place in the hands that are not ready to hold that, and like I don't trumba bond with

my audience. This is not about us sharing and how deep and is rule the world is right, there's a difference between exhibition in reality in the form of poetry, right, and there is a difference, and that there's a whole other thing where like we're only bonded and you only like my work because it validates your pain. Yes, I'm not trying to do that when not trauma bonding. I'm not trauma bonding with an audience. I'm not coming there for you to cry and go home and completely be

in deep sorrow about your life. That's not what I'm about to do. That's not the goal and the objective of what I'm doing. So, because I care about the people that have opened their ease and the soul to me, I have to make sure that when I'm delivering, I can tell a story with all of its layers properly. So for a long time I couldn't speak about my mother's DV because it wasn't a story I was ready

to tell. Yes, and I didn't want a bunch of beautiful women who watched me on stage to connect with sorrow. I wanted them to see the revolution that was in my mom as she came out of that, I wanted to honor her in a way that completely articulator stories.

And even though there are many stories I'm gonna tell about that that all my own experience as an audience member in that reality, but I wanted to I wanted to stop the story by honoring it from from beginning to end as a summary, so then I can then honor every part without it looking like with trauma bonding, because I don't want that at all. So I often just go to the ocean. I tell my friend this all the time. My favorite moment is when I stand right at the ocean and I remember just how small

I am. I it is the most being able to bash in the sun, have it used its glow as like use your skin as a stage to dance on, being be able to kissy by the wind, and remembering that this ocean that provides you, this water that gives you life and reminds you of the fact that you are alive, it's gonna be. It can be the one thing that also completely closes your chapter. There is something so profound standing that humanizing yourself is equally as important

as amplifying yourself. Yes, Oh, people need to do that more like you want to be great, love that be great, You are great, you deserve that, but humanize it.

of themselves. Ooh, come on, And it's so and as I'm sort of working with that energy, and it almost it makes me sad. And I mean I've been and not to throw any sort of shame or anything on that, because it's all of us, you know, Like I've experienced that too, you know, where we were so afraid to sort of like really sit in the complete honesty of who we are, because so much of who we are is actually just a reflection of everyone else around us and the world around us, and the world that we've

been placed in. And it's more we've been created out of safety as opposed to being created out of who we actually are and the energy that we've come in with.

because I owe it to myself. I really don't care too much if you believe it or not, to be quite frank with you, and that's been the power in this. It's like, my obligation or my priority is not you loving it. My priority is you feeling it, and you can't deny the truth because you are feeling. You might not comprehend it. It might not even be your story, it might never be your story. But the fact that I can sit in it and be like, Yeah, this is what it is. That's the truth of that's my reality.

This is my truth. I say with conviction, I say with pride, and I say it for no adjustment for anyone's ears. He's what it is, and put whatetry allows me to channel part of myself that I think I would bury in a closet, you know, Like I think we all have to put on a certain costume to walk out into the world and not be so sensitive and be shatted. And I hear that, I understand that need for self preservation because outside is not built for

your inside. Yeah, I hate you, I get it. I'm not even mad, But I'm like, when you start to put on that mask, even in your own.

you have to decide to do things scared. Oh, get back to me.

that's like where you meet yourself. That's where you go, and that's where you meet your power, right because you're like, oh my, I can fucking take on, Like I'm so resilient, I'm so much more capable than I've than the stories that I've told myself, And like I can feel it in you, this like deepness within yourself where you just want to grab people and be like you can find like you are fucking I want you to be able to do this for you. I'm not doing shit for you.

I want you to be able to do this for you, like I can see in you and in everyone, what I can see in myself and what I can oh just that like wanting it for I don't know just the empowerment of all I just find it. But I want beautiful.

in this world is how I make people feel. And if I can pick up a nineteen year old girl who sings and never thought she could do this as a way and again sings the thing, we call it right. But it is the capacity to turn your reality into vibrations that strangers will want to dance to, not greater conversation here. So when I'm like I'm me, I'm able to be the mirror that you need at this very given point to give you a reminder that you are

more capable than you think. Because I'm the exception. I was supposed to be somewhat buried in with no noise and no story, and I made myself the exception. You know, I need you to do that because there was somebody else watching you that wants to be the exception and they don't think that could happen. What if the rule

became the exception, if people just chose that. Sometimes all you need to do is remind people that have the capacity to decide, And if you can't do it, I'll do it for you, and I will leave you in a room that reminds you how great you are, right because you need that. And I literally had an interview yesterday about my next festival, She Is, and I was

telling the organization that I'm working with. One thing that's super important to me about this show as a collective is that I want people to realize the power these women have and to see me so much out of the story, like it's not about me at all. Right, I woult to be able to CoCreate, call me the architect in the space that right, let me archetize and then let people do what they do. And every show,

our first show was beautiful when we debriefed. Our second show was like one hundred and sixty people sold out. Everybody was booming, and I said, listen to the audience. We get a paycheck, yes you Cloud Foster, and we love that. We will have photos to take home. But I would like for you to leave a note for the artist, because there's going to be a certain point in their career in which this doesn't look like it's

something they should do anymore. Yeah, I want you to give them a reason for whenever time they doubt themselves. Whatever you felt in your heart, I want you to try to put us whatever words you can to it. I have a bag full of eighty to one hundred notes from strangers that are dedicated to each artist that are like, this is how you made me feel. Do not stop. Like it's if we can do that for people.

When people come to my workship, I'm like, this is your time to write a letter to yourself that whenever you lose connection with who you are, you pick up that letter that was written by a past self to remind you of way you've come. If you want to heal, understand that your past is the evolutionary clap that you have for now yesterday, was you clapping for you today? Yes,

you need that clap. Keep that with you. If you can't, put it in a drug closet, seal it and put it in your bedroom and you close a room and let it out so that it bounces off every wall. You feel the greatness that your past self is allowing you to have because you have evolved.

for yourself consistently despite the imperfection. So if there is a way for you to set up fuel and protein for yourself to keep rising out of your own despair, do it. If you can pick up a pen right after listening to this podcast and write a love letter to yourself and keep it in your room. If there is a way for you to seal your laughter and put it in a jar so that when you are crying, you remind yourself that you have been happy before and

you can go back to that. If there is a way for you to get a snapshot of every moment that reminds you of your humanity. If you can just walk into the street and remember, honestly, I believe the last innocent thing that we have constant is a child's smile. That's one of the last innocent things that continues to be pure. Please completely fill yourself with as much ammo to be the greatest version of yourself, because you deserve that.

It is not how you show up for others. It is how you show up when the audience is gone, when there is nobody at the table, when there is no one beside you, when there is nobody holding you when your affirmation to yourself far exceeds the world. How valuable you are is not determined by this great level stance that you have to be in this high position

at all times. We connect with realness. Your capacity to smile at a stranger, to show up, to allow your soul to cry and clean itself of everything that was yesterday for tomorrow is who you are. So forget who to the goddess, forget the poetry, remember that our intrinsic need is to be seen, is to be valued, It's to be honored as our whole reality. Your imperfection is exactly what is those world needs for its vibration to

Can you continue to be perfect? So just do that, commit to that and choose that for you.

watched it happen. We just watched you just like speak from your body, from your truth, from wherever it came from, and the trust that you had for it, and like it fucking pays off because when you're listening and you're like, those words felt like they were for me. Thank you so much, Tudor. You really are just such a blessing to this world and your words are just so fucking potent and powerful.