Photo by Hermes Falcon
Growing up, Kyla Jenee Lacy lived in two different worlds: the south side of Chicago and the “very white” Seminole County, Fla. She began writing poetry when she was a little girl and the earliest piece she remembers penning was on the state of the world, which she authored when she was only ten years old.
Performing poetry was never the goal, but 300 colleges and 40 states later, Lacy has gone viral.
Bradley students welcomed Lacy for this year’s Speak Out poetry event, hosted by ACBU on Feb. 9.
“I was originally going to be a doctor, but I’m kind of squeamish so that went out the window,” Lacy said. “I was also going to teach. I had a degree in history and foreign language.”
Poetry resurfaced in Lacy’s life when an ex-boyfriend was badly injured and she moved in with him to oversee his care. Lacy wrote poem after poem while caring for him, reopening her mind to the subject and eventually boosting her into the spotlight.
Lacy began writing pieces on love and relationships, but her works slowly turned into more “socially conscious” or “woke” pieces, she said.
However, Lacy’s first performance did not go the way she expected.
“I performed my first piece in front of the crowd and when I finished, they quickly called the next person onto the stage,” Lacy said.
Lacy wasn’t met with the excitement she was expecting, but regardless, she continued to perform her pieces and write new ones, building herself up. With time, Lacy was able to return to the University of Central Florida where it all began and perform once more. This time, her impact was much larger.
“I was able to host the homecoming event for my college, which was a big deal for me because it’s UCF; UCF isn’t exactly a tiny school,” Lacy said. “It was difficult, but it meant a lot.”
For the students of Bradley, Lacy performed a compilation of poems, each discussing impactful and powerful themes such as learning to love her “unapologetically Black” hair, white privilege, gendered double standards, school shootings and police brutality.
Each of these poems came with a story. One piece – centered around white privilege – was covered on Fox News and led to the firing of a teacher for playing the performance in class.
“A lot of my former [white] teachers didn’t like that their brightest student was also their darkest,” Lacy said. “White privilege is the default. Everybody wants privilege but no one wants to admit they have it.”
Lacy still performs one of her oldest pieces, about seeing love through mathematical equations, but said her favorite poems are the ones she wrote on school shootings and code switching.
At the end of the hour-long poetry session hosted by ACBU, after answering questions from the crowd, Lacy was met with a round of applause and crowds of people eager to speak with her on her development, her works and her cats.
Besides poetry, Lacy produces visual art in the form of axiom walls and other styles. She sells CDs of her performances and travels where her voice will be heard.
“I didn’t think that I would be here in life,” Lacy said.
