An Interview with the talented Poetess Tikisha McFall

By Charles S. Mombo

Article Sponsored by: Workshop on How to Start, Build, and Grow Your E-Commerce Business

An Interview with the talented Poetess Tikisha McFall. Chocolate City recently caught up with the beautiful and talented poetess, Tikisha McFall.

Chocolate City recently caught up with the beautiful and talented poetess, Tikisha McFall. Despite her very busy schedule, Tikisha still found the time to sit and chat with Charles S. Mombo, Editor of ChocolateCity.cc (CC). Following is our interview with Tikisha McFall (TM):

CC: Tikisha would you like to introduce yourself to Chocolate City readers, please?

Hi everyone I’m Tikisha McFall aka Essexence

CC: Where did you go to school and what was your major in college?

I went to Garinger High School in Charlotte NC. I went to Central Piedmont Community College and got my Associates in Arts and a Degree as a Paralegal. I went to Loyola University Chicago for Psychology for 3yrs but had to drop out due to my mothers health declining. I had planned on going back to get my degree in Psychology but life took me on a different course. I started doing natural hair and found that to be one of my passions in life, which coincided with my passion to write. I found that when a person sits in a stylist chair its like therapy, they tend to talk about there life, there trails, situations and experiences, which inspired me to write about it because I could relate to some of the things they were saying.

CC: Does poetry define Tikisha or does Tikisha define poetry?

Wow, I would have to say that Tikisha defines poetry.To say that poetry defines Tikisha does an injustice to what I do and puts me in a box without diversity. I am not my poetry and my poetry is not me.

CC: How would you describe your work, please?

Poetry has so many dimensions. That’s what I love about it. You don’t have to stay within a structure of language or words. My work is like a movie in your mind, I set up the scene and my words are the play by play. I tell a story that takes you out of where you are and how you feel. I guess you can say my style is nontraditional. I like to play on words and the structure of poems. Like for instance one of my poems is entitled Symplistic and that is how I spell it, I know the correct spelling is Simplistic. I spell it with a “Y” because the poem speaks on love and how love can be and is when you have come across someone to love, but its different and not always so simple. You can say it and or describe it one way but mean it in a totally different way. To use normality when it comes to the structure and flow of poems or writing in general is not what I do and it’s not how I see myself. My poetry treads on the not so normal.

CC: What is Essexence?

When my first CD was made, which was a fluke by the way, I needed to come up with a name and I wanted something different, something that would stand out from others, and give the true understanding of the CD. Since most of the poems on the CD were sexual in nature, it was only fitting for it to be Es-Sex-ence, which means the Essence of Sex. With that being said, I do not only write about sex. Es-Sex-ence speaks only to one dimension of my poetry and writing.

CC: How did you discover poetry in you? At what age did the light-bulb come on for you, and what poem/poet(ess) flipped the switch?

Well, I have always written. When I was young, I struggled with reading so my teacher had me write everything down. I fell in love with poetry the first time I heard, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I guess I was in the sixth grade when I heard something in me came on. I understood how the bird felt. So, I tried to write like or as Maya Angelou. Of course, it didn’t go so well, it was a lot of rhyming but I guess I did OK to be so young. As years went on I began to write how I felt, what I was thinking, and what I did like a journal. What I found was the way I wrote it, how I was explaining it and the words I used to express it. I never really thought of myself as a poet or that my writing was any good for that matter. It wasn’t until 2006 at Loyola University, Chicago, when I was taking an English class, that I realized that my work was good.

CC: Which poet(ess) and/or poem or anthology most inspires you now and why?

William Allegrezza’s book Temporal Nomads inspires me. Temporal Nomads is a collection of poems that has a style which plays with the boundaries of language. I learned in grade school that language is a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks. Allegrezza goes against societal norms of using language. He has taken the basic and fundamental part of language and spared it out of control. He challenges you to go beyond the simple form of writing or even reading poems. He makes you think as your reading and listening to the words that are being said and how they are being said. He made me see that it’s ok for my sentence structures to be wrong and that the spelling of a word wrong or right is ok, because it has your audience looking at you differently and thinking: Is this really how they wanted it to be read, and, what am I suppose to get out of this? This excites me! To have a person to look beyond what they see or hear. Language and reading have always been challenging [subjects] for me, and, to see a poet come out of the structure of things brought new found hope and a more new and exciting way for me to write.

CC: What is your biggest challenge in your creativity?

The biggest challenge for me is not to be repetitious in my work. Making sure that I give them something new and fresh to envision or think about, being able to bring their thoughts and feelings to the surface as if I’m in their mind.

CC: What are you doing about that challenge?

I get inspired from talking to many different people. I will begin to do forums where I can talk to men and women together because we are concerned about the same things while, at the same time, I will hold forums separately because we view those concerns differently.

CC: If you were to meet with any poet(s) living or dead, who would it be, and what would you say to them?

One poet I would love to meet is Maya Angelou, I would say, "thank you for the gift" in the work of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. If it had not been for that poem, I would never have been inspired to write. William Allegrezza is another poet who I would love to meet and say "thank you" to. If it had not been for his anthology of Temporal Nomads, I would never have felt that my work was good enough because it did not fit into societal norms of language.

CC: What brought you to poetry, and what has sustained your passion for poetry up to today?

A need to improve my reading at an early age; the [my] poetry was honed threw journal entries of my everyday thoughts. It has been sustained because it is a healing process for me and for others who listen to my work, and, I know that the gift that God has blessed me with is blessing others and me.

CC: You do have a CD out, what’s the name of you latest CD and where can it be purchase?

Yes, I do, and the name of it is Essexence of Love and you can get it by going to my blog at 1unspeakablejoy.blogspot.com or my Facebook fan page, Essexence. You can also listen to one of my pieces by going to Reverbnation.com and searching for Essexence.

CC: How soon can we expect your next CD?

My next CD will be dropping in February of 2012. Not sure what the title will be, but it’s a continuation of the love story. I will say this, there just maybe a name change.

CC: Why would you believe poetry is relevant today?

I believe poetry is relevant today because it’s almost like therapy. It helps people to vent, inspire, help and talk about things that were at that time difficult for them to express. It also helps to say or mask it in such away that if you don’t feel that comfortable about being venerable you’re still able to with out people know that’s what you’re doing.

CC: How would you like to be remembered?

I would like to be remembered as poetess in motion. As a poetess who is not only sharing how she feels and also emulating how the audience feels. As one who captures the moment when they thought the moment was gone.

CC: What advice would you offer to other inspiring female poets out there in particularly when it comes to expression and self-awareness?

Be true to yourself and don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Out of your expression and self-awareness, you also bring out self-awareness in others.

CC: Many thanks for spending time with us! I very much look forward to attending one of your performances.

Tikisha can be contacted at:

Facebook: Essexence

CD Purchase: http://1unspeakablejoy.blogspot.com/