Jade Helena is a writer, poet and Community Artist at SKETCH. Her autobiography, The Teen Sex Trade: My Story, will be published this Fall. In the meantime, you can follow her on Instagram, her website and using the hashtags #stagesbyjadehelena and #authorpoetsurvivor.
My art practice, right now is novel writing but I also dabble in poetry. Occasionally, you’ll see me on a stage performing a spoken word piece, but I prefer to write and have people experience my words for themselves. I like when people read my work and make their own interpretation as opposed to hearing my words or tone and viewing it from my perspective.
My creative process is pretty spontaneous. I have random bursts of creative energy. I usually don’t work well under pressure or with a designated topic for my writing. I like to write whatever comes to mind. I’ll be in random places such as home, on the bus or in the shower when all of a sudden, a poem starts forming in my head. Then I have to scramble to write it down ‘cause I know I’ll forget if I tell myself that I can write it down later.
Sometimes I’ll form a poem in my head while asleep and then I’ll have to wake up and try to write it before I forget. I try not to censor myself or edit while writing. I let everything flow then when I think I’m done, I’ll go back and change words or punchlines if they don’t work for me. Most of the time, I can rhyme off the top of my head but sometimes I’ll use rhymezone.com or make a note to myself to look up a rhyming word.
I tend to write about the things I’m experiencing or have experienced. A lot of what I write sounds kind of sad or depressing but I don’t mean it to be that way. My writing starts out with the problem I’m having. By the end of it, I’ve created a solution for myself or realized steps I can take to fix the issue. Sometimes, I get this crazy urge to solve a problem like I can see the solution in my mind but it’s foggy. I know it will stay on my mind until I write it down so I do. I write about love a lot too. My head is always in the clouds about love. I like to write down my goals every so often as well.
I’m going to release my autobiography in September. That’s like… my thing. It talks a bit about my childhood then goes into detail about my teenage years. I went through some shit at those times with my so-called boyfriend who turned out to be a pimp. My book is about that experience. I wrote the book for lots of reasons but one of the main reasons was so that I could heal. I was so angry and self-destructive for a long time that I needed to get it out. The best way for me to do that was for me to write it down.
Read part two here.
Photo credits: Sophia Ogbe