James C. Ellerbe

Poets & Storytellers Open Interview Date: 2025/06/13

“There’s nothing like when someone internalizes what you said and they gather something else from it. And that’s what the poem was supposed to do. Who am I to get in the way of that? I know why I wrote it, but whatever the words do after that, that’s the universe.”
- James C. Ellerbe

Gregg Yupanki Bautista: So much of what I love about spoken word poets is everything that goes into not just writing, but preparing the performance. Memorizing, finding the rhythm and the cadences, and essentially not just rehearsing, but every performance is a rehearsal. You end up editing as you go… I don’t want to speak for or generalize for you, but it seems that a lot of what you perform would always be evolving, especially with the content and things that are happening in the world, you almost model yourself and your work after what’s going on.

So the first question from me is, what drives you to create as a poet, as a creative? 

James C. Ellerbe: Well, I would just say, this may seem like just another cliché, but just life in general. I have an excerpt in my book, Beyond The Event Horizon, that’s from my actual diary and it basically, you know, to summarize it was me telling myself what I wanted to do with my words and that pretty much what I write, I wanted to cause people to think differently about different subjects, about different experiences, whether they be my personal experience or whether they be the experience of others or a group of people. So that’s what inspires me.

As you can hear, I love science, big time, hence the book title, Beyond the Event Horizon. It’s a metaphor for my life. I’ve been through some dark things that would have destroyed most individuals, but through poetry and words it has given me purpose and direction. So that’s why that’s what inspires me. That’s what continues to inspire me in my work and I hope that I continue to inspire lives. 

GYB: Awesome, thank you. And kind of going off of what you just mentioned about your personal experiences—one of your poems that I read, “Pain with No Chaser,” there’s one line that really hit home for me, or one stanza that’s “You think that because I’m from the suburbs, I’m an exception. All it takes is one paycheck to put me in the same direction,” which is like a section that’s talking about education and poverty in certain communities. 

JCE: Yeah. 

GYB: The reason why that hit me is because I got the sense of almost an imposter syndrome through the speaker because you’re not “from” where you’re writing about… almost like wondering if you feel like you have a “permission” to write about it? I mean, I’m Latino myself, my parents are immigrants, but I also grew up in a very predominantly white area, and I had a lot of trouble grappling with that. Like a “can I talk about something that wasn’t necessarily my experience.” Sort of referring back to my last question about your ideas and work morphing—with everything that’s happening, not just in the past couple weeks or months, everything we’ve seen over the years, you know, since four years ago, eight years ago, twelve years ago, just getting worse and worse. For me, at least, that gave me the space to think, “okay, this is like an entry to engaging with these ideas.” How did you work through that yourself? 

JCE: Oof that’s a very powerful question. Honestly, I’m still working through it. Because it’s so much. I don’t think people realize this world is not made for people to survive. You have to really have something deep inside you that pushes you on, that’s what I’m discovering. It’s not just, you know, for marginalized communities, but it’s just this society period. I mean, 1% of the population has all the wealth. Think about that. 1%. And there’s no such thing as a middle class, you might as well throw that out the window. That is gone, forever gone, you know. So, we really have to really push for some change, for some new ideas out there to clean up this mess of a society that we’re in. So until the society is fixed, I will always have something to write about, you know? I mean, yeah, I’m still working through it. I’m still processing that.

In fact, I’m actually currently working on a joint book with another poet by Christopher Bogart, and he’s an older white gentleman, and I’m an… I’m getting up there (laughs) you know, black gentlemen, and we’re having a real, real time discussion on racism and honestly some of it has challenged me as a writer to really think about what is truly going on, and what things we can do to kind of overcome it. But I think there’s gonna always be some form of it. We can’t completely eradicate racism, and we certainly can’t eradicate poverty, because greed is one of the biggest villains out there. And until we can mitigate that appetite, we’re always going to be in this cycle of living. 

GYB: Tax the rich and liberate the proletariat. 

JCE: (laughs) Right, right! Simple, right? Simple formula. 

GYB: Too bad it’s not as simple to make it happen, but that’s why we have to keep working towards them. 

JCE: Absolutely. 

Audience Member (AM) 1: While we still have voting. 

GYB: Voting, keep voting, keep demonstrating, just get out there. 

JCE: Think about that, because they wouldn’t want to take your voting rights away if it wasn’t powerful. So just think about that. 

GYB: And also, I usually mention it at some point at every event—those things are absolutely our rights as U.S. citizens, but there are so many more things that we could do that are smaller scale and are just as equally, if not more and immediately, powerful. Like, you can donate your time to organizations. There’s food banks, there’s a communal pantry two blocks away for dropping off food and goods for people. Those things really matter whether it seems like it or not, because we pass by them every day. But those things help people. It’s every little thing that we can do to move ourselves forward and be progressive, and not just in like, you know, that “liberal” political way. We’ve regressed a lot because of the 1%. But I think together, there are a lot of changes that we can make. 

JCE: Absolutely. 

GYB: Umm… sorry to turn that political. (laughs) 

JCE: It’s hard not to in this environment. 

GYB: One last question for you before I hand it over to the audience, but I’m really interested in the music portion of Pulsar. So we were chatting a little bit about that before, about how you were speaking with a producer and you had an idea that he helped bring into fruition and make a tangible thing. In preparing to write for that, preparing to start recording that, did the fact that there was any music that was going to be involved change your poetry writing or preparation, or did you have music in mind already? Or was that like a separate phase? 

JCE: I was slowly getting to that point when we were talking before. That’s the crazy part about this album. All the poems were already written. So it was just to marry the music with the words, and I struggled for a very long time to just have that beautiful compound experience. And then I came across a friend of mine, who I didn’t even realize that he produced beats, but he told me, “I’d produce your album.” And literally, from the first session of him just flooding me with music, I knew right then and there, that this was meant to happen. I mean, he did things that I didn’t think was possible. I have a poem on my album called Close Encounters. It is about me being abducted by aliens. But it’s a message in there, there’s a whole message in that poem. And I’m like, “how is he gonna capture this?” And he… you got to hear it. It has a Native American vibe, it has a spiritual vibe, it has an “out of this world” vibe. And I was like, “oh, my goodness.” Like, he did it, you know? But it just was meant to happen, and that’s the beauty of art. Like, sometimes art just creates itself, and you just got to just go with it, you know, just be open to receive it and just, you know, that’s what happens. 

GYB: So being like a channel. 

JCE: Yeah, yeah. 

GYB: I love that. One of my favorite musicians, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, he’s the guitar player for The Mars Volta… I was watching an interview where he said something similar, and to take it another step forward, it’s kind of like you said, in addition to maintaining a sort of spiritual center and being open to the ether, always being open to something getting to you. And when it’s there, like take it, because if you don’t, someone else will take it… and based on what you’re saying, that sounds like exactly what Pulsar is, so that’s incredible. 

JCE: Can I geek out a little bit? 

GYB: Yes! 

JCE: I’m gonna geek out a little bit, right? So if I had my way, I would have opened up with a Neil deGrasse Tyson quote. If I had my way, but I got something better. I saw this documentary… It’s a video by this science vlogger by the name of Fraser Cain. And I mean, this guy worked with NASA. I mean, check him out. His stuff is very good, he’s always on the cusp of what’s happening right now in science and so forth. But I just said, “all right, shot in the dark. Can I use an excerpt from your documentary called ‘What is a Pulsar?’” And so I’m thinking, oh, I probably will never hear from him. He literally responded the next day, and he said, “Use whatever you want. Just give me credit. That’s all I care about.” This guy don’t know me from Adam. This guy, I mean, he’s big. A little person like me, a little poet like me, he allowed me to use that. So he opens, you hear a little mixture between him and the person that actually mixed my album. You hear like a little back and forth of going between them, you know, with excerpts from his documentary. That’s on the album. Like I was AH! I had to say it, I had to geek out. 

GYB: That’s so cool… All right. Any of you folks out there have questions? 

JCE: Please, please. Anything, anything. Go ahead there. 

AM 2: Any cheat codes for going off-book? How do you memorize? 

JCE: Believe it or not, there’s a science to it. There’s three ways to memorization—audio, visual, and written. You just need two of those to memorize, and it’s your personal trait. I’m a visual person, and I’m an audio person. So I need to use two and constantly practice and see it, so I visualize a lot of what I’m talking about. Like, I gotta see it, you know? And that’s what helps with my memorization. So when I’m practicing, I’m remembering, “okay, this is the emotion, and this is how I was feeling,” and I visualize myself. So in any part of the poem, I visualize myself in that poem, and that’s what helps me remember it. But the rest is just repetition, constant repetition. And before you know it. Now, if you could use all three, I bow to you, (laughs) but I just use two. Two of those three, and you’ll always remember. It’s a science, you can look it up and you’ll see that’s the key to memorization. 

GYB: How long would you say it takes you? 

JCE: That’s changed over the years. Before I literally could memorize a poem in one day. I’m too old for that now. (laughs) 

GYB: Well, you do also have a lot committed to your memory. 

JCE: Yeah, yeah, that’s funny. “Outer Space in Outer Space” talks about me downloading my excess information to upload more. That’s in the book, too. Yeah, that’s literally what I have to do. Some of the poems that I haven’t performed in a while, obviously, I got to revisit, I got to practice. I might not have to practice the whole poem, but, you know, but that’s what visualization helps, because you can just think, “oh, yeah, I remember, okay, that comes after that,” and I could go back there and unlock that key and memorize it. Good question. I love that question. 

GYB: Anyone in the back? Cool kids in the back? 

AM 3: I just had a comment that Gregg and I listen to StarTalk every morning over our coffee. Big, big Neil deGrasse Tyson fans. 

JCE: Yes. Awesome. I went to Comic Con and they actually had a live StarTalk. And he, oh my God, he gave a letter to NASA. You… trust me. He talks about him being a young black kid and how a science book changed his life. And then he parallels it with the achievements of NASA, because they literally were happening in his lifetime at the moment. So, I mean, to the point where everybody, there wasn’t a dry eye in that place. I mean, he was crying and he had everybody crying because you realized he literally lived through the moon landing and all that. And it was just amazing. YouTube that, trust me. You’ll thank me later. 

GYB: Homework assignment for everyone. 

JCE: Homework assignment, there you go. Trust me. You’ll love it. 

AM 4: Can you download the album? 

JCE: Yes, yes. I actually have digital cards on me too that you can actually download. Oh, and I’m going to answer because I know you’re probably thinking, “why didn’t you just do it that way instead of streaming?” Streaming is a new slavery. Period. They are literally taking advantage of artists and something needs to be done about it. Like, 0.005 of a cent. Come on. For every… thousand streams? Yeah. So I tell any artist that’s looking to stream, it’s good to get you out there. I’ve had my album on all streaming platforms, but when I got my first check from them, I was like, nah, I’m done. But I will say, if you do want to go that route, use it more as a promotional platform, like a track or two. I mean, my work was viewed in Russia. Australia. Multiple countries in Africa, and these are places I never would have gone to, you know, but that’s the one small benefit of streaming. So I tell anybody that is looking into that to just keep that in mind. Use it to your advantage. Don’t let them take advantage of you in your art. 

AM 5: So small question, but I just wonder, how does it feel to you when you see your work published written down? Do you feel that it’s missing all of this personality that you have, that you bring to it when you perform? You feel like all of it is there, or is it only half of it? 

JCE: That’s a beautiful question. I think there’s two experiences. There’s that experience. There’s nothing like when someone internalizes what you said and they gather something else from it. And that’s what the poem was supposed to do. Who am I to get in the way of that? I know why I wrote it, but whatever the words do after that, that’s the universe. So, yeah, there’s that experience and then there’s when I actually perform it. Because then you get to hear my voice, you get to hear the little intricacies that you don’t hear when you’re reading it. So I think both are just as valuable. And I really can’t choose between either. I love performing it, don’t get me wrong. I love performing it, but when somebody… I got this review from a guy who struggled with alcoholism… going back to us talking about ”Pain with No Chaser.”  He said that poem, it hit him unlike any other poem he has heard, because it really spoke to him. That is priceless. You can’t… there’s no price tag you can put on that. But that was his personal experience with that. So, yeah, I can’t choose between them, and I get that question all the time, about choosing between spoken word or the written word. 

AM 6: But are you writing for the page or for the performance? Because I find the more I perform, the more my poetry changes. 

JCE: I’m like a hybrid. There are poems that I write specifically for the page, and then there are poems that I write specifically for performing. Like, one of my personal babies in this book is another ode to another artist by the name of Sade. It’s called “I Got This Blues While Listening to a Sade CD.” And literally, sprinkled throughout the old poem are titles to Sade songs. Check this out: I didn’t know this at the time, but that is a poetic style called cento, which is Italian for patchwork. So you literally take pieces from another poet or another artist and recreate your own art through it. I was doing it, I didn’t even know it. That’s how that one’s written, that’s one of my babies. I think I performed it maybe twice, but to me, it’s not the same. You got to read it, you know, you got to read it. 

AM 7: How do you handle artistic dry spells or like the moments when you have something to say that the gears just aren’t turning? 

JCE: Most people call that writer’s block. Yeah. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I have another term for it. I call it “refueling.” You just haven’t processed the ideas and the experiences that you need to write the next poem. So you just surround yourself like this, right? ::(motions around room):: This is a creative environment. A lot of poems I have written were inspired by being in venues. So just surround yourself. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be in, you know… Like, I’m inspired by looking at the floral decorations here. I’m inspired by the clothing displayed here, you know what I’m saying? Be in a creative experience and then the words start coming, don’t force it. Me, I’m not like the type that writes every day. Nothing against anybody that does that. I gotta be fueled. It’s gotta come from somewhere. 

AM 7: I was gonna ask if for you, is it like a physical space or a mind space? 

AM 8: Or is it a SPACE space? 

JCE: I’m laughing because I’m… Believe it or not, I give it to Gayle King, she better than me, because I would have not got up there, you know. She had to sign a waiver. And anything could have happened up there. So I don’t know if I would go to space and write some poems. But I was laughing before because I was thinking that one of my best pieces I wrote in the bathroom. So, to answer your question, it could be anywhere. When the words come, I got to write them. 

AM 3: But you told us that when you perform it, you remember writing it. So when you perform that one, do you always think of the bathroom? (laughs) 

JCE: Unfortunately, yes… (laughs) 

GYB: Another cool thing to think about too, in reference to the question about dry spells, is a pair of similes I heard from another author, Kaveh Akbar, on something he was saying about poetry work styles where he talked about two modes of thinking about how authors write. One is a cat, and one is an ox. The cat naps, takes their time until they’re ready to start writing and do the thing. Whereas the ox, building on what James is saying, is just always toiling the field, doing something every single day, always going. Either way, eventually you’ll get to the point of what you want. And just know that whatever you’re writing or working on, not everything has to be a hit. And like James was saying, any output is conducive to where you want to get to. So, whether it’s every day or once a week, if you have a goal or you have a nice little space at home or a diner or anywhere you want to go. Jumping back to what we were saying before, if you’re open to what’s out there, and you’re ready to grab something… every word, every sentence that you write is like strengthening that muscle that’ll help you recognize that moment. 

JCE: Exactly. Yeah, do what works for you. 

AM 6: Can I say one more thing? So, New Jersey poetry events. So you have introduced me to so many communities. Like, there’s so many people I’m close to to this day, communities I read with because of your site. And I think I told you the last time I saw you at MI’s event that I wore your New Jersey Poetry Events shirt when I walked the Camino de Santiago. I was trying to find a picture for you but I can’t, so thank you for that. I would love to know how you started that. 

JCE: Well it is like what you said. Like, I would go to venues and nobody knew what was going on in different parts of New Jersey. And I got tired of complaining about it. I said, I’m just going to do something about it. So I mean, it’s a task. But hearing you say that, I’m so… the fire inside me is just, you know, immense and it tells me that I’m doing the right thing. So thank you for sharing that, that means a lot to me. Because I really do care about New Jersey poetry. I love New Jersey and New Jersey has some of the most phenomenal poets I’ve ever met. The Jersey poets, let me tell you, you go to different parts of the country than Jersey, it ain’t Jersey. It’s just something about Jersey, like the texture and way we write, you know, where we go with the words. There’s nothing, no other place like Jersey. I’m biased, I don’t care. I hope nobody’s from any other places, don’t jump me outside. (laughs) I love Jersey. 

AM 4: I second her ::(motions to AM 6):: because I found out about Poets & Storytellers Open through the New Jersey Poetry Events page. And then I started going to all these other events. 

GYB. Yea, thank you, James. 

JCE: No, thank you. Thank you. Keep visiting. That’s how we grow community. 

GYB: Anyone else? 

AM 3: Do you have any other books available? 

JCE: Oh! Yea, this is my book, Beyond the Event Horizon, my first full volume. I’m working on a second volume. It’s a labor of love. If anybody knows or has written a book, you know. And my spoken word album Pulsar on CD. CDs are still being listened to. And I also have gotten my work published through an anthology called Silence is Consent. It’s an anthology addressing this current administration, it’s over 83 poets, and I’m one of them. I’m very thankful to be one of them. 

GYB: So, one more question from me… cycling back to the beginning. What does “peace” mean to you? 

JCE: Oh, I knew that was coming. Peace to me, personally, is every time that I share my words, because there’s nothing like that kind of freedom. And you can’t get it anywhere else. So to me, that’s peace, that, you know, we need to create. I think the arts is peace. We need to support the arts. I don’t care what form of it—visual, written, theatrical, whatever, we need to support it because we’ve seen the effects of what happens when they pull it out of schools and when communities don’t have it. We suffer, you know. So that’s peace to me. 

Back to The Interviews