In Cool Cleveland's ongoing vYbe feature, we hook you up with 20-somethings who have something more to offer our city creatively and intellectually.

As the youngest full-time employee for the City of Shaker Heights, Kelly Harris is forging a new definition of up-and-coming young African American females in Cleveland. Her activist ideology has led her to complete her third year in the Art in Prison program, inviting artists into the facilities to enrich inmates and potentially contributing to their rehabilitation. Kelly also helped design the Poet-in-Residence Program at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and was producer of The Poets' & Writers' League's First Stage, a poetic drama featuring the writing of high school students. In 2002, she was honored to receive the Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artists Recipient from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, the youngest and only poet to receive the honor.

Cool Cleveland: How does your creative background manifest itself in your current position working for the City of Shaker Heights, and what ideas and perspective are you bringing to the forefront?

Kelly Harris: I make no separation between poet and employee. It all relates somehow. For example, there was a 107-year old senior who used our city services and led an extraordinary life. She studied with Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. She was gracious enough to invite me to her home for conversation after work; of course I brought my camcorder and pen. It was like having a conversation with a history book. So I try to make my God-given poetry duties and my job co-exist as much as possible.

I believe I am the youngest full-time employee for the City of Shaker Heights, and I didn’t grow up in Shaker, so a lot of my ideas are out the box. Many of my co-workers have been employed with the city as long as I’ve been alive (laughing). They call me restless, but it’s really an internal drive not to be content with being ordinary. I promised myself very early on that I wouldn’t live the sequential life of college-work-marriage-babies-retire-die.

What projects are you involved with for the City of Shaker Heights?
There are too many to name! I've been blessed with much freedom to be creative. Last October, Shaker Heights was invited to participate in the Ohio Girls Institute for the Girls-At-Risk Conference, and I was sent to Columbus for involvement in the event. It's interesting that researchers across the country are finding that more girls are getting suspended from school, and committing more serious crimes than ever before. The numbers are alarming. When I returned from the event, I asked if I could implement a summer camp for girls that addressed social, cultural, health and physical needs. I was given the OK, and now our health department and myself are creating the curriculum. I’d like to be able to have a mentorship breakfast where girls can meet Cleveland women professionals. This pilot program is important to me because I believe government is not about control but empowerment, so hopefully the camp does that. In fact, we are in need of organizations to get involved.

You produced the Poets’ & Writers League’s First Stage, featuring writing of high school students in 2004. Has working with students posed more challenges than working with adults?
The largest obstacle I’ve face working with teens (and even some of my peers) is convincing them that Matter doesn’t Matter. There's this incredible sense of urgency to make money, to be something other than oneself, to be an over-night success as if one can go to a counter and super size their life. And why not? You can be an American idol, model, reality TV superstar, a hip hop hero, drug dealer, pimp, diva, and talk show host instantly. The task is to get young people, including myself, to slow down. The process is like writing poetry and it requires patience because, like poems, they choose their arrival just like a baby: some come quick, others slow. But while still inside - and waiting for the birth/poem/light bulb moment/the applause - the body, mind, and the spirit still need nourishing. So, I encourage my teen students and myself to take in music, art, photography, and friends because it is needed nourishment that helsp create content for the page.

Before First Stage, I was teaching teen creative writing at various Cuyahoga County libraries, and I did some work with Wiley Middle School. In college, I worked at a camp for artistically gifted children. Since my father is a retired high school art teacher, all these things I'm involved with seem very natural.

Have you ever considered journalism?
Originally, my major at Kent State was magazine journalism. However, my first assignment was the obituary section of a newspaper. I couldn’t write about dead people I didn’t know. I hated it. I changed my major. But I did write for a student publication there and eventually became an editor. I did serve on a diversity committee for the journalism school once, and I’d like to freelance more locally.

Is Cleveland’s leadership embracing its young professionals who are in positions of influence with the workplace?
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. But I have been very blessed; I interned at both American Greetings and CEOGC [Council for Economic Opportunity in Greater Cleveland], but having professional mentors and opportunities to offer concrete input is rare for young professionals. Most of the young professionals I know have had to create their own organizations and support networks in Cleveland. Honestly, many professionals I know have left Cleveland because they feel the professional opportunities here are reserved for daughters and sons of the chiefs. It’s hard to break through here if you don’t know somebody who knows somebody.

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked who I was related to when I first got to Shaker Heights, especially since I was only 23 years old at the time, but I knew no one. Well, maybe one person - God (laughing). He pretty much gets His way. At this position, I am currently designing an internship program and I will be hiring a college student or graduate for the summer.

You’re equally active in the community as you are at work. Talk about some of the projects you’ve been involved with.
Fresh Flames was a poetry anthology CD featuring emerging African American poets in Cleveland, and I was the editor of this project. The Cuyahoga Community College Recording Arts students recorded the poetry reading as a class assignment, so it was a wonderful collaboration. It’s special to me because it serves as a type of oral documentary of performance and traditional poetry from black people. Many critics said it was exclusionary, and it’s funny because the Fresh Flames project was kind of a response to being excluded often locally and historically, whether you’re a janitor or poet.

I have also been active in a program called Art in the Prison, and this past December was my third year at Grafton Correctional Facility. I perform poetry along with some other artists. It has been a tremendous experience for me. Inside, they have their own art classes and jazz band. I can’t really put it into words. I have learned that a lot of us on the outside are just like them — locked up. Many people here have this behind bars mentality – watching the world from the bench waiting for a coach to let them in the game. It’s about moving with the ball, the globe, and the world.

I’ve also worked with the Juvenile Detention Center, [African American non-profit arts group] Sankofa Fine Arts, Heights Arts Collaborative, 25 Magazine, and various departments within the City of Shaker Heights. I haven’t yet gotten into The City Club, The Rock Hall or The Cleveland Foundation’s Anisfield Wolf Book Award yet (laughing), but I’m working on it.

What are your plans in 2005?
I have always had these grand ideas that I never know how to accomplish. But my grandmother says all you need is the want-to, and the how-to will take care of it self. This year, I would like to do a poetry anthology of breast cancer stories featuring the voices of those who are struggling with it. My mom is fighting the disease. Also, many of the Grafton inmates want to get their art on display on the outside, so I want to see that it happens whether I am involved directly or indirectly.

I’d also like to see East Cleveland rejuvenated in my lifetime. I had a wonderful educational, cultural and social experience growing up there. My street was a real community. Unfortunately, one of my childhood friends was recently murdered and I have this itch to do something about it - I don’t know what though. And I still have all these duties as assigned by God in poetry and at work.
Kelly Harris can be reached at KAHpublishing@yahoo.com

Interview by Tisha Nemeth

Photo by Kelly Harris (:divend:)