Today we’d like to introduce you to Andre Bradford.
Hi Andre, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Absolutely, so my name is Andre and my stage name is S.C. Says. I started performing slam or spoken word poetry in 2014 after sitting in the audience at the Austin Poetry Slam for six months just admiring other poets’ bravery and creativity. There was something about the rawness and the vulnerability that immediately drew me in. I had a strong theatre background and was incredibly comfortable telling other people’s stories, but hadn’t really considered telling my own. In a lot of ways, slam poetry helped me to find my voice and to see how powerful our vulnerability can be in bringing people together.
I’d soon find I had a knack for finding creative ways to talk about things like being mixed race (I’m Jamaican and Mexican, or Jamexican), what struggling with depression is really like, or how important it is to find self-love before seeking romantic love. I went on to become a two-time Austin Poetry Slam Champion, a three-time Texas Grand Slam finalist, won a national group piece championship, and am the current 2022 Grand Slam Champion of Texas.
While I am incredibly competitive, I found that my favorite parts of performing were the dialogues I’d have afterwards with mostly complete strangers. Time and time again, I’ve seen that if I’m willing to be honest and vulnerable with my own struggles and emotions, then the people listening are more willing to share vulnerable and authentic parts of their stories with me and with each other. I LOVE that. I’ve had deeper conversations after a performance with people I’ve known for five minutes than with people I’ve known for five years. I wanted to find a way to cultivate more of these dialogues and help people to see the connecting points with the people around them. In 2017 I got the idea to write a slam poetry show around Purposeful Empathy. The show would use slam poetry, personal anecdotes, and research to help audiences see how life changing implementing more intentional empathy could be in their lives. I titled the show Kintsukuroi: On Empathy and Other things, and included five of the most meaningful poems to me at the time. The show title was inspired by the Japanese art form Kintsugi where you take a piece of pottery that’s been broken and you mend it back together using a golden lacquer, so the finished piece is arguably more beautiful after it was broken than it was in the first place. When I think about how vital, powerful, and healing empathy is, that metaphor really rang home for me. Once I finished writing it, I started pitching the show to different independent schools around the country since I’d had some experience performing at schools doing work for a performance group called COMETRY.
Within a few weeks, I had already booked my first three shows, and after that first performance for a high school in MA, I was absolutely hooked. The show is a unique blend of engaging poetry, comedic anecdote, and educational information and there was a line of students and faculty after that first performance that wanted to either thank me for being real and vulnerable with them, tell me how my story related to theirs, or both. I’ve now performed the show for over 50 different independent schools across the country, 20 different colleges and universities, and several educational and business development conferences. In January 2021, I was able to quit my full time job as a Sales Director for a tech company in Austin to pursue performance and speaking full time. It’s been daunting, especially on the backend of a pandemic, but I genuinely love this work and am so incredibly grateful for every single stage I’m able to share my story on.
Just this September, I released my first book of poetry through Write About Now titled Golden Brown Skin. It’s a culmination of the last 8 years of writing and performing poetry and this journey of self-reflection and growth that I’ve been on. I’ve also just finished writing and preparing my second full-length slam poetry show titled No Hard Feelings around navigating life’s heaviest emotions, and have my first performances of it already booked. I’m so excited to see where this art form and my story take me next.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
So I was actually in Dublin with two of my best friends since elementary school when the world started to shut down due to Covid. 2020 was setting itself up to be my best year yet for performances, and I remember getting email after email of show cancellations. Like many other speakers and performers, I pivoted to virtual performances fairly quickly, but a huge draw of the performance is the conversations and dialogue created afterwards and so much of that was lost due to Zoom fatigue or bad internet connections. It’s incredibly humbling knowing a lot of my success or growth can be completely out of my hands, and even now, I’m still incredibly wary of another major world event putting a pause on live events.
I think the other major obstacle I’ve had to navigate is that many of the people I’m pitching my show to have no idea what slam poetry is, or have a sort of cynical view of it. Several times I’ve been on calls with coordinators for schools or conferences who flat out told me they don’t like poetry and don’t think their audience will like poetry either. But I get it, there are art forms I’m not crazy about too, and I’m a firm believer that I’ll end up where I need to be with the audiences that need the message most.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
When people ask me now what I do, I tell them I’m a motivational speaker that uses slam poetry to educate about empathy. But there are maybe 12 different jobs that I had before that title. I’ve worked at a movie theatre, a theatre theatre, I’ve waited tables, sold cars, acted in commercials, did inside sales for IT products, and most recently was a Sales Director of a tech company making mobile accessories.
I have a hard time being idle, but I think that work ethic also gave me every single skill that I use today to run my own business. Be it doing a sales pitch for my show, creating marketing material for my performances, running workshops, and all the little tasks required to be a solopreneur.
I’m a full time spoken word artist, which still feels wild to say. I specialize in using art to help other people feel seen, and I think that was true even when I was pursuing acting in High School and College. Growing up mixed race I struggled a lot with having a sense of belonging, so a huge driving force for me is using my creativity and story to help someone to see that they aren’t alone in their pain or struggle. After so many shared tears with audience members, I know that it’s working, and that, too, inspires me to continue this crazy journey I’m on.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
Oh man, there are SO many books that have inspired me in this journey but I’ll try to narrow it down to just a few.
I re-read a series called The Walk by Richard Paul Evans every year. It’s a five-book series about a man who literally loses everything, and instead of taking his life, he chooses to honor his wife’s last wishes and sells everything he has left to go on a walk across the country. It’s a POWERFUL story about grief and healing.
I can’t recommend anything by Fredrik Backman enough, but I think my new favorite book of all time is Anxious People. I wept reading this book, it was such a beautiful reminder that we are all struggling with something and if we just take the time to appreciate that we can do so much good.
I draw a lot of inspiration from fantasy, I’m a huge sci-fi and fantasy lover, and a series I re-read every year is The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Easily the most powerful and relatable female lead I’ve ever read, and even though it’s a fantasy the emotion in the book is palpable and moving and I get something different out of the series every time I read it.
I’m a big Brene Brown fan, and her latest book Atlas of the Heart was a huge inspiration for my new show No Hard Feelings. It’s essentially an encyclopedia of human emotions, but told in a way that is so vulnerable and relatable and that book alone has dramatically improved my overall emotional intelligence.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.scsayspoetry.com
- Instagram: @scsays
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/scsayspoetry
- Twitter: @scsays
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@scsayspoetry?lang=en
Image Credits
@kpphotographdesigns – Personal photo
@caitlinrosephoto – No Place for Hate photo
