Work samples
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Leap.pdfLeap, a "tender, powerful" poem from Janea's self-published literary zine "We Are Beautiful Here & Everywhere It Hurts" captures intimate wavering, reluctance and unravelling of narratives of strength and vulnerability regarding black women, regarding strong, independent women. Even Sisyphus must have found pleasure, once in a while, in consenting to letting the rock go.
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Teenage Scavenger.pdfTeenage Scavenger is a poem meditative piece on the nature of love, character flaws, earnest yearnings and the balance and order of the world. It's the second sample from "We Are Beautiful Here & Everywhere It Hurts." "You’re not mine, you belong to the universe in which you were born; you belong to millions of atoms I cannot see, and you are loved by so much— not just me. We are beautiful here and everywhere it hurts."
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Universe Becomes.pdf"Universe Becomes" is a piece from the second zine from the We Are Beautiful Here series called "It Hurts 2B Born." It's a collection that is dank with resin and honey, it's warehouse parties and hoping you won't be broken for your whole life. It's wanderlust and the hometown glory. "Universe becomes / A sakura tree grows in Washington, D.C. / There is a time where we used to give gifts in the form of people, metal, and trees asking them /To grow where they did not belong"
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Sag.pdfThe poem "Sagittarius" is taken from Janea's final installment in a self-published zine series on intimacy, trauma, and sticky summer nights titled "It Hurts 2B Touched." The poem comes from a collection of origin stories, of a girl trying to rewrite her past and mythologizing her hurt beginnings. "My father was larger than life and I inherited his girth when he died in childbirth."
About Janea
Baltimore City - Station North A&E District
Janea Kelly is a later bloomer who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Janea is one of those people who took the long way around and is better off for it. As a child with a heavy yet happy heart and ant-like strength, Janea was drawn to poetry and sprawling her complaints and hopes in sea green crayons. Ever since she was made to memorize a Langston Hughes poem for a primary school recital, Janea was aware of the power of speaking poetry, of its performance. After a long battle with trauma and mental… more
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We Are Beautiful Here & Every Where It Hurts
We Are Beautiful Here & Every Where It Hurts is the first and beginning of a trilogy of self-published poetry zines that Janea wrote the bulk of the material after a heartbreaking incident and deals with her internal discourse regarding love, forgiveness, and biology. From fearing her mother in her reflection to romantizing Griffon Eagles, Janea confronts her issues with intimacy at a lower rate than a therapist. It's a collection of poetry that took 5 years to comply and includes new and old work.
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We Are Beautiful Here & Everywhere It HurtsWe Are Beautiful Here & Everywhere It Hurts, cover page and a photograph the artist took years ago while on a walk alone after a panic attack.
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Fields Festival Write UpJanea performed at a local festival in Maryland called Fields Festival. A quote from her poem "Leap" was included in the write. "Leap" is found inside of "We Are Beautiful Here & Everywhere It Hurts."
It Hurts 2B Touched
The final installment in a trilogy on intimacy, trauma, and what it means to hope to re-do the way we create narratives. It's the stickiness of existence and the mythology that is created when we hurdle over the impossible. It's heartbreak, it's the grief of losing and the aftershocks of depression. It's how we, to take from Toni Morrison, re-memorize hurt and pain expresses and how we work through it.
Tender.FM
Tender FM is a poetry and performance night held at The Crown, a Korean restaurant and venue, in Baltimore, Maryland. It was conceived when two poets, with desire to build community and run an electric current of softness through Baltimore's new emerging entertainment and arts scene and give refuge for vulnerability. It's a series for everyone, a sanctuary to creative expression, that's curated and hosted by Janea Kelly and Anna K Crooks.
It's a beautiful evening of poetry from MFA and nervous to prolific and formally unequipped. It's about the human and ugly parts of our souls, the hurt pieces that draw us together. It's what we can see in each other that makes us think "same, similar, me."
It's a beautiful evening of poetry from MFA and nervous to prolific and formally unequipped. It's about the human and ugly parts of our souls, the hurt pieces that draw us together. It's what we can see in each other that makes us think "same, similar, me."
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Tender x ArtscapeTender FM's Janea Kelly and Anna K Crook's were asked to curate a poetry and performance pop-up at Artscape in 2016. This is Janea Kelly performing.
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HostsJanea Kelly and Anna K Crooks hosting Tender FM (photograph by Brian O'Doherty). Janea and Anna are co-hosts and curators.
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Flyer One.jpgA flyer by Anna K Crooks for the first Tender FM
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Flyer4The 4th poster for Tender FM (art by Anna K Crooks)
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Best Poetry SeriesTender Fm won "Best Poetry Series"
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Screen Shot 2017-01-23 at 4.43.25 PM.pngDue to efforts in Tender.FM and performing locally, Janea Kelly earned the award of "Best Poet" from The Baltimore City Paper.