PhenomInal! The prophetic voice of Carla P. Elliott
I’m writing this Monday morning, April 13. I’ve just been checking whether my Chattanooga “people” are okay. They are but…barely. Everyone’s on edge. Tornadoes, flooding and high winds have followed hard on the heels of COVID-19, making this an Easter of dark intent for sure.
It’s in times like these we need a voice of prophesy.
Luckily for Chattanooga, Carla P. Elliott, who performs as Poetess PhemonInal C, has been inspiring hope, praise, laughter and the occasional moment of righteous trembling with her poetry for the past 13 years. She is the prophet we need for these days, and biggest blessing is that she’s already with us.
“[Poetry] created me the day our dear father was diagnosed with cancer,” she says, emphasizing the word in her characteristic style. “It became more than words that rhymed. They now had meaning, healing, release, and empowerment that I wanted and needed to welcome. I learned they were not mine to possess, but a gift of expression to share with others.”
Carla’s nom de plume was gifted to her by a beloved “sister in Christ” in 2009, she recalls. At Rhyme N Chatt’s Love Groove Open Mic night, her sister exclaimed: “Sis! PhenomInal C…spell yours with an ‘I’ because you are a phe-nomenal woman!” As she was signing her name on the event roster, Carla recollected how both her daughter and her niece had chosen to write about her in school assignments, using that very word. She accepted the synchronicity and has been performing as Poetess PhenomInal C ever since.
Carla has performed at Rhyme N Chatt, Barking Legs’ Wide Open Floor, and Open Mic at The Well. She’s been part of the Hunter Museum’s Vison + Verse series and the Chattanooga Readers and Writer’s Fair at the public library. She was featured at the 2020 3rd Annual Tennessee Statewide Women’s Policy Conference and performed on the Tennessee State Legislative Plaza Steps as part of the Poor People’s Campaign.
When you listen to Carla’s voice, whether in person or online, you’ll notice she does a lot more than recite her words. She sings. She howls. She turns her verse into an incantation, a witchy prayer. When in “Memento Vivere” she traces the soul’s journey—
Back to the womb
of fleshly dirt
and heavenly breath
—she hisses, growls, chants, and declaims in a masterful effort to capture the swirl of celebration and mourning evoked by the date of two painful deaths. Life’s beauty taunts her, and she answers in the same vein, crying out against the lives taken from her, even while embodying the breath, that, in an echo of John Donne’s words “hisses [and] beckons for the bodies of his saints.”
Her sweet tremolo, ending the poem, almost caresses the same “Life, Oh Life” she had savaged before; in the end, the act of creativity unites the angel and the poet who would wrestle with him in a single vision.
We need this. We need a poet who is not afraid to wrestle with the angels challenging us today—fear, loneliness, despair. If you haven’t heard Poetess PhenomInal C in the flesh, it’s high time to tune in and hear her online.
Like many of us, Carla is following her favorite poets on the Internet nowadays. She listens to the posts and livestreams of groups including Open Mic at the Well, Rhyme N Chatt, Barking Legs Theater (especially Wednesday Night Jazz and Wide Open Floor, which have both continued programming online), Chattanooga Writers’ Guild and members of the Black Poetry Café.
As a disabled woman living with rheumatoid arthritis since age 7, Carla has plenty of spiritual strength to meet the challenges of social isolation. If anything, she has to force herself to take a break sometimes.
“Fleeing,” she tells me, “is not part of my life curriculum.”
She finds joy in the fact that she still feels butterflies before a reading: “The butterflies are a signal that I am excited to connect with the audience, and want to be effective. I want to give and receive an energy not visible to the naked eye, but embraced by the spirit.”
As a member of the disabled community, she has strengths that she’s eager to share with us during this crisis.
“During this time of unrest, uncertainty, and isolation, people are actually becoming aware… of not only the needs of others, but their own limitations, physical and emotional needs as well,” she says. “They are being transparent and supportive, seeing their strengths in seemingly weak moments.”
If we are, it’s thanks in no small part to artists like Poetess PhenomInal C.
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Where to find Carla: facebook.com/PhenomInalC/
Once we emerge from isolation, be on the lookout for Carla’s disability social awareness group, CHATT-ABLE!