Today we’d like to introduce you to Avery R Young.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am a poet who uses various materials to create poems. Those materials include sound, music, visual works and I also perform. I started performing or learning to have conversation with people inside the Baptist Church and applied those lessons at the open mics and then later into my performance style. I actually started my spoken word career co-producing an open mic series with my good friend / sister Smokie. The open mic was called INNERVISIONS. Poets would come and DJ Clever Cliff would spin jazz funk instrumentals as the poets read. Although that was Smokie and my open mic, I would say my poetry home was Lit-X @ Another Level Bookstore. Nestled in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, it was where I figured out what I was going to do whenever I performed poems. I started teaching poetry from there. Then fast forward. I’m here. The Inaugural Poet Laureate of the City spinning poetry into operas!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It hasn’t been a smooth road. But what road is? I wouldn’t want it to be a smooth road actually. I am not a fan of hardship, but twists, turns, potholes and the times I had to pivot has built an automobile that has endured. The challenges and/or obstacles of the profession is getting people to see the value in art that isn’t attached to stardom or celebrity status. I have had other obstacles with finding an agent to represent me. I have been in the office of many who just have said, WE DONT KNOW HOW TO MARKET YOU. ARE YOU A POET? OR SINGER? OR ACTOR? The truth of the matter is I am a poet with a whole bunch of Mississippi in my throat who performs with a band called de deacon board. I don’t necessarily want to be famous, but I do want to be compensated fairly for what I do. And represented.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am mostly known as a performer / arts educator in Chicago. But my writing has shifted to more theater pieces after writing a libretto for the Chicago performance of Twilight: Gods. An adaptation of Wagner (Vog-ner) opera Twilight of the Gods. In April of 2026 Lyric Opera of Chicago premiered and my opera safronia. I am the librettist, composer and I starred in it. The opera is inspired by my Maternal family’s migration from Lexington, MS to Chicago, IL. My Grandmother name was Safronia and one of my favorite artists is Nina Simone so the opera was an opportunity to pay homage to both women in one title.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
There is a lot of language I don’t use. Risk is a word I don’t use. Busy is another. Instead of saying I’m busy or too busy, I use committed. Instead of risk I us the word leap. I leap a bunch. Every move in my career has been a leap. It is way easier to write a book and read pages from said book into of an audience who finds what you do with language interesting or super-duper. The leap is treating the poem as a sermon. Lending the poem my body and voice in order to transport a hall into a sanctuary. The leap is composing a whole opera humming and beatboxes the parts to de deacon board. Bas go like this. Guitar go like that. Put your weight on that organ chord in C Major, Can’t pick up anything and play it, but I can communicate what I hear in my head and feel in my heart. Those things are things I think might fail. That is what risk is. Risks consider failure. A leap has failure nowhere near it. I leap because I know I will land. I say this all of the time. The magic is in the leap.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.averyryoung.com
- Instagram: @avery_r_young
- Facebook: AveryRYoung
- Twitter: @beblk
