The Cave Volume I Issue 1 | 25
Social Media Influencer & Poet: Janielle Browne! By T’afari Steede
I
“Every action is a political statement”
had always seen her around at Poetry Limes or at UWI but my first interaction with Janielle was stapled after a poetry reading for Pouii magazine in the Cynthia Wilson Arts Lecture Theatre. With her impeccable sense of style I was pleased to note that she also had great taste in literature. The following semester found us in a course together and through multiple class discussions on philosophical views I grew to realize not only was she wellversed in topical issues but she was also a growing social media influencer due to her poetry. Amassing over two thousand followers on both Facebook (Janielle F. J Browne) and Instagram (@aquanxD), Janielle says she really began to blow up after releasing a video for her poem ‘Melanin’ which spoke on the harmful effects of bleaching one’s skin:
“I
didn’t expect it to blow up,” she says, while contending that the feeling of having strangers approach her in the streets because they related so much to her poetry was definitely appreciated:
“Sometimes I am wary of putting out things that are so personal, but when people relate to it, it kinda makes me realize that nothing is in a vacuum.” Janielle has poetry platforms both online and outside in the real world; but before delving into how she utilized social media as a tool for expression I wanted to find out more Janielle Browne the poet and how she got into poetry.
“I
got into poetry when I was about say, eleven. I always loved literature because my mother was an English teacher so I always had an appreciation for words. As soon as I got into school I got into writing. Do you remember on mother’s day and father’s day in class how they would make you write a little poem? So I guess I started there but I didn’t get into it until I was like eleven and I started to write stories. I realized you could still tell a story with like, fewer lines so I did my first poetry collection when I was like twelve, but I didn’t get it published so don’t get excited! But I was really proud of myself for being able to write and write that consistently so that I could have an actual body of work.” Imagine amassing an entire collection at the age of twelve. I was curious as to whether she had adult assistance or if she undertook this endeavour completely on her own.
“T
his was actually completely unassisted. I used to take my exercise books for school and write stories in them. My teachers [sic] would always be like:’ why do you need a new exercise book again?’ and I would be like: ‘ohh don’t worry about it!’ but I was really just writing stories. Then I got a notebook, cause I really wanted a separate notebook for poetry. It was one of those black and white notebooks with the static on it; you know what I mean? So I wrote pages back to front of poetry. I didn’t really want to share anything with anybody because I just started and it was more of a personal thing. In my classes in secondary school we had a book club thing where we would share our fictional works and everybody would read them, but I didn’t want to do that with my poetry.” “Obviously this was when you were still young, right? So when was it that you were actually propelled into sharing your poetry?”
“A
bout two years later, when I was in third form... about thirteen. My best-friend actually sent me a poem a few weeks ago I wrote when I was thirteen and I was like: ‘you still have that?’ but she was the first person I decided to share my poetry with and she was like : ‘this is really good!’. In our English classes when our lecturers would let us do something creative I
