Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Rhea Carmen and I believe anything is possible.
I'm Halloran Hilton Hill and welcome to another episode of Anything is Possible.
Great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.
Rhea Carmen, also known as Rhea Sunshine in Studio with me.
And I'm excited because we share one thing in common.
What's that?
We love words.
We do.
We love words.
Yeah.
We love poetry.
Yes.
We love what words do in, through, and for you.
And so we get to celebrate that today.
Yes, absolutely.
We also get to celebrate the fact that as we are doing this today, this is your birthday.
It is.
So happy birthday.
Yes.
Thank you.
And I understand it's your son's birthday as well.
It is, yes.
How cool is that that you and your son share the exact same birthday?
He's the best birthday present I ever got.
Tell me about it.
He is, he'll be 13, well he's 13 years old today.
He is an amazing musician, one of the sweetest people I know.
And I never really wanted to be a mom.
And then he came along and I say it all the time and in a point that we do together, it's
the best job I've never applied for.
And so he's teaching me a lot.
He lives with autism and he teaches me how to celebrate life every day.
And he's made me a better person.
Why don't we start with one of your pieces?
Oh, okay.
I would love for you to share one of your pieces as we open this journey together.
Okay.
Quite frequently, I can be caught flying to the rings of Saturn, escaping from my classroom
walls on a wing and a prayer.
Because that's the only place that I'm free.
To be the me that expresses words like nothing else matters.
Not breath, nor beat, not drink, or meet.
I'm a poet with no time to write poetry.
Finding beauty in the crazy, I'm a wife, a mother, and a teacher.
Sometimes life preacher for generations, sometimes clueless.
Instead of opening my notebook, I unlock doors that lead to open minds.
I have no time to sit and write because I'm trying to right wrongs on how we motivate and educate.
I build household systems that mold young minds.
I speak not knowing what will happen.
I need more time to be who God created me to be so that now I became a thief.
I started stealing early morning and late night sessions as if there would never be another chance.
I laugh, I dance, but most of all, I speak like fire on my lips will cease to burn.
Like my pen is running out of ink.
I speak poetry in each testimony, and every now and then I steal a way to be free.
A poet and a thief with no opportunity to change destiny.
I shake the fear that I cannot change lives with the words that I write.
And I speak like time ends after this.
Like love stops existing and I'm pricking the ears of God like last chance for dreams to come true.
I never thought like this. I never believed like this.
I never knew like right now you can feel me urging you to be exactly what God created you to be
because I will always be a wife, a mother, and a teacher that decided to be a poet
and write these words to set the rest of the world free.
That's what I was doing.
Oh, that's powerful. That's beautiful.
Thank you. Thank you.
What is the origin of that piece right there?
I was talking, we were celebrating the life of Alex Haley.
Yes.
And Alex Haley said that roots was a gift and a curse because the fame kept him from writing.
Yeah.
Right?
And when you talked about being a thief and having to steal time to do this thing you were born to do,
when did you do that piece?
Talk me through the process.
I used to be a high school math teacher.
So the educational system doesn't leave you a lot of time as a teacher for anything but to be a teacher.
And then you have to still have your family and life.
And I just wasn't finding time to write.
And so one morning I woke up at 4.30 in the morning to steal time.
And that's when that piece came out.
And I was like, I do this because I want to change lives and I know that what I write will change lives.
But I don't have time to do it.
So I'm going to have to start stealing time so that I can have the time to affect my students
and all the people that I know that I can touch with this gift.
How do your students, how do people respond to the poetry?
Because it's beautiful.
It's lyrical.
It's turbulent.
It's emotional.
It's good.
Thank you.
I think it inspires people, which is what I wanted to do.
I want people to see humanity when I write and not see a black woman, not see somebody that has an illness or anything.
I just want them to see humanity and when we start to see that in each other,
then we can get past all the other stuff.
And so I write my story because I know my story will connect with somebody.
You can't take my story from me.
And so I write that to connect.
Stories do reveal our humanity.
And I guess what I found is that in the Legos of life, we click when we fill each other's stories.
That's where the bumps cover the holes.
Where were you born?
I was born in Detroit, Michigan.
Guess who else was born in Detroit, Michigan?
You.
Me.
Yes.
Hutzel Hospital.
Guess who was born in Hutzel Hospital?
I kid you that's that.
That's amazing.
I was born in Hutzel Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a small one.
That is bizarre.
So tell me more.
So I was born in Hutzel Hospital, 1978.
And we left Detroit in 1986 and moved to Huntsville, Alabama.
Do you know where I lived and worked and went to school?
No.
Stop it.
I'm a graduate of Oakwood University.
I went to Oakwood.
In Hutzel, Alabama.
That was what school I went to from third grade all the way to seventh.
You got to be kidding me.
No.
Oh my gosh.
That is amazing.
I could probably call some names and you'd be like, oh, I know them.
This is bizarre.
Tell me more.
Let's go deeper.
So yeah.
So we moved there because my grandfather had cancer and they lived in Alabama.
My dad wanted to be closer to his dad.
So we moved to Huntsville, Alabama.
My dad worked for the city of Huntsville.
He was an accountant.
And I went to Oakwood until seventh grade.
And then I went to Westminster Christian Academy after that.
And that's where I graduated from high school.
And I left there and came to Knoxville to go to the University of Tennessee.
And I have never left.
This is home now.
I've been here for 27 years.
When did, when were you apprehended by art?
When did the words, when did that fascination begin to?
Wow.
I can thank Oakwood for that.
I tell people all the time, we had to read black poets.
And we had to read black books.
And I fell in love with poetry in third and fourth grade when they made us read Nicky Giovanni and Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes was the one that got me.
Yeah, Langston Hughes got me.
And then James Llewden Johnson.
I remember being nine years old doing the creation in front of my church.
And I made them flash the lights and added all the theatrics and everything.
I performed James Llewden Johnson, the creation.
What was it about the poetry and the words?
What?
It was a feeling.
It's a feeling that it gave me that you can put your entire self into something and it lasts forever.
Like I'll never meet Langston Hughes, but I know his story.
Right.
And I know his mom's story.
And mother to son, that's probably going to always be one of my favorite poems.
And I feel that way when I teach my sons about life, you know, and I bring that in to tell them all the time, you know, life's not always going to be easy.
But you don't ever give up.
You don't sit down on the steps because it's hard.
You keep climbing.
You keep pushing.
I fell in love with poetry most expressed through songwriting.
Right.
And I'm working on a musical now.
But here's what the words did for me and do for me.
It gave me a place to repurpose pain.
Yes, absolutely.
So that pain that would have consumed me.
I flip it on his head and use it as a resource.
Oh, yes.
Does that make?
Oh, absolutely.
I tell people all the time, poetry saved my life and yours.
It saved you from me.
Unresolved, right?
It saved both of us, yes.
It saved my life all the time.
All right.
So you run an organization called the Fifth Woman Cohort.
What is that?
The Fifth Woman is a collective of poets who have gone through a fellowship with me at
some point in time in their journey as poets.
And they spend, I'd say, about nine months with me just digging in and making them confront
pain and confront their own personal stories.
And they perform those pieces.
And then after that, they are a part of a collective.
And we perform all over the country.
So we perform at Bonnaroo, we go to poetry slams, we do events here in the city.
And some of them live in Knoxville, some of them live all over the place.
So there's poets everywhere that I've been able to touch their lives.
And then they go forth and they touch everybody else.
Thank you for blessing the world with your art through that.
What was it like to be named poet laureate of the city of Knoxville?
Oh, gosh.
It was hilarity.
I never expected it.
And then the way it happened, I think I was in Kroger grocery shopping and my phone rang.
And I, you know, I answered the phone and it was Mayor Kankannon.
And she was like, hi, Rayya, this is India Kankannon.
Thanks for agreeing to be the poet laureate.
I was like, I didn't even, I didn't know I agreed.
And I was like, okay.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
I got you.
Absolutely.
But it was such an honor.
I think knowing my family's history, my family's story to be black history was just amazing.
To be the first black poet laureate of Knoxville was, that was just the biggest honor to me.
And to be able to say to my boys, you can still make history.
Like, it doesn't have to be a long time ago.
Mom made history yesterday.
We're proud of you.
Thank you.
Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Coming up.
I was diagnosed 13 years ago, six months after I died.
Let's talk about your journey.
One of the things is you are on this journey with multiple sclerosis.
Yes.
When did you find out when were you diagnosed and what is that journey been like for you?
I was diagnosed 13 years ago, six months after I died.
I was born.
So my 13 year old was born.
And then six months later, I was up teaching class and started losing my vision in my left eye.
And it was the second time I had lost my vision in that manner.
And so that's when they decided to test and see what was causing it.
And they found the lesions on my brain.
And so that was the diagnosis.
But my neurologist has informed me that I probably had my first episode at nine years old when I had Guillain-Barre syndrome.
And it completely paralyzed me at nine.
And I think I was completely paralyzed for about four or five months.
And then I started walking again and all of that came back.
It's just, it's a journey.
I tell people all the time, life be lifeing.
So it's a part of my story.
It's a part of my life.
And I love that it's a part of my story.
Because I get to show people the resilience that you can have in your body and your mind.
How art can be healing.
I wrote a whole book while I was going through some things with my MS and dealing with pain and medication changes and all of that.
And more poetry came out.
Through the clouds.
Is it available?
It is available on Amazon.
All right.
So please, please go get that.
Were you, are you afraid?
I'm only afraid that I'll let it worry me too much.
I try not to worry.
I try to be a pretty stress-free person.
And so I guess I'm only afraid that one day I'll be afraid.
Does that make sense?
I don't even know if that makes sense.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Yeah, so that's what I'm afraid of is that one day it'll scare me.
Right now it doesn't.
I don't, I don't let it get me down.
You know, I have my rough days.
I have days of fatigue.
What's your rough day like physically?
I don't want to move.
I just want to be.
I don't want to talk.
I just want to sit still.
I'm tired.
And those days, you know, thankfully I have a partner and he is the best person in the world on those days.
And he's like, put your feet up or rub your feet.
What else do you need me to rub?
You know, he's like, I got you.
And those, those are the, those are the worst days.
And those are the, those are another form of a cloud.
The clouds represent two things.
And so when I lost my vision, it was like looking through clouds.
It was white.
Did you lose your vision in one of your eyes?
I lost the vision in my right eye first.
And then it came back after two months.
And then the second episode, I lost it in my left eye.
And it came back after eight weeks.
So, but during those times, it's just like looking through clouds.
Like if you're trying to see through that eye, you can't make anything out.
You're just looking through clouds.
And so that's what those clouds represent.
But on rough days, it's like a cloudy day, you know, like it's like my head is in the clouds.
And so I feel like I'm just like, kind of just.
Tell me about meeting your, I got you person.
Funny story.
So I'm almost four years older than him.
So when he came to UT, he was 17 years old.
And that's the first time we met.
And he was a kid.
So let him be a kid.
10 years later, we ran into each other again.
And there's just like, I don't know, we were like brother and sister.
You would seem we played video games together.
We hung out and laughed and I cooked.
And it was never anything.
And then one day I was in church just worshiping and he was next to me.
And I felt a whisper like, that's him.
And I ignored it.
I was like, whatever.
And we're trying to worship here.
Like we're trying to work here.
Stick to the program.
And then a few weeks after that, we were sitting on my, he was sitting on my,
my couch.
I tell people all the time, we didn't even sit on the same couch at my house.
Like he sat on one couch with my dog and I sat on the other couch.
We played video games and he says he heard audibly God say, that's your wife.
And he's not the type of guy who ever says that.
Like he doesn't say, God spoke to me.
That's, you know, he's not that guy.
So we did the Daniel Fast in January, new year, and we were sitting down eating a salad together.
And he goes, I have to tell you something.
And I was like, okay, you know, we're in this place, iron sharpens iron.
What do I need to fix?
Like you're about to correct me is what I thought.
And he goes, God said that you're my wife.
And I was like, okay.
And I just kind of kept eating.
I gave him no response.
I gave him nothing to go off of.
He had to have faith.
He was going to follow through with that one.
And so I just was like, okay.
Because at the time I didn't feel there was no butterflies.
I didn't feel, you know, like, oh, this is going to be the love of my life.
You know what I mean?
I just didn't feel that.
And, you know, I talked to my mentor and I said, and Marcus said that God said I'm his wife.
And she said, well, how do you feel?
I said, I don't feel anything.
And she was like, well, if it's God, he'll bring the love.
Just trust, just wait and see.
And so that's what we did.
We just kind of, he said, well, will you at least be my Valentine?
And I said, okay, now be your Valentine.
And so by Valentine's Day, he reached down and held my hand and I didn't pull it away.
It felt okay.
And from there, just he grew to be the love of my life.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
He's amazing.
Why don't we take a break?
Your story demands a part two.
My guest is Rhea Carmen.
And I'm delighted to have you here today.
Thank you so much.
I'm delighted to have you here today.
Thank you so much.
I'm delighted to have you here today.
Thank you so much.
I'm delighted for the way that your gifts and your inspiration and your talent is being used to be a light and a blessing,
but also think your life is a representation of possibility, which I want to explore further in our next episode
because I want to talk about art.
Yay.
We'll do that.
You're watching Anything Is Possible.
We'll see you next time.