Elizabeth Acevedo On Storytelling, Twitter Poets, And The Evolution of Poetry In The Digital Age
Valentino has turned to some of the world’s leading literary writers to carry forward its message of love. Award-winning poet Elizabeth Acevedo is one such wordsmith…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but Dominican-American author and poet Elizabeth Acevedo might just disagree with that. She is one of 17 writers tapped by the Valentino fashion house to take part in the second edition of its The Narratives textonly ad campaign. “I find it fascinating that we’re trying to find new ways, to have language kind of live with us and around us,” says Elizabeth about the project. “I’m really curious about the way that Valentino is bringing language, and really poignant language, into their relationship with their clothing.”
The Narratives was first launched last year with a series of texts from authors that name-checked the Italian house in their prose. But for this sophomore outing, Valentino’s Creative Director, Pierpaolo Piccioli wanted a new group of writers to take on the topic of love. He asked each of them to come up with written expressions of the emotion that was at the heart of his latest collection and gave them carte-blanche to do it.
“I am a poetry reader, and this helps me to visualise words and to deliver my emotions and vision,” says Pierpaolo. “I think poetry protects our humanity and allows inner explorations; it gives you the lens through which one can really touch the nature of our most intimate feelings,” he adds.
Elizabeth’s own love of poetry and the written word came from a childhood filled with storytellers. Her mother was forever recounting colourful stories of her time growing up in the Dominican Republic, while her grandfather would charm Elizabeth with rhyming riddles as he walked her to and from school to help pass the time. Music was another avenue that lead the aspiring wordsmith to poetry, as one of her early dreams was to become a rapper.
It was a dream that grew and shifted over time, with Elizabeth finally finding her calling in the world of slam poetry, becoming a national champion in the field. She is also a highly regarded author, having published a number of young adult novels. These include With the Fire on High, Clap When You Land, and the New York Times bestselling tome The Poet X, which also garnered her the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the Carnegie medal.
“I think that it’s interesting to see poetry kind of move into these very quick spaces and with the advent of the Instapoet or someone who can tweet poetry, we are discovering what it is that people look for when they are interested in very short text,” muses Elizabeth. “We are seeing an evolution of how a poet moves across different landscapes.”
For Valentino this meant, in collaboration with the Belletrist book-lovers community, covering the windows of independent bookstores across the United States – as well as a number of city buildings – with colourful texts about love from some of today’s leading literary voices. Elizabeth’s ode to love now sits alongside those of Chung Serang, Douglas Coupland, Andrew Sean Greer and David Sedaris, just to name a few. The fashion house will also be making donations to each of the bookstores that are participating in the campaign.
Elizabeth is all for any movement that highlights the power of the written word and will entice more zoomers and millennials to crack open a book. “You know, in a graphic moment, when everyone is vying and paying millions of dollars to try to capture their attention… in your four or five lines, you can do something that marketing brands are struggling to do. I think that that’s speaking to something really connected. And that is interesting for me,” she admits.
Truth be told, Elizabeth’s take on the topic of love turned out to be a bit too steamy to print in these pages. So intrepid readers will now have to hunt out the text she chose to give to Valentino for this project on their own.
But the very fact that the fashion house didn’t baulk at what Elizabeth gave them is just further proof that the company is interested in being a ‘big tent’ brand where all are welcome and also one that stands up for what it believes in. As evident in everything from its inclusive fashion shows and boundary-pushing advertising campaigns to initiatives like its (V) Vaccinated by Valentino capsule collection, which raised funds for Unicef to supply Covid-19 vaccines to countries in need.
“I’m moving into a new space as an adult author with my first novel coming out with my poetry collection, so I wanted something that also felt like it was ushering in a new sensibility of my writing,” says Elizabeth (whose latest book, Clap When You Land, is a novel-in-verse story that deals with death and self-discovery) about the text she submitted to Valentino. “So I kind of just tossed it out there as like, ‘let’s see what happens’. Like, maybe this is super sexy, but we’ll see. And they loved it.”
Pink Poems Fragments By Douglas Coupland Supplied By Valentino.
Photography: Adel Rashid. Styling: Nour Bou Ezz. Make-up: Mabs Khakwani. Hair: Laloge Beauty Lounge. Stylist’s Assistant: Cristina Burca
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s April 2022 Issue