We were lucky to catch up with Alaina Hasse recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Alaina, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Truth be told, most of my resiliency comes from my stubbornness. The two aren’t so different from each other if you really think about it. In addition to being stubborn, I do have a spitfire attitude andI think the sum of these two things contribute greatly to my resiliency. When faced with trials and tribulations I have to question myself on whether or not I am going to allow a situation to get the best of me, or if I’m going to get the best of it. My mother loves to tell this story about me when I was a baby. I was barely 13 months old and as my mom likes to say I “wasn’t even toddlering yet”. In this story my mother is watching me from about 8 feet away, she is standing in our kitchen and I am in the family room. A consistent little thumping noise and the sound of tiny hands slapping on leather garnered her full attention, and there I was in all of my half naked diaper wearing glory, going toe to toe with the furniture like a sheriff in a western. We have a small tan and square shaped leather ottoman, it sits on four wheels and I am climbing up on it and scooting to the very edge. Once I reach the ledge I take a moment, staring down at the carpet and the little tips of my small toes, and I leap. I fall clumsily to my butt and for a moment rest. Before she can blink I am getting back up to my feet and am climbing back up to my ottoman and I jump. Again. Again. Again. I climb up and I jump over and over again, each time falling to my bottom. I refuse to acknowledge my mom watching and decline any attempts of her offering assistance. I climb up on the ottoman and I fall on my butt every single time. Until I don’t. I climb up on the ottoman. I scoot to the edge. I jump. I land on my feet and… I walk away. Not once looking back at my now finished conquest. As I journey through life I try to look at my challenges as the ottoman, I climb up and I jump down over and over again until I land on my feet. After some leaps it’s hard to climb back up and tackle the ottoman after I’ve just plummeted, but then the stubbornness kicks in and the thought of letting something get me down, gets me up.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Poetry started for me as something that was cathartic. I could clear my brain and my heart simultaneously while also exploring a creative side of expressing myself. Very quickly the relationship between poetry and I turned into passion. My goal and focus with my writing is to heal and to hold space for both myself and others. I tend to focus on my life experiences and mental health, advocating for women’s rights and also about IPV and healing from traumas. My style of writing is also something that comes from writing being a cathartic experience for me. I’ve coined my personal style as “off the dome” in which I freestyle poems with nothing written beforehand and all being done on the spot. This style actually grew and came from me continually attending open mics and local slams and letting my nerves short my brain out once it was my turn on the mic. I have learned to really lean into it and allow myself to kind of “let go” when performing off the dome pieces. For me this style of mine both provides inspiration and allows for a raw release of any emotions or thoughts I may be processing at any given time. My focus lately has been preparation for WOWPS (Women of the World Poetry Slam) coming up in March out in Baltimore, MD. Last year was my first year attending and I am super excited to return this year and experience it once again. I’m thankful to be surrounded by many mentors, who are also dear friends, to help me prepare for this. My major focus over the course of the next year is to push myself, to push my growth and my writing and continue to polish my works. I’ve recently begun to do more fiction short story writing within the last several months and it has been a lot of fun! The ability to create an entire world off of an idea has expanded the way I think about writing. When I was a little girl I fell in love with reading immediately, from the second I learned how to read I haven’t stopped and usually have a few going at once. I would love to focus more on short story writing this year as well and continue to explore that realm of writing and the ways in which I can merge short story and poetry writing.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The most important advice I have to give is to just stay true to yourself and enjoy the process. Don’t put any pressure on yourself and allow yourself to write what you need to write. Write what you feel you need to write or hear in those moments that you are writing. Allow yourself to authentically be you.
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
The most impactful things my parents have done for me is support and believe in me. They are my number one supporters and are always in my corner. They have always cultivated a safe and loving space for myself and my siblings and truly have given us every opportunity to be who we want to be. My parents have supported my artistic journey from the second I fell into poetry. They have never let me quit or stop or speak badly about myself and my work. I’m constantly encouraged by them to keep at it and to continue pushing, they reaffirm to me that my words are important and someone somewhere needs to hear them. One of the more incredible things they do that has impacted me is simply mastering the balance of it all, mastering the balance of being able to read when I’m feeling less proud of my work and knowing exactly what to say and when to give me my own space and quiet, and being able to read when I am feeling more open and I want to share what I am working on. They are always showing interest in what I am doing and are constantly asking how they can help me and if I need feedback of help. They are always pouring into my cup, I am never empty.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: alainanoellepoetry
- Other: TikTok: alainanoellepoetry
