Caleb Rainey, “The Negro Artist,” fosters healing spaces for spoken word poetry in Eastern Iowa, beyond

IOWA CITY — Poetry first hooked its claws into Caleb Rainey one fateful week in high school, but the dedication to educating others — in one form or another — has kept the art form’s grip on him ever since.

His first performance, a love poem, sprouted out of an attempt to impress a crush at school. In one week, the 16-year-old wrote something in time for his school’s live poetry slam. It got a lot of attention — and it won.

But it wasn’t just the win that captivated a lifelong romance with poetry for “The Negro Artist” who has been captivating audiences across Iowa and other states. As a biracial child from Missouri, it was the moment he discovered the key to capturing others’ attention.

“I grew up unheard, especially in educational spaces where most (people) were white. I didn’t feel like I had the power to be listened to,” said Rainey, now 28. “What was powerful about it was it was a moment where I was being listened to. This is a way I can be actually heard in a world that doesn’t want to hear me.”

Twelve years later with two published books, two albums and growing rounds of tours each year across the country, the wordsmith performer still is anchored by the Iowa City community he’s called home since attending the University of Iowa.

  Buy Photo

But more than existing, he’s cultivated physical and metaphorical spaces of transformation.

How he got here

Iowa City, a UNESCO City of Literature, was the place to be for a budding Rainey, a writer who saw promise in the small city when he moved up from Columbia, Missouri.

But the blossoming poet noticed that the best times he got to spend around people like him — people of color at poetry slams or open mic events — were during his visits to other cities and regions.

“There were no spaces in Iowa City, no poetry slams, no open mic poetry,” the 2017 University of Iowa graduate said. “Then, all of the sudden there was one because we had The Hook, and this growth of a community.”

Akwi Nji, founder of The Hook in Cedar Rapids, asked him to help spearhead the organization’s programming expansion into Iowa City, showing him how to create events to uplift other artists.

“I was one of those artists going, ‘When is my opportunity?’ ” Rainey said. “If I wanted to take more stages, I had to make more stages.”

It was on those stages that he endeared his work to those who saw him perform poems on themes from race and toxic masculinity to abuse and power.

As he continued in community activism and organizing around affordable housing and racial equity during college, performances were his way of having the conversation he couldn’t have in administrative offices with those in power. On the stage, he could have a conversation with “the people” at the same time as he did with people in power.

“If I can change enough people’s hearts, the rest of it will follow.”

Performances like “The New 3/5ths,” a poem in which he describes in wrenching detail the reckoning Black Americans face to achieve equity and full acceptance, grip even the whitest of audiences in Iowa.

“For you, I’ve got to choose which three I’ll be, and which two I’ll hide from you. I’m negotiating my humanity. My Blackness must be compromised so you’ll finally recognize me. Because at least with three-fifths, I know that I exist,” his poem ends.

How he got others there

Before long, poems like that got the attention of Lisa Roberts, founding director of Iowa City Poetry. On stage, she saw a performer with the power to light a flame in the next generation of literary artists.

“Good teachers need to know their subject matter and know how to be human. From the moment that I first saw Caleb perform ‘The New 3/5ths,’ it seemed clear he had both types of knowledge,” Roberts said. “Poet Philip Larkin says it’s hard to be both true and kind, and that’s what Caleb was then and always is.”

Though the English major had been adamant against teaching before, it was a challenge he accepted from Roberts, and an engagement he grew to enjoy with time. After developing a style of vulnerability in his performance that spoke to the heart in ways the ears cannot hear, he channeled the promise he saw in Iowa City into the high school students growing up in it.

  Buy Photo

By 2019, he felt called to expand his high school workshops, and now serves as director of Iowa City Poetry’s IC Speaks. Iowa City Speaks students and staff say he’s helped youth find their voice in an accessible art form in ways other arts don’t offer.

“What I love about spoken word poetry is at the core, it’s sharing emotions. For junior high and teenagers, there’s a lot going on,” said Ruth Thomas, former student and current coach for IC Speaks. “It’s an art form that’s flexible. It’s a 3D art form — on the page, the way you perform it.”

With a bit of a cult following, she and others have picked up on Rainey’s teachings and mannerisms. Thomas advises students at competitions to read the poems they’re most excited about, not necessarily the best one they wrote, echoing Rainey’s advice.

In the habit of Rainey’s warmest form of encouragement, students hum an affirming “mm” in the audience the way he does during their performances — the way a church congregation might say “Amen” or hum “mhm” in agreement during a sermon.

“That’s startled guest readers sometimes when a bunch of high schoolers go ‘mm’ at the same time,” said Thomas, 20. “(Rainey) gives encouragement any way, big or small.”

That sense of immediacy in feedback electrifies students, Roberts said. For those who haven’t been listened to, his patience unlocks a trust that develops a new confidence. She credits the success of IC Speaks in part to a shared sense of purpose Rainey has brought to writers.

“What I see come alive in students who work with Caleb is the thrill of discovery. They never knew they could write with such precision and heart,” she said. “They never knew they could write about ‘that,’ whatever ‘that’ is for them. They never knew that others cared so much about what they had to say.”

  Buy Photo

Why he stays

Rainey, a former day care teacher, never set out to be a full-time artist. But as tour bookings gradually increased, he started shifting away from his day job in 2018.

As a performer, he has won multiple poetry slams and was named a 2019 finalist for the UNESCO City of Literature Global Poetry Slam — Iowa City. Now, he tours in major cities across the country and has dipped his toes into international performances.

But no matter how far he goes, he continues to return to his home in Iowa City.

To the poet, fostering spaces that bring healing remains a high priority — places where an audience walks away more developed as human beings after sitting through a performer’s expression of their own experience.

“My hope isn’t to be the be-all, end-all, but a catalyst — a moment that makes those in the world think differently,” he said. “If I can change enough people’s hearts, the rest of it will follow.”

Comments: (319) 398-8340; elijah.decious@thegazette.com