That is where i find you
Tucked among the grey
Oooh, you’re so yummy
It’s gonna be a good day
Oooh, all the color i see
When you look at me
I like the way that you communicate
I think about you when i
Contemplate the messages you bring
The divine song you sing
Round and round you go (direct)
Og uoy dnuor dna dnuor (retrograde)
Oooh, all the color i see
When you look at me
“Black joy always lives in the revolution. And that was a story I needed to tell. And it does have to do with your ancestors. And it does have to do even with all of these voices and people that are literally trying to kill us off… what did Lucille Clifton say in her poem, won’t you celebrate with me? ‘Something every day has tried to kill me and has failed.’ Let us celebrate this.”
—Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams, in this edition of Constellation Conversations
Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams (She/Her) is a Poet, and Founder, Chief Storytelling Officer at Narratives for Change, LLC. She is a long time artist (musician and poet) who runs a narrative arts-based social practice to help women and girls use storytelling to create art, heal, consciousness-raising, activism, and advocacy. Yvette facilitates story circles and creative writing groups to unpack hard and complex issues (i.e., race, gender, misogyny, ethnicity, spirituality). She writes poetry and essay; conducts ongoing research and writing as Autoethnography and Scholarly Personal Narrative; speaker coach for TEDx presenters; curates literary events, and organizes art activism. Prior to forming Narratives for Change, Yvette served as CEO for a change management consulting firm and as a C-Suite executive in financial services. Today, Yvette is a highly sought after executive coach for women led systems using a narrative-based approach in leveraging relational skills and building team culture. Her work is known to help women and BIPOC claim their voice and story to better lead their whole lives.
Yvette is on the international editorial board for Practising Social Change; she is Chair of the Board for Alternate ROOTS; is on the Leadership Council at the Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center, and on the Advisory Board for Generation Wow. In the fall of 2019, she was selected as an Associate Artist for a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, working with U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Yvette earned an MA in Transformative Language Arts (studying Creative Writing for Personal and Social Change) from Goddard College, a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Denver, and a BS in Occupational Education and Workforce Training at Southern Illinois University.
Yvette’s leadership and accomplishments are notable and recognized in a Harvard Business case study as a best practice for mentoring and African American Leadership.
Write someone you love, your child, partner, nephew, niece, write them a letter once a year. A year of reflection; a year of what’s been going on in your life, how you observed them in their life and give that to them and keep a copy for yourself because now we have technology, we can keep copies for ourselves.
ALTAREDSTATES is made possible with generous support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional support provided by the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab.
Produced by CalArts Center for New Performance.
ALTAR NO. 1 is commissioned by The Public Theater, and created with support from CalArts Center for New Performance and New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency, with funding from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Partners for New Performance.
