By Steven Psyllos

Celena Glenn

Born in Alabama, lived in Texas, Germany, New Jersey and finally Memphis, where she dropped out of college and made for New York. Writing poetry for five years, performing for five. Two-time champ of the National Poetry Slam. Can be seen at Bowery Poetry Club with her Urbana crew, or hosting a slam at Nuyorican's Poetry Cafe. Hustler.

Why do you write? I started out as a visual artist, but the more I examined cultural politics, the more I found that words were a more direct medium to articulate my ideas.

How much of art is a craft and how much comes from within? I think all art comes from within, but we have to craft ways to get what's within out. I teach spoken word in high schools throughout the city with this organization Urbanword NYC; we basically do free writing workshops for teenagers. What I learned from this experience is, we all are creative because we always had to creatively deal with what we've been given in life. But a lot of people have a hard time owning their own ideas. I find writing is therapy; it's a look inside ourselves to see what we think about and how we think about it.

What have you learned of the artist's struggle to survive? Art is a curiosity in life and an interest in trying to understand the things that can't easily be explained. For me, it is the question "Why?" that sorta keeps me going. In terms of rent, I decided a couple of years ago to stop doing the 9-to-5 job thing. And that has made me even more intimate with my art, because everything at this point relies on my ideas.

What is the role of competition in poetry? Every artist enters the slam from a different place in their heart. For me, I like to think of the slam as a workshop. I don't really consider it any different than a literary writer's workshop that I'd have to pay a couple thousand to participate in. Why? Because you're getting an immediate response to what you wrote. And you're getting it from poets as well as people who are a little indifferent to what you're doing. A lot of the time, the audience members aren't writers themselves, so you get a real good range of feedback. In a certain way, the more successful I've been in the poetry slams, the more I've changed my writing. Because I don't want to just be good, I want to continue to be different. The competition has inspired my drive to constantly change and grow and be different.

What is the role of an artist in this society? The role of anyone is to be honest.

Celena Glenn will be performing Thurs., Jan. 13 at Southpaw, 125 5th Ave. (betw. Sterling & St. Johns Pls.), Park Slope, 718-230-0236, 8:30, $8.