Arts Directory

About

Artist Bio

Vera Gómez is an accomplished business marketing professional and communicator. She also works as a workshop facilitator, performance poet and a teaching poet. Vera considers herself a habitual border-crosser between her American upbringing and Mexican heritage. Her poetry chapbook, Barrio Voices, was published in 2008 and her work has appeared in State of the Heart: Carolina Writers on the Places They Love, Volume II; ARCHIVE; Ties that Bind, Quintet, Kakalak and the Emrys Journal.

Vera is a firm believer in the power of words and the importance of everyone’s unique voice. She holds fast to the difference her bi-culturalism – in both her professional and personal life — encourage her students in being confident in who and what they are and where they come from. Vera is also an advocate and supporter of collaboration. Her past projects have included curating Voces Nuevas – Raising Latinx Voices in South Carolina, Deckle Edge Literary Festival (2019); being named to The Jaspar Project’s Supper Table: An Array of Remarkable SC Women (2019); teamed with the Indie Grits Festival’s Visiones project (2017); presenting a Chautauqua Talk on Caesar Chavez (2017); and introducing “Improv Poetry” at Read Up, Greenville (2017). She was part of the Free Verse: Charleston Poetry Festival (2018) and Columbia, SC Rain Poetry Project (2019).

Vera holds B.A in Television Communications with a minor in English. She has attended the Iowa Summer Writer’s Workshop on scholarship, is a constant reader and learner, and works in sustainability. To learn more, visit veragomez.com.

Artist Statement

As a firm believer in the power of words and the importance of storytelling, I team with educators, students, and adults to encourage their use of voice. Voice, being the tool for spoken and written word, with combined with person’s memory, dreams and recollection allow me to enable those I work with to find their place and gain confidence in learning how each of us is different and unique in our experiences and personal “story.” Even if experiences are similar, each of our stories is special and a vital part of the communities we live in.

My artist-in-residencies and workshops center on my understanding of the audience I am going to work, which I ask of my host, and then using the first :10 minutes of our first session with conversation to develop trust. I often then leverage inquiry questions to get to know participants and get them comfortable in participating and “hearing” their speech.

My goal is to have each of person create which I use listing exercises based on the five senses to discuss our writing topic. Topics can range from academic ones, like mitosis and meiosis to jazz history or Brown vs. the Board of Education. Listing exercises allow me to demonstrate to attendees how we can form factual, emotional, and visual images (I use slides and planned PowerPoints) to begin to capture story.

In addition, my personal work focuses on elements that comprise the melting pot of America. They ran the gambit from a person’s ethnicity, nationality, cultural upbringing, gender identity, and social economics to the daily barriers we each face due to who we are and where we come from. Other topics include areas such as the social injustices and economic inequity that we all may experience.

If I can enable a student or another adult to find their voice, usually it is the quiet student/adult or the loud troublemaker and enable them to “hear” their strength in written word spoken out load, their peer’s applause helps a lot, then as an artist who specializes in the “power of words” I feel extremely gratified.