A street poet finds her voice on Penn Avenue
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Haley Clancy would like to write a poem for you. “I wish everyone had one of my poems,” the 18-year-old said as she sat in front of Parma Sausage Products on Penn Avenue in the Strip District.
It was March 13, a sunny, windy Friday before COVID19 overturned our lives. Events had been canceled but Strip District shoppers seemed more interested in stocking up on St. Patrick’s Day decorations than toilet paper.
Still Mary Buratti, of the West End, was worried about Haley. She pressed a small bottle of sanitizer into Haley’s hand. “You touch so many people,” she said.
A half-hour earlier, Haley had touched Mary with a poem. Among the typed lines on a yellow piece of paper were these:
“Because God will bless us He told me not to worry ... All hope is not forever gone.”
“She is so talented,” Mary said and pointed to me: “We’re gonna make you a star.”
A day later, it was over. Only three people wanted poems that Saturday, a day when Haley usually types at least a dozen on her old Smith-Corona manual typewriter. One was a woman afraid to shake hands. Yet when Haley was done, she forgot about social distancing and hugged her.
“I guess it made her forget,” Haley said. “I wanted to say, ‘Please don’t, but …”
Haley was never a hugger. She was born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., the youngest of three girls. She came to Pittsburgh after her father, Kendrick Clancy, was drafted by the Steelers. The defensive tackle was a backup for Pittsburgh from 2000 to 2004, then spent five seasons with the Giants, Cardinals and Saints.
Her father wrote poems when he was younger, but Haley says she has never seen one. She attended public school in the Seneca Valley School District. In the fourth grade, she heard Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son,” which ends:
“... Don’t you fall now — For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”
“I cried. It changed my life,” Haley says.
She started writing in a little rhyming book and reading poetry by Maya Angelou and others. Now living in Cranberry, she competed in poetry slams, including Steel City Slams on Tuesday nights at Capri Pizzeria and Bar in East Liberty. Her mother, Patricia Harris, set her up with her typewriter at an iced tea shop. “I didn’t sell one poem,” she says.
Haley had better luck by Stage AE on the North Shore, but really found her voice in the Strip District. Parma Sausage owner Rina Edwards and Jim Coen, owner of Yinzers in the Burgh, have been very supportive, Haley says. Each has a poem on the walls of their stores.
When she started on Penn Avenue last spring, Haley often gave away her work.
“Poetry is something no one can take away from me … unless I give it to them,” she says.
She writes about whatever people want. One couple asked for a poem after their 7-year-old son died. Another was about a man who was getting ready to pick up his girlfriend from rehab. One woman asked last year for a poem about her 20th wedding anniversary. She returned this year wanting one about her divorce.
“I try to give them some kind of hope,” Haley says.
She never imagined herself as a street poet. “Being out here made me grow a whole different skin.”
When I asked Haley to write a poem about herself, she immediately started one-finger typing on her phone (her typewriter was stuck). The result is a dark tale about an unmourned girl who carries her casket on her back. It ends with the lines:
“That girl died that day This girl carried on and fought.”
I asked the poet what it meant.
“The first girl is my life before selling poems. I’m a different person, or maybe I’ve become more the person I am.”
Thanks to the new coronavirus, Haley cannot sell poems on Penn Avenue. Her mother is trying to help her set up a website, A Poem’s Purpose. For now, you can email her at apoemspurpose@gmail.com and pay her through Venmo.com.
How much? Whatever you want. Some people pay $5. Others pay more.
For a month, one woman routinely handed Haley $50 and told her to write a poem about herself, never stopping to read it.
“She gave me, like $200. Finally I said, ‘Here’s a poem about you.’ It was the best poem I ever wrote.”
Haley never saw her again.