Poet By Design:
Fashion and Flow by Golden Infamous da Angel
(Part I)
By: Ccep J. Dew
dews_ccep@yahoo.com
There is nothing that I can say about Golden Infamous da Angel that she can
not express more powerfully through her own words. I met Golden at
my first open mic which was held at A Good Book book store in Maryland. She
intimidated me not only as a poet, but as a person. Her fashion style is unique
and her words are deep yet real. The more I bumped into her at other events
(even to the point that we had an impromptu co-feature at another A Good book
open mic) the more I began to admire the person that she is.
I wanted to interview Golden with the intentions of letting the world know
more about her poetry and fashion line. Never in a million years would I have
expected to have so many laughs and to walk away feeling so inspired. Golden
Infamous da Angel not only gave me words, a book, and a cd…she gave me hope.
Ccep: Hello, Golden?
GIdA: Hey! What’s up?
Ccep: Hey! You ready?
GIdA: Yeah. I’m ready.
Ccep: Okay…Alright, first of all, how you doing?
GIdA: Good. How you doing?
Ccep: That’s good. I’m alright. I’m alright.
GIdA: (laughs)
Ccep: Okay… So, how did “Khadija Harris” become “Golden Infamous da Angel”?
GIdA: Oh, God! I knew you were gonna ask me that. It’s such a boring story.
Ccep: (laughs)
GIdA: Um… Alright, let me try and shorten it into an interesting story… “Golden
Infamous da Angel” is a combination of different names that I have used
throughout the years. And… um… growing up I had ‘bout three different names that
I wrote under and I combined them all into one. But, um… Actually, Golden
Infamous was a poem that I wrote. I wrote a poem in high school called Golden
Infamous and at the point where I was tryna figure out what name I was going to
use my cousin was like, “That would be a hot name!” And, so I took that, added
the “Angel” which was a previous name that I had written under. Hence “Golden
Infamous da Angel”.
Ccep: Okay. Cool. What hardships have you had to overcome in order to be as
successful as you are?
GIdA: *screams* Oh, God! Oh! What hardships have I had to overcome?
Ccep: (laughs)
GIdA: What hardships haven’t I had to overcome? I grew up with a disabled
mother. My mother had a disease called Huntington’s Disease, which is a very
rare condition and mostly Caucasian people have it. Not a lot of African
American people have it. So… I grew up in Baltimore City in a single-parent
household and, in addition to the fact that it was a single-parent household, I
was taking care of my mother most of my childhood. My mother passed away in
2001... um… and… as a result of my mother’s illness, I spent my teenage years
moving from house to house. Probably from me being in ninth grade all the way to
me being in college, I moved like every year. Like, in college I went to four
different high schools—I mean, I’m sorry, in high school I went to four
different high schools. I moved for college. I basically was moving like every
year to another household tryna find somewhere to stay. So, that really pushed
me. That really pushed me because I had to fend for myself at a very early age…
At a very early age.
Ccep: Wow. That’s amazing. I—It’s hard taking care of myself now and I have
somebody to help, so…
GIdA: (laughs) It’s hard taking care of myself, too.
Ccep: Yeah. Out of all your endeavors, ‘cause you do some many different
things—
GIdA: Yes.
Ccep: —Which one is your favorite?
GIdA: Um… It depends. It depends. I don’t necessarily say that I have a favorite
because I love them all as much as I love the others. Like, I love fashion as
much as I love poetry and I love poetry as much as I love, you know, fashion
shows or something. I love them all differently and equally. Like, I could do
either or and be fine because I have some moments where I’m playing fashion
designer more and you might not even see me do poetry and then I have some
moments where you might see me at an open mic every night, but I won’t have any
shows. So, I tend to be engrossed in one more than the other at a particular
time, but I love them all equally. I wouldn’t ever want to give any one up.
Ccep: What are your goals in life?
GIdA: My goals in life are to take over the world—
Ccep: Me too.
GIdA: And… Yeah, to take over the world and… um… to run for the president. And
I’m probably gonna lose, but um… No. my goals are to—I want to be a force in the
fashion industry. I also want to be a force in the literary slash poetry
industry however that comes. I want to start a modeling agency in the future.
I’m gonna keep on writing books. I probably will start…well, finish my second
novel sometime this year and start working on my third. What else do I want to
do? Um… Wow. I wanna do a lot of stuff.
Ccep: That’s good.
GIdA: Yeah. I wanna start a magazine. I wanna start a hip-hop magazine… um… but,
for women. How they have KING magazine for men, I would like to start a magazine
for women like that. Like, a hip-hop magazine for women.
Ccep: That would be hot.
GIdA: Yeah, like without rims and butts and boobs on every page.
Ccep: Yeah, ‘cause a lot of the hip-hop magazines… they’re not really catered
towards us.
GIdA: Not at all. They’re not catered towards us at all.
Ccep: It’s just hard to get through it. That would be hot.
GIdA: And I like hip-hop, so a lot of the times I look at hip-hop magazines, but
I gotta flip through fifty pages of butts to get to the article.
Ccep: Do you have a motto for life or a quote or something that you just pull
out, you know, if you’re having hard times?
GIdA: Yeah. A quote from one of my poems which is called Swine and the quote is,
“You never know who’s a snake until their comfort zones break.” And that is a
quote that I have come to realize over and over again. You can have—like they
say, “You gotta keep your enemies close”, you know? You never know who will turn
on you when the press gets stiff and a lot of people that you would think are
family and think are friends would do things to you, you know, that you would
never think possible and people that you love would do things to you that you
would never think possible when they’re placed in a certain situation. And it’s
like you might say, “Well, I never knew this person was capable of doing this.”
It’s because they’ve never been placed in that situation where they had to.
Ccep: Right.
GIdA: You know, it’s always been in them. They’ve always had, you know, the
ability to turn on you they just never had the opportunity. So, once the
opportunity is presented then they’ll switch on you quick and you’re sitting
back like, “Wow! I would never think this person would do that to me.” But, they
just—it was never a reason for them to.
Ccep: Wow… Why did you start writing poetry? Like what led you into writing
down your thoughts?
GIdA: I’ve always written. I started writing poetry as a teenager. Prior to that
I wrote a lot of short stories and comic books. I was a very creative child. I
used to draw my own comic books, my brother and I. So, I’ve always written, but
as far as writing actual poetry, I started doing it as a teenager and my first
poems were awfully funny. Like I didn’t write a lot of serious poetry when I
first started writing. I’d write funny poems. Like, I wrote a poem about when
people call you on the phone and don’t have anything to say and they’re just
breathing into the phone—
Ccep: (laughs)
GIdA: —And you’re on the other end like, “Okay. Like, why’re you calling me?”
That’s the kind of poems I’d write. Like humorous stuff. It slowly evolved into
me writing about my life and stuff like that to deal with things that I was gong
through.
Ccep: So, is that what currently inspires you to write? Just everyday things
that you’re going through?
GIdA: Yeah. Most of my poems now are responses to things. It could be something
that I’ve gone through. Sometimes people go through things that are close to me
and it’ll inspire me to write something. Like somebody’ll call me and be like,
“Guess what happened to me today?” and as they’re talking I’ll have a poem going
through my head and then I’ll go home and write it and, you know, call them back
like, “Listen to this poem I wrote.” You know? A lot of my poems are responses
to stuff. Like I have one poem called Sunshine that starts off, “Yes, I wake up
this pretty,” and I wrote that poem after a man was on the street and he was
like, *in a grainy voice* “Hey, girl, do you always wake up that pretty?”
Ccep: (laughs)
GIdA: (laughs) And I went home and I wrote the poem and it starts off, “Yes, I
wake up this pretty,” and starts talking about, you know, beauty and finding
beauty in yourself. So, a lot of my poems are actually responses to things that
people say to me and things that I see.
Ccep: Okay. Have you always been interested in fashion or was it something—
GIdA: Yes. Yes.
Ccep: Okay.
GIdA: I wanted to be a fashion designer before I wanted to do anything involving
poetry. I’ve always wanted to be a fashion designer as long as I’ve been alive.
Like… yeah… yeah…
Ccep: So, what made you finally decide to just go ahead and start your own
fashion line? ‘Cause you’re still young and that’s a big accomplishment.
GIdA: Yeah. I got pushed by one of my college professors. Her name is Dr. Love
at Morgan [State University] and I was in her writing class and we had to do a
big project involving writing. And this was at the time that I was working on my
novel and she knew this and she also knew that I was heavy into poetry. And so I
told her—we were supposed to do a big project with writing—I said, “Dr. Love, I
don’t wanna write anything else.” I said, “I’m writing a novel. I’m performing
every night…” I said, “I’m tired of writing.” She was like, “Well, what else do
you wanna do?” She said, “Think of something else that you wanna do and if you
can make it happen, then I’ll let you do that for your project.” So, I said, “I
wanna do a fashion show,” and she was like, “Okay. Well, if you wanna do a
fashion show—” She said, “If you put a fashion show together I’ll give you a
grade for it.” She was like, “You don’t have to do anything with writing.” She
said, “If you perform at your fashion show and you make it happen, that’ll be
your grade.” So, that led me to doing my first fashion show…”
Next month, find out more about Golden Infamous da Angel’s fashion line G-N-A, self-publishing her novel A Vision I Had, and how networking with the mindset of “Golden Infamous the Corporation” places her one step closer to reaching her many goals.