Brooke Solis weaves words into pure magic.
If you havn't already had the pleasure of digesting her poetry, our chat with her will give you a glimpse into the wizardry she can create and feelings she can ignite with her lusty language.
Q. Hi Brooke, welcome to the Woman Of Series! Can you tell us what it is you create?
Thank you so much, it’s honestly a pleasure to be here. I create poetry. Poetry that burns a little hotter. That stings and wakes up and moves the insides. It’s poetry, but it’s poetry on fire. Like a strong wine. That kind of thing.
I currently have three creative works to date: The Zodiaco Collection - which is a collection of digital poetry books written for and inspired deeply by women and the zodiac signs,
Rebelíon – which is a digital book for creative rebels and revolutionaries and is home to some of my creative philosophies, and Dirty Gold, my ever-growing, online membership where my latest and hottest work currently lives.
Q. Can you share with us a bit about your journey so far and where it all began?
My journey as a writer began as a teenager with a creative English assignment. I found I loved it, started writing outside of school and then posting my work online.
The first was to Myspace, then Facebook, then Tumblr and so on. I crashed into my obsession for writing during the disaster time of my teenage years. Confused, lost, and filled with raging hormones; writing became a solace for me and a way for me to make sense of the mysterious process that is becoming a woman and a human.
After school I applied for and got accepted into a creative writing program at university, turned it down so I could do visual arts in another program along with writing, found I despised being told what to create, dropped out of university, had a hot and cold relationship with writing for years, picked up the pen again in the hot, dry summer of 2015/16, created an Instagram account because I needed to put the words somewhere, never stopped and I guess, here we are. It’s been WILD.
Q. What do you think it is that makes your work unique?
I write from the wildest places in me. It’s messy and exhilarating and cuts me open. It cuts me up. It’s a flood of my existence into ten fingers. I have no interest in anything other than reaching into people’s chests and making them feel like their blood is on fire. Like they have chilli in their veins. Like life is the wildest, most thrilling ride of all. And it’s from that desire that I write. I think that’s what makes me, me.
Q. What has been the single most crucial tool or strategy you’ve used to grow your creative business?
The ever sexy, ever cruel, delicious word of consistency. I’ve found creative business to be a lot like the loves of my life. That if I don’t open and show up and shower my vision in my presence, attention, love, and lust on a consistent basis – then she’ll give me nothing back.
Even on those days when it’s hard as hell, when it feels like nothing is happening, like the garden is dead- I’m still there tending in one way or another.
I don’t believe in overworking, or ridiculous hours, or hustling until your eyes strain out of your head and your health declines, but I do believe in the power of consistency. In the power of showing the hell up, for your dreams, the life you want, and the things you desire. It’s not always easy. But neither is love. So I show up to my creative business the way I would want a lover to show up to me: obsessed, passionate, committed, and undeniably, in love.
Q. What’s been the best thing that’s happened to you since you started your career?
Finishing my first body of work, releasing it to the world, and being hit with the reality that people bought my work. That they had cried, laughed, melted, broke open - with my work in their hands. That this wild thing that was mine, that I had always needed, could be something someone else always needed. It was crazy to me that this thing I had made was in the hands of women all over the world and that they got it. They felt it. And that, is the best thing that’s happened to me as an artist.
Q. Where do you go or what do you do to recharge your creativity?
My bedroom & the sun. I am an absolute hedonist and I adore lounging in the hot sun or pant-less in my bed. Also. Candlelight, long sleeps, steamy showers, loud music, wide open windows, wine, and literally doing nothing. It’s doing all these things that allows me to go roaring to my desk in the morning, filling notebooks with ideas, and getting as creatively high as possible. For me, without real deep rest; there is no real deep art.
Q. How are you fulfilling your creative passions this year?
Through my world on Patreon, Dirty Gold. This a place where I am exploring my creative expression and delving into different parts of me as an artist and writer. It has been allowing me to go deeper into art and life and wildness. To connect more intimately with hot strangers on the internet. To explore and make and create things that feel a bit too juicy for the gram. It’s like an underground bar where I pour my hottest work into the glasses of the women who join and we all just have a raging, brilliant time being horribly ourselves. Pining, laughing, wanting.
Oh, and there are also some big, swollen projects I’m working on that are currently fulfilling so many creative passions I can’t keep count.
Q. We’re all about women inspiring women. Who inspires you?
Myself - there is an outline of me I am constantly chasing, and she’s the best version of who I can be. She is the woman I’m becoming, the woman I’m growing into, the woman I’ve always wanted to be, the highest embodiment of myself as a human, an artist, a woman- that is who inspires me.
I might never reach her or be her, but she drives me towards myself all the same.
Q. What advice would you impart on the next generation of women, and women in business?
CHASE YOURSELF RELENTLESSLY. Chase the things you love and the things you want and the things you desire. Chase your highest dreams and your deepest obsessions.
Chase the versions of you that you know you can be. Chase the life you thought you couldn’t have. Chase the things that excite you. Chase the life you so desperately want.
Because ultimately, there is a paradise in being shockingly yourself; and I want every woman to have that.
