Phylisha Villanueva ’23: A Poet With Purpose

(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — April 16, 2025) The first time Phylisha Villanueva ’23 poured her feelings into poetry, she was angry at her mom for not letting her attend a school dance. “I remember feeling better after I wrote it,” she recalls.

Years later, she poured her feelings about an abusive relationship into her poetry and a self-published book titled “Pretty Girl Special.”

Today, as the poet laureate in Westchester County, Villanueva sees herself as an ambassador for poetry, traveling throughout the county to promote the power of voice and writing.

Now in the second year of a three-year term, Villanueva recently read her poem, “Hope for Us is a Deep Current” at the inauguration of Ken Jenkins, Westchester’s new county executive and the first African-American to hold that position.

Villanueva was inspired by current events and the dire need for hope, which “has always been for the black community a way of life. “I wanted to write a poem about hope and the kind of leader we need right now,” she says. “Hope is all we have.”

Birth of a Poet

Villanueva grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., where she was an avid hip hop dancer, before moving into cheerleading and breakdancing.

In high school, Villanueva joined an afterschool book club, where she read “Bronx Masquerade,” by Nikki Grimes, in which teens use poetry to tell their stories. Villanueva credits that book with making her a writer.

By the time she was 16, Villanueva was taking hour-long train rides into New York City to participate in poetry slams, often getting home at 2 a.m. When her mom balked at the late nights, Villanueva found the Blue Door Art Center in Yonkers, where she took a workshop on ekphrastic writing, in which writers describe or respond to a work of visual art in words.

At the Blue Door, she started an open mic for teens that soon opened up to the whole community. “I didn’t realize how much my community needed that space,” she says. “I just knew I needed it.”

She ran the open mic for five years and eventually became the center’s director of children’s programming. She also joined the Jazz and Poetry Choir Collective, a group of jazz musicians and poets, who perform. (SUNY Empire alumna Andrea Wolper ’95, a jazz musician, is also a member.)

Writing as Healing

Villanueva’s writing took a four-year hiatus when she got involved with a man who became abusive. A few months after giving birth to the couple’s daughter, she left him and resumed writing again.

She began by penning letters to her daughter about the abuse she endured. Writing quickly became a tool that helped her heal. “Once I was out of (the relationship) for at least a year or two, I was able to look back at what I’d conquered and find the poetry in there,” she says. “I went back and made it poetic and beautiful.”

Writing poetry helped her expose the truth and heal from the trauma.  “The main thing with abuse and violence is that it lives in silence,” she says. “That’s why there’s this intense need for me to want to get to the truth, explore the truth, and tell the truth. I can’t be silent. Poetry is all about the truth.”

Around the same time, Villanueva began thinking about going back to college. She’d finished her associate degree during the pandemic but wasn’t sure she’d ever get her bachelor’s.

SUNY Empire turned out to be a perfect fit. The experience not only led to a degree in creative writing but also bolstered her confidence. Writing her prior learning assessments showed her all the experience she’d acquired at the Blue Door — gallery management, public speaking, and community organizing, to name just a few.

“Writing those PLAs reminded me of how amazing I was,” she says. “It gave me such a feeling of confidence that I didn’t even know I needed.”

She graduates this spring with an MFA in poetry from St. Francis College.

Spreading the Word

These days, as Westchester’s poet laureate, Villanueva is working to get ekphrastic writing into art galleries. She’s also doing poetry workshops at libraries, museums, and candy shops, and hopes to bring poetry to yoga studios, barbershops, and kickboxing gyms.

As much as writing is a solo activity, Villanueva believes that what you write is meant to be shared. The process of writing and sharing, she says, always leads to self-discovery, much in the same way writing her PLAs taught Villanueva about herself.

“As important as writing is to me is being a person who creates space for other people to thrive and heal and share their stories,” she says. “I’ve seen the power of what open mic spaces do for people. I’ve seen how it heals people and transforms communities. People always have something to say. They always have something they want to share.”