Today we’d like to introduce you to Karness Turner Jr.
Karness, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My story is not a success story. My story is a rollercoaster of rises and falls. In 2009, I became one of the most well-known faith-based poets in the world after my poems were launched by an organization called P4cm. In 2010, I was doing commercials and throwing some of the largest faith-based poetry events in the world.
In 2011, at what I felt was the peek of my life, I lost eleven people I loved within a six-month span. Some of these people included my uncle from cancer, a good friend from heart complications, my brother from a drug overdose, and my mother to cancer. I lost my job because I couldn’t balance my depression and my responsibilities. I lost both my mom’s car and my car because I couldn’t rationalize needing either when I couldn’t even conjure up the energy to leave my room. I literally watched them tow the cars from my bedroom window and said nothing. I felt powerless. But most importantly, I lost my reason to fight because everything I had fought for up to that point was dead.
In 2012, I sank even further. I couldn’t psychologically rebound from the loss, and it affected my consistency as an artist. In 2013, I moved to from Chicago to Kentucky and only told two people. I needed to heal from the hurt of the loss. I needed to be around people that saw the value in me as a person and not just an artist. I needed to think that I was worthy to be loved beyond my platform. In 2014, I started to gain traction to recover, but by the end of the year, I relapsed.
In 2015, I hit rock bottom. I was homeless, sleeping on railroad tracks some nights hoping that I would get run over, on benches, and in church attics. I was admitted into a halfway house after being on suicide watch. I finally got a job back with the airline industry through a favor from a friend, and I didn’t look back. I went from sleeping on the street to sleeping in the office supply closet at work, to getting a promotion to move to Denver.
In 2016, I got another promotion to move from Denver to San Diego as a manager for a major airline contract. I also got back on the ball poetry-wise, releasing “Dear Future Wife” that year. Things were starting to look up.
In 2017, two years removed from being homeless, I bought my first home in North Carolina after being promoted to General Manager. I dedicated it to my deceased mother. I also met my girlfriend.
In 2018, I got promoted again and moved from North Carolina to Oregon to become the manager of two airline contracts simultaneously. I worked hard to pull myself up, but as hard as I worked to obtain stability, I didn’t have the discipline to maintain what I worked so hard for. I resigned from my job.
In 2019, I lost my house, but unlike before, I didn’t lose my confidence. I moved to Memphis after a brief stint in Phoenix, got a new job cleaning planes with a new airline, and proposed to my girlfriend. Today, as it stands, I worked my way up with my current company from being a plane cleaner to a Shift Supervisor, am getting married in less than a month, and have started to rebuild my brand as an artist, a writer, and an entrepreneur.
Has it been a smooth road?
Not at all. I think the biggest struggle that I’ve had, even worse than death, loss, homeless, etc. is struggling with the idea that if I ever get what I lost back, that I would lose it again because I wasn’t good enough to maintain it. I think for years, that fear of losing everything again is what’s kept me from making a comeback. The fear of people riding the hem of your platform only to never hear from them again when you lose everything. The fear of working so hard to climb the mountain, having people praise you, only to slip and fall again. The fear of what people will think when they see that I’m artistically, psychologically, and spiritually no longer the person they once knew. I think, more than anything, situationally-based, my struggle is fear.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
So I am a Writer and a Spoken Word Artist. I essentially travel the country performing Spoken Word at different venues around the country, from juvenile detention centers to churches to open mics. I am most known for poems like “Does Anybody Know You’re A Christian,” “The Biggest Loser,” and “Dear Future Wife.”
I would say that I am the proudest of my evolution as a writer. Whereas before, I exclusively focused on spoken word, recently, I’ve begun to shift my focus to writing fantasy novels, similar to Game of Thrones and the Chronicles of Narnia type of writing. That evolution has opened up a whole new world of writing, as well as a whole new focus on writing discipline for me.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I think one of the fantastic advantages of being a writer and a spoken word artist is that the art speaks to the heart of people, and when you’re speaking to the heart of people, there isn’t a place that the art form of writing can’t be effective.
Contact Info:
- Email: karnessturnerjr@gmail.com
- Instagram: @karnessturner
- Facebook: @karness
- Twitter: @karness
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