By Momo Chang

'I'M KNEE- deep in fish guts," Ishle Yi Park told me.

She was talking about working at her parents' fish market in Queens. She's also hawked Rollerblades on the streets and worked as a paralegal for a conservative Republican. She didn't always think she'd be a poet. Now it's hard to imagine the poet laureate of Queens as anything but. –The first time she realized the power of her poetry was two years after college, when she was 24.

"I went into this longer poem, which was kind of a rant, and [poet] Reggie Cubico started rolling on the floor and fanning himself," Park said, describing her performance. "People in the audience went crazy. That connection to the audience was very powerful and surprising to me."

Dramatic reactions to Park's readings aren't uncommon, and she's been known to move the audience to tears. Struggling to find her identity as a young woman of color growing up in urban America and seeing the hardships her family and those around her have faced, she has railed against racism, violence, and relationships gone wrong in her writing, infusing it with a healthy dose of anger and tints of sadness.

Since that early reading, Park, now 27, has joined the cast of Def Poetry Jam, appeared on HBO, and met hip-hop's biggest players, such as Kanye West. Just back from New Zealand and a writer-in-residence stint there, Park spoke on the phone in a natural rhythmic cadence that showed how deeply embedded poetry is in her life.

This week she's performing and teaching a writing workshop to youths at "Brave New Voices," a four-day event organized by San Francisco's Youth Speaks. "I love working with kids," Park said. "I'm such a kid myself – I'm so spontaneous and crazy – so I feel like they like working with me because I bring a crazy energy."

Her current project is a series of love sonnets colored by street patois that chronicle a young, urban couple falling in love. Where once her poetry was marked by anger, she says these sonnets stem "from a source of pure joy. That's kind of a breakthrough for me, in my life and my poetry! I'm in love right now."

She's come far from the days, 10 years ago, when she was writing staid sonnets for a ninth-grade assignment. "I'd use this Elizabethan language, like 'thee' and 'thou,' which is just not really my language," she said with a laugh. Now she has adapted the form to fit her own style. One of her favorite poems from her sonnet collection is "Gold Hoop – Sonnet 8" (previously unpublished):

One day she will be brave enough

to venture away from stereotypical gold hoops,

parroting her mean friend's laughter, sitting on the stoop

for hours, trying to look half-fly/half-tough,

sucking on a sour apple Blow Pop,

mouthing the boom box's latest version of bad hip-hop. One day

she will look at her rough, scarred face

in the compact mirror without her Mac eyeliner and stop

hating those young, haunted eyes.

I hope a slant of gold light will hit her cheek

just right, and it may come as a surprise

to her how fine she really is. Fabulous. Sleek.

Soulful – full of her own juju and mystique.

A rose fury! Black lightning when she hits the street.

Not all poetry can do "well on the page as well as the stage," Park said, although she has already proved she can excel in both arenas. Last year she released a book titled The Temperature of This Water (Kaya Press) – "a collection of poetry and prose that took seven years and my whole life to write," according to her Web site (www.ishle.com) – and it received critical acclaim, along with a 2003 self-released CD of poetry and songs, Work Is Love (Issilah Productions).

She says the label "spoken word" is limiting and prefers to be called a poet. "I believe Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka were spoken word artists," she said. "It's anyone who can express themselves articulately and passionately in their poetry."

Other poets who made their name in the spoken word movement have also strayed – Saul Williams, Dennis Kim, and Beau Sia are all pursuing other media. Yet Park believes that, regardless, "poetry will always have a life and will always continue to prosper as long as people are being brave and honest and real with their word. There will always be an audience because people are looking for something beyond the materialist, capitalist, superficial world that we live in. They want something that will move their spirits, and as long as the world's like that, we're going to need poetry."

Park has come a long way from fish guts and rants, although she still helps out at her parents' market during the holidays. "It's hard to be a diva while wiping fish guts on your apron," she wrote in her online journal. It's clear Park is always coming back to what she knows, but each time she's a little wiser, brave enough to share her journey along the way.

'Brave New Voices 2005: The Eighth International Youth Poetry Slam Festival,' featuring Park, dead prez, Saul Williams, O-Maya, Suheir Hammad, Bamuthi, Beau Sia, and others, takes place Wed/20-Sun/24, various San Francisco venues. "Bring the Noise" concert takes place Fri/22, 8 p.m., Regency Grand Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, S.F. $25. www.brownpapertickets.com, www.ticketweb.com. Grand Slam Finals take place Sat/23, 7:30 p.m., Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California, S.F. $5-$15. (415) 292-9191, www.nobhilltickets.com. For more information call 415-255-9035 or go to www.youthspeaks.org.