Elyanna Banes Sanchez, Elle for short, is a New York born, raised and based poet, model and multidisciplinary artist.

Elle knew she wanted to be a poet and educator since she was young, but in a non-conventional way. In 2016, she started an online blog where she would upload photos from her photoshoots along with her poetry and prose, and stopped in 2019 to focus on writing her book, aiming to combine personal style and poetry within something that's more tangible and physical.

When she started a career in modeling and fashion, having traveled the world and living in Los Angeles and London, having appeared in campaigns for Versace, Bape, Calvin Klein, Adidas, Nike, Balmain, Burberry, and Glossier, to name a few, at first, she wrote out a whole script, having a large production in mind, but as much time passed, she realized she wanted raw presence, refraining from altered performance and perfectionism. 

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Throughout the years, she has had people tell her that how it’s being executed it could strip away the meaning and depth of her words, but as it has come to be, she accepts that this perfectly visualizes the truth of the self and that truth is that she, as well as many others, lives life as an oxymoron. Although she is a poet and has a deep love for literature and writing, Elle had built a foundation for herself and her career that’s focused primarily on exteriority, ego, and the illusion of perfection.

Unless you truly take the time to get to know someone within in-person, consistent communication, you’ll never truly know them, which is the truth of many. Although this is true, even the most authentic, transparent person who wishes to translate themselves through different mediums of communication, whether it be digital or in 3D real life, is still an illusion of the character that person has chosen for themself. The virtual self, the brief passerby self, is not, and will never be the true self, and even that can be disassembled, and for her, it has been. In other words, that is simply growth and evolution. The idea will remain, but its execution through perception is what ultimately changes. 

Her journey towards healing her physical, mental and spiritual health led her understanding how trauma can be stored in the body, through studying and practicing holistic nutrition, meditation, prayer and acts of creation rooted in intuition.

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Parallel To You ‘Words and Images’ is Elles debut self-published and self-edited poetry book that blends poetry, visual art, and design to explore identity, spirituality, transformation, sexuality, and human error through the lens of a Puerto Rican and Filipino woman.

It is nothing short of a confession born from the yearning to be transparent with herself. 

Consisting of poetry written across a span of 15 years, the book is comprised of several versions of herself— poetry selected from 8 notebooks, new and old documents, personal online files and late night diary confessions along with photos of hand-made “wearable poetry” pieces: clothing Elle designed and hand-made herself, wrote, carved and painted poems on, as well as shot with on self timer at her childhood home. Each piece mirrors the emotional landscape of the poem it carries. 

This collection examines the contradictions we live within— desire and avoidance, beauty and distortion, fear and vulnerability and the ways we learn to hold both at once, rooting itself in survival, the preservation of mistakes within youth, intimacy, desperation and finally, acceptance of the self and the past.

Elle attained a bachelors degree in English Literature and Creative Writing with a minor in Philosophy from Hunter College in New York City.