Welcome to Episode 12 of The Poetry Gods! On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to Safia Elhillo about her writing journey & much more. As always, you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. We are looking to book shows for Fall 2016. Bring The Poetry gods to your campus!

SAFIA ELHILLO BIO:

Safia Elhillo’s first full-length collection, The January Children, is forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in 2017.
Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, a Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly: a journal of black expression, she received an MFA in poetry at the New School. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. In addition to appearing in several journals and anthologies including “The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop,” her work has been translated into Arabic and Greek. 
Safia has performed at venues such as TEDxNewYork, the South African State Theatre, the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway, and TV1’s Verses & Flow. She was a founding member of Slam NYU, the 2012 and 2013 national collegiate championship team, and was a three-time member and former coach of the DC Youth Slam Poetry team. She is currently a teaching artist with Split This Rock.

Follow Safia Elhillo on twitter: @mafiasafia on instagram: @safiamafia

Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media:
@jayohessee, @azizabarnes, @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods

& CHECK OUR WEBSITE:
thepoetrygods.com/

(much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Chen for making our logo)

Episode 12 Featuring Safia Elhillo

The Poetry Gods are here to show you how to not be wack in 2016 & beyond. Interviews and stories about the people behind the poems. You don't have to love poetry to love the show. Hosted by Aziza Barnes, Jon Sands, and José Olivarez. Artwork by Jess X. Chen. If you dig the show, share the link.

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to Willie Perdomo about how he got started writing poetry, The Crazy Bunch, friendships in poetry, and so much more.

As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. We love to hear from you, so please drop us a line! Leave us a review on iTunes! Bring us to your college/ local hummus emporium!

WILLIE PERDOMO BIO:

WILLIE PERDOMO is the author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Poets), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Milton Kessler Poetry Award; winner of the International Latino Book Award, and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. He is also the author of Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax), winner of the PEN/Beyond Margins Awards and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (Norton), a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. Perdomo is a Pushcart nominee, two-time New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow and a former Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, Bomb Magazine, and African Voices. He is currently a member of the VONA/Voices faculty and an English Instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Follow Willie Perdomo on Instagram & Twitter:
@willieperdomo

Visit Willie's website:
http://willieperdomo.com/

Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media:
@_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes/ @azizabarneswriter (IG), @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods

& CHECK OUR WEBSITE:
thepoetrygods.com/

(much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Season 2, Episode 12 Featuring Willie Perdomo

On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to Eboni Hogan about courtship: the do's and don'ts, fragile masculinity, poetry, New York City, making the transition from poetry to screenwriting, and so much more. 

As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. We love to hear from you, so please drop us a line! Leave us a review on iTunes! Bring us to your college/ local hummus emporium!

EBONI HOGAN BIO:
Eboni Hogan is a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist who has performed in over 65 U.S. cities, as well as internationally in Ghana, Germany, and Austria. She is the 2012 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion and a Pushcart Prize nominee. After receiving her training as an actor and playwright from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, her plays "Foreign Bodies" and "30,000 Teeth" would go on to be featured at The National Black Theater of Harlem, The Living Theater, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe and in The Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival. The pilot episode of her series "The Pudding Club" is available on YouTube and a new series "Manic-Impressive" as well as a full length horror screenplay, are in development. Eboni currently freelances as a curriculum writer and side-hustles as a textile artist, crafting embroidered works of art. She hasn't received any fellowships, grants, or big-ups from HuffPost, but her kid thinks she's pretty dope. 


Follow Eboni Hogan on Instagram & Facebook:
@ebonihogan
& @the_wreckshop (for visual art)

Visit Eboni's website:
thewreckshoprising.com

Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media:
@_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes/ @azizabarneswriter (IG), @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods

& CHECK OUR WEBSITE:
thepoetrygods.com/

(much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Season 2, Episode 11 Featuring Eboni Hogan

On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to Lauren Whitehead about courting rejection, writing in multiple disciplines, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, masculinity, & much more. As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com. We love to hear from you, so please drop us a line! Leave us a review on iTunes! Bring us to your college/ local hummus emporium! 

LAUREN WHITEHEAD BIO:
Lauren Whitehead is a writer, performer and Master of Fine Arts recipient in Dramaturgy from Columbia University where she was a Schubert Presidential Fellow and an Undergraduate Writing Teaching Fellow. Lauren has written, composed and performed two one-woman musicals. The first, Written in Blues, was presented in the Afro Solo Festival, The Left Coast Leaning Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and at DiverseWorks in Houston, Tx. An excerpt of her second one woman show, A Tribe Called Blessed, debuted at the Women Center Stage Festival (Lynn Redgrave Theater) and was featured at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her first full length play, stunning, still was read at Naked Angels 1st Mondays Play Reading Series after a residency at Vineyard Arts Project and her second full length work, American Courage, was selected for a workshop with Crowded Outlet and will have a reading at Judson Memorial Church in January of 2018. This year, Virtuosically Invisible, her non-fiction prose manuscript was runner up in a book prized judged by Maggie Nelson and her poems have been published in Apogee, Winter Tangerine and Union Station Magazine. 

Lauren has performed her work in various venues around the country including The Sundance Film Festival and The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Lauren was featured on HBO’s documentary, Brave New Voices and this fall, she will originate the role of Un/Sung in Opera Philadelphia’s production of We Shall Not be Moved, a hybrid opera written by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and directed by Bill T. Jones. Prior to that, she played the role of  “Zillah” in A Bright Room Called Day (Connelly Theater). 

As a dramaturg, Lauren has worked in various capacities both inside and outside of the theater. She recently directed How Bodies Reclaim Light (New York Live Arts) and was playwright/adapter of Three Sisters: Tulsa 1921 (The Secret Theater). She was the assistant director of Paradox of the Urban Cliche by Craig “muMs” Grant, the festival dramaturg for The Fire This Time Festival and co-curator of the Conscious Language Festival at The Wild Project. In addition to touring with The Dialogue Arts Project, an organization that uses the arts to facilitate difficult conversations about social identity, Lauren has given a number of lectures and workshops across the country. Most recently, Lauren worked as a research assistant to Oskar Eusits at New York University in partnership with The Public Theater. Currently, Lauren teaches an Advanced Playwriting Lab at The New School and she facilitates a poetry and performance workshop at Juilliard. 

Follow Lauren Whitehead on Instagram :
@lady_whitehead

& on Twitter:
@ladywhitehead

Visit Lauren's website:
http://www.laurenawhitehead.com/

Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media:
@_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes/ @azizabarneswriter (IG), @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods

& CHECK OUR WEBSITE:
thepoetrygods.com/

(much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Season 2, Episode 10 Featuring Lauren Whitehead

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 9 of The Poetry Gods! 

“If we commit to telling particular stories, we need to tell the circumference of them, and not just just the wound.” - Adam Falkner

On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to Adam Falkner about The Dialogue Arts Project, Urban Word NYC, writing, teaching, the music video for The One & much more . As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com.

ADAM FALKNER BIO:
Adam Falkner is an artist, educator and consultant. His work has appeared in a range of literary and academic journals, and has also been featured on HBO, NBC, NPR, BET, Upworthy, in the New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the pioneering diversity consulting initiative, the Dialogue Arts Project, and Chief Operating Officer of Urban Word NYC, a nationally acclaimed youth literary arts organization. A former high school English teacher in New York City’s public schools, Adam has toured the United States as a guest artist, speaker and consultant, and was the featured performer at President Obama’s Grassroots Ball at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. He teaches at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where he is an Arthur Zankel Fellow and PhD candidate in the English and Education program.

Follow Adam Falkner on Instagram :
@adam_falkner

Visit Adam's website:
http://www.adamfalknerarts.com/

Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media:
@_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes/ @azizabarneswriter (IG), @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods

& CHECK OUR WEBSITE:
thepoetrygods.com/

(much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Season 2, Episode 9 Featuring Adam Falkner

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 8 of The Poetry Gods! We realized many of the poetry podcasts we listened to were wildly dull. Hyper self-serious, self-agrandizing, and totally exclusive to high academic circles. That’s not the way the three of us know or love poetry. It’s also not the way any of our homies and idols dig into this craft. Poets are fucking hilarious. Joyful and absurd, with stories for days. We hear them at the bar, during their banter at the reading. We wanted to hear it in a podcast. So we made one.

On this episode of The Poetry Gods, we talk to John Manuel Arias about Costa Rica, writing a book, and much, much more. As always you can reach us at emailthepoetrygods@gmail.com.

JOHN MANUEL ARIAS BIO:
John Manuel Arias is a gay, first generation Costa Rican/Uruguayan poet and crepe-maker raised in a DC ghetto when it was the murder capital. His poems have appeared in the James Franco Review, Rogue Agent Journal, Red Paint Hill, the After Happy Hour Review and others. His debut collection of poetry, “¡I’D RATHER SINK–!” is forthcoming from Red Paint Hill Publishing. He currently lives in San José, Costa Rica with his grandmother and four ghosts.

Follow John Manuel Arias on Instagram :
@latinfishdrama

Follow The Poetry Gods on all social media:
@_joseolivarez, @azizabarnes/ @azizabarneswriter (IG), @iamjonsands, @thepoetrygods

& CHECK OUR WEBSITE:
thepoetrygods.com/

(much thanks to José Ortiz for designing the website! shouts to Jess X Snow for making our logo)

Episode 12 Featuring Safia Elhillo

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