Listen & Be Heard has hosted open mics on the east coast and west coast and starting on Juneteenth, in the Carolinas. In this episode we sample spoken word from all those places as we look forward to seeing what grows on Wednesday nights  in downtown Greenville, SC. We feature the late Q.R. Hand jr.,  unofficial poet laureate of Vallejo, CA in the early 2000’s, speaking at  a poetry marathon L&BH organized in protest to a proposal to build a liquified natural gas plant there. Also featured from the west coast, Jacqueline Scott Ramos, Yenia and Copus. From the east coast, poetry for Mumia Abu Jamal from the Black Lives Matter issue of A Gathering of the Tribes. From the Carolinas, Tony Robles, Tabitha and David Cameron. And from all those places, Martha Cinader reading from a journal made in China.

We pulled up root crops for this show, from the west coast garden, we’ll hear poetry from REGINALD LOCKETT, and we dug up an interview with CLEVEN GOUDEAU, who created the first line of black greeting cards among many other accomplishments in a long career. From the east coast garden, we found more from RUTH OZEKI reading from My Year of Meats as well as EDWIN TORRES and SPACEMOUSE. And on the to-be-read list, Martha talks about personal habits, climate change and The Tree of Life by Suzanne Simard.

Martha takes listeners on a tour of Martha's Kitchen Garden, introducing the animals, plans for a radio station and ideas about regenerative agriculture and recycling garbage. She digs around and discovers an archival reading by RUTH OZEKI from her novel, My Year of Meats, and a play called Dis for Dat by STEVE CANNON.