Quintessential Poetry: Online Radio, YouTube and Zoom

Encore Presentation

Rojé Augustin is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her first novel, The Unraveling of Bebe Jones, won the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award in African American fiction.  She wrote the novel while a stay-at-home-mom in London and Sydney.  In 2013 Rojé’s script The Weekly was selected for the Australian Writer’s Guild prestigious Pathways Program.  In May 2020 Rojé published her debut poetry collection, Out of No Way, Madam C.J. Walker and A’Lelia Walker, A Poetic Drama, which tells the story of Madam Walker’s phenomenal life story.  Rojé continues to work as a screenwriter, journalist, and producer.  She is a dual national currently living in Sydney with her husband and two daughters.  When she's not working or spending time with family and friends, Rojé loves to rollerblade through the park while listening to her favorite tunes.

Aaron R The Poet sponsors multiple poetry contests throughout the year. Chev won the 2022 Winter Edition of the contest. Konscience 101 won 2nd place. Other participants in the contest were Camile.Denine, Indea Hoffman, Miss Kiane, JT Lovegame, Only Keys Will, Sam Oliver, Kyraspeaks, GNRLYLUV (Jess) and Mayangozi and RSenThePoet. Join us for this special program.

Proud Father. AntiHuman Trafficking Advocate. Women's Right Advocate. Lyricist. Empathetic Writer. "One voice could change the world."

The mission of Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio is to provide a live format for emerging, mid-career, and established poets to showcase their work. Whether traditional poetry or spoken word, the show offers an online vehicle for artists to engage in critical dialogue and discussion about poetry. If you would like to be a guest on QL: POR, please contact the host Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram at [email protected]. Dr. Ingram is a retired university professor and social change activist. A Washington DC resident, he is committed to employing the arts, specifically poetry, to disseminate information and raise awareness about issues related to power, identity, and oppression. Known widely as the Counseling Poet (www.thecounselingpoet.com), he has gained an international reputation as a spoken word artist and performance poet. A 2015 Pushcart poetry prize nominee, he has traveled extensively, reciting his works and conducting workshops on building cultural competency and empathy skills through poetry and metaphor.

Martin Graff is an artist, author, musician, and extreme-chin-beard enthusiast in Arlington, VA who crafts poetic vignettes with matching art on every topic from the stigma of liking scrapple to the meaning of life in a series called The Face Zone: Surreal Daydreams to Trip Your Imagination... Marty’s live spoken-word show adds original piano compositions from his album Trips for Piano to heighten the experience. His affecting commentary, original humor, whimsical artwork, and absorbing piano offer a uniquely engaging respite that cuts through the noise of our information-age lives with concise, essential truths certain to entertain as they set mind in motion.

Rojé Augustin is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her first novel, The Unraveling of Bebe Jones, won the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award in African American fiction.  She wrote the novel while a stay-at-home-mom in London and Sydney.  In 2013 Rojé’s script The Weekly was selected for the Australian Writer’s Guild prestigious Pathways Program.  In May 2020 Rojé published her debut poetry collection, Out of No Way, Madam C.J. Walker and A’Lelia Walker, A Poetic Drama, which tells the story of Madam Walker’s phenomenal life story.  Rojé continues to work as a screenwriter, journalist, and producer.  She is a dual national currently living in Sydney with her husband and two daughters.  When she's not working or spending time with family and friends, Rojé loves to rollerblade through the park while listening to her favorite tunes.

Diana Howard is a poet and children’s author living along the Missouri River in southeastern South Dakota. She has published two children’s books, Applesauce and Boo Boo La Roo. Her poetry has appeared in several journals and on several websites. She is a member of the South Dakota State Poetry Society and the Poetry Alliance of southwest Florida. Visit her at https://thecottonwoodtree.com/.

Winter Solstice by Diana Howard burrows deep into the heart-rendering poetic journey of a daughter trying to love and help her mother who is slowly losing her memory. Through poems and vignettes written over a period of 15 years, the reader will enter a world of denial, confusion, shame, fear, humor, sacrifice, patience and love - finding solace and empathy with an experience many of us go through, yet struggle to find words to describe.

Linda Imbler’s poetry collections include six published paperbacks: Big Questions, Little Sleep, Big Questions, Little Sleep” second edition, Lost and Found, Red Is The Sunrise, and Bus Lights, Travel Sights.  Soma Publishing has published her four e-book collections, The Sea’s Secret Song, Pairings, a hybrid of short fiction and poetry, and That Fifth Element, and Per Quindecim. Her new book, Spica’s Frequency, will be published on December 1, 2021. Examples of Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com. In addition to writing, she helps her husband, a Luthier, build acoustic guitars and steel strings in Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A.  They are currently working on number 10.

Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2020 ProForma Contest and the 2019-2020 Seven Hills Review Poetry Contest. He is an accomplished artist, public speaker, and educator who has shared the stage with several members of HBO’s Def Poetry cast, legendary poet and activist Ishmael Reed, Grammy-nominated artist Minton Sparks, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members The Impressions, etc. Mr. Collier has also given a TED Talk and been featured on an episode of TNT’s State Farm Neighborhood Sessions. 

Christian J. Collier’s poems of witness have the kind of keen insight that slices to the heart of the subject. The Gleaming of the Blade examines Black masculinity in the contemporary American South, alongside the lingering ghosts of the past, and how it feels to be Black in a country whose divisions and struggles could signal the end of civilization. These poems never shy away, interrogating harsh injustices and contending with the truth of today’s America, a truth sometimes beautiful, sometimes biting.

Bill Nevins was born in 1947, grew up near New York City, graduated from Iona College and the University of Connecticut grad. School, lived in New England and Pennsylvania and moved to New Mexico in 1996. He is a life- long peace activist who opposed the Vietnam and Iraq wars and also worked to advance the Irish Peace Process. He is a grandfather and a so-called “gold star” parent whose son died in combat in 2013 as a US army soldier in Afghanistan.

He’s a retired educator for University of New Mexico and other schools, a publishing journalist, a songwriter and a poet, with two books in print, Heartbreak Ridge and AWE and a 2007 feature film Committing Poetry in Times of War. He is working on a prose/verse memoir.

Bill lives with his partner Jeannie Allen in Albuquerque and in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Angel Fire, NM.

Bill has read his poetry in-person nationally and he has hosted several open mics. He is an active member of the National Writers Union, Cultivating Voices Live online, Southwest Writers, SOMOS of Taos, Irish American Writers and Artists and other cultural groups. He is the Poetry Editor of Logos a Journal of Modern Society and Culture online. Contact: [email protected]

Ashanti Anderson (she/her) is an award-winning writer who advocates for health equity, reproductive justice, disability rights, and criminal justice reform through her poetry, prose, playwriting, and more. A Black disabled queer woman herself, Ashanti’s writing frequently explores the connections between identity and health. Her debut short poetry collection, Black Under, is forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press in Fall 2021 after winning the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Collection. Black Under reflects the African-American experience over several era, the author leaving no stone unturned in her interrogation of the racialized violence that has occurred throughout history. At once haunting and hopeful, Ashanti “documents atrocities while singing.”

Ashanti has collaborated with universities, at-risk youth groups, nonprofits, and healthcare professionals to develop programs and activities that promote diversity, inclusion, and minority health. She received her MFA in Creative Writing in 2018 and went on to teach creative writing courses and workshops for both teens and adults. Leading by example, Ashanti encourages her students to develop multi-dimensional characters, find their unique voice, and do their research

Awards and honors:

• Winner, Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition (Spring 2020)

• Winner, Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Contest (2018)

• Winner, Haley’s Flight, LLC Page-to-Screen Short Film Competition (2017)