Canon, Canyon, Cannon: Poetry Reading

Black, poet, queer-god, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha Olayiwola is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival. Olayiwola is Brown University's 2019 Heimark Artist -In -Residence and a poet laureate fellow with the Academy of American Poets. The author of i shimmer sometimes, too published by Button Poetry and Olayiwola is the current poet laureate for the City of Boston. Her work can be found published with TriQuarterly Magazine, The Boston Globe, Essence Magazine, Redivider, The Academy of American Poets, Wildness Press, The Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and elsewhere. Olayiwola joined the faculty of Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-In-Residence in Fall of 2022.

Porsha Olayiwola photo courtesy of the artist.

Michelle Garcia Fresco is a Dominican poet, performer, and programming director at arts and social justice organization, Elevated Thought. Believing in the power of poetry as a medium for social justice. Garcia’s writing is often inspired by the women in her family, social and racial injustices in America, coping with loss and mental health, as well as her Dominican roots. Her work has appeared in Wbur/The Artery, Tinderbox Poetry, Berkeley Poetry Review & also was the winner of Stirling Spoons “2020: Identity in America" contest. Chosen by Richard Blanco, former US Inaugural Poet and author.

Michelle Garcia Fresco photo by Mavvro.

Charlotte Abotsi is a writer, educator, and filmmaker from Providence, Rhode Island. As a spoken word poet, she has competed in several international poetry slams, placing in the top 20 poets at the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam, and winning the 2017 Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam competition; her work has been written about in HuffPost and Mic.com. As a filmmaker, Abotsi has focused on documentary film, debuting her short documentary Process at the 2018 Ocean State Film Festival. She has received fellowships from the Pink Door Writing Retreat, the Incubator for Community-Engaged Poets, Tin House, DreamYard’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, AIR Serenbe, and Define American. She co-curates the poetry-based web series Ours Poetica for The Poetry Foundation.

Charlotte Abotsi photo courtesy of the artist.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah is a Ghanaian American poet, editor, and educator living out the diaspora in Boston, Massachusetts. They are both Black & alive. Born in 1993, Emmanuel currently teaches 11th grade English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and in the past has served as a teaching artist at organizations such as the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective, the Cambridge Arts Council, Northeastern University, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. When not kicking it with juniors, Emmanuel works as an instructor at the Boston-based nonprofit, Grubstreet, and as an associate editor for Pizza Pi Press. Emmanuel’s poem, “kra-din” (Kweli Journal), is a past recipient of the Pushcart Prize (XLIII). In his free time, Emmanuel enjoys hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, and the long sigh at the end of a good book. You can purchase Emmanuel’s own brightly colored chapbook, not without small joys, at Game Over Books Press.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah photo by Carlie Febo.

Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin, 2022). Their work appears in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Paul is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Paul Tran photo courtesy of the artist.

DJ WhySham aka Your Community DJ is a four-time nominated DJ/Producer, Visionary, Activist, Traveler, Sister, God-parent and Dorchester Native. WhySham is the CEO of “Boston Got Next Entertainment and Bringing Back Boston (BBBMA) now known as “The Social Justice Trap Movement, Inc.' She believes in bringing music, hardship and pain together while creating events as a release for collective trauma. WhySham is an On-air Radio Personality for SparkFM Online (Lunch Is Ova) on Thursdays at 1PM ET.  Follow on Instagram: @whysham617.