Suzi Q. Smith is an American an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado.
She began writing poetry in her elementary years and by high school was participating in poetry readings and poetry slams. She began her career as an activist working with civil rights organizations, and continued working as a community organizer and artist performing throughout the United States. She has shared stages with Nikki Giovanni, the late Gil Scott Heron, and many more. Her poems have appeared in Union Station Magazine, Suspect Press, La Palabra, Muzzle Magazine, Malpais Review, The Pedestal, The Los Angeles Journal, Denver Syntax, Word is Bond, The Peralta Press, Yellow Chair Review, and in the anthologies The Mutiny Info Reader, Diverse-City, His Rib: Anthology of Women, and In Our Own Words. Her chapbook collection of poems, Thirteen Descansos, was published by Penmanship Books, and a full-length collection, A Gospel of Bones, will be available from Alternating Current Press in spring 2020.
In 2006, she worked with community activist Ashara Ekundayo and poets Ken Arkind and Panama Soweto to launch Slam Nuba, which quickly became one of the nation's most highly ranked poetry slams. [1]
She became the founding Slammaster of Slam Nuba, and spent 12 years in the poetry slam arena as a competing poet, coach, organizer, board member, eventually serving as the Executive Director of Poetry Slam, Inc. from 2014-2018. She placed as a finalist multiple times in the Women of the World Poetry Slam, the Individual World Poetry Slam, and she has earned the champion title at Southwest Shootout and the Taos Poetry Festival several times. In addition, she has worked extensively with youth, serving as a Partner Artist with Youth On Record, and as co-coach of Denver Minor Disturbance Youth Poetry Slam, resulting in two international championships.
In 2007, she collaborated with Belgian group Psy'Aviah on their single 'Moments', which was a finalist in the BBC's 'Next Big Thing' Contest [2] and was later released on their [Alfa Matrix] debut, 'Entertainment Industries'. The video was released and received 3 million views in 3 months, and was subsequently banned from youtube.com due to their claim that the content was 'explicit'. The video's ban received attention in the national press in Belgium, [3] including Het Laatste Nieuws, De Morgen, and Gazet Van Antwerpen.
In 2008, she released a spoken word album entitled Picks, Pistols, and Prayers, featuring the title track dedicated to Huey P. Newton. In 2011, she released her second spoken word album entitled "Re-Mixed", a collaborative music project featuring the work of several producers from around the world. Her third spoken word album, "Black Hole Mouth" was released in January 2013.
Smith was also a founding member of one of Denver's most popular musical acts, the Lady Wu Tang Clan, [4] from its launch in January 2011 until May 2013, performing as Method Man alongside her fellow Lady Wu Tang members to sold-out audiences around the region, and sharing stages with Raekwon and Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Smith is also a writer and performer in How I Got Over: Journeys in Verse, an experimental play written in verse. Produced by Off-Center Theatre Company at the Denver Center for Performing Arts, the show premiered to a sold-out audience in March 2016 and continued to sell out every show during its run.
“Suzi Q. Smith has spent much of her life giving voice to suppressed and oppressed girls and young women, and that’s just what she is doing now in her first collaboration with the Denver Center. How I Got Over: Journeys in Verse features Smith and four young warrior poets offering fresh and largely unheard perspectives.”
A Gospel of Bones. Alternating Current Press. Spring 2020.
Thirteen Descansos. Penmanship Publishing. January 2015.
“We Pay Cash for Houses” Suspect Press. Winter 2018. “Bones”. Suspect Press. September 2016. “Until the End of Time”. Yellow Chair Review. May 2016. “Sweetback”. No Dear Magazine. February 2016. “Game”. Union Station Magazine. March 2014. “Wet”. Suspect Press. January 2014. “Twelve” and “Thirteen”. La Palabra. January 2014. “My Father’s Hands” Muzzle Magazine. November 2013. “I Do Not Know How to Love You in English” Malpais Review. June 2012. “Tattoo” and “Lazarus” The Pedestal Magazine. January 2010. “Ripe” The Los Angeles Journal. April 2006. “Emancipation” Word is Bond. April 2005. “Forge” The Peralta Press. Spring ed. 2002.
“Bones” and “Mustangs”. Mutiny Info Reader. November 2016. “My Stepfather is Not the Kind of Man Who Weeps” Diverse-City Anthology. April 2013. “Blue” World of Women Poetry Anthology. March 2008. “Infidelity” His Rib: Anthology of Women. July 2007. “Jalat Khan” In Our Own Words Anthology. March 2003.
Where We Are From: Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Co-Writer. December 2018. Produced by 5280 Co-Op at Aurora Cultural Arts District.
How I Got Over. Co-Writer & Performer. March 2017. Produced by Off-Center Theatre Company at the Denver Center for Performing Arts.
Joan Murray is an American poet, writer, playwright and editor. She is best known for her narrative poems, particularly her book-length novel-in-verse, Queen of the Mist; her collection Looking for the Parade which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition, and her New and Selected Poems volume, Swimming for the Ark, which was chosen as the inaugural volume in White Pine Press's Distinguished Poets Series.
Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.
The Three Hundred Tang Poems is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778), who was a Qing Dynasty scholar and was also known as Hengtang Tuishi. Various later editions also exist. All editions contain slightly more than 300 total poems. The number 300 was a classic number for a poetry collection due to the influence of the Classic of Poetry, which was generally known as The Three Hundred Poems.
Kimberly Johnson is an American poet and Renaissance scholar.
Annie Finch is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, meter, and poetic form and for its themes of feminism, witchcraft, goddesses, and earth-based spirituality. Her books include The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, Spells: New and Selected Poems, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, A Poet's Craft, Calendars, and Among the Goddesses.
Cole Swensen is an American poet, translator, editor, copywriter, and professor. Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of more than ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and served as the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. She taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa until 2012 when she joined the faculty of Brown University's Literary Arts Program.
Suzanne Lummis is a poet, influential teacher, arts organizer and impresario in Los Angeles. She is associated with the poem noir, as well as the sensibility for which she is a major exponent–a literary incarnation of performance poetry–the Stand-up Poetry of the 80s and 90s. She is also grouped with “The Fresno Poets.”
Slam Nuba is a performance poetry event based in Denver, Colorado, USA. It originated in 2006 as a program of the Pan African Arts Society and certified by Poetry Slam, Inc. Slam Nuba holds its poetry events at Cafe Nuba, and the major slam at The Crossroads Theater, both located in the Five Points neighborhood in Denver.
Jessica Fisher is an American poet, translator, and critic. In 2012, she was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lisa Russ Spaar is a contemporary American poet, professor, and essayist. She is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia and the director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Vanitas, Rough: Poems and Satin Cash: Poems. Her latest collection, Orexia, was published by Persea Books in 2017. Her poem, Temple Gaudete, published in IMAGE Journal, won a 2016 Pushcart Prize.
Wang Zhihuan, alternatively transliterated as Wang Tsu-huan, was a Chinese poet of the Kaiyuan era of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. He is best known for his jueju "Climbing Stork Tower" (登鸛雀樓).
Carmen Giménez, also known as Carmen Giménez Smith, is an American poet, writer, and editor.
Marilyn L. Taylor is an American poet with six published collections of poems. Taylor's poems have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including The American Scholar, Able Muse, Measure, Smartish Pace, The Formalist, and Poetry magazine's 90th Anniversary Anthology. Her second full-length collection, Subject to Change, was nominated for the Poets' Prize. She served as the city of Milwaukee's Poet Laureate in 2004 and 2005, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010. She also served for five years as a contributing editor for The Writer Magazine. A retired Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, she taught poetry and poetics for the Department of English and later for the Honors College. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she presents readings and facilitates workshops throughout Wisconsin and beyond.
Melissa Studdard was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and is an American author, poet, talk show host, and professor. Her most recent book is the poetry collection Dear Selection Committee. The title poem from her collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast was produced as a short film and featured as an official selection at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival. Her middle-grade novel, Six Weeks to Yehidah won a Forward National Literature Award and Pinnacle Book Achievement Award. The accompanying journal, My Yehidah, was released in December 2011 and was adopted by art and play therapists for clinical use in adolescent therapy sessions.
Rebecca Gayle Howell is an American writer, literary translator, and editor. In 2019 she was named a United States Artists Fellow.
Meredith Quartermain, née Yearsley is a Canadian poet, novelist and story writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Bianca Mikahn is an American poet, spoken word artist, hip hop musician, and activist based in Denver, Colorado. Mikahn was born and raised in Westminster, and began writing poetry at a young age. She began performing slam poetry in 2006, and has coached the Slam Nuba slam poetry team. In 2016, Mikahn was named one of Westword's 100 Colorado Creatives, and one of Denver's eleven best alternative hip hop music acts. In 2019, 303 Magazine named Mikahn one of "Six Black Musicians Pushing Denver Forward."
Bobby LeFebre is an American poet, performer, and cultural worker. He is the current poet laureate for the state of Colorado. He is the state's youngest and first poet laureate of color.
Dominique Christina is a writer, performer and social activist. She is a champion at the National Poetry Series and Women of the World Poetry Slam.
dg nanouk okpik is an Inuit poet, specifically Iñupiaq. She received the American Book Award for her debut poetry collection, Corpse Whale (2012). In 2023 she was the recipient of a Windham Campbell Literature Prize for poetry and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.