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This episode features our conversation with Tiriq Rashad, which was live-streamed on October 17, 2025 as a part of our National Black Poetry Day marathon. We chatted about his recently released spoken word album, Kiss My Art.

Tiriq Rashad, a proud native of “Atlantic-Ville” (Atlantic City and Pleasantville), blends his social work background with a gift for storytelling to create work rooted in resilience, authenticity, and healing. Author of A Diamond In God’s Dirt and shine through our shade: an evolution of self-love, his writing has earned praise from readers and icons like Nikki Giovanni for its powerful reflection of both universal and Black experiences.

Kiss My Art, which was released on October 17, 2025, is a soul-baring journey through grief, identity, and creative liberation. Merging spoken word with jazz and hip-hop, the album unfolds like a living memoir.

Purchase Kiss My Art, directly on Bandcamp.

Check out Nicole's spoken word album, IN/Put: Live from the Valley on Apple Music or Amazon Music

Find Tiriq Rashad on Instagram: @tiriq_rashad

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This episode features our conversation with Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton, which was live-streamed on October 17, 2025 as a part of our National Black Poetry Day marathon.

Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton is an award-winning poet, educator, Pushcart Prize nominee, and publisher. Lofton is the author of more than thirty-five collections of poetry and more than one-hundred and seventy spoken word albums. His poems have appeared in Clock House Journal, Revenge, UpStreet, Experience Reality Magazine, Quay, Dissident Voice, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Mid-Atlantic Review, and Blue-Collar Review. He earned both a B.A. in Creative Writing and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. He has held teaching positions at Chesapeake Bay Academy, Norfolk State University, and Elizabeth City State University.

To learn more about Synnika and his work, please visit www.iamsynnika.com.

Special thanks to Dr. Khadijah Ali-Coleman (featured on Season Five, Episode Four) and Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice for introducing us to Synnika.

Find Synnika on Instagram: @i_am_synnika

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This episode features our conversation with Damon Moore, which was live-streamed on October 17, 2025 as a part of our National Black Poetry Day marathon. We talked about his debut poetry collection, Anthems for an American Apocalypse Volume One: Poems for Recitation and Resuscitation.

Bridging psychology and prophecy, Damon Moore crafts mythic verse that prods you into awakening. Anthems of the American Apocalypse Volume One burns with themes of identity, culture, and rebirth.

A must-read for anyone who knows America is cracked and still wants to build something sacred from the ruins. In this genre-defying spoken-word poetry collection informed by ancestral wisdom, collective shadow work, and lived experience, Damon Moore fuses prophecy and poetry into a vision for what comes after collapse. He exposes the cultural rot of the American empire and deconstructs the machinery of its identity, systemic oppression, and spiritual fragmentation. These poems move through history, psychology, and ancestry with precision and passion.

Published in August of 2025, Anthems of the American Apocalypse Volume One is a vital offering for thinkers, artists, and seekers longing to reclaim soul in a soulless age.

This very eye-opening and compelling poetry collection is available for purchase on Amazon: https://a.co/d/986XdtJ

Find Damon on Instagram and TikTok at iamdamonmoore.

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