Jeffrey Banks is poetically known as “Big Homey”. He’s worked with notable people such as the late Fred “Rerun” Berry of What’s Happening!, Stellar Award-Winning Gospel Singer Maurette Brown Clark, GRAMMY-Nominated Soul Singer and Television Star Syleena Johnson, 2000 Olympic Gold-Winning NBA Legend Allan Houston, New Jack City Actor & Singer Christopher Williams, Gospel Trailblazer Dr. Bobby Jones and others. He’s been featured in national media such as ESSENCE Magazine, Sirius/XM Satellite Radio, Radio-One Inc., the CBS Early Show and BLACK ENTERPRISE Magazine. Big Homey’s album, Exposed-The EP, is the poetic testimonial of the trials & victories of a Christian Believer. He’s had the opportunity to perform across the USA and has done numerous engagements on East Coast college campuses. He’s a nationally-recognized event planner who was named one of the “Top 40 under 40” American Meeting Planners of 2013 by Rejuvenate Magazine. He has been a grant writer since 2008 and has been awarded numerous grants. He was a 2018 finalist in Day Eight’s DC Poetry Project and is currently continuing a collaborative relationship with grants each party was awarded from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities. He’s been published in short-run anthologies in conjunction with DC Public Libraries (2009) and the National Association for Poetry Therapy (2019). Most recently, he’s been a contributing writer to the online publication, DC Theatre Scene...
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An online Spoken Word for these strange times.
Thanks to a Zoom room provided by The University of the 3rd Horizon.
Thanks to a Zoom room provided by The University of the 3rd Horizon.
Sign up from 8pm.
Poetics begin 8.30pm
Jose Padua’s first full length book, A Short History of Monsters, was chosen by former poet laureate Billy Collins as the winner of the 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and is now out from the University of Arkansas Press. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as Bomb, Salon.com, Beloit Poetry Journal, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Unbearables, Crimes of the Beats, Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and others. He has written features and reviews for Salon, The Weeklings, NYPress, Washington City Paper, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times, and has read his work at Lollapalooza, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and many other venues. He was a featured reader at the 2012 Split This Rock poetry festival and won the New Guard Review’s 2014 Knightville Poetry Prize. After spending the past ten years with his wife (the poet Heather L. Davis) and children in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he and his family are back in his hometown, Washington DC. His poetry and essays appear regularly at Vox Populi (
A special event combining the usual spoken word open mic with the première of the short film Coldhearts, a poetical.
Texas-born Afro-Latinx performance artist, dancer, and Pushcart-nominated poet Arielle Cottingham is an internationally touring whirlwind. With a degree in theatre and an Australian Poetry Slam Championship under their belt, they explore the interplay between the word and the body, merging elements of dance and physical theater with written poetry to create multidisciplinary short works they have toured through the US, Australia, and Southeast Asia, from the mamaks of Kuala Lumpur to the Sydney Opera House. Their work has been published in BOOTH, Pressure Gauge Press, About Place Journal, and elsewhere, and their first collection, Black and Ropy, was published by Pitt Street Poetry.
Constant L. Williams is a Los Angeles-born poet and former resident of Paris, France, where his writing first came of age. He studied creative writing at the University of Southern California where he received the Beau J. Boudreaux Poetry Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, 
Michael Rothenberg is co-founder of the non-profit 100 Thousand Poets for Change (
Lisa Pasold is currently sheltering in place in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a storyteller, journalist, and poet. Lisa’s 2012 poetry book, Any Bright Horse, was nominated for Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award. Lisa’s poetry has appeared in magazines such as The Atlanta Review, The Los Angeles Review, Fence and New American Writing. @lisapasold
Laura Thurlow is a writer, filmmaker and musician originally from Toronto, Canada. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, and a Masters in Film Directing. Her recent endeavour is a short film called Shirley & Jane, starring Kate Dickie and Rosaleen Linehan. She did her first real slam in Paris in September, and was invited to go to Manchester with folks from Paris to compete in the Commonword European Slam Final. This past March, she had a show on in London, at the Drayton Arms Theatre titled Romance at The End of The World. She’s never had any poetry published- but she’s also not really tried yet ! It’s all a bit new! Plans for a chapbook this summer have halted with the pandemic – so for now she is best found @Laurelbrae on Instagram. She hopes to return to Paris very soon, but is enjoying quarantine in sunny Edinburgh, Scotland.
SpokenWord Paris 