The WORKING POET RADIO SHOW

Author and journalist Joseph Lapin hosts a live-recorded late-night style talk show dedicated to the working lives of creative people. For National Poetry Month, WPRS features The Dark Noise Collective, six award-winning multiracial, multi-genre spoken word artists (Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, Danez Smith and Jamila Woods).

Dark Noise is a nationwide, multiracial, multi-genre collective featuring some of the most exciting, insightful, and powerful poets writing today. Dark Noise is composed of Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, Danez Smith, and Jamila Woods. These poets, diverse in content and form, find common ground in their commitment to using art as a site for radical truth telling. They explore themes of identity, intersectionality, trauma, and healing in accessible forms without sacrificing the highest standards of poetic craft. Dark Noise explodes archaic notions of page vs. stage with their dynamism in all arenas of verse. Dark Noise poets have been featured on film and television projects including HBO’s Brave New Voices, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and Louder than a Bomb. They have featured at venues across four continents, including Madison Square Garden, Sweden’s National Poetry Slam, Sanaa Africa Festival and The Apollo Theater. They are well-published poets who have garnered honors such as Ruth Lilly Dorothy Rosenberg Fellowships, State Arts Council grants, Pushcart nominations, and a host of publication awards. In addition, our artists bring a wealth of collective experience as organizers and educators who have worked to establish spoken word as a tool for critical engagement and entertainment.

Co-presented with O, Miami Poetry Festival.