Performing for Power to the People

For most of its over-two-decade existence, I’ve performed at the Power to the People (P2P) stage at the Twin Cities Pride Festival. P2P is produced by RARE Productions, an arts organization by and for BIPOC LGBTQIA+ people. On the P2P stage June 24, 2023, I read two poems, "After Langston Hughes" and "Whole Numbers," plus I spat a revision of my rap "Steph's Cypher" that I wrote in the Cave Canem’s Minneapolis Regional Workshop on “Laboratory Poetics”.

The video was shot by my wife using an old camcorder I bought from Free Geek electronics thrift store, so that's why the image quality is bad. Also, it took so long for me to get this video ready to publish because I needed to close caption it correctly with two poems, one rap and other speech. Captioning note: Poet Danez Smith uses gender-neutral pronouns for themself, so I corrected my misgendering Smith in the subtitles.