We Who Do Words: CityLit Festival Poetry Finale

7:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Red Emma’s Bookstore
3128 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21218

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In a final nod to poet Nikki Giovanni, the 22nd CityLit Festival ends National Poetry Month with a poetry finale. We Who Do Words, with musical guest artist Wifty Bangura and featuring poet Dominique Christina with Sylvia Jones, Michael B. Tager, Erica Dawson, Ailish Hopper, and Tracy Dimond as the Mistress of Ceremonies. “We who do words are doing what we do,” says Nikki G. “Through the pen, you wielded like a torch, like a wand, like a blade when the world needed sharpening. You didn’t just write poems – you built rooms for us to walk into, to rest in, to rage in, to love in. I stepped into those rooms again and again, never leaving quite the same as I entered,” writes poet Fredrick Joseph, We Alive, Beloved, in a tribute to this highly revered poet. We end this festival season with creatives and poets who walk into that room, who shine their own light, who read their own poems where they will be seen.

Wifty Bangura is a multifaceted creative specializing in sound, blending hip-hop, neo-soul, and alternative music with classical vocal training and performance experience. She uses music as a tool for healing and self-liberation, inspiring listeners to embrace their true selves and resist anything that stifles self-love. Dominique Christina is an award-winning poet, author of Anarcha Speaks, curator, conceptual installation artist, and Arts Envoy to Cyprus. She believes words make worlds. Sylvia Jones’ first poetry collection, Television Fathers, was released in 2024. She is an editor at Black Lawrence Press and a reader for Ploughshares. She earned her M.F.A. from American University in Washington D.C. and lives and writes in Baltimore. Michael B. Tager is the author of Pop Culture Poetry: the Definitive Collection. Erica Dawson is a Black poet living with bipolar disorder and OCD in the Baltimore-DC area. Ailish Hopper is a poet who works in page, performance, and social forms. She’s the author of the chapbook, Bird in the Head, and the full-length collection, Dark~Sky Society. Tracy Dimond, Mistress of Ceremony is a 2016 Baker Artist Award finalist. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Emotion Industry and the Vice Chair of CityLit Project. In this final act of poetry, Nikki G reminds us, the human spirit will prevail. Her words bring extraordinary light to our current circumstances, “We will take what we have to make what we need.” May she Rest in Power. May we remember her name.

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Wifty Bangura is a multifaceted creative specializing in sound, able to shine through several genres including hip-hop, neo-soul, and alternative music. Her belief in music as a method of healing is at the forefront of her writing and melody selection, which she uses to stir one’s spirit and encourage them to know themselves and enact rebellion on all that seeks to oppress their truest love for self. She’s a versatile veteran with 6 years of training as a classical vocalist and 15 years of performing experience. With her diverse range of skills and influences, Wifty Bangura is a true force in the world of music, using her platform to inspire listeners to reject anything that seeks to diminish their sense of self-love.
https://wiftybangura.univer.se/
Instagram: @wiftybangura

Dominique Christina is an award-winning poet, author, curator, conceptual installation artist, and Arts Envoy to Cyprus. Her works include The Bones, The Breaking, The Balm, They Are All Me, This is Woman’s Work (a collection of essays), and her fourth book, 2017 National Poetry Series winner  Anarcha Speaks, a collection of persona poems about an enslaved girl named Anarcha who was the subject of torturous medical experiments during chattel slavery at the hands of Dr. J Marion Simms who is regarded as the father of modern-day gynecology. Anarcha Speaks is the reckoning, the grief work, the exhumation, and the proper burial. “In inventive and soul-deep narratives, Christina has wholly encompassed the breath and breadth of Anarcha, who steps out of an enslaved and pummeled body to reclaim her root in the world.” ~Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art. This featured poet holds five national poetry slam titles, including the 2014 & 2012 Women of the World Slam Champion and 2011 National Poetry Slam Champion. Her work is greatly influenced by her family’s legacy in the Civil Rights Movement and the idea that words make worlds. Dominique Christina, live and off the page, is an experience you won’t soon forget.
www.dominiquechristina.com
X: @nyarloka
Instagram: @DominiqueChristina

Sylvia Jones is a writer, editor, and prison abolitionist who earned her M.F.A. from American University in Washington D.C.. Of her debut collection, Television Fathers, Jennifer Baker, editor, of Everyday People: The Color of Life says “The pleasure in reading (and reading) Television Fathers is that revisiting each poem creates a new sensation. Sylvia Jones’ collection is a sublime alchemy of the senses, an illumination of how relatable the most potent memories are through Jones’ singular voice.” Sylvia serves as an editor at Black Lawrence Press and a reader for Ploughshares. Last year, on behalf of the Goucher Prison Education Partnership she led a summer intro to poetry workshop in Jessup, MD. She has received fellowship and support from the Peaked Hill Trust; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Walters Museum, Topical Cream; Jack Straw Cultural Center; The Emerging Artist Initiative; OUTWrite DC; Poets at the End of The World Collective; Literary Cleveland; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Bucknell University, where she was a 2021-22 Stadler Fellow. Her writing appears in R&R Journal, Smartish Pace, Sprung Formal, Revolute, DIAGRAM, the Hopkins Review, Poet Lore, Spilt Milk by the Poetry Society of New York, Shenandoah, and the Cortland Review.
www.english.columbian.gwu.edu/sylvia-jones
Instagram: @sylviajonesjonesjonesjones

Michael B. Tager is the author of Pop Culture Poetry: the Definitive Collection. Of his latest work, Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America writes, “These poems joyfully mine the depths of popular culture in unique ways that invite a warmth, a generosity that sparks both a relationship with memory and beauty. The writing is playful but also takes its subjects, and the worlds it has built, seriously, approaching them with care.” Michael is a writer, editor, organizer, and all-around mensch. He has been published in various places, and his website is remarkably easy to find. He thinks you’re swell.
michaelbtager.com
Bluesky: @iamragesparkle.bsky.social
Instagram: @iamragesparkle

Erica Dawson is a Black poet living with bipolar disorder and OCD in the Baltimore-DC area. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently When Rap Spoke Straight to God. “Again, Erica Dawson has expanded the possibilities of what we think poetry can do. The lusciously long poem, When Rap Spoke Straight to God, is sensual and openly political and so well-crafted in epic blank verse that we begin to see how the contemporary moment has yet to fully correct far too many historical moments,” says poet Jericho Brown. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Blackbird, Orion, Revel, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals and anthologies.
www. ericadawsonpoet.net
Instagram: @ericadawsonpoet

Ailish Hopper is a poet and multi-disciplinary artist who works in page, performance, and social forms. She’s the author of the chapbook, Bird in the Head, and the full-length collection, Dark~Sky Society. “Consider her verse coiled and sprung; and, to paraphrase an exalted homegrown colloquialism, ‘busted loose,’” Greg Tate has said of her work. Her poems have appeared in APR, POETRY, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, and many other places. “Hopper steps right into the center, inside her own body and known life, and offers to say what the less courageous or less moved leave unsaid…” says Jane Hirshfield. She’s performed at the Bowery/NYC, Busboys and Poets, and numerous college campuses, and is the grateful recipient of support from MacDowell, Maryland State Arts Council, and Yaddo.
www.ailishhopper.net
X: @ailishhopper
Instagram: @ailishhopper

Tracy Dimond is a 2016 Baker Artist Award finalist. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Emotion Industry and four chapbooks, including: TO TRACY LIKE / TO LIKE / LIKE, and Sorry I Wrote So Many Sad Poems Today, winner of Baltimore City Paper’s Best Chapbook. “Tracy Dimond takes the reader on a journey through living with an undiagnosed illness while trying to survive the world in a woman’s body—“so bent over from this leaning in.” She hints at the discomfort she feels in her own skin: “thinking about the body— / the reign of terror over every moment captured in / store mirrors” but reminds us of “the privilege of / a bag of muscles and bones and fat / with a voice box.” Emotion Industry is filled with sharp images and a dry wit that sticks with the reader. Sagely, Dimond tells us, “Aging is deciding which system to buy into, / but I’m still searching for shooting stars.” This collection is a shooting star and the one I’m buying into.” ~ Courtney LeBlanc, Her Whole Bright Life.

Tracy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Smartish Pace, The Nervous Breakdown, Fact-Simile, Barrelhouse, The Little Patuxent Review, Pinwheel, Sink Review, and other places. Dimond holds her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. She has taught classes and writing workshops for Writers in Baltimore Schools, EMP Collective, The University of Baltimore, and more. She serves as Vice Chair on the board of CityLit Project.
poetsthatsweat.com
Instagram: @glitterature72

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CityLit Project in partnership with Lord Baltimore Hotel and Red Emma’s present CityLit Festival: Our Stories Give Light To Our Future. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 5, 2025. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.

Download the CityLit Festival: Our Stories Give Light To Our Future flyer.