Jonathan B. Tucker is a performance poet, teaching artist, educator, and coach of the DC Youth Poetry Slam Team. He has represented DC at the National Poetry Slam multiple years and has been published alongside Amiri Baraka in Howard University’s Amistad Journal. In 2010 he was a grantee with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ Young Artists Program with a group from Children’s National Medical Center called Teens Against the Spread of AIDS. He has shared stages with nationally recognized poets such as Gil Scott-Heron, Sonya Renee, Anis Mojgani, and Suheir Hammad. Jonathan regularly hosts open mics and slams at BloomBars, Busboys and Poets, The Fridge, and other popular DC venues. He teaches creative writing and performance poetry in DC and across the country to students at all levels, from elementary to college, helping people find their voices using poetry. He was born in Southeast DC, raised not too far away in Crofton, Maryland, and after studying at Boston University and the University of Maryland, College Park (where he founded TerPoets, the only open mic and poetry student org there), he returned to our nation’s capital to advocate and agitate for peace, justice, and cultural understanding. In 2010 and 2011 he received the COUP Award from the National Underground Spokenword Poetry Awards, which stands for Community Oriented Underground Poet of the year. He has shared the stage with American Indian Movement activist and poet John Trudell, politically charged, radical hip hop emcee Immortal Technique, and several HBO Def Poetry Jam features, including Regie Cabico, Black Picaso of the Poem-cees, Carlos Andrés Gómez and Sarah Kay. He lives and works in Washington, DC melding art and activism with his work as a performer, educator and youth programs coordinator for Split This Rock.
Jonathan’s second self-published chapbook, I Got the Matches, is a collection of poems that speak to issues of injustice, resistance and love. He provides special insight, before each poem, into the inspiration or circumstances surrounding the creation and use of the poem. He firmly believes that poems must jump up off the page and be spoken in order to live as they are intended and remain relevant.
Visit Web site for more information, and watch his video channel at www.youtube.com/user/phenomejonathan.
Who is your favorite poet?
Henry Mills
What is your favorite poem?
“, said the shotgun to the head” by Saul Williams
What line(s) of poetry do you love?
the ones that make you say mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yeah! (too many to list)
What word do you love?
chalibel (Justin Christmas and I created this word in 2000)
What word do you hate?
bureaucracy
Where do you write?
where don’t i write?
If a dead poet visited you in a dream, who would it be and what do you wish the person would say to you?
i do not want dead people visiting me anymore
Mountains or beaches?
yes
Summer/warmer climate or winter/cooler climate?
no
Brain/mind or heart/soul?
yes
Anything else?
I like peanut butter, noodles, DJ’s who still use vinyl, riding my bike to work, and views from rooftops.
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