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Tuesday, April 27, 2021 Voices of Justice Poetry Slam (04.27.21) Categories: Other Local Events Timelines: 1b: Past Events (Unseen Archive), 2: Civil Writes Project Archive

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Voices-of-Justice-Poetry-Slam-4-27-21

Where: Live-streamed event
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Host: D’Youville College Honors Program

In conjunction with D’Youville’s Cultural Enrichment Center, the D’Youville Honors Program will host Voices of Justice, featuring poet Eve Williams. The event will feature other local Buffalo spoken word and slam poetry artists as well as original student compositions. The event will be held at the Kavinoky Theater, located on D’Youville’s campus. We invite students and other members of our campus and wider community to join as we speak out for justice!

Watch the event’s live-stream here!

Performers include:

Poet Eve Williams is the highest internationally ranked slam poet from Buffalo and in the top 20 slam poets in the world (2018). Eve was a recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award. She was the 2018 Buffalo representative to both the Women of the World and the National Individual Poetry Slam and a member of the 2018 Buffalo National Slam Team. Eve has published videos of her work on a Facebook page titled Unfiltered which have over a million estimated reach. Her poems “I’ve been having a hard time with white people lately,” “I know you Rachel Dolezal,” and “Black Girl Gone” have garnered national attention and she has been featured on several blogs including AfroPunk, SonofBaldwin and KinfolkKollective. She has published in the Buffalo News, A Flash of Dark: an Anthology, My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry, Peach Mag and Sun Magazine.

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Tyrone “Legendary” Huston made his debut to the stage in 2012 and since then has been a featured artist in numerous local events including Juneteenth, 100,000 poets for change, Disability Pride, and a Black History Month program held by Mayor Brown via invitation. He has also been a recurring artist featured in several nationally syndicated radio networks that include programs hosted on ONE Network, D.A.M.O.N Networks, SkyVisions Radio, and BlogTalk Radio. In recent years, Legendary was declared the Freestyle Champion of Buffalo after competing in a Freestyle Spoken Word contest and has received two local award nominations. In 2019, he was nominated for Poet/Spoken Word Artist of the year at The Black Music Month Conference Awards and was also nominated for a 2020 Spark Award. He is the self published author of 4 books of his written poetry: Rocks Over Diamonds, The Courage To Scream, Nameless and, most recently, Iron Cursive.

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Poet and Actress Jheanelle Kerr hails from the island of Jamaica and studied theatre arts in Guyana. She is a past student of the National Drama School, she was trained in the art of acting and uses this technique to express her poetry. In 2017, Jheanelle won her first poetry slam in Guyana, after which she traveled to America and won the Pure Ink Poetry Women slam in Buffalo. Since then, she has created a name as a young international poet, competing against well-known poets in the Buffalo area. Jheanelle has published videos of her work on her Facebook page “Mustard Seed Poetry” and Instagram page “Jamanesepoet ” she features poems that deals with race, identity, and self-worth. Her philosophy is, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed then you will move mountains, whatever your might mountain look like”.

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Bianca L. McGraw uses art, poetry, performance and space as a vehicle for discussion about identity, diversity and perspectives while exploring personal, societal and communal experiences. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate Degree in Adult and Higher Education at Northern Illinois University. Completing her Master of Fine Arts Degree encouraged her to continue her education and research on the importance of how art, advocacy, and communal/cultural environments intercept. Her artistic exploits have allowed her to showcase her messages nationally (Chicago, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Buffalo, etc) and internationally (Canada, France, Mexico, and the United Kingdom). Her passion is an interchangeable balance between art, design, diversity, poetry, community development and personal engagement.