artist statement

I am a disabled, Black hybrid poet expanding the pastoral tradition of the Southern Black Belt using a "rural hip-hop blues" aesthetic. Grounded in Rural, my work reflects a familial lineage in South Carolina’s Lowcountry region, not only of sharecropping and segregation but also of religiosity and self-determination. The golden age of Hip-Hop punctuated my childhood, and my work is forever in conversation with young Black and Brown innovators, cultural workers, and movement-builders. As a genre and worldview, Blues is a brave expression of struggle, heartbreak, and sadness—all vulnerabilities rarely afforded us Black, disabled people. My work exists within radical disability justice frameworks, especially those focused on humanization and the intrinsic value of disabled people. I resist this ableist society’s limited scope of what (Black) disabled bodies/minds can or should produce.