"Poetry is Life" for Josephus III

For spoken word, visual, and performance artist Josephus, “Poetry is Life”. The traveling poet and educator often mixes his poetry with R&B and Jazz. Josephus writes a column for the newspaper Go Triad, and his voice is heard weekly over the Triad airwaves as host of 90.1FM's The Poetry Café.

WFDD Radio camper Jack Lee recently got a chance to speak with him.

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Josephus walked into the room with a bright red Transformers tee shirt and dark blue skinny jeans. Not only does Josephus travel the globe performing poetry, but he also teaches his many talents to children through The Poetry Project.

He was quick to share his own creative process with me.

...To be able to see yourself between those lines on the sheet of paper when you're finished to make the experience as real and as vivid as possible. When you're reading a story, you want to be able to picture an image in your mind. And so, using your five senses is something we work on with the Poetry Project: Touch taste smell sight sound. It's how we as human beings see the world. So If you can tell someone how something feels, and how something tastes and smells, you can automatically give them an idea of what you're talking about.

I asked Josephus about his connection between poetry and journalism.

Poetry got me to journalism. I was performing here in Greensboro at a few different places, and I caught the eye of some journalist who was interested in possibly seeing my work in a written form. I was a spoken word artist, so I was performing in showcases and different locations, doing live poetry, but I thought it was a good idea for my following to read my work in the newspaper, so it kind of started that way.

For the 3rd year in a row, Josephus and The Poetry Project is sponsoring The Gate City Youth Slam Team as they prepare to travel to Chicago for the 16th Annual Brave New Voices Poetry Festival. The International Festival is for teens ages 13-19, and it will take place Aug. 7th - 11th.

 For WFDD Radio Camp, I'm jack lee.