A Poet Activist at Brown With a Powerful Voice

Title: Amiri Nash

Age: 20

Hometown: Washington, D.C.

Now Lives: Mr. Nash lives on-campus at Brown College within the Harambee Home, a residence for Black college students.

Declare to Fame: Mr. Nash, a sophomore at Brown, is a journalist, activist and poet who was named Washington’s Youth Poet Laureate in 2021. He was a part of a spherical desk dialogue with Vice President Kamala Harris on homosexual and transgender points final summer time, and wrote concerning the politics of poetry for Washingtonian journal. “Poetry provides me a approach to say issues that I wouldn’t in any other case be capable of say,” Mr. Nash mentioned.

Massive Break: A lifelong lover of phrases, Mr. Nash gave his first public poetry studying throughout an honors English class throughout his sophomore yr on the Duke Ellington Faculty of the Arts, a public highschool in Washington. The piece, titled “Between the Stars,” was primarily based on “coming into acceptance as a queer man,” he mentioned.

Inspired by his English trainer, he utilized to Press Pass Mentors, a writing-focused nonprofit, the place he was arrange with an internship with the Washington Submit political reporter Eugene Scott. “Eugene can also be Black and homosexual, he confirmed me how writing was therapeutic for him,” Mr. Nash mentioned.

Newest Undertaking: In February, Mr. Nash began the Black Star Journal, a scholar newspaper that covers “masculinity, Afro-Latinx illustration, Black womanhood, Black artwork and Black music,” he mentioned. (Latest articles embrace an evaluation of using assonance by the rapper MF Doom and a bit on how British Vogue covers Black magnificence.) He additionally printed 1,000 copies to “present that Black individuals take up area,” he mentioned. “You may actually stroll into our eating corridor and see stacks of the newspaper and different college students studying it.”

Subsequent Factor: A set of fifty poems written by Mr. Nash will probably be printed this yr by Phrases, Beats and Life, a hip-hop and schooling nonprofit in Washington.

From the archives: Earlier than he began his personal journal, Mr. Nash realized from different publications began by Black college students at Brown, together with B.O.P. (Blacks on Paper), a literary journal from the Nineteen Seventies, and The African Solar, a tradition journal edited by members of the Black Pupil Union from the Nineteen Nineties. “I would like future generations of scholars to have the ability to have that very same entry to what day-to-day life is like for Black individuals at Brown,” he mentioned.