Flowers For Linda

Poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor talks with tenderness, humor and wrenching honesty about raising, being raised by, and losing her son Malik, whom you and I know as the legendary Phife Dawg from the seminal hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. This profound, uplifting, and touching double-length episode offers—through an open conversation between two longtime friends of different generations—Cheryl’s experience of grieving through the holy trinity of poetry, therapy and community; The blessings and challenges of sharing a private loss with the world; Parenting a bold artist as a bold artist; And a series of only-a-mother-would-know stories. The episode also includes Cheryl sharing poems from her poetic archive “Mama Phife Represents,” (Haymarket Books, 2021) and the episode opens with a collaborative poem recorded live at New York City’s The Bowery Poetry Club by Cheryl and Phife​​—never before released to the public.

Losing her brother unexpectedly as a teen, multidisciplinary writer, storyteller and performer Caroline Rothstein leaned on Jewish ritual to survive. The poetry of her faith now finds its way into every area of her life—inspired by death. In this heart to heart, Caroline introduces us to her brother Josh in his playful spirit form, and she shares two profoundly moving poems that transmute grief into powerful testimonial art. 

The overstory is your first book is a NYT bestseller. The understory is your father’s recent death. FLOWERS FOR LINDA audiozine is (finally!) back with author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah in this heart-opening conversation about the collision of grief and creative success.

When I was asked to present a keynote speech in fall 2021 at the Transformative Language Arts' Power of Words conference, alongside one of my inspirations, the astonishing poet laureate Joy Harjo, I knew I had to muster up the courage to really speak from spirit. This rangy, experiential talk is laced with personal anecdotes, the philosophy of beauty, and the wisdom of flow and presence as access points to embodied creativity. I tapped in. Now I re-listen to myself when I need some strong medicine.