Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is Reading Poetry at His Press Briefings

For People magazine, Morgan Smith writes about Newark 's Mayor Ras Baraka, son of famed poet Amiri Baraka, reading poetry at the culmination of his Covid-19 press briefings. "One day it might be Tupac Shakur, the next it might be one Baraka has written himself. The goal, he says, is to spread a little joy, and challenge people to see their city, or the pandemic, in a different light," Smith explains. Picking up from there: 

“It’s difficult to be happy in these difficult, depressing times,” Baraka notes. “But I love to share poetry that is encouraging, inspiring, that gives people a sense of a new day, new opportunity of how to persevere.”

Baraka has always sought comfort in poetry. His parents, Amiri and Amina, are celebrated poets well-known for their community activism and searing prose on social justice. Amiri died in 2014. Growing up in Newark, Baraka says his house was often filled with jazz music and poets from all over the world giving diatribes in the middle of the living room.

“It really changed how I see the world,” he says.

The mayor’s poetry readings have become wildly popular with his constituents — thousands regularly tune in to the briefings, suggesting poems for him to read and sending poetry they’ve written.

“Some days I’m so involved in the information I have to include in the briefing that I’ll forget to do the poem,” he says. “And I’ll invariably get an email that’s like, ‘Yo, you forgot the poem today, man!’”

Continue at People magazine.