CONTACT for booking performances, workshops, features or guest hosting:
[email protected] **Non-Profits, public schools, activist groups, community organizations and charities, if i am down with your cause I will perform for FREE just get at me.**
I started my LYRICAL JOURNEY as a high school sophomore who liked to FREESTYLE with friends and occasionally battle. Also while still in high school I was a member of the Philadelphia Student Union, a student ACTIVIST group in Philadelphia that works to improve PHILADELPHIA's public schools. While in the student union I flourished as a public speaker, energizing crowds at RALLIES and bringing attendees at school board meetings to tears. My other passion in high school was peer EDUCATION. I worked with a peer education group in putting on educational plays and workshops for students about living healthy lives. During the summer of 2004 it struck me that I could combine my rhyme SKILLS from freestyling, my POLITICAL beliefs that came out in my speech writing, my stage presence which I learned from THEATER and my personal experiences from my life, into poetry. I have been MADLY IN LOVE with poetry ever since. An activist at heart most of my poetry is meant to be a piece of the process of creating social change. I especially believe that young people are the key to CREATING social change and must be the LEADERS in doing so. I work under the guise that POETRY can be used as a great tool to educate and ORGANIZE people while entertaining them. I am a young poet who is growing every time I write a poem down and every time I put it on stage. I am a lot goofier than my poetry (or this bio) will ever be so dont be scurred to holla at a POET when you see him in the streets. ;-) !
"...take note -- this raw talent brings a stage presence and fire only found in a few. I watched him go up against National Slam Finalists and seasoned Slam Champions at the Red Bull Word Clash and level the room. This kid's going nowhere but up from here."
-Carlos Andres Gomez, 2003 Nuyorican National Slam Team (http://www.killapathy.com/)
"Jacob's words penetrates ones gray-matter! His truth is incontrovertible."
-Bruce George, Co-Founder of Def Poetry Jam
"Over the years, I have been fortunate to have some fantastic
student/poets in my class 'Poetry as Performance' at Temple
University; but I can honestly say that few have impressed me
with their dedication to craft, technique and sense of timing
like Jacob. On the printed page, Jacob's work can hold a
candle to the best of them; and as a Performance Artists,
with the speed of rhyme and the power of "the word", from
social consciousness to "love", Jacob shakes the air and
demands that we listen..."
Kimmika L. H. Williams-Witherspoon, PhD ,
award winning poet,
playwrite, actress, teacher and mentor to many.
Theater History
Temple University
Poetry Credentials: HOST of the Heat open mic and poetry slam in Philadelphia, WINNER of Art of War MC vs. Poet lyricist competition, 2nd place finisher in the 2006 AKoben Words in Action Poetry Festival, two time participant in the North Carolina Word Clash National Poetry Slam (6th place in '05), two time Nuyorican poetry cafe semi finalist, Temple University Slam Champion, finalist in Muse Work NY's impromptu Poet/MC battle.
