BREAKDOWN: The Poet & The Poems, Season 2, Episode 5, hosted by Tamara J. Madison, features poet .CHISARAOKWU. (bio below) discussing a new poetry collection forthcoming in 2026. This episode is part of a limited edition series discussing “lineage literature,” writing/poetry about or directly inspired by the author’s own personal family lineage. In this episode, .CHISARAOKWU.discusses the influences of her Igbo origins and her medical studies/career in her poetry and her activism.

BREAKDOWN: The Poet & The Poems is a conversation series to spread awareness of poets and their poetry as inspiration and motivation for our everyday life journeys. The conversations are for poets and non-poets, writers, readers, spoken word artists, students/fans of poetry, and anyone looking for a little “soul food.”

This opportunity is made possible through the Literary Arts Projects, a program of South Arts.

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POET’S BIO:
.CHISARAOKWU. (she/her) is an Igbo American transdisciplinary poet artist and 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her practice—inspired by Igbo tradition and cosmology, quantum physics, and the natural world—weaves archive, collage, film into experimental poetry and visual art. Her work is featured in Michigan Quarterly Review’s special issue “African Cartographies,” edited by Chris Abani, ANMLY, Beloit Poetry Journal, Transition, Obsidian, and many others. Her writing has been nominated for literature prizes including the Pushcart Prize, Best of Net (Poetry), and Best New American Poets.

Her chapbook “This Wake Holding, Mmiri” received the 2023 Evaristo Poetry Prize’s Honorable Mention from the Africa Poetry Book Fund. She is grateful for additional fellowship support from the California Arts Council, Cave Canem, Anaphora Arts, The Black Genius Foundation, Headlands Center for the Arts, MacDowell, Torch Literary Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, Ucross, and more. From 2010-2017, she served as a US Commissioner to UNESCO.

Before pivoting to the arts, she worked as a pediatrician and trauma specialist, and served as a senior advisor and direct on health policy for the federal government under the Obama Administration. She earned her MD from Duke University, Masters in Public Health from UNC, and BA from Stanford University. Find more at https://www.chisaraokwu.com/.

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