aja monet | Pioneer Live

In December of 2023, aja monet brought her Why My Love tour to the PW Main Hall for a night of poetry, music, and storytelling. A community organizer, surrealist blues poet, and teacher, monet moves between mediums, and considers her work to be the process rather than some point of arrival. Her endgame is liberation, and her poems, music, and art serve as scribe of that struggle. She cut her teeth within the walls of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, where she won the title of Grand Slam Champion in 2007 at age 19, making her the youngest Grand Slam Champion in the venue’s history. In her 2017 poetry collection, she writes, “i owe my life / to the woman / who stopped my mother / on the b56 / on her way / to the abortion clinic / and told her / you have a poet coming.” Monet’s debut album, when the poems do what they do, traverses the questions of Black resistance, love, and the inexhaustible quest for joy. ♦