Omari Hardwick is spreading his poetry wings even further and is making a podcast.
According to Billboard, the poet and Power actor has created a new podcast for the Luminary network called Poetics. In each episode, Hardwick will interview a guest from the world of hip-hop and will provide their piece of poetry to discuss. Guests include Wyclef Jean, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Casanova, Big Daddy Kane, Dave East and others.
Hardwick told Billboard in an interview that he wants the podcast to provide a space for rappers to “lose the machismo.”
“Poetry has a vulnerability that rap and MC’ing doesn’t. You gotta be vulnerable,” he said. “That kind of takes it to another level and gives [artists] a different look.”
“Poetics brings to its audience an audience that calls back to the cinematic vibe. Omari encourages guests to go deep, and we enhance that storytelling with a dope soundscape,” said Alex Nagel, the podcast’s co-creator and executive producer, to Billboard. “It’s not like an interview that you heard on a lot of podcasts.”
Co-creator and executive producer Elliot O’Dea added that Omari’s experience in both the hip-hop and poetry spaces has created “a vibe that made the artists comfortable enough to get vulnerable when they sit down for a session of Poetics.”
Hardwick’s love of poetry is well-documented; in his spare time, he runs the bluapple Poetry Network, a part of the Jason Taylor Foundation in South Florida, which gives students a chance to express themselves through the power of spoken word poetry.
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