Spoken word poet Maggie Estep has passed away. The Los Angeles Times has a wonderful write up of her life and career and how she shaped a whole movement.
“In her early work, Estep was a downtown New Yorker who talked tough, joked and was drawlingly sardonic while being sexually explicit. Her pieces often expressed the anger and frustrations of young, urban women. “I’m not a normal girl,” she said in one of her most popular “rants,” as she called her poems. “I’m an angry, sweaty girl, so bite me.” She called her success a fluke.”
Read the rest here.

![National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”](https://therumpus.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/pic-Ty-Raso.jpeg)

