Season Two opens not with answers but with an invocation—an exploration of poetry as an act of liberation and remembrance.

What happens when language becomes both mirror and machete? When the poem insists that freedom is more than the absence of chains?

Honoring the legacy of the late Haitian poet Danielle Legros Georges and her haunting poem Makak, this episode journeys into the heart of what it means to reclaim space, preserve memory, and insist on being seen.

Joined by the luminous Dr. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, we move through the intersections of history, memory, and creative resistance, tracing how poetry becomes both refuge and reckoning—a place where freedom is not a destination, but an ongoing demand.

Together, we ask how art helps us wrestle with what lingers after liberation. What does it mean to be free when the ghosts of empire, displacement, and erasure still haunt the margins of our stories? And what might it look like to imagine a freedom spacious enough to hold joy, tenderness, and transformation?

This conversation is as much an offering as it is an inquiry—a call to those living poetically, consciously, courageously. It reminds us that poetry is not only written on the page, but lived in the choices we make, the silences we break, and the worlds we dare to rebuild.

🎧 Featuring music by [insert composer/producer if applicable]

✨ Follow the journey at enzothepoet.substack.com and listen to more episodes of It’s a Poetic Life

Season One closes with a craft meditation on authorship, cadence, and the art of the intentional dive. From Elton John’s impossible-to-mimic phrasing to August Wilson’s dialogues with characters, Enzo maps the “fumble & tumble” of process—writing with the work (not at it), and composing a life that is unmistakably yours.

Along the way: the tree that keeps returning across his books and what it teaches about witness, endurance, and breath. This finale lingers on the deeper work of process—trusting the dive, embracing discovery, and allowing creation to change us.

Stay for a heartfelt wrap-up and a glimpse at what’s ahead: a guest-rich Season Two, opening with poet & artist Dr. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, and continuing the practice of holding clarity, courage, and presence. Two.

🎙 Season 1- Episode 9: Art Official — Writing Authentic Stories in a Market-Driven World

Guest: Daphne Santana Strassmann

What if the bravest thing you could do as a writer wasn’t just to write—but to write like no one’s watching?

In this intimate and layered conversation, Enzo sits down with memoirist and educator Daphne Santana Strassmann for what feels like a master class on writing from the inside out.

Together, they explore the quiet—but powerful—ways we’re taught to question the validity of our own stories. Not just by the outside world, but by the expectations we internalize. Whether it’s the pressure to fit into a narrative that makes sense to others, or the fear that our truth is too complicated, too specific, too much—this episode is a reminder that honoring your voice is a radical act.

💬 Inside this episode:

– How to trust the shape of your story before it’s “market-ready”

– Memoir as a way of returning to yourself

– The danger of leaving stories untold

– And how writing with honesty—on your own terms—is its own form of liberation

Daphne’s wisdom, warmth, and lived experience offer an invitation to all of us: to claim our stories not because they’re easy to tell—but because they’re ours to tell