Brooklyn Poetry Slam | Oct 7, 2025

Gabriel Ramirez, author of the chapbook IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD, IT’D BE A PIT BULL (The Head & The Hand Press) and the children’s book We’re Community is a Queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal and the 2024-2025 CantoMundo Poetry Coalition Fellow. Gabriel has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops.

Gabriel’s electrifying writing and performance are catalysts towards healing and brings awareness to mental health, Afro-Latinidad, the African Diaspora, self love, masculinity, and social change.  Gabriel is dedicated to working with young people and poets ranging from middle schoolers to adults inspiring them to cultivate their voices as writers and performers through writing workshops and performance coaching. Gabriel has also received admiration from institutions of higher education and the underserved communities Gabriel cares for.

Gabriel has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, The National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues & universities around the nation. Gabriel was featured in Huffington Post, VIBE Magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, The Flama, and Remezcla.

You can find their work in various spaces, including YouTube, and in publications like Poetry Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, BOMB, and others as well as Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books 2017) What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press 2019), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press 2020), and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Library of America 2024). 

Jive Poetic is a writer, organizer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BA in Media Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and his MFA in Writing and Activism from Pratt Institute. In 2017 Jive was the first recipient of the John Morning Award for Art and Service. He is the founder of Insurgent Poets Society, Carnival Slam: Cultural Exchange, and co-founder of the Brooklyn Poetry Slam. His work has been showcased on season four of TVONE’s Lexus Verses and Flow, PBS NewsHour, and BET. International recognition and support for his work has come from the British Arts Council; US Embassies in Australia, Brazil, and Poland; and the Minister Of Culture in Antigua and Barbuda. He has received fellowships from Air Serenbe and Rhode Island Writers Colony, and when he is not on tour or hosting, he teaches poetry and hip hop workshops to at risk youth in New York City and the surrounding area.