DJ RENEGADE
BIO
D.J. Renegade (aka Joel Dias-Porter) was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After high school he enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he served two and a half years as a computer operator. After leaving the service he spend the next eight years as a professional disk jockey, working in DC area night clubs.
In 1991 he quit his job and began living on the street and in homeless shelters while undergoing an extensive self-taught Afrocentric study program (primarily at the Library of Congress). At this time he also began to seriously study and write poetry.
DJ Renegade's work has been published widely, including in Callaloo, Asheville Poetry Review, Red Brick Review, and the GW Review , as well as in numerous anthologies. Renegade, who played himself in the movie "Slam," reads regularly in the area. He has read at the Library of Congress, the Black Cat, Foxcroft School, Border's Books, and the Ellipse Arts Center, among other venues. A regular finalist in the National Poetry Slam Championships, Renegade won the 1998 Haiku competition. DJ Renegade worked with WritersCorps for more than five years, teaching poetry workshops in traditionally underserved areas.
DJ Renegade lives in the Washington, DC, area, and is the father of a one-year-old son.
Biographical information from Songs For Sarasvati: Love Poems by DJ Renegade, 1996.
POETRY
DJ Renegade can be an intimidating person: he's 6-foot-4, he's smart, he loves to argue and debate, he's grumpy before noon, and every time I've seen him he's been wearing black from head to toe. His appearance, however, belies his sensitiviy as a poet, as the two poems below illustrate:
"Song For Sarasvati"
I was bewitched
by the ghost
of your childhood lisp
by the way words
pushed for a chance
to dance across your lips
by your eyes
brown as Brazil nuts
by your legs
longer than a Baptist sermon
thicker than
homemade gravy
And any doubts
I harbored
suddenly ceased
when you laughed
and I encountered
all of California
curled into your smile
.
"Blessing"
I'm glad we talk
on the telephone.
Because then you can't see me
here on my hands and knees,
sweeping up the leaves
of your laughter
as they fall from the phone.
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