Featured Readers
Jamila Woods is a poet, songwriter, and performing artist from the South Side of Chicago. Her first solo album, HEAVN was released by JagJaguwar Records in 2017 to critical acclaim. Her sophomore offering, LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019), features 12 tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced the creator’s life and work — including James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.
Jamila surrounds herself with things she loves, things like Lucille Clifton’s poetry, her grandmother’s handwriting or the late 90s alt-rock of Incubus. “I think of songs as physical spaces,” Jamila says, “Writing a song is like decorating your apartment with things that comfort you and represent who you are.” Songwriting–like poetry– is a process of personal excavation. She says, “Poetry became a way for me to stop hiding, to be the most honest version of myself through my writing.” Her work is the culmination of two decades’ worth of vocal training, creative remixing, interdisciplinary performance and her unique “collage” writing process.