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BIOGRAPHY

a sound poet experimenting on the outer rim of ultrasonic soul

 
Born and raised in Harlem, Latasha first began her journey as a visual art major at Laguardia High School of the Arts. It was when Latasha was a dancer for musical groups like Deee-Lite and Heavy D, however, that she took to writing poetry and music reviews. As a journalist, she has been published in several magazines including Vibe, The Source, and Urb. Her poetry has been featured in a wider array of publications from Long Shot, Drum Voices Review, and Bum Rush the Page.

As a fellow of the Cave Canem Workshop for African American Poets, Diggs began a rigorous exploration to reinvent her poetry and what it meant for her to love both the word and the voice. She understood the importance of accomplishing the word on page. However, coming up from the downtown spoken word scene with the likes of Anti Pop Consortium and Mike Ladd, Latasha knew that the page, like the mic, had its limitations and she had other means of conveying that same emotion. She wanted to challenge herself by fusing sound and text. Thus, after several poetry collectives and collaborations with musicians, Latasha started to deal more with improvisation and language. Today, her poems are often mutated, processed, and performed in a collage of dialectics; a 'deconstructo manifesto' journalist, essayist, and musician Greg Tate coined "Japanglish". The result is what can only be described as an eccentric, electronic spoken word cabaret of singing, screaming, speaking, cooing and whispering brilliance.

In addition to being published, Diggs performs in many spoken word venues in New York and abroad including Riker's Island and Switzerland. As a poet and vocalist, she has performed with DJ Little Louie Vega's Nuyorican Soul Orchestra at Central Park's Summer Stage, the femme-fatale poetry/performance act Girl Group: An Afroglam Ethnography directed and conceived by poet/playwright Carl Hancock Rux at Joe's Pub (The Public Theatre), and collaborated in a "sound" improvisation entitled Santeria Songs and Voudon Striptease Rituals with poet Edwin Torres. She has also been featured as such on recordings by Vernon Reid (Yohimbe Brothers), Domenico Ferrari (Commute), Guillermo E. Brown (Soul at the Hands of the Machine), Greg Tate (Burnt Sugar: That Depends of What You Know), Ryuichi Sakamoto (Sweet Revenge), Towa Tei (Future Listening!), and Eargasms: Hip-Hop Poetics, Volume 1.

As founder of All Gods Play Chess Inc., a company geared towards promoting the arts Latasha has produced the events 4 umen and Les Sirens, which featured an assortment of talented women through the medium of song, performance, and word. She has published two chapbooks, Ichi-Ban: from the files of negrita muneca morena linda and Ni-Ban: Villa Miseria. She is currently an artist in residence at the Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center working on her debut album.

 
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