When I speak at schools, the most popular type of question I get is, “What’s Your Favorite…?” If you want to learn firsthand, check out the “My Favorites” video series. Right now it features some of my favorite poems and books but I’ll continue updating it to show what inspires me. 

In April, I had the great pleasure of giving the keynote for a cool platform called the EdCollab Gathering. It was basically a worldwide Google Hangout! I got a chance to talk about my creative process, but more importantly I also offered 5 actionable tips for educators to help young writers. Feel free to jump to the 17:12 mark when I get introduced. Enjoy!

Two of my most popular books celebrate the best pro basketball players. Hoop Kings celebrates the men while Hoop Queens celebrates the women. Since each book is a collection of poems, I wanted to make it easy to follow so I created this Follow The Poem series. The words might move a bit quick but it will help you get the flow of each poem and help improve how you read poetry in general. This one is for Allen Iverson but there’s a few more Kings and some Queens too on my YouTube channel so check it out. Enjoy!

28 Days celebrates Black History Month in February by focusing on 28 different people and events in black history that helped shape our country and the world. But every four years there’s a 29th day, a Leap Day. When I did this book, I knew I wanted the Leap Day to focus on the reader. Too often kids think that history is about things that happened long ago and has nothing to do with them. With day 29, I titled the poem Today to challenge readers by asking them: How will you make your mark? 

If you enjoyed the video above, check out more like it on my YouTube channel. I created the channel to feed the mind, body and spirit so you will see a wide variety of topics covered. You can see me perform my poems, or follow along with a poem, watch a book talk, see me workout, see my favorite books and more. New content will be added every week so if you don’t want to miss out, visit the channel, hit the red Subscribe button and the bell to receive notifications. Click on the picture to take you to my channel.