Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade) is originally from Pittsburgh, PA & currently resides in South Jersey. The 1998 & 1999 Haiku Slam Champion, his poems have been published in Poetry, Mead, Best American Poetry 2014, Callaloo, Antioch Review, Red Brick Review, and the anthologies, Short Fuse, Role Call, Def Poetry Jam, 360 Degrees of Black Poetry, Slam (The Book), Poetry Nation, Beyond the Frontier, and Catch a Fire. A Cave Canem Fellow, he also received the Furious Flower “Emerging Poet Award” in 1995. His first collection Ideas of Improvisation was published by Thread Makes Blanket Press in 2022.
