Specialty Slam: Black History Month :”Paying Homage” Slam - 1st time specialty slam. To “Pay Homage” - all slammers in this competition must read the work of a Black Poet of their choosing.Airea “Dee” Matthews is a widely acclaimed performer/writer and 2009 third ranked female performance poet in the world.  In 2008, she landed the title of Detroit Grand Slam Champion and Regional Rustbelt Individual Slam Co-Champion.  She has featured on National Public Radio (NPR), The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Detroit’s Max Fischer Theatre, The Fillmore Theatre and other select international venues including Toronto’s popular Drake Underground.  She continues to move audiences with her deeply insightful and chilling persona and narrative-based poetry.  Her work combines her abiding love for 17th century verse with a modern voice and keen eye on current events. Her style, by turns, has been described as aching and fierce.She has been widely anthologized and published in e-zines and is the producer of the DVD performance collection, Venus Disrobed.  Holding a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a M.P.A. from the University of Michigan, she is currently Poet-in-Residence with El Arte and the Y-Arts program in Detroit as well as a workshop facilitator and executive board member of the Prison Creative Arts Project based in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan.  She’s an unruly mom and wife who loves her family, creative company, fairies, saints, eccentricities, regional accents and clay.