Still Mama Phife: Flowers For Linda Ep. 5 with Cheryl Boyce Taylor
Friends,
More on life coming soon. I’ve been quietly emerging from my cocoon.
And it is my honor to do so with this new episode of Flowers For Linda.
There is so little I can say that will do this listening experience justice. It took me months to release because it demanded such care, tenderness and complete attention to edit our hours of conversation down to this (still quite long, but so very potent) 1 hour and 45 minute long double episode.
My friend and mentor, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, sat with me to talk generously, with raw and unfiltered emotion, about loving, losing and living without her son, Malik Taylor, whom you and I know and love as Phife Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest.
Below is the official press release. Take a scan. Put the episode on. Get ready to feel like someone’s super sassy Grandma is dropping gems about surviving one’s own heart in the darkest times. Catch a poem or two. Laugh with us. Grab the lessons. Grab the heart chakra. Breathe with us. Open.
I hope you’ll send this to someone who needs it.
I hope you’ll share it widely on social media.
By the way, I’m back on Instagram and having a lot of fun, if you do that kind of thing.
And if you’re in New York, we’re reading poems for Phife on Wednesday. Join us there to continue the celebration of this giant spirit.
With love,
Caits
FLOWERS FOR LINDA podcast features legendary poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor sharing about the love and loss of her son, Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest.
On episode 5 of FLOWERS FOR LINDA, a podcast on creativity and grief hosted by artist Caits Meissner, poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor talks with tenderness, humor and wrenching honesty about raising, being raised by, and losing her son Malik, whom you and I know as the legendary Phife Dawg from the seminal hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest.
This profound, uplifting, and touching double-length episode offers — through an open conversation between two longtime friends of different generations — Cheryl’s experience of grieving through the holy trinity of poetry, therapy and community; The blessings and challenges of sharing a private loss with the world; Parenting a bold artist as a bold artist; And a series of only-a-mother-would-know stories about Malik Taylor.
The episode also includes Cheryl sharing poems from her poetic archive “Mama Phife Represents,” (Haymarket Books, 2021) and the episode opens with a collaborative poem recorded live at New York City’s The Bowery Poetry Club by Cheryl and Phife — never before released to the public.
To contact Flowers For Linda for an interview or other queries, email forlindaflowers@gmail.com.
To listen to the episode featuring Cheryl Boyce Taylor, check out the Anchor.fm episode page, or search on Apple or Spotify to listen.
FLOWERS FOR LINDA is an audiozine (some call it “podcast”), created and hosted by me, Caits Meissner — named after my late gardener mom — about creative relationship, giving the living their flowers, and the surprising lessons of grief. You can listen to all the episodes on Anchor: anchor.fm/caitsmeissner.
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet, author, and curator. Cheryl’s verse memoir, Mama Phife Represents, stands as a tribute to her late son, hip hop icon Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Alongside Mama Phife Represents, her four collections of poetry, Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing the Body, and Arrival, a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Award, present a lifetime dedicated to the written word. Cheryl’s latest work, We Are Not Wearing Helmets was published in 2022 by Northwestern University Press.
In her community, she has judged poetry entries to The New York Foundation for the Arts and The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and facilitated poetry workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown: Evidence, A Dance Company. A VONA fellow, her work has been published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Pluck!, Killings Journal of Arts & Letters, and Adrienne.
The recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, she is the founder and curator of the Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series. Cheryl earned an MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast: The University of Southern Maine, and an MSW from Fordham University. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.
