Summary: Tonight my guest will be Black Talk Radio member Clarence Barbee aka Nebraska who is a poet, radio host and entrepreneur who hails from Omaha, Nebraska. He began writing poetry in the eighth grade at age 13 and at the request of his Language Arts teacher, he composed the NAACP Martin Luther King celebration prize-winning poem entitled Survive on Hate. In 2000, after graduating from Clark Atlanta University, he began getting involved in spoken word. He started out performing at local venues such as Club Kaya, calling himself Nabraska, in homage to his birthplace. Late in that same year he networked with four other poets and completed a compilation CD. They called themselves A Group Called Karma and Nabraska produced two of the albums titled Shakespears in the Alley and Verb. A Group Called Karma performed at the Marietta Black Arts Festival in 2001, doing an original piece composed by Clarence entitled Rights. In 2003 Nabraska went back to the studio with a friend who played upright bass, and they combined to create Open Field. After a successful audition, he performed a piece entitled Open Letter to Sammi at Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn Festival. Clarence’s main influence came from writers such as Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Nabraska describes his writings as philosophical and societal, using social issues as a basis and platform to engage the thought process for his audience. He is still very active in the Atlanta spoken word scene performing at several local venues but also travels throughout the United States to perform.
