Lawrence “BasiKnowledge” Green Jr. is a writer, competitive performance poet, and spoken word artist whose work is capturing audiences from New Mexico to North Carolina. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, he is presently studying accounting at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, where he can also be found gallivanting about with the G.S.U rugby hooligans.
He is a keenly competitive performer who wrote his first poem on September 6, 2004 and won his first slam on November 23 of that same year. Since then, he has competed in the National Poetry Slam Competition in Albuquerque (on the Atlanta Slam Team) ,the Southern Fried Southeast Regional Slam Competition in Charlotte, and competed in the 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam and finished 11th. He has been a featured performer at venues throughout the Southeast and was named Savannahs Best New Poet of 2005.
Lawrence’s work is a socially conscious mix of the political and the personal, the abstract and the concrete, in which he explores the idea that our best knowledge is also our most basic, that truth is not something you find, it is something brought out of yourself. His poems fit no specific genre; he delights in both tenderness and absurdity, wielding a razor wit with lyrical sensitivity. His energy is contagious, as is his dedication to his art, and it is his ability to balance sheer exuberance with technical skill that makes him one of today's rising stars of spoken word.
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