Artist Spotlight: Mighty Mike McGee

“I love making people laugh, that’s one of my favorite things in the world”

“Mighty” Mike McGee’s relationship with poetry was born from the love of his friends and their love for poetry. After witnessing his first open mic with them, he was inspired by the act of performance and spoken word. Twenty or so years later, he’s performed at over thousands of open mics, won awards, and become an inspiration internationally. 

“There’s nothing quite like performance of any kind.”

Starting poetry at 22 years old, Mike knew poetry would always be a part of his life but he never expected it to be his career until his winning the individual poetry competition at the National Poetry Slam in 2003. After his win, he took poetry on a full time career and started touring internationally for ten years. Mike chose to settle back where he grew up in the South Bay, still performing but within his community. Through his performances, he began teaching poetry workshops to the youth in 2017 and continues to teach even now.

In his teachings, Mike is motivated to help his students understand the healing properties of poetry. He recognizes that despite his love for poetry that not everyone will love it as he does, but he wants them to understand how it can be useful to them. Growing up, Mike wasn’t interested in how poetry was taught at his school and knows many others feel the same way. Mike states: “I at least want them to be interested in (poetry) enough to where they’re a little excited for me to show up”.

“Poetry can be a tool one of many tools to express themselves”

Mike’s own poetry is primarily written on loneliness; inspired by the current culture as well as his own experiences with the subject. Writing loneliness as “this kind of disease, this scourge”, one that has personally affected him and actively affects plenty of people in our society today. By sharing how he feels through spoken word poetry, Mike believes his feelings will resonate with at least one other person creating connections and acknowledging how loneliness can affect everyone. 

Conversely, the other subject Mike writes his poetry on centers a humorous tone. Having stand up comedy as a hobby and a pension for making people laugh, Mike’s poetry always has multitudes and layers to it. Whether it be through comedy or slam, Mike describes his love for being on the stage, for the applause and the reactions. He moves people, to both tears and laughs. 

“The absolute highlight is all the friends I’ve made”

Mike listed plenty of memorable moments in his career, from being one of the first Americans to perform at the University of Paris to being featured on an episode of HBO’s Poetry Jam alongside performers like Kanye West and Joy Harjo. However despite this long list of experiences, Mike states the most memorable, meaningful moments of his career have been meeting people and making lifelong friends. Mike ended his interview on a short and sweet admittance, befitting of his poetry: “You can blame all my friends for everything I've ever done”.