T-Spirit the Poet

Tracy (T-Spirit) Stanton is an award-winning International Spoken Word Artist, trainer, workshop facilitator, community organizer,  peacemaker, and certified well-being coach. She uses the transformative power of spoken word poetry and storytelling as tools for personal and societal transformation. Tracy deeply understands the need for connection, collective liberation, and creative expression. She speaks truth to power and healing to the heart as an act of resistance.

T-Spirit is the producer of Some Things Must Be Heard: Closed/Open Mic: Spitting & Politicking Series, a community building spoken word platform featuring artists and community organizers dedicated to raising the collective consciousness of the people. This platform is where creativity, political education, and organizing collide.

She also served as the Director of Movement Building & Storytelling at the Freedom Community Center, a Black-led abolitionist organization in St. Louis. As a founding member, she helped build the infrastructure for peace-making and power-building efforts that center currently and  formerly incarcerated Black individuals and survivors of violence. Tracy applied her talents as a poet, healer, writer, organizer, and thought leader to develop the organization's membership model, curriculums, dynamic training programs, lead grassroots abolition campaigns, and facilitate anti-carceral approaches to addressing violence.

Among her recent accomplishments, she became a 2024 Artist Inc Facilitator and a 2023 Artist Leadership Fellow with the Mid-America Arts Alliance. She performed at the 2024 Rising Majority Conference, the 10th anniversary of Mike Brown Jr.'s alongside Cornel West and Fred Hampton Jr., and Black Men Build’s National New Men’s Tour. She also collaborated with Missourians Against the Death Penalty for the Free Khallifah Poetry Event and was personally invited by Kahlil Robert Irving to present at the opening of his Archaeology of the Present exhibit. She is even taking " Some Things Must Be Heard to Accra, Ghana this fall. 

In 2023, Tracy received a Regional Arts Commission Grant for her work with Some Things Must Be Heard: Spitting & Politicking. She served as the Poet in Residence at the National Blues Museum, where she led the Poetry Collective and presented the works of 10 local spoken word artists. Additionally, she facilitated poetry workshops with youth as a teaching artist at the Freedom Arts and Education Center. As a guest panelist at the 2023 Socialism Conference, Tracy presented poetry, discussed abolition organizing, and shared the demands of the STL Defund campaign. She was also invited to facilitate her poetry workshop, The He(ART) in ART, at the 2023 and 2024 Roots & Remedies Conference.

 

Tracy (T-Spirit) Stanton has led and organized direct actions, facilitated over 100 community organizing meetings, and conducted workshops and training on topics such as systemic violence, movement building, transformative justice, racial capitalism, abolition, emotional regulation, transformative & restorative justice and more.

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T-Spirit’s work has appeared in publications such as the St. Louis American, Riverfront Times, STLMAG, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and KSDK. She has been recognized in the Washington Post, New York Times, ABC News, NowThis News, and St. Louis Public Radio for her advocacy and community service. Among her numerous accolades are the 2024 Arts Excellence & Passion 4 Poetry Award, a 2022 nomination for the Missouri Mental Health Champion, and the 2021 Mid-America Emmy nomination for a short story on her transition.

Poetry allows Tracy to live in the hearts and souls of all she encounters.