Cheryl Boyce Taylor

Cheryl Boyce—Taylor is the author of 5 poetry collections with another scheduled for 2022.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor founded the Calypso Muse Reading Series in 1994 and is the creator of the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series.

In 1994, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor was the first Caribbean woman to present her work in Trinidadian dialect at the National Poetry Slam. She has toured the United States as a road poet with Lollapalooza and performed for Mamapolooza in New York City.

The Cheryl Boyce-Taylor papers, 1982–2014, partially document the artistic and personal life of poet, visual and teaching artist, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor. The collection contains biographical material, such as correspondence and interview transcripts;writing material, such as manuscripts, drafts; and printed matter, such as programs, flyers, and clippings.

She co-founded an all-lesbian women's performance group, the Stations Collective, which included Dorothy Randall Gray, Sapphire, Pamela Sneed, Storme Webber, and Hadley Mays, to perform Audre Lorde’s work in the late 1980s.

In 1970, Boyce-Taylor married childhood friend Walt Taylor whose family lived on the same street as hers in Arima, Trinidad.  They had a son, Malik Isaac Taylor (rapper Phife Dawg of the rap group A Tribe Called Quest), who was born premature, and whose twin, Mikal, died only a few hours after birth. Cheryl and Walt later divorced.

Cheryl Allison Boyce-Taylor (born 1950) is a Trinidadian poet, teaching artist, and theatre performer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Boyce-Taylor has published several full-length poetry monographs including early works As A Woman I Laugh and Cry: Poems, Birthsounds, Rhythms and Other Contractions; five collections of poetry; and an award-winning verse memoir dedicated to her son.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor was born in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago on the 6th of December 1950. Her early years were spent honing a love for poetry in the footsteps of her mother who was a regular winner of poetry recitation contests during her own school days. In primary school, Boyce-Taylor recalls learning Shelley, Keats, and Shakespeare, but it was through the political and social musings of calypsonians and through the sound of the steel pan that Boyce-Taylor realized the power of poetry to reflect her life.