Tanicia Pratt was born on June 8th, 1993 on the island of New Providence. Raised in the hush of Freeport, Grand Bahama, Tanicia channeled her wild imagination through art, dance, music, theatre, journaling, and poetry. However, it was something about poetry that lingered with her.
Moving back to Nassau was a big change for her. After graduating from Mt. Carmel Preparatory High School in 2010, she made friends with local poets and was introduced to spoken word. Enamoured by the energetic, emotive, and lyrical performance of spoken word – poetry seemed to give new meaning to storytelling and expression. And having never performed publicly, she began going to open mic shows such as Listen 242, Golden Club and Poetic Breeze to eagerly experiment with her practice.
After taking a spiritual sabbatical, she re-emerged in 2016 to collaborate with visual artists Jodi Minnis and Edrin Symonette. This resulted in a variety of poetic responses to their artwork / curated spaces, and was featured in the group exhibitions Double Dutch, NE8, and Transforming Spaces: SWELL.
Tanicia’s work has developed from the deeply personal + emotive to include more political + objective themes. Her work focuses on the natural + social landscapes of the Caribbean. Afro-Caribbean culture, history, intersectional feminism, racism, violence, and environment are common interests that surface in her work. Her intention is to be transdisciplinary in her approach to poetry. Allowing her text to come alive on and off the page (so spoken word is not off-the-table).
Throughout her teen years, she used poetry as a personal hobby to unbottle; letting out her emotions, ideas and perspective on on the world.
She was known in Nassau for merging song, theatre, and raw feeling into her early work. In 2011, there was a period of vacancy within Nassau’s poetry open mic circuit. She and her friends formed a spoken word collective called Just Cause (fka Impromptu Floetry). Together they hosted a weekly open mic titled SPEAK! 242 from 2012 to 2015.
In 2018, she received her BA in Marketing at The University of The Bahamas and competed in the Women of the World Poetry Slam (WOWps) in Dallas, Texas.
