For Mikhayla Robinson Smith, poetry isn’t just art, but a means of fostering connection, community, and healing. Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, Mikhayla moved to Athens in 2018 to study English at UGA. After graduating, she began teaching at Athens’ Joy Village School, and later at Whit Davis Elementary. These days, she works at the Georgia Conflict Center, a nonprofit that helps advance restorative justice in communities, schools, and institutions through education and outreach. The Center currently partners with the district attorney’s office to support young people who have caused harm in their communities through Restorative Justice Diversion (RJD). You can read more about the Center’s RJD work here.
As the 2024–26 Poet Laureate of Athens-Clarke County, Mikhayla is passionate about making poetry accessible to everyone in the Athens community. She has partnered with Flagpole magazine to publish poetry by Black Athenians, taught children’s poetry workshops, and led summer programs that blend restorative justice and poetry through Divas Who Win, a wellness organization for women in recovery. She is also working towards her 200- hour yoga teaching certification. Mikhayla is finishing up her joint debut album “The Gospel As Told By Black Love,” with Benny St. Piexe, and her debut full collection of poetry “Black Girl Blood Song.”
Mikhayla lives on Athens’ West Side with her family.
What do you love most about the work you do?
The people. I love meeting people. I love hearing their stories. I love seeing their eyes light up, and I like watching them try something new and engage with something new. It’s really just people for me. You know, it’s like everything that I do, I’m always like, how can I bring more people into this? How can I share this? How can I be there for someone? From sharing my poetry on the page, to on the stage, or bringing a meal to someone, community organizing, it’s all about the people for me. So that’s my favorite part of everything: getting to be with people, getting to learn with people, hearing from them, and sharing space with them.
When you’re not working, what kinds of things do you like to do in and around Athens?
When I’m not working, I’m typically community organizing. So I’ll be at the library for meetings, or maybe I’m doing a community event, or some sort of volunteering. I love the library. Sometimes I’m just there to take my kids there. That’s one of my favorite places in the entire world: the Athens-Clarke County Library. I love Bear Hollow Zoo. That is also one of my favorite places. What else do I love? I love Buvez. That is one of my favorite cafes. So I’ll be there, maybe reading a book or having coffee with a friend.
I love the Athens Farmer’s Market, when I can go. If I don’t have a community event, I love the Saturday market in the morning. One of my other favorite places is Bishop Park, just in general. That park is so nice. I love taking my kids there. We love the baseball fields, because it’s just flat, it’s open, and I just let them run, and it’s the best because I can read and watch them while they’re running at the same time.
If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would you go and why?
I would love to visit Rishikesh, India, which is known as the yoga capital of the world. I’m working towards getting my yoga certification, and I have such reverence for the practice, the people who created it, and the culture. I would go to understand, to learn, to appreciate, and to expand my worldview.
If you could put any single message on a billboard, what message would you want to put out there?
One of my favorite lines and quotes by Audre Lorde: “Poetry is not a luxury.”
That’s from her famous essay, also called Poetry is Not a Luxury. And to me, that just echoes that things like poetry and beauty and love, they’re not unnecessary. We need art, we need these things to live and breathe. I think art is a sign and a symptom of being alive.
Do you have a favorite movie, or a movie that you’ll watch every time you run across it?
Love Jones, of course. Which is probably stereotypical for me as a poet to say. But to me, one, it’s peak Black cinema. It’s like, you have to watch this movie. Two, it introduced me to spoken word and what it can do. And also the love story, the cinematography, the colors, the music, the vibe is all just, I don’t know, it puts me in a sentimental mood – which is one of the songs in the movie. But yeah, I love Love Jones so much, and I will watch it ‘til the end of the Earth. That is a movie that I will play over and over and over and over again.
Do you have a favorite book?
Oh, that’s hard. I have so many favorite books. I love Heavy by Kiese Laymon. The way that he is such a truth-teller and writes about his truth and his life. It genuinely changed the way that I write and changed my brain chemistry. It’s so good.
If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
I would tell her to keep dreaming and to keep going. I feel like that’s typically what people say, but I think my younger self never imagined that I would be doing this, that I would be a poet laureate, or that I would be an author. I just kept writing and writing, and I didn’t know what I was doing. And a lot of times, I felt discouraged or that it was just something on the side or that it wouldn’t be important.
I think a lot of times with artistic expression, especially when you’re growing up, you’re told that it’s not gonna lead you anywhere, and so you shouldn’t follow it. And of course people are well-meaning, but that’s such a symptom of capitalism and white supremacy – that we don’t deserve to dream, that we don’t deserve to have art, or that we don’t deserve to do things because there’s so much other stuff we should be doing. And I feel like art and expression, that is the thing that we should be breathing and living and spewing out and sharing; that is the thing. And so, yeah, I feel like I would tell myself to keep going and to keep pursuing my dreams and my passions.
If you could see any band or musician, anywhere, at any time, who would it be and where?
I would see SiR. He’s one of my favorite artists. He is R&B. I literally listen to his music every day. He has a very poetic style, and I love his lyrics. The beats are also really good, and everything that he does is very thought-out and meticulous. It’s clear that he has influence from people like D’Angelo, which is someone that I would resurrect immediately to listen to as well. But yeah, you can definitely hear his heavy music influences, but he’s also still his own musician.
I would love to see him at the Georgia Theater.
If you could have lunch with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and where?
It would be Zora Neale Hurston, and it would maybe be at a beach somewhere. I read Their Eyes Were Watching God first, I think, in middle school. My copy is so tattered and so ripped up because I’ve read it so many times since. And I just love Zora and what she did for writing and what she did for Black women, and how she told her truths and her story. She is so raw and emotional and also so lyrical. And she’s definitely what people say, like, you know, she was beyond her time. She’s definitely someone that has lived on, whose words have lived on through time. She’s very transcendent. So yeah, I would like to talk to her, on a beach, and meditate on her words and her being.
What three words or phrases come to mind when you think of the word home?
I think solace, sacred, and solitude.
I’m definitely someone that enjoys being with my family. When I’m home, I wouldn’t say that I’m a hostess or anything like that. I don’t typically have people over as much just because I’m gone so much that when I am home, I want to enjoy the sacredness of being in this place with my family. Home is my place of solitude, of rest.
