Tifara Knowles is a published writer and performance poet, oral historian, and activist with roots in Southern Georgia. She began transcribing her stories as a child, sharing her dreams in front of an audience in her home church and in front of her classmates at assemblies at the age of 9. Tifara has built a personal brand on the advancement of Black American history, cultural preservation, art activism and community relations.
She began competing as a performance poet and saxophonist in middle school, winning regional and state awards arranging jazz and spoken word composition pieces by the age of 12. She played saxophone in her family’s band, recording a saxophone album, radio and television performances and became a church pianist at age 15. She began writing original poetry in 2013 at the beginning of her undergraduate career at the University of Georgia. Tifara was selected to share a TEDx talk to an audience of 1,500 on the power of the spoken word as a tool for healing.
Tifara was the inaugural fellow at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping and Training Centre in Accra, Ghana for the Women’s Institute. The KAIPTC is an international research institution commissioned by the Ghana Ministry of Defense where scholars from all over the world come to receive training in peace and security operations. Sponsored through a research grant from the Office of the Provost of the University of Georgia, Tifara spent three months in Accra executing gender policy projects, studying peacebuilding, and facilitating workshops for military staff. She also continued her study of oral storytelling and has implemented the skills learned from the griots of Ghana to shape her own approach to preserve history through the spoken and written word.
In response to the flood of protests and organizing in 2020 through the George Floyd social movement, she wrote and self-published a poetry book entitled Honeysuckle: Poems and Stories from a Black Southerner on Juneteenth 2020. Honeysuckle is a memorial story to one of Tifara’s ancestors who fell as a victim of racial violence in the late 50’s. She committed the initial profit from the book sales to support the Atlanta Solidarity Fund and received an interview feature on WALB News-10 to spread awareness of the reality of race relations in the Deep South. Tifara was one of the featured poets at the “Justice for Black Lives” Rally organized by the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement with an attendance of over 3,000 individuals honoring those lost to hate crimes. Honeysuckle has been used as an instrument for reconciliation, academic support for young people in South Georgia and Northern Ireland, and a tool to teach women transitioning out of the sex industry entrepreneurial skills and opportunities in writing.
She has been published in in Quartz Literary, Wingless Dreamer Publisher (Oxymorons and Poets Anthology), Sunspot Literary Journal, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine and others.
