Louie B: The Poet Who Leads With Love

By Phoenix Kabali

There’s something about a voice that trembles, not from fear, but from the weight of truth. Something about a poet who doesn’t just perform, but invites you to sit beside their heartbeat, to sift through memory, grief, joy, and that tender, tangled thing we call love.

Louie B is that kind of poet.

If you’ve ever been in the room when he speaks, you’ll know what I mean. His words don’t just echo, they root. Into the floorboards. Into your ribcage. Into every place you thought no one else had been.

Where It All Began

But long before Louie B took to the mic, before applause and packed poetry nights, he was a kid discovering the magic of language in its earliest forms.

Back in 2005, he met poetry through the whimsical pages of Where the Sidewalk Ends and the soulful strength of Maya Angelou. Poetry tried to find him back then, but he didn’t chase it; it whispered to him from storybooks, from lyrics, from life.

By 2007, that whisper became a rhythm. Graduation by Kanye West dropped. And tucked inside that sonic landscape was a path that led him straight to Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor. The intro, penned and voiced by Ayesha Jaco, cracked something open. Suddenly, poetry was in the rhyme, in the cadence, in the soul of hip-hop.

And so began the delicate balancing act of rap and verse, of self-expression and self-discovery. Poetry didn’t just knock twice. It pulled up a chair and stayed.

From Outlet to Lifeline

But it wasn’t until 2021, amid the aching silence that followed his father’s passing, that poetry transformed from outlet to compass.

The pen no longer just documented life, it became a lifeline.

“After the grief settled,” Louie says, “I took stock of my life and specifically what love meant to me.”

When he returned to the stage the following spring, something had shifted. The poems carried more weight, more marrow. They were no longer just about telling stories, they were about telling the truth.

Love is Louie B’s true north.

It saturates everything he writes: the thrill of romance, the ache of loss, the quiet pride in fatherhood, the mess and majesty of self-love, the struggle to love humanity on its worst days. He doesn’t run from complexity; he walks straight into it, pen first.

Even when “down bad,” he finds himself writing love poems—maybe not for anyone specific, but always for someone who might need them.

Poetry as Connection

Because Louie writes for connection. That moment when someone in the crowd flinches, just slightly, because they’ve been seen. That’s the kind of miracle he shows up for.

“Walk in those rooms like God sent me there; ‘cus He did,” Louie says of taking the stage.

It’s not bravado, it’s belief. Not just in himself, but in the sacred act of being vulnerable in front of strangers. Spoken word, to him, is a divine conversation. And though he’s introverted by nature, the mic becomes a pulpit, the stage a sanctuary.

Breathing deeply, reading the room, and trusting his gut, he steps into the spotlight not to perform but to connect. He believes someone in that room needs to hear him, even if it’s only one line.

“Urns On A Shelf” and the Hug That Said Everything

And sometimes, the deepest reactions don’t come in words at all. He remembers a night vividly. His first performance after grieving his father. The piece: Urns On A Shelf. The delivery? Raw, shaky. But honest. Unfiltered.

When he finished, silence cracked open into applause, but what reached him first was a hug. Warm. Unexpected. Wordless. From Sadey, a fellow poet and host.

They barely knew each other then, but that embrace spoke louder than the claps. That night, Louie understood, his words could hold others the way poetry had held him.

Community as Practice

And that’s what Louie B does—he holds space. Not just on stage, but behind the scenes too.

He believes in community not as a concept, but as a practice. If he’s invited to a show, he asks who else can come. If he finds a publication, he shares the link. If someone needs advice, he’s there.

“Community is key to growth. Period,” he says, with the kind of clarity that only comes from living those words.

The Craft, the Process, the Pulse

His writing process is as layered as his poems. Sometimes it’s a flood; sometimes a drip. His Notes app overflows with fragments, titles, beginnings. Some poems come fully formed in a sitting. Others need to simmer.

He considers performance an essential part of editing: what hits, what misses, what grows each time the poem meets a new crowd.

Take his piece Bachatero. Every performance shifts its rhythm. Sometimes he starts in the crowd. Sometimes he doesn’t use a mic. The poem, like the poet, breathes differently depending on who’s listening.

It’s not a recital. It’s a dialogue.

To the Quiet Ones

To the young ones, quiet kids with loud minds, Louie offers this:

“There are people out there waiting to hear from someone like you. One only you can tell.”

He speaks as someone who once thought his voice didn’t matter, who now understands that even the “worthless” thoughts can become lifelines when shared. Louie B leads with love. And not just the tender, soft-edged kind. He leads with the hard love too—the love that grieves, that wrestles, that gets back up and still chooses connection.

That kind of love, expressed through poetry, heals.

He doesn’t just write poems.
He writes permission slips.
To feel.
To break.
To rebuild.
To be seen.

And if you find yourself in the audience, let the words wash over you.
Let them crack something open.

Because chances are, Louie B wrote it just for you.

follow on IG: @louiethebee_