How poet became a breakout TV star
After 2nd audition, Leake goes on to claim ‘AGT’ crown
Spoken word poet Brandon Leake honed his craft at open mike nights on the campus of a small California Christian college, on slam poetry teams, in high school classrooms and wherever else he could. Raised by a single mother on the south side of Stockton, California, he was accustomed, as he put it, to “playing this game of life with the decks stacked against you.” But he also knew his calling.
By 2017, the year Leake first auditioned for “America’s Got Talent,” he had visited “every single high school in town” to perform spoken word poetry or lead workshops with their Black student unions.
The show, which just finished its 15th U.S. season, is part of the global “Got Talent” franchise created by British entertainment mogul Simon Cowell. In 2014, the brand was recognized by Guinness World Records as “the world’s most successful reality TV format” for its spinoffs in 58 countries and territories.
Leake, a former high school English teacher who now works as an academic counselor at a community college, was flatly rejected by the “AGT” screeners in 2017. The show’s contestant roster had been home to ventriloquists, magicians and acrobatic troupes, along with the dancers, comedians and musicians. But it was not yet ready for a performance poet.
In American life, poetry is often relegated to the dustbins of academia by The Washington Post. Even spoken word poetry, which skews younger and less stodgy than the written stuff, rarely has a place on the national public stage.
Leake tried his hand at auditioning for “AGT” again in 2020. After making it through the entrant rounds, he received a call from producers in March, just as the coronavirus was beginning to rewrite the narrative in the U.S.
They told him that if he wanted to do the show (and, by extension, make history as the first spoken word poet to be granted a spot), he would have to be in Los Angeles the next morning. His wife, Anna Leake, had just given birth two weeks prior, but when he told her the news, she told him he had to go. He let her nap for a few hours and then headed south toward Hollywood.
As he was driving through the night, Leake’s 17-year-old Honda broke down. He had barely had a wink of sleep when he finally made it to the Dolby Theatre. And Simon Cowell immediately expressed his skepticism before Leake had even begun his first performance, telling him: “I don’t really understand poetry, I’m going to be honest with you.”
But rather than intimidating him, Leake said that Cowell’s words excited him. “I can be your introduction to this world,” he remembered thinking. “Let’s do this.”
And as the season continued, something even stranger than a spoken word poet earning a spot in a primetime talent competition happened: powerfully rendered performances.
Viewers and judges watched in awe as Leake performed spoken word poems about the Black Lives Matter movement and his mother’s fear that someday her son’s own name might become “America’s next most popular hashtag,” along with his grief over his little sister’s death in infancy and his yearning for his father.
During the first installment of the show’s finale on Sept. 22, with more than 5 million viewers tuning in, he performed a spoken word poem in the form of a prayer for his baby.
For 3 minutes and 52 seconds, he spoke directly to his 6-month-old daughter, Aaliyah.
He grappled in urgent rhymes with the most intimate and universal of relationships, telling his child how he prayed his own inadequacies did not “become a family legacy,” that he could carry his sins to the cemetery “before they ever become hereditary.”
He told her how there was no longer time for fear or faltering when he felt so compelled to plant the best of himself in her, to guide her toward what she wanted to be. He finished with an “amen,” his head bowed and hands folded in worship.
And then the camera cut back to “America’s Got Talent” host Terry Crews. Noting how powerful the performance had been, Crews asked the judges for their take.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life, and especially on this show,” judge Howie Mandel said, adding that he had never really experienced poetry before.
But the television personality and comedian had been an unlikely champion of poetry on the prime-time stage throughout the show’s 2020 run. He awarded Leake a coveted “Golden Buzzer” early in the season, granting him a straight shot to the live shows, and heaped praise during his performances.
“Like Howie said, this is a new experience for me, and I have loved it,” actor Sofia Vergara said. “It’s so meaningful.”
Finally, the third judge, Heidi Klum, took her turn. “I truly believe you deserve a show in Las Vegas,” Klum told Leake, marking perhaps the first time those words had been uttered in that order to a poet. “And we, as people, we deserve more artists like you.”
The judges had had their say, but the final winner would still be decided by the voting public.
“It’s time,” Crews said with great gravitas on Sept. 30.
“America has voted. The winner of the one million dollars and the star of the headline show in Las Vegas is ... (an interminably long 15-second pause) ... Brandon Leake.”
Fireworks rose over the Universal Studios gates as Leake fell to his knees in joy and surprise.
In interviews after his win, he said he wanted to cut a check to Sallie Mae and pay off his student loans, to go on a world poetry tour and to keep investing in Stockton.
Late last month, he told me he planned to lead student poetry workshops in Los Angeles, particularly in “our disenfranchised south- and eastside communities,” and get back to a writing curriculum he had been teaching at a prison northeast of town. He might even try his hand at acting and directing.
I asked him what he hoped his students and former students were thinking as they watched him take the grand prize for his very personal work.
“I hope that they were able to see themselves,” he said.