Artist Profile

Unique Mical Robinson (a/k/a Uni Q. Mical) is a multimedia performance artist, poet, professor, and proud Baltimore City native. At immediate glance, it becomes clear that Unique’s work embodies the widely circulated feminist phrase, “the personal is political”. And yet, for her, this is no cliche, but a lived principle. Unique pulls inspiration from Baltimore's terrain, with all its pride, pitfalls and contradictions, 1990s Hip-Hop & R&B icons, and the cathartic verses of the Black Feminist literary canon (Audre Lorde, June Jordan,  Lucille Clifton, & Toni Morrison). Her life’s intention is to create spheres of healing and accessibility within community, via the arts as a vessel. Unique holds a BA in Creative Writing & African American Studies from Hampshire College, and received her MFA in Poetry/Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland, CA. 

Her poetry is often visceral, its delivery intentionally unabashed, and her words, seething in their critique of systemic oppression, from having experienced intersectional oppressions firsthand. In the near 20 years since she entered her first poetry slam, this energy has remained consistent throughout each and every phase of her life, and every performance, with audiences awestruck from tuning into ancestral invocations in her voice.

As an artist, Unique has performed locally and nationally - as an individual, and as part of Black queer poetry collectives. Most notably, she featured at Mickalene Thomas’ A Moment’s Pleasure Opening Exhibition at Baltimore Museum of Art, The Peale Museum, Parkway Theater, The Crown, Creative Alliance, The Pride Center of MD, Dovecote Cafe, and Eubie Blake Center. She has also featured in poetic performances, theater & music productions, and multimedia art exhibits at Busboys & Poets (Washington, DC), National Mall (as part of FORCE’s Monument Quilt), WOW Cafe (New York, NY), La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley, CA), SOMArts Cultural Center (San Francisco, CA), and The National Queer Arts Festival (Oakland, CA).

As an educator, Unique has served in Teaching Artist and administrative roles for various Baltimore nonprofits, and received the Emerging Teaching Artist award from Arts Every Day in 2017. She is the Co-Founder of blkottonkandy (pron. "black cotton candy"), an arts & wellness initiative, which received the Grit Fund Grant in 2019. Currently, she is Humanistic Studies Faculty at MICA and Towson University, and remains a Poetry & Performance Teaching Artist with K-12 Baltimore City School students.

Unique has two book releases: the chapbook, flicked/forgotten/FREED (2014), and a full-length poetic memoir, Four Wings & A Prayer: A Charm City Churn (2019). She later expanded into music, releasing blkottonkandy's debut EP, vesica piscis (2019), and Tha 27th Letter, Vol. I & II in 2019 & 2020 respectively (under the moniker kLefta*maniak). Her latest project, GETCHA LIFE! (With MRDJXZ) was released in September 2021. 

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