For the first 34 years of her life, artist and poet Unique Mical Robinson didn’t have a car, so she relied on the city and state’s public transit. The at-times unpredictable system of buses, light rails, and subway trains served as a lifeline for Robinson, who grew up in both the Lexington Terrace and Park Heights neighborhoods.

Now, that experience is the inspiration for a new collection of poetry, (Not) In Service, which was written between 2017 and 2022, a time when Robinson was “in transit,” both literally and within herself as a queer artist navigating love, work, identity, and her place in the world.

The collection, featuring dozens of poems and personal photographs across 80 pages, is published by the Maryland-based Homie House Press. This is Robinson’s second book of poetry and it reads like a coming-of-age chronicle, as she reflects on her recovery and sobriety, and emerges, as she says, “more grown and more evolved.”

And the book is just one of the many ways in which Robinson has used her own life to connect with her community. The Grit Fund winner is also a rapper (under the name kLefta*maniak), an Arts Every Day teaching artist for Baltimore City Public School students, and the director of the Maryland Institute College of Art’s MFA in Community Arts Program. (She was also the cover story of last year’s GameChangers magazine.)

How did you come up with the idea for (Not) In Service?
I spent 34 years of my life riding public transit in Baltimore and other cities. It’d become a way of life, not by choice, but because I didn’t learn how to drive until I was 34, when my grandmother gifted her car to me. Truth is, there is still shame attached to riding public transit, especially for those of us growing up in poverty. I wanted to peel back these layers and own that experience, as well as give ground-level witness to the sights, sounds, and people of Baltimore that are often unseen.

How would you describe Baltimore’s public transportation?
Our public transit is nowhere near as efficient as New York’s or Chicago’s or even D.C.’s. Baltimore, pretty obviously, has gotten that scrap end of the deal. When the transit system is on time, we’re excited, because it doesn’t happen often. One thing I will say is that it’s affordable. You can get an all-day pass for under five bucks.

Your book is a love letter to the city of Baltimore, featuring moments of both frustration and appreciation. What else are the poems trying to convey?
As someone who was directly impacted by the oppression that Black people experience in Baltimore—who are often relegated to lower middle-class or working-class lives—a lot of my poems are critiques of the Baltimore system.

You’ll hear some people just trash Baltimore. For me, it’s never that. I always say it’s from a place of love. I want to see us be better, right? So in a way, this book of poems is a cry for the transit system to be better for the city, to be better for us, to be visible in many ways…I also see it as an advocacy tool. [I hope this book can] bring attention to a deeper need in the community.

Tell me more about what you were going through personally when writing these poems.
It feels like Mary J. Blige’s My Life album. People listen to that album because they feel what Mary was going through. It’s the blues. It’s joy. It’s happiness. It’s struggles. It’s our humanity in many ways. It’s that transition from your 20s to your 30s that is, indeed, an arduous one, which we don’t talk enough about, but is a cycle we all collectively experience.

I wanted to show the emotional turmoil I experienced during that time, but also to show how I’ve grown and evolved through those obstacles and made it to the other side, where I am thriving. So much of the internal pain I endured has fallen away and made room for so much more confidence and faith to take its place, reminding me of the adventure of life, and not to get stuck in suffering.

Your mom is a big supporter of your work. What did she say about the book?
She loves it. She thinks I’m a queen. She thinks it’s vibrant. She thinks it’s colorful. She’s amazing. I get all of my colorfulness from her…Since [I was a kid], she’s encouraged me to write and to be an artist, and even to leave Baltimore, to know that my dreams don’t need to be restricted. She encouraged me to be a weirdo, to dare to be different, to embrace my oddities, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Though she’s the first person of color to hold state office in Baltimore’s 46th legislative district, which wraps around the harbor from Brooklyn and Cherry Hill to Highlandtown and Dundalk, Del. Robbyn Lewis never set out to be an elected official.

Inspired by a childhood dream of becoming a physician and running the World Health Organization, the Indiana native worked for two decades in international health after serving in the Peace Corps. After being recruited by Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health to study tuberculosis and HIV prevention in Haiti, Lewis settled in Baltimore, where she worked for the Hopkins-affiliated nonprofit health organization Jhpiego and jumped into community activism in her neighborhood of Patterson Park.

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Lewis became a trainee with Emerge Maryland, which recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office. When one of her delegates, Pete Hammen, left to work for then-Mayor Catherine Pugh in late 2016, Lewis was chosen for the job. She was reelected by her constituents in 2018.

What led you to the Maryland House of Delegates? How does this role build upon your prior work in public health?

I am part of the wave of people who came into an elected position as a result of the 2016 Trump-Clinton presidential election. Around that time, I learned about this program called Emerge Maryland. I thought, of all the changes I’m looking for in my life, maybe I’ll check this out. In the aftermath of the insanity of the presidential election, I asked myself, “What can I do to protect my neighbors?”

After traveling the world, what made you stay in Baltimore?
I got to Baltimore because Hopkins recruited me. I stayed because I fell in love with the city. Even though I was traveling constantly, as long as I was in this city, in my neighborhood, I was up to my elbows in life here. I bought a home on the Highlandtown side of Patterson Park in 2002. This was a really major turning point for me. I got myself elected vice president of the neighborhood association before I closed on the house.

How did neighborhood activism pave the way for
elected office?

I made the most amazing friends and got to be part of this community-wide metamorphosis. My timing was good, too. There was funding available for the kinds of investments that were required to transform neighborhoods. Years later, when there was a vacant delegate seat, I was somebody who folks thought should go for it. Not because I was an ambitious political animal, but because I had loved this place so well and given what I could to it.

What do you see as some of the most pressing challenges facing the city?

Probably the same things that William Donald Schaefer saw. Or that Tommy D’Alesandro saw. Baltimore is Baltimore. One of the biggest problems we have is political corruption.

The other problem we have is environmental degradation. This is a great industrial city, full of makers and creators, but it’s also a city of toxic waste and air pollution.

And I would say the legacy of white supremacy and residential racial segregation. It is an indelible stain that left its mark on the physical characteristics of the city and the hearts and minds of the city.

How can we begin to tackle these issues?
The city’s walking around with a broken leg and one tooth knocked out, and we’re pretending like everything’s fine. The whole system is designed to maintain the status quo. We have to dismantle it. The work of repair requires enough people, a critical mass that believe that repair is possible. I think we have reached that moment, that critical mass. But we need great, visionary leadership. We need someone at the helm who has a vision for the city, a 21st century vision that is inclusive, that fearlessly acknowledges past harms, but refuses to be hobbled by them.

What are your hopes for the city in 10 or 20 years?
We could be the place that figures out how to do equitable development, without displacing legacy residents. We’ve got to repair our school system. We’ve got to make our neighborhoods safe for everyone. We have to repair our environment and position ourselves for climate change.

You’re the only car-free legislator in the General Assembly. Why is public transit so important to you?

Transit doesn’t work here. It’s a disgrace. We’ve disinvested and destroyed the public transit system for a couple generations. If you don’t own a vehicle, you’re consigned to poverty. The greatest obstacle to employment is commute time.

As an elected official living in a city where 30 percent of people don’t own a private vehicle—in some neighborhoods, it’s much higher—being car-free keeps me grounded in the reality of my constituents and the most vulnerable people in my city.

We can address a lot of the injustices in our society by making it easier for people to get to school, to work, the doctor’s office. It’s a civil rights issue, human rights issue, and a health issue.

What message would you send to people who want to get involved in helping their city, but aren’t sure where to start?
I always say, “Have you been to your neighborhood meeting yet? Go do a cleanup.” That’s really where democracy begins—in the neighborhood. Go say hi to your neighbors. That’s a really great starting point. Not everybody has to be a visionary neighborhood transformer. The work of democracy is joining your neighbors and loving the place where you live.