On an unusually warm February Sunday afternoon in the Mount Royal Terrace area, a petite young woman gets situated on a legless Asian sofa. Her hair is extremely close-cut and tattoos on each forearm read poet and warrior, but her demeanor is warm and welcoming. Her frayed jeans and a simple heather-gray shirt look stylish on her. The smell of incense and candles fills the air as her videographer, working on a possible documentary about her, positions a tripod on the hardwood floor. The intriguing woman is Michelle Antoinette Nelson, aka LOVE the poet, and she is one of Baltimore’s more talented spoken-word artists, guitar-playing singer/songwriters, and a recently published author. Her Black Marks on White Paper was published in December.

The Columbia native discovered her calling at a young age. “I’m kind of an anomaly,” she says. “I figured out my gift was poetry when I was 11 years old. When I realized I was good at it, I’d start to use it in my schoolwork. When my friends got wind of it, they’d have me write little love notes to their boyfriends and girlfriends.” Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” was the first poem she ever memorized, and Nelson felt that as an awkward child it spoke to her. Come high school, she was influenced by Gil Scott-Heron and Erykah Badu.

She moved to Baltimore in 1999 to attend Coppin State University, where she majored in criminal justice. “If I wasn’t a poet I’d be a cop,” she says. “My parents used to call me the ‘militant midget.’ I’ve always been about justice. I know when people think about cops they’re like, ‘Boo, cops suck,’ but I was down with the paramilitary operation as a way to help people.”

While attending Coppin, she saw local poets perform and was inspired. “[David] ‘Native Son’ [Ross] and a sister named Danielle Fuller, they were the first people I ever saw do spoken word,” Nelson says. “I ran up to them and said, ‘Teach me how to do that!’ They were like, ‘OK!’ and I latched on to them. That was about 12 years ago.”

Through Ross, Nelson was introduced to the legendary poetry troupe Poetry for the People of Baltimore, and her earliest performance exposure came at one of its slams. “It was the first Battle Uv Da Skoolz slam,” she says. “Me, Danielle, and a sista named Angie got together [representing Coppin State] and we slammed against Morgan [State University]’s team, which was Sir Reigns, Lyrical the Lyricist, and Third Isis. That’s when I started meeting everybody, but I didn’t go out into the scene officially until I graduated.”