Influenced by David Bowie’s 1972 glam rock era concept album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, where Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust alter ego represented androgyny, Saul Williams considers Niggy Tardust to be “a hybrid of race.”

“I haven’t really been writing that much poetry lately,” Samantha Thornhill says matter-of-factly. Her statement is particularly jarring to someone expecting to interview a poet. Wasn’t that E.E. Cummings quoted passionately on her cell phone voicemail greeting?