Moonstone Arts Presents Poetry Through the Generations; Sojourner Ahebee and Octavia McBride-Ahebee -

Sojourner and I were honored to share our journey through generations of poetry with poet Charles Carr.Our Our conversation aired on Philly Cam.

I also took this opportunity to pay tribute to Rose Martin and those first educators in our lives who ignited those passions that would come to guide our existence. Martin, now deceased, was a teacher at the Overbrook Elementary School, in Philadelphia. Each year, in the 1970's, she organized the Black Poetry Panorama, in which just about every student, from kindergarten to sixth grade, had to learn and recite several poems for this huge and anticipated event. Hosted at Overbrook High School, students dressed up, came out with friends and family and recited their poetry.

Imagine a community of about 400 households filled with African-American children learning poems by Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Nikki Giovanni, Claude McKay, Robert Hayden, James Weldon Jonson, Gwendolyn Brooks and Countee Cullen to name a few.

This was more than 50 years ago and even my mother, now deceased, who had Alzheimer’s near the end of her life, could still recall and recite Langston Hughes’ poem "The Negro Mother" because of the time she helped me to memorize this very long poem for Martin's event.
I came of age in a school setting and a neighborhood community that saw magic in words, knew the power of a poem to inspire and respected the writer as one who could be part of a vanguard.

Moonstone Arts Presents: Philly Loves Poetry Feburary 2020 from PhillyCAM on Vimeo.