To Live on Spring Forever

  Sojourner describes so well here the multilayers of needs supermarkets satisfy in our community and why this mural matters. We are so honored to have our poem featured on this mural, on the wall of a market that means so much to our folks. 

...by Sojourner Ahebee

   In the Philly, where I'm from, supermarkets aren't just places to shop for food -- they're vibrant community spaces you come to catch up with neighbors and care for one another. And as a child growing up in Philly, I was lucky to be raised by a community of southern women (my grandmother Sallie and my great aunt Lillian to be exact) who only ate fruits and veggies in season, who could turn any plot of land into lush abundance, who crushed grapes in their backyard for wine, who canned their spring produce so as to live on spring forever... I come from Black women who held their labor close, who worked to make a garden out of their desire. In other words, the poem and the mural are for all the Black women we know who've taught us a thing or two about ABUNDANCE, about making something out of nothing.

Walt Whitman Still Inspiring the Young- Whitman on Walls International Project

My wonderful students practicing yesterday for their evening performance of their poem, This is My City,  for the Walt Whitman on Walls project presented at the Venice Island Performing Arts Center. They will be sharing the stage with the great poets of their city. 

Thank you to all organizers of this project and participating poets: Karin Coonrod, of Yale's School of Drama and the Compagnia de’ Colombari  theatre,  Brooke Palma , Anthony Palma , Elijah Elijah B Pringle III , Sean Hanrahan , Alison Lubar,  Leah Jackson and David Kozinski.

Here is a link to the Philly Voice article about this event:  https://www.phillyvoice.com/walt-whitman-poetry-venice-island-performing-arts-center-manayunk/

May This Be a House of Joy

Poet Laureates Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta Mayson; Photo/Philly Magazine

Thank you to Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta Mayson for organizing a beautiful gathering of Philadelphia Black women and femme poets. Hosted at the Awbury Arboretum, this retreat was a day of cultivating joy through rest and pleasure.
After giving thanks to our Lenape sisters and brothers, the day consisted of literary walks, workshops, catered meals throughout the day, taking a historical group photo, double dutch, blowing bubbles and a poetry reading.

“May This be a House of Joy”
by Lucille Clifton

May this be a House of Joy.
May we be open here to dreams,
and to each other.

May all who enter in these magic walls
feel love and feel respect
for learning and each other.
May we be always friends to life.
May we walk in that friendship.

May learning live in this house.
May it never leave.

To learn more about this project read the following Philly Magazine article.

https://www.phillymag.com/things-to-do/2022/07/27/consensis-poets/

Nina in Liberia

Many are unfamiliar with this chapter in Nina Simone's life; the years she lived in the West Africa country of Liberia- 1974-77. She left on the eve of the start of Liberia's civil war. She said in Liberian Calypso, a song inspired by her time there:

*Artwork-Martha Rich

"1974, that's the year

I went straight home 'cause I had so much to fear

I had dreamed for oh so long

That one day I'd be going home…"

To read more about this period in Nina's life, see link here: https://www.guernicamag.com/nina-simone-in-liberia/

.

Kudos to literary activist Debra Wright who organized the ultimate tribute to Nina Simone; a poetry anthology dedicated to her. Wright compiled and edited "Philly Jawns:

For Women Revisited" which features 40 Philadelphia women poets exploring the nuances and complexities of the incomparable Nina Simone. My poem, Nina in Liberia, which is included in this project, pays homage , in a small way, to the time when Nina graced the coast of West Africa.

                                                      Collage by Pat McLean-Smith

Link to purchase this anthology:

https://www.amazon.com/PHILLY-JAWNS-Revisited-anthology-tribute/dp/B0914WWD37

RENAISSANCE IN THE BELLY OF A KILLER WHALE at the Wilma Theater

   

Photo Credit- Joanna Austin

 I came to see the play, Renaissance in the Belly of a Killer Whale, running now through March 7 at the Wilma Theater, not as a theatre critic-which I am not-but as an aging African-American resident of a neighborhood that is rapidly changing. Mine is a neighborhood changing in ways that will seemingly guarantee the erasure of my community and its collective history.  I came dejected and cynical.

   But in deft hands of director Jaylene Clark Owens, who also wrote and performs in this multilayered performance piece, along with co-creators Hollis Heath and Janelle Heatley, Renaissance in the Belly of a Killer Whale delivers what art should; brazen commentary laced with lots of hope. This trifecta of masterful actresses takes the audience on a journey through time and a changing Harlem, which could easily be so many Philadelphia neighborhoods. And on this adventure through dance battles, song, old school hand games and rhymes and powerful spoken word, the central characters asks of themselves and of us- how do we, as longstanding communities, in transition, against great economic pressures, preserve what we have known and love. Difficult questions are raised and explored with joy and fierce honesty.

    “Although Killer Whale is a personal love letter to Harlem, so many people who are not from Harlem have said they can relate to it because it reminds them of their neighborhood, their sense of community, their childhood memories," said Owens, a member of the Wilma HotHouse acting company and this year’s winner of the F. Otto Haas Barrymore Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist.

  The show originated after Owens posted on Facebook about the burgeoning gentrification of Harlem in 2010. “Harlem is looking more and more like the belly of a killer whale,” she wrote. A former teacher encouraged her to expand the post into a spoken word play. 

Renaissance in the Belly of a Killer Whale has since received dozens of presentations, most recently a successful limited engagement at Theater Horizon. “I love how these three women bring their humor, energy, and sarcasm into a very serious subject that every city, particularly Philadelphia, is grappling with,” Wilma Theater Artistic Director Blanka Zizka.

   In addition to the public performances, the Wilma will host four student matinees of Renaissance in the Belly of a Killer Whale, reaching hundreds of students at Philadelphia public high schools. Many of these students will go on to create their own original works in response to the show through Wilmagination, the Wilma’s school residency program.  

RENAISSANCE IN THE BELLY OF A KILLER WHALE

Extended by popular demand!

February 26-March 7, 2020

Wilma Theater

265 S. Broad Street (Broad &Spruce Streets)

Philadelphia, PA 19107

Box Office: 215-546-7824

https://wilmatheater.org/event/renaissance-in-the-belly-of-a-killer-whale/

*Chyann Sapp is also a co-creator of this project.

Monday Poets Featuring Octavia McBride-Ahebee & Sekai'afua Zankel at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Audience members enjoying this evening of poetry at the Phila.
Free Library Monday Poets Series/Photo-Andrea Walls

     

Photo- Andrea Walls

So honored to be included in The D'Archive. These are photos from the Philadelphia Free Library's Monday Poets Series featuring myself -Octavia McBride-Ahebee- and Sekai'afua Zankel . Thanks Andrea. You can see more of her amazing work at www.thedarchive.com

McBride-Ahebee listening intently to Zankel's performance. Photos/Andrea Walls

Octavia McBride-Ahebee reading and signing her books at the Free Library of Philadelphia's Monday Poets-Feb. 10, 2020- Photos AndreaWalls

Monday Poets at the Free Library of Philadelphia Presents Octavia McBride Ahebee & Sekai'afua Zankel

Poet Sekai'afua Zankel and Percussionist Extraordinaire, Poet, Playwright Karen Smith

Available on Amazon

Kirwyn Sutherland Reads from New Collection - Jump Ship- at Penn Book Center

So honored to celebrate with Kirwyn Sutherland the release of his new poetry collection Jump Ship! His featured reading yesterday, at the Penn Book Center, was phenomenal. Kudos to poets Husnaa Hashim, Wes Matthews and Kassidi Jones for sharing their work as well. Humbled to have been a part of the lineup.

Shoutout to the Faye, the events coordinator at the Penn Book Center, who was so welcoming and who has a fierce, upcoming lineup of writers passing through- Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Feminista Jones, Sonia Sanchez just to name a few.

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.

Monday Poets at the Free Library of Phila.; Octavia McBride-Ahebee and Sekai'afua Zankel