If poets are preachers, aja monet’s studying for her upcoming Florida Water was church. It was a packed home at Isola Brooklyn in Williamsburg as Dr. Mahogany Browne took to the stage to welcome the group, introduce the Grammy-nominated poet, and remind all in attendance that stay poetry isn’t meant to be loved silently. “This ain’t YouTube,” she mentioned Wednesday evening, inviting the group to reply out loud with “oooohs,” “woooows,” and “wooord,” as wanted.
And did.
monet, who hasn’t launched a set of poetry since 2017’s My Mom Was a Freedom Fighter, graced the stage donning a keffiyeh and her signature blue-black curls. Florida Water explores the toll of liberation work. How the urgency of collective wrestle can go away artists with little vitality for their very own artwork. Some poems within the assortment stretch like prose, whereas others punctuate like reminiscence fragments. monet additionally paid homage to her contemporaries, Lucile Clifton and Ntozake Shange, and honored her late buddy, actor and producer Chad Gittens.
Following monet’s studying, she sat down with Haitian author and former neighbor, Edwidge Danticat, in dialog with Dr. Browne. They mirrored on the artistic course of and their shared historical past of group activism in Little Haiti, Miami.
monet spoke to the stress to be excellent— the expectation, particularly in motion work, to point out up each area the best way she exhibits up on the web page. “As a younger poet being mentored by poets that I like, however broke my coronary heart actually because their lives didn’t exemplify the issues that they professed,” monet instructed Browne. In Florida Water, she explores this rigidity and lots of extra themes, together with love, loss, and the gorgeous and tragic realities of freedom.
Florida Water is at the moment accessible on Haymarket Books.
From Your Website Articles
Associated Articles Across the Net