Her Fierce Performance Transforms
Audiences with the Power of Poetry, Music and Dance
For Immediate Release
Contact: Shaun Nethercott
snethercott@detroitartsculture.org – 313.980.2711
You will not leave this multi-media event the same way you came in. Semaj, the first poet laureate of the Flint city’s area, commands the stage as she performs her theatrical poetry production with music, video and dance. Her imaginative work comes from Bleeding Fire, Tap the Eternal Spring of Regenerative Light, her recent poetry and prose collection published by Detroit’s Broadside Lotus Press and Health Collectors LLC. Joined by other artists onstage, Semaj gives fresh insights into ideas like women’s equity, black body representation, Middle Passage resistance, and social and environmental justice.
Semaj, an artist, educator and poet, and her cast will perform Thursday, March 19, 7:30 pm, at the Center for Detroit Arts & Culture Theater at Marygrove, 8425 W. McNichols Rd., and is free and open to the public. A question & answer session and book signing will follow. Her cast includes James Brown, MD, Billie Scott Lindo, Oiya Lowe, Michelle McKinney, Sunanda Samaddar Carrodo and Ayi Robeson.
A Cass Tech and WSU graduate in biology, Semaj says she got her “razor walk” living on the edge in Detroit. “Everything about Detroit is razor sharp,” she says. “The first unions, the underground railroad, Motown, techno, white rock and roll – all that happened here because of the grit and the pressure. But like the factories we built, and the people who built them, we make things and destroy them.” Her stories are about the love and transformation to resuscitate our world.
Semaj has performed around the country and is recognized by the Academy of American Poets. Her main focus, however, is on the health and well-being of the Flint community where she and her husband, a family physician, conduct events and workshops that engage students in literacy and science. “We’re going to have a literacy revolution fueled by poetry in Flint,” Semaj says. “We’re going to have a battalion of Reading Road Warriors. Our children will no longer be fodder for the criminal justice system!” She says only 11% of third graders in her city are literate: a 75% drop since the water crisis. She won’t wait for the government to do the right thing. “We can teach children to read. All we need is people to do is to organize our powerful human capacity.”
This program is part of the Institute for Detroit Studies’ Third Thursday series at the Center for Detroit Arts & Culture (CDAC) that preserves Marygrove’s outreach arts programs in the community.
A Cass Tech and WSU graduate in biology, Semaj says she got her “razor walk” living on the edge in Detroit. “Everything about Detroit is razor sharp,” she says. “The first unions, the underground railroad, Motown, techno, white rock and roll – all that happened here because of the grit and the pressure. But like the factories we built, and the people who built them, we make things and destroy them.” Her stories are about the love and transformation to resuscitate our world. Semaj has performed around the country and is recognized by the Academy of American Poets. Her main focus, however, is on the health and well-being of the Flint community where she and her husband, a family physician, conduct events and workshops that engage students in literacy and science. “We’re going to have a literacy revolution fueled by poetry in Flint,” Semaj says. “We’re going to have a battalion of Reading Road Warriors. Our children will no longer be fodder for the criminal justice system!” She says only 11% of third graders in her city are literate: a 75% drop since the water crisis. She won’t wait for the government to do the right thing. “We can teach children to read. All we need is people to do is to organize our powerful human capacity.”
This program is part of the Institute for Detroit Studies’ Third Thursday series at the Center for Detroit Arts & Culture (CDAC) that preserves Marygrove’s outreach arts programs in the community.
Please note that the Center for Detroit Arts & Culture at Marygrove (CDAC) preserves the outreach programs and community legacy of Marygrove College as it grows, shares and explores the culture of Detroit. Classes for young people and adults include music, dance, theatre, photography and more.
Visit our website for class schedules at www.detroitartsculture.org
The production of Semaj, Bleeding Fire! is a Defining Detroit Program within the Third Thursday Series at Marygrove which brings leading Detroit artists and events to the community – free and open to the public – on the Marygrove campus. Performances are made possible with generous support from the Kresge Foundation, the Erb Family Foundation, Hudson Webber Foundation, Dr. Glenda Price and other donors to the Center for Detroit Arts & Culture. Information about all events and classes at Marygrove
are at:
www.detroitartsculture.org
Shaun Nethercott,
Executive Director, Center for Detroit Arts & Culture at
Marygrove
snethercott@detroitartsculture.org – 313.980.2711