2018 performance, “Mother Ocean (Making of a New Tribe)” at the Flint Institute of Arts
“…I asked Mother Ocean, how long, how long after Middle Passage did it take to heal your daughters, make them whole? How did you shape this beautiful distinct creation? …”
“… On my Ocean floor, I rocked them in a crucible of seaweed and succor, coddled them in the ebb of coral incantations, washed them with those two aquatic lovers, hydrogen and oxygen. I cleaned and christened, purified and baptized their white bone skeletons in briny blessed assurance…”
“… Mother Ocean lifted, waves rose, and fell like flying blue tarpaulin, floods surged dredging sand ,and civilization into the amorphous body, she spoke:…”
“…I followed that tide of dripping gote across myself to the shore of servitude. I never left my daughters. I persisted in all my forms: sometimes water vapor, whispering dignity, sometimes hail storm summoning the strength of Ella Baker ancestors …”
Photo Credit: Linda Belford
“…Standing up Up! Standing up, Up! Grandmothers and Grandchildren, Standing Up Up! Standing, Standing, Staaaannnnddinning as unlikely activists, in Lansing capital, against state-sponsored poisoning of 100,000 Flint resident!!!!!!!!!!…”
Excerpt from the Poem “Mother Ocean (Making of a New Tribe)”
Excerpted reading from the Literary Living Room, host M.L. Leibler, Writer’s Voice
By Ocean By Fire Performance Pictures
Pictures Below are from Performances from Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
Al Nur African Dance Troupe
Ayi Robeson, Director of Al Nur African Dance Troupe
