The Martin Luther King Symposium was a beautiful display of spoken word and visual art. Taking place in the Pendleton room in the Michigan Union, this event really embodied the work of the great Dr. King and the freedoms that he fought for.
The slam was dazzling, with many talented student poets, such as AJ, TJ, Aisha, Brandon, and Chloe, who all spoke from the heart about freedom, peace, and inequality. The judges unanimously declared AJ the winner and he received a $100 visa gift card, while the crowd favorite was undoubtedly Ame (sorry, I don’t know the exact spelling and she told us to write “Amy” if we wanted to vote for her) who won the gift bag. Both were poets of amazing talent and emotion.
There were four artworks at the event also, paintings and drawings, to be admired and rewarded. These works were creative depictions of what civil rights meant to the artists, or at least shared some relation to MLK and his dreams.
The best part of the night, however, came with the feature poets Jessica Moore and Dee Matthews. They were Amazing! Dee was definitely my favorite with her second poem telling the untold story of Eve. She is such a passionate performer with such wonderful word strings and ideas. I could listen to her for hours, and so could most of the crowd, I believe. She also read a poem about the old folk that decided to ride the storm during hurricane Katrina and another about the revolution that never happened for the African American community. Both were intriguing and amazing, but the poem about Eve outstripped them emotionally and made us want to cry.
Jessica Moore was another great addition to the show. She read so many amazing poems that I can’t list all of them, but I can suggest that you look her up. Jessica Care Moore is the CEO of a poetry company, an Apollo legend, and a proud single mother from Detroit. What I really like about Jessica was that she was so real, I mean soooo real. She told us about what it is like to be world famous and still broke. How it feels to have people in countries all over the planet recognize your name and still have to receive welfare to feed your child. Moore is a beautiful person and I think to know her would make a person’s life better. I wish her and her son all the best, because she is fantastic.
As always,
This is Danny Fob: Artist and Art Reviewer
FYI, Dee’s last name is spelled Matthews.
Thanks. I kept going back and fixing it but my spell check was messing up. It must have changed to the one T after I pasted it into the post. You know how Microsoft word thinks everything is spelled wrong. 🙂
I was very encouraged to find this site. I wanted to thank you for this special read. I definitely savored every little bit of it
and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.
It sounds like everone had fun