Update #5a — Cleveland
Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing..
—Lucille Clifton
The OctoGenarian Tour 24-25—September & November, Fort Wayne IN; March, Ithaca NY; April, Boston, Framingham MA, & Cleveland OH; May, Comer, GA, & Washington DC; June, Fort Wayne IN; July, the Pacific Northwest—Olympia, Tacoma, Bellingham, Port Townsend, San Juan Island, Washington. Why?
Ostensibly, the tour celebrates my 80th birthyear, including 58 active poeting cycles. From the outset, however, the intention tour intention has been to lift collective agenccy & Poetik Voice into the public square. Poetry is powerful! That power is potential & is possessed by Poetz! To influence individual & collective perception, inspire engagement by amplifying marginalized voices, raise community awareness, & encourage critical observation & alternate envisioning is a cultural responsibility & spiritual obligation. Poetz who belong to the community have a platform to challenge static norms, expose contradictions, & engender collective work & responsibility. Poetz can bring lite or darkness to communal identity & interests. Choose, Poetz. The abiding question: in this era, in this space, at this time, what does it mean to be hueman? Eshu leans on his staff grinning at the crossroads.
The OctoGenarian Tour ’25 is not a detailed plan but an organic approach that values individual participants perspective & lived experience. It develops by building relationships. Friends connecct us to Poetz & Activists. We outline the tour’s collaborative & collective process. Together, we build out from there one relationship at a time. All change begins with conversation.
We’re identifying people to call together at year’s end with the intention of connecting & expanding relationships toward collective voice & practical agency. The work centers community interests, & Poetz & Activists as its agents. In Cleveland individuals are working in their silos & reaching beyond them in meaningful collabora tions. Ideas are important but more so are the crossroads—the intersectional work where mis-steps & successes can be identified, analyzied & evaluated, corrected, learned from for next steps. OGT25 takes the longview moving one day, one relationship at a time.
April 20-28 — Robin Robinson & I have known one another for more than 25 years. Robin lived & worked in Fort Wayne before moving to Cleveland. She’s now the director of Sankofa Fine Arts Plus that’s dedicated to developing public opportunities to showcase African American art & artists. Robin was my main Cleveland contact. Art is a rich, yet underutilized resource to engender local pride & support to revitalize urban communities. The artists’ work is credible & essential to neighborhood well-being & developmment.
Sankofa’s focus speaks direcctly to OGT25’s intention of giving Poetz a platform to speak with agency to their community’s interests. Glenville is home to Sankofa. Robin shepherds organizational output to intergenerational education & community collaboration. For mural projects, Sankofa meets & surveys residents to aggregate & articulate their neighborhood’s vision. Artist then interpret that input & create the images that speak to that identity. Sankofa is art central for Glenville’s community murals, & as one of the city’s principal design muralists, Robin has brought to life her neighborhood’s self-perception. Independently, she’s now managing a multi-artist mural project that rolls out in Cleveland neighborhoods this summer.
Other community-insipred murals in Glenville speak to the community’s social & political consciousness.
