Tuesday Switch Up

Last Tuesday a few of us (Ahmer and his friend, Bukola, Lam, and I) watched the movie “Black Panther” at Eau Claire instead of going toKawa. Then Wednesday at the Genesis Centre we attended the very energized and energizing presentation that “Black Panther” stuntwoman Janeshia Adams-Ginyard gave to inspire youngsters. The visual highlight of that evening was Janeshia surrounded by about twenty children, all of them seated on the dais, the children eagerly raising their hands to ask her questions. Here’s a link to the CBC radio interview https://bit.ly/2INKoeN on Wednesday, in which Janeshia gives much the same message she gave to the children. It's a safe bet that Janeshia had a very empowering effect on quite a few children that night, that will be with them for the rest of their lives.

In the audience were Don Harris and Arthur Clark, each of whom had published poetry and both of whom were well past seventy years of age. Their question for Janeshia was whether she thought it would be possible for the two of them to learn stunts which they could then combine with a poetry reading they would do together. As far as we knew no one had ever attempted this. Janeshia encouraged us not to let anyone tell us we couldn’t do it. Later, however, Don and I decided to do synchronized dancing with the poetry, instead of stunts, as we thought we would be more likely to survive the performance.

So you can see how Janeshia activated the imagination of those who attended the event, even the old folks. Bukola Okedara came up with the idea for Janeshia’s visit and organized the whole thing. That could be our gold standard for generative dialogues at Kawa: Can we come up with ideas as good as that, or even better?

We’ll be there at Kawa on Tuesday March 27, 6 to 9 PM, doing quick sketches and live readings of poetry, and generating ideas.

Kawa Espresso Bar https://bit.ly/2pDOBss is at 1333 Eighth Street SW.

Arthur

“It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.” Erica Jong