At Lyric Hall, Alex Nicks was crafting her song in bits. A sunset falling over New Haven. A senpai with half a pancake for a face. A big, cavernous room across which two characters might be able to see each other. Scratch that. A hallway. No. A more abstracted space, with enough breathing room for the song to exist on its own, punctuated by bouts of laughter and Anthony Duff’s beat boxing from the corner.
Dymin Ellis was tired of watching mothers wash their boys’ blood away with tears. Jasmine Smith wanted to explore the criminal justice system through fairytale metaphor. Mya Baldwin found that no one looked like her – or was particularly interested in making her feel welcome – on the cheerleading team. And on his way to a job interview, Myles Davis was pinned swiftly to the ground on the basis of his black skin.
A harsh, pink light fell over Garth Harries’ face as he approached the microphone. He blinked, drew back, came closer. A bead of sweat had formed at the left corner his forehead. He wasn’t facing a Board of Ed grilling, though. Not angry parents, either. This was the beginning of a poetry jam, and Harries was about to get serious — very serious — with the words of poet Mary Oliver in a tribute to Jericho Scott.
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Alexis Zanghi |
Mar 27, 2015 12:00 pm
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Fake Babies Photo
Unit G-2, aka “The Submarine,” before last week’s raid.
When I first came to Daggett Street Square in 2007, I was taken by its rambling hallways, its pulley-operated elevator. The building may not have been insulated, but it was insular. By that time, few live-work spaces remained in New Haven. There had been others — on River Street; in the Munniemaker cigar factory on State Street; at Chapel and Church, above what is now Gotham Citi — all now shut down.
Now we can add Daggett Street Square to the list: Last week officials ordered it cleared out.
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Allan Appel |
Mar 12, 2015 4:21 pm
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Wormser (left) with admirer and fellow poet David Leff.
The williwaw — an icy, mountainous wind that literally drove some GIs crazy during the Aleutian campaign in World War II — made a chilling and beautiful appearance in both words and music, alongside the propulsive verses of nationally known poet Baron Wormser, in a haunting evening of poetry at the Institute Library.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 12, 2015 4:00 pm
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Midnight rubbed his hands together and flashed the room a couple smiles. “Hopefully this is enough fire for y’all.” He gave himself a moment, leapt into the first line of his poem, “The Photographer,” and for the next three minutes was a man transformed, and transfixing.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 21, 2015 1:02 pm
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Porsha Olayiwola started her cadence slow, one deliberate word following another. Before long, though, the words were coming faster and faster, like a train gathering steam. She took the audience with her all the way.
“You will not silence my prize or grammatically correct my ebonics / I am not hooked on your phonics,” she spat out, to laughter and clapping. “You will not silence my prize or crack down on this truth / I am louder than this.”
She dropped that final word, someone in the audience shouted “come on!” and the place erupted into cheers.
“We didn’t come here to tap dance,” emcee Ngoma said.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 8, 2014 9:27 am
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Winfred Rembert
It was expected that the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s annual arts award ceremony, held at the New Haven Lawn Club on Friday, would be a celebration. It also ended up being one of unexpected emotion and depth.
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David Sepulveda |
Nov 18, 2014 1:46 pm
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Event sponsors insisted it was not a workshop or seminar, but it had all the hallmarks of one. Flip charts with prompts scrawled in magic marker lined the walls of the hall. On tables sat programs to go along with bright-red information packets. November is National Adoption Awareness Month and invited speakers drove shards of awareness into every heart present.
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Aliyya Swaby |
Oct 24, 2014 2:07 pm
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Allan Appel dumped an entire career worth of books and magazines onto a desk in the Institute Library — and proceeded to take his audience through a decades-long, hodgepodge literary journey.
Mention of the spoken word movement may conjure phrases like Go Innnnnnnnnnnnnnn and Spit, Poet!, an obligatory reference to a body part (ribcage, sternum, tongue are among the best) or a hopeful chorus of yes yes’s, guttural sounds and snaps that accompany a reading. Rarely is it said that it is most genuinely performed by middle-school students.
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Lucy Gellman |
Feb 27, 2014 12:59 pm
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“What will you do/ if it turns out you’ve failed?/How will you fare?” Peter Cole asked members of the audience, looking up from the pages of his book to gauge their reaction.
He was greeted with faces basking earnestly in the light of this new poetry, ambivalent chewed lips toward the back row, a few scattered and nervous laughs.
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Melissa Bailey |
Nov 18, 2013 12:58 pm
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They started with an age-old dum-diddy-dum. They added snares and high-hats. Then Andrew Sweet and his students brought an ancient Roman poet into a modern Garage Band.
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David Sepulveda
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May 13, 2013 12:01 pm
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Festival-goers who gathered at Westville’s neighborly Aquila Motors during the opening of Friday’s 16th Annual Artwalk, were not there for a lube job or car repair.
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Allan Appel
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Apr 22, 2013 11:38 am
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Two Pulitzer Prize winning poets packed ArtSpace Friday night to lead a stellar cast of African-American writers in praise of the beauty of the paintings of the late Ficre Gebreyesus — and in praise of a well-lived life.
