Archive for December, 2011
Giselle Robinson
Giselle Robinson
When: Friday March 2, 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave.
Giselle was born in “Rock City”, St. Thomas, USVI. Giselle’s voice and her words, her stories and her style, reflect the deeply ingrained West Indian values and traditions she was raised with. She is as warm and smooth, deep and as vibrant as the Caribbean Sea.
She and her son have lived in Fort Worth for 4 yrs. This is where she was first introduced to the open mic in September 2009.
DFW’s own Island Girl, Giselle is a member of the 2011 Fort Worth Slam Team as well as the 2011 DFW Gladiator Slam Champion. She has just released her first CD, “Cadence” as she prepares to rock the National stage.
Giselle says she writes because she has to, is compelled to, but she performs for that moment of personal connection; shared pain, shared purpose. She’s still amused by reactions to her accent; after all, it’s just “Me”.
Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby
kYmberly Keeton and Dallas Poetry Youth Slam @ Tyler-Davis Arts District Block Party
kYmberly Keeton and Dallas Poetry Youth Slam
When: Saturday March 10th, Slam 5 pm, kYmberly 8pm
Where:WordSpace, 415 North Tyler St.
kYmberly mieshia dionne Keeton was born in Fort Worth, Texas. She is a graduate of The University of Houston with a B.A. in English Creative Writing, with a minor in African-American Studies (and awarded a Baccalaureate Degree with Honors in in English-Creative Writing and The Graduate Certificate in African-American Studies).
Keeton’s first short story: 2.Butahflies.Charlie.Browne.&.Painky.Lillies won the Honorable Mention Sylvan N. Karchmer Short Fiction Prize in May 2006 at The University of Houston and was published in the PARALLAX Journal at Richland College in Dallas, Texas.
As the former City Editor of rolling out dallas and Entertainment Editor for the Dallas Weekly Newspaper, she has interviewed Larenz Tate, Illyasah Shabazz, Haile Gerima, Usher, Mara Brock Akil, Dwele, Musiq Soulchild, Talib Qwele, KeKe Wyatt, Monique, Snoop Dog, Charles Stone III, Akon, Pam Grier, Tamara Peterson and countless others in the industry.
Creating her own publication entitled Literafeelya Magazine in 2003, featuring work on arts and politics; the magazine produced twenty-two issues online, and published its first print issue with a grant funded by Young People For in November of 2007.
kYmberly is the former publisher and co-founder of Songhai News: The Black Collegiate Voice-Black Newspaper at the University of Houston. Keeton is also a November 2010 National Novel Writing Month winner, and her first library proposal was accepted at the 2011 Library 2.0 Virtual Conference. In addition, Keeton is the recipient of the 2012 E. J. Josey Library Academic Scholarship
As a collage artist, Keeton’s work has been displayed at the Community Artist’s Collective (Houston, Texas), in the Via Colori Sidewalk Exhibition, and in the MFAH 16th Annual Citywide African American 2012 Artists Exhibition (Houston, Texas).
Currently, she is the Associate Editor at ThyBlackMan.com; is a graduate student at the University of North Texas in the Library Science and Information Technology program, and hosts a blog entitled digibooklibrarian for literary enthusiasts.
Dallas Poetry Youth Slam is hosted by Dallas Poetry Slam’s Alexandra Marie.
T. Odis
T. Odis
When: Friday March 2nd, 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave
Terry G. Odis is a 24-year old-alumnus of Tuskegee University, and a graduate of Hampton University with a Master of Architecture. A Chicagoland native, Terry began writing poetry as a college freshman struggling to balance academics and turbulent domestic life. Since then, he has made it his responsibilty to use his God-given gifts as tools to build up his environment through positive and informative poetry. He’s performed spoken word at venues, colleges, and schools throughout Chicago, Alabama, Virginia, Indianapolis, and more recently, the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Terry has had the honor of sharing the stage with poets such as Black Ice, Abyss, Tasha Jones, and Tommy Bottoms. He is a member of The Left Side Poets, a group of individuals determined to contribute to the artistic world by providing personal accounts of life through poetry. In addition to being a flourishing spoken word artist, Terry is an architect and freelance graphic designer and currently resides in Dallas, TX.
Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby
Flow
Flow
When: Friday February 17th 8pm
Where: Mighty Fine Arts, 419 North Tyler Street
RonAmber Deloney, known to many as Floweasy, native of Dallas, Texas is all about social dialogue. As a performance poet her work is conversations on street corners and words exchanged in the breezeway – a mix of images rewritten in various places on random things. She has worked with The Last Poets in Europe and along with black German rapper Khabo and Takeshi Beats released a spoken word/hip hop album entitled Of Brickwalls and Breezeways, which is currently available on Itunes. The second cd, Lilac and Rapeseed, is in the final stages of production. She holds an M.S.Ed. in Adolescent Education, MA in Art and Public Policy from NYU and BAs in English and German from Austin College.
Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby
Desireé Dallagiacomo
Desiree’ Dallagiacomo
When: Friday, January 20th 8pm
Where: Heros: 7402 Greenville Avenue
Desireé is an activist, teacher, writer, performer, and horror film fanatic. She has been a full-time teaching and performing artist since August of 2010. Desireé decided to leave her life in California when WordPlay Teen Writing Project offered her the dream job of teaching poetry in high schools and middle schools full-time. Desiree recently released her first album of spoken word poetry, “Hiding”. Born and raised in Chico, CA, she has made a home in Baton Rouge, LA. Desireé represented Baton Rouge at the National Poetry Slam on Louisiana’s first all-female national slam team. She is Baton Rouge’s current Grand Slam Champion. Desireé is an English major and is founder & curator of the LSU Writing Collective. She is the lead teaching artist for the Baton Rouge Poetry Alliance.
Desireé believes in spoken word and the slam because of what it does for the community. Through her writing, she captures images of what it means to grow up white, poor, and female in a world of color. In a sea of well-crafted masks, she bares everything on stage.
Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby
WordSpace Board and Program Committee Member RockBaby, award winning poet, teacher, HBO Def Jam poet and Host of the Dallas Poetry Slam curates a monthly Dallas Poetry Slam Featured Reader Series for WordSpace. Founded in 1994 by Clebo Rainey and his wife Naomi, Dallas Poetry Slam is the oldest and most respected Poetry Slam in the Metroplex. Dallas Poetry Slam is a non-profit organization that promotes the performance and creation of poetry while cultivating literary activities and spoken word events in order to build audience participation, stimulate creativity, awaken minds, foster education, inspire mentoring, encourage artistic statement and engage the DFW community in the revelry of language. Dallas Poetry Slam provides an opportunity for local poets to compete as individuals and with a team on the local, regional and national level. Poets are exposed to art, language and culture from a network of poets and the general population in various cities throughout the United States. As a member of the Dallas Slam Team, one can develop team building, leadership, writing and performance skills along with greater pride as an artist representing the City of Dallas.
Martha Heimberg, Brian Nowlin: Wallace Stevens “Tootings at the Weddings of the Soul Night”
What: Wallace Stevens-“Tootings at the Weddings of the Soul Night”
Who: Martha Heimberg and Brian Nowlin
When: Thursday, February 7, 7 pm
Where: Private Residence, RSVP 214-838-3554, wordspace@wordspace.us
Admission: Members Free, Non Members $10 Suggested
7 pm: Wine & cheese & talk.
7:30 pm: Martha’s intro focuses on earlier work, poet’s joyful and erotic depiction of the natural world and the suddenness of insight in poems like “Floral Decorations for Bananas”, “The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man”, “Martial Cadenza”, “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard”, “Motive for Metaphor”, and “Sketch of the Ultimate Politician.” (20 min.)
8:00 p.m. Brian Nowlin summarizes the often contradictory world of Stevens scholarship, and focuses on the brilliant late poems that emerge at the intersection of desire, memory and metaphor. Poems include “Large Red Man Reading,” “The World as Meditation,” “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour,” “A Quiet Normal Life,” and others. (20 min.)
A scholar and poet, Brian Nowlin is a doctoral candidate at the University of Dallas, where he is completing a dissertation on the late poetry of Wallace Stevens, and where he has worked as an adjunct professor of English and as the director of the writing center.
Martha Heimberg is assistant professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, creative writing instructor at Richland College and arts critic for Turtle Creek News and Theater Jones.
Five-time winner of Dallas Press Club’s Katie Award for arts criticism, community affairs and business writing, she has also won the Texas Historic Commission Griffin Award and the Sierra Club Award for writing. She has written over 200 features and reviews on live theater, visual and literary arts, and community affairs for Texas publications, including D Magazine, Texas Monthly, Lone Star Book Review and others. She originated DART’s Poetry in Motion program, a national project placing contemporary and classic poems on buses and trains, and is a founding member of the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum.
