Archive for July, 2013
Bonnie Friedman
Who: Bonnie Friedman
When: Thursday, September 12, 7 pm
Where: Salon, Private Residence, RSVP 214-838-3554, wordspace@wordspace.us
Bonnie Friedman was born in the Bronx, New York, and to her amazement was accepted into the Bronx High School of Science despite the fact that math made her weep and the only thing she liked about biology was spelling agar agar.
She continued her studies at Wesleyan University, where she majored in Third World Politics, and the University of Iowa, where she earned an MFA in fiction writing. She has won fellowships to both MacDowell and The Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, and was awarded a 2013-2014 fellowship by the Institute for the Advancement of the Arts at the University of North Texas
Her first book, Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life (HarperCollins) was a Village Voice bestseller and is widely anthologized.
Her next book, The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy(Beacon) was called “eloquent” by Library Journal, “excellent,” by Publisher’s Weekly, and “compulsively readable” by O., the Oprah Magazine.
Her writing has been selected for inclusion in The Best American Movie Writing, The Best Writing on Writing, The Best Spiritual Writing, and The Best of The Oprah Magazine. She has published frequently in the New York Times, and her work has appeared inO., the Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Self, and The Ladies Home Journal, as well as many literary journals. Her very first short story was published in Playgirl magazine (a mixed blessing), and she’s been accepted to be a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and at the MacDowell Colony.
Most recently, her essay “Becoming Visible” was selected by Kathryn Harrison for a special memoir issue of Ploughshares. She has been the keynote speaker at many writing conferences, as well as at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.
She has taught writing at Dartmouth College and at NYU, and is currently an assistant professor in the creative writing program at the University of North Texas. She divides her time between Brooklyn and Denton.
She is not the same Bonnie Friedman who writes travel guides to Hawaii, much as she wishes she were!
Summer Culture Melt: Anant Kumar, Charley Moon and Bunny Trahan
Charley Moon and Bunny Trahan join Anant Kumar, as he pitstops his Greyhound ride around the U.S. teaching, meditating, reading his poems and sleeping on the floors of ashrams and American bookstores.
What: Summer Culture Melt
Who: Anant Kumar, Charley Moon and Bunny Trahan
When: Friday, August 9, 7:30 pm
Where: Lucky Dog Books, 633 West Davis (Oak Cliff)
What else: Refreshments Served
And: Free
Anant Kumar was born in the Northeastern Indian state Bihar. He learned German as a foreign language in New Delhi before he moved to Germany in 1991 to study German literature and linguistics. He has published 13 books of prose and poetry. His most recent book is “Fredo A German Voice”. He is a member of the Association of German Authors and Literary Society of Hessen and has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes.
Charley Moon is a poet, photographer, designer, and beauty queen of Dallas night life. One of Dallas’s seminal neo-beat writers, she has presented her work in galleries, theaters, universities, nightclubs and festivals. Her photography has been featured at the South Dallas Cultural Center and many other venues. WordSpace is honored to present Charley Moon as homeland cultural ambassador in this event.
Bunny Trahan is 19 years old, born in Corpus Christi, raised in Dallas, living in Chicago and Home For The Summer. She’s been studying and creating art at School of the Art Institute of Chicago for a year and loves flowers.
Roxy Gordon
Some things he did
Roxy Gordon was “one of the great outlaw artist misfits” and so much more
To those who knew Roxy Gordon, the news of his passing on February 7 may have caught them a little off guard, but the official cause of death didn’t come as much of a surprise: cirrhosis of the liver. The man loved his liquor. Sorry if that sounds blunt, but that’s the way he was. Blunt and right to the point — no bullshit. Roxy was the most unpretentious person I’ve ever met in my life, and his writing reflected that. After years of watching alcohol take its toll on many of the creative people around him, he kept right on drinking. Old habits tend to die hard, and old drinkers die harder.
For example, a couple of years back, my girlfriend Perla and I were in East Dallas on our way home from dinner, driving west down Oram Street toward Greenville Avenue. As we swung past Gordon’s house at the southwest corner of the Matilda intersection, I noticed that the porch light was on and the front door was open. We decided to drop in for a minute and say hello. Roxy was like that: You could drop by his place any time you wanted, and he and his wife Judy would always welcome you inside and make you a drink.
As Perla and I walked up the steps that night, we could hear someone inside playing an acoustic guitar. The man started to sing in a flat, monotone voice, and he sounded a little drunk. As we got closer to the front door, it became obvious that it wasn’t Roxy who was mumbling through “Pancho and Lefty,” a song that I was beginning to recognize from one of my dad’s oldWillie Nelson records.
I peeked through the door at the intimate little gathering that was happening inside. There were seven or eight people strewn all over the living room, some holding vodka bottles, most smoking cigarettes. Roxy waved us in and Judy rose up to give us each a big hug. Man, it was just such a great vibe in that room. I could tell right away that we were in for something special that night.
The skinny guy in the corner with glasses and a beat-up guitar in his hands was Townes Van Zandt. For two hours he sat there and knocked out one amazing song after another, stopping only to do a shot of cheap vodka or light another Winston. The inside of Roxy’s living room was like a thumbtacked museum of photos, books, and artifacts dedicated to Native American culture. It was absolutely the perfect place to hear Townes do his thing.
After about 10 or 15 songs and stories, I got up off the floor and went into the kitchen to fix a drink. A couple of minutes later, Roxy came in and sat down at the kitchen table. I wanted to seize the opportunity to tell him how much we appreciated his letting Perla and me in on this amazing little experience. We were pretty much awestruck by Van Zandt’s rather intoxicated interpretation of his songbook.
“Damn, Jeff…can you guys take him with ya?”
What was that?
“He’s been here for a damn week,” Gordon explained. “He came to town to do some show at Poor David‘s, and he’s been on our couch for days. We can’t get rid of him. He thinks all he has to do is sit there in that chair and sing all night, and we’ll put him up for however long he wants.” Roxy poured himself another shot into his Styrofoam cup.
I laughed out loud. “No, man, I wish I could, but Perla and I are in the same boat Townes is,” I said. “We just got back from Los Angeles, and we’re staying in the room above the garage at my mother’s house.”
I thought about it for a second: Townes Van Zandt staying at my mom’s house, sitting in our living room smoking cigarettes and singing songs until three in the morning for a week or so. Sure, she’d go for that.
“Well, damn it. I don’t guess I’m ever gonna get to sit on my own damn couch again.”
Roxy was smiling when he said it, half putting me on, certainly meaning no disrespect to one of his best friends in the world. I’m sure it was the vodka talking. It said a lot for him sometimes.
We left about three in the morning, but things were really just getting going, if you ask me. In the car on the way home that night, we agreed that we had just had one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Even as passive, casual observers to the goings-on in Roxy Gordon’s living room, we felt damn lucky to be able to hang out with a group of folks who were so unpretentious and real.
Townes, who shared a birthdate with Roxy, passed away a couple of months later.
Not long after that, the Gordons, along with their son Quanah, decided to move out to Roxy’s grandmother’s old house near Coleman, Texas, about four hours west of Dallas. By this time they had pretty much had enough of Dallas. “Wouldn’t you leave Dallas, Texas?” Gordon asked theDallas Observer a few months after moving (“Roxy redux, February 26, 1998). “I always planned to live out here or northern Montana, but I guess here is where I’m going to be for now.”
Quanah and Judy also wanted to live out in the country. Roxy and his son had been building a smaller lean-to shack called the “House Up” for years before that, which sat on a bluff overlooking his grandmother’s old place. It was a great place to write, and people would come out and drink all night, singing songs and carrying on. With no electricity or running water, built entirely by hand, the House Up was as close as Roxy could get to the clouds and stars. It was a radical departure from the life he had led while living in Dallas.
Over the years, Gordon became entrenched with a fairly odd cross-section of people from around here. Painter Frank X. Tolbert, Jr. and his wifeAnn Stautberg were Roxy and Judy’s seemingly constant companions. In fact, there is a portrait of the foursome painted on the wall in the back room at Terrilli’s, down on Lower Greenville.
I met them all for the first time back in 1987, when I was booking the shows at Prophet Bar in Deep Ellum. Russell Hobbs and I were living in the loft space above the bar, and he liked to invite the four of them upstairs to drink and tell their stories after hours. I remember thinking at the time that Roxy looked like a biker, with his leather pants and that black bandanna tied around his head. He and Frank Jr. could drink anybody we knew under the table back in those days. Tolbert would play the washtub bass and provide backing music for Roxy’s stories. These people were insane, and I loved hanging out with them.
Over the years, Roxy’s peer group of Texas “folk artists” and drinking buddies included a surly cross-section of outlaw freaks that had each (in their own twisted way) redefined the word “subculture.” Besides permanent sidekicks Tolbert and Van Zandt, there was David Allan Coe, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and former Nervebreakers and Rotten Rubber Band lead vocalist Tex Edwards. And somewhere along the way, Roxy crossed paths with snot-caked Stick Men With Ray Guns nuisance Bobby Soxx, and he came aboard as well.
Also included in Gordon’s definitive circle of friends were Butch Hancock, Tommy Hancock, The Gourds‘ Max Johnston (who recorded 1990’s Smaller Circles with him), Terry Allen, music writer Joe Nick Patoski, Jim “Reverend Horton Heat” Heath (who also lived on Oram), poets C.J. Berman and Charley Moon, Billy Joe Shaver, poet Karen X and visual artist Laney Yarber. He often shared stages with Van Zandt, Tolbert, Allen, Johnston, Richard Dobson, Diamond Jim Richman, Texanna Dames, and he even did a show at the old Major Theater with Erykah Badu‘s first performance art group, Soul Nation. Roxy Gordon had far more allies than enemies; he could hang with anyone.
One of Roxy’s best friends was a local writer and poet named Robert Trammell, who is currently the executive director of WordSpace, a nonprofit arts and literary organization that often featured Roxy’s work at a number of their gatherings. Trammell remembers seeing him for the first time about 15 years ago.
“I met him at his first house over on Palo Pinto in East Dallas,” Trammell says. “I went over there with Frank and Ann Tolbert. I did not like him at first. Roxy and Judy had come to Dallas with David Allan Coe a couple of years before that. They had been on the road with him in some capacity that I was never sure of. I thought they must be gypsys or part of some kind of circus.”
But what Trammell remembers the most is Roxy and Judy’s first place here in Dallas.
“It was a little house at the back of the lot,” he recalls. “One side of it was on a side street. There was this little camper parked in front with some kind of Indian drawings and words on it. I wound up living in that trailer for several months. They moved to the Oram house after that, seven or eight years ago.” That particular house was like a living folk art landmark for a lot of people, who would stop or pull over to see the various animal hides or bone fragments that decorated the front porch.
Trammell and Gordon were also both active participants in the movement to free imprisoned Native American activist Leornard Peltier. They did several benefits over the years that featured, among others, Sara Hickman, local performance artist Fred Curchack, “Dollar” Bill Johnston(Michelle Shocked and Max Johnston’s dad), Ray Wylie Hubbard, and of course, Townes Van Zandt. Native American culture was Gordon’s sincere passion and obviously the essence and inspiration for most of his writing. Roxy was adopted into the Assiniboine tribe in Montana in the late-’60s, and was given the name “First Coyote Boy.” Trammell describes Gordon’s family tree as “one-half Choctaw, and one-half Texas Ranger…and half outlaw.”
In his hilariously poignant song “Indians,” Gordon split the world in two specific groups: That which was “Indian” (acceptable in his eyes), and that which “ain’t.” Making the cut as “Indians” were: Leonard Peltier, Chuck Berry, baseball, Willie Nelson, red meat, Hank Williams, street people, Pancho Villa, Los Angeles, Fort Worth, fry bread, Africa, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, poetry, circles and random lines, and “living.” That which “ain’t Indian” included Michael Jackson, Europe, JFK, proper punctuation, the president of Baylor University, football, New York City, health-food stores, General Custer, straight lines, Che Guevara, the FBI, and unions full of cops. The last words of the song are, “Expecting to live forever won’t ever be ‘Indian’…”
On the Marq’s Texas Music Kitchen Web site (www.lonestarwebstation.com/roxygordon.html), there is a quote from Lubbock musician-artist Terry Allen that probably says it best.
“Roxy Gordon is one of the great outlaw artist misfits,” Allen says. “He writes like an angel and sings like livin’ hell. He’s got a fine eagle tattoo on his arm, and I like his hat. His voice is as stone, true as the history of blood and dirt. In those mirrored shades he looks like the perfect cross between an ex-state trooper and a serial killer. He’ll hate me for saying that…the state trooper part. Roxy is a brave and solid heart.”
It was hard to believe that this soft-spoken old guy who was always sitting out on his front porch in East Dallas had really lived the kind of life that Roxy had. He wrote several books of poems and short stories, including Breeds andSome Things I Did. He also released three spoken word albums, Crazy Horse Never Died,Unfinished Business, and the one that was my particular favorite, Smaller Circles. I bought my first vinyl copy of Smaller Circles at the old Record Gallery store on Lower Greenville. It was an import, released on a label based in London. I think I paid 20 bucks for it. Roxy was living right down the street from me at the time and I didn’t even know it. I wore that record out fast.
Over the years, Roxy’s writing was featured in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. He also often contributed to a UK publication calledOmaha Rainbow. The late ’60s and ’70s found him hanging out with guys like Jim Morrison, author Richard Braughtigan, Leonard Cohen,Robert Creely, and Temple native Rip Torn. Like a lot of people at the time, he was living Jack Kerouac‘s On the Road, but he was living it better. He was both Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.
A few years after Some Things I Did came out in 1972, Roxy and Judy moved out to New Mexico for a spell and began publishing a country music magazine called Picking up the Tempo. It was there that he hooked up with Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver, and Waylon Jennings. Roxy was right there in the thick of the “Texas Outlaw” country-rock movement, lending his rather concise perspective to the proceedings. He was Americana before the frat boys and washed-out middle-age punk rockers started turning it into their Highland Park version of Hee Haw.
Sometimes I get to thinking that people in Dallas tend to take some of our more “eccentric” citizens for granted. For instance, Tom Landry passed away a couple of days after Roxy did. There were huge headlines, specials on TV, and this city paused for a full week to hold a huge memorial for the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys. One after another, former football stars and various civic leaders praised Landry’s Christian morals and ideals.
On the other hand, aside from what is left of his immediate family, there were fewer than 10 people from Dallas at Roxy Gordon’s services in Coleman.
Both were men who were thoughtful and poised, determined, and firmly believed in their spiritual convictions. Both often led by example and loved their families deeply. Both men used an entertainment medium in an attempt somehow to teach greater “life” lessons. However, in this particular juxtaposition of “Cowboys and Indians,” Tom Landry’s lifestyle was celebrated, exalted, praised to the high heavens. Roxy Gordon’s obituary in The Dallas Morning News took up less than six column inches, and not one of the local news broadcasts mentioned his passing. Make of it what you will.
Roxy would have been 55 years old on March 7 of this year. Survivors include his wife, Judy N. Gordon of Talpa, Texas, and his mother, Louise E. Gordon of Coleman. Other survivors include his adopted Assiniboine parents, John and Minerva Allen, and two sons and one daughter-in law, J.C. and Corinne Gordon of Dallas and Quanah Parker Gordon of Talpa. Roxy also had a twin brother that died at birth. J.C.’s wife Binky is expecting Roxy Gordon’s first grandchild in four or five months.
Somewhere Roxy and Townes are knocking back a bottle of vodka, trading stories about all of the people they met and places they’ve been. That night I spent listening to Townes playing in Roxy’s living room probably won’t even register in the scope of their overall experiences. A hell of a lot of living went into those 55 years, and those who were close to Roxy feel lucky ever to have known the man.
As I’m driving home from work down Central Expressway, amidst all the traffic, billboards, concrete, pollution and confusion, one thing comes up as clear as the water in Coleman: Roxy Gordon was Indian, and many of the rest of us ain’t.
JANIS KEARNEY-Author, Publisher and Personal Diarist to President Clinton
SALON ON THURSDAY! RSVP: 214-838-3554 or wordspace@wordspace.us
Janis Kearney-Author, Publisher and Personal Diarist to Presdent Clinton
What: WordSpace Salon
Who: JANIS KEARNEY
When: Thursday, November 7, 7 pm
Where: Private Residence, RSVP 214-838-3554
Hosted by: Sanderia Smith and Charles Dee Mitchell
BONUS: Her new book Cotton Field of Dreams: A Memoir will be availble for purchase and signing
Admission: Members-Free! Non Members-Suggested Donation, Thank You.
Janis F. Kearney, book publisher and author; former publisher of the Arkansas State Press Newspaper, and former Personal Diarist to President William J. Clinton, is one of 19 children born to Arkansas Delta Sharecroppers, and cotton farmers. She graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.A. in Journalism, and 30 graduate level hours toward degrees in Public Administration, and Journalism.
In 2003, Kearney founded Writing our World Press, a micropublishing company. The Company’s current slate of books include: the award-winning Cotton Field of Dreams: A Memoir; Quiet Guys Do Great Things, Too – as told by Frank Ross; and Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton…from Hope to Harlem, an oral biography centered around the Clinton presidency and political legacy; Once Upon a Time there was a Girl: a Murder at Mobile Bay; Kearney’s first fiction, and Something to Write Home About: Memories from a Presidential Diarist, her second memoir, nominated for the Small Independent Booksellers Award (SIBA) for 2009. In 2009, WOW Press published Black Classical Musicians in Philadelphia, by Elaine Mack. In 2013, WOW! Press debuted Kearney’s sixth book, Daisy: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, a biographical memoir chronicling the life of civil rights leader Daisy Lee Bates.
Kearney completed a two-year W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship at Harvard University’s Center for African and African American Studies, in 2003, and was also appointed that year, as Chancellor’s Lecturer at Chicago City Colleges, which included lecturing at Chicago’s seven city colleges. In 2004, she began a two-year Humanities Fellowship at Chicago’s DePaul University Center for the Humanities. She was appointed, in 2007, to one-year Visiting Humanities and Political Science Professorship at Arkansas State University (ASU), teaching Memoir Writing, Writing Arkansas Culture, The Clinton Presidency, and the American Presidency: Inside the White House.
Kearney served as Personal Diarist to President William Jefferson Clinton from 1995-2001. She was the country’s first personal diarist to a U.S. President, serving as the White House liaison to the U.S. National Archive’s presidential records office. In her role as diarist, she attended numerous levels of meetings throughout the day led by the President, as well as official events at the white house. She also participated in White House management meetings, and worked closely with the White House Information and Records Management office – an extension of the National Archives – to help collect and maintain Presidential records for future presidential library. She served as personal diarist during the six-month Presidential Transition Office, January – June 2001.
Kearney was appointed by President Clinton, in 1993, as Director of Public Communications, for the Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration, serving for two and one-half years. As Public Affairs Manager, she was responsible for the agency’s national media coordination, including new product rollouts, briefing and preparing SBA Administrator for all media interviews, coordinating press conferences, and all other media events. She also supervised, trained and evaluated all regional information directors.
She took the role of Managing Editor of the Arkansas State Press Newspaper, founded by Arkansas civil rights legends, Daisy and L.C. Bates in 1987. She became Publisher and Owner of the Arkansas State Press in 1988 with overall responsibility for the operation of the company, which included hiring and supervision of all full time and part-time staff, development and building creating new image for the newspaper, and expanding into new market niches. In 1991, Kearney was elected by publisher colleagues to the board of directors for the National Newspaper Publishers Association; as well as the outreach committee for the Arkansas Press Association.
Currently, she serves on a number of volunteer boards and committees, including Director of the Arkansas Writers Conference; and President of Arkansas’ Pioneer Chapter of the National League of Pen Women. Awards and Recognitions include: Arkansas’ Small Business Administration’s Minority Business Award, 1992; the PUSH for Excellence Award for outstanding communications; induction into the History Makers Archives of Outstanding African American leaders; University of Arkansas Outstanding Alumni Award, and the University of Arkansas’ distinguished Journalism Lemke Award; and a Special Recognition Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
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Da’Shade Moonbeam at Dallas Poetry Slam
What: Da’Shade Moonbeam at Dallas Poetry Slam
When: September 13, 2013 at 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave., Dallas, TX 75231
Admission: $5
Hosted By: Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
To say that I am simply a Poet or a Hip-Hop artist, would not be an accurate description as to what I do, or who I am. I choose to express myself through many artistic mediums, and I am constantly pushing the limits of these artistic forms to avoid categorization. But if I must classify myself, then I choose to be called, an Artist. My mentors have always told me that I am so far ahead of my time that my work may not truly be appreciated by human beings, until we’ve mastered the science of Terraforming distant planets throughout the Universe. Life has taught me that a person can be many things, so I trek beyond conventional definitions of titles and boxes, to shed the spotlight on what I am, and where I am currently. Da’Shade Moonbeam is; a Martial Artist, a Poet, an Emcee, an Actor, a Cinematographer, a Stage & Film Fight Choreographer, a Photographer, a Film Editor, a Script Writer, a Sketch Artists, a Teacher, a Mentor, a Sound Constructor, a Singer and a Warrior. This list is constantly expanding, and I may be one of these art forms more than the others, at any given time. I am a self-proclaimed -Street Nerd- that has had a Love affair with the Martial Arts since the tender age of 7 years old. The Martial Arts were my first love, shortly after came Poetry, the Spoken Word, and Music in the form of Rap and Rock. I am a two-time National Poetry Slam finalist, and an internationally ranked Slam Poet. The subject matter covered throughout my collective catalog of work, include, but are not limited to: the on-going exploitation of women, men, and children through human-trafficking, slave labor, and sexual exploitation; love lost and obtained, happiness, the hood and Nerd-dom.
MasterPiece at Dallas Poetry Slam
What: MasterPiece at Dallas Poetry Slam
When: October 11, 2013 at 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave., Dallas, TX 75231
Admission: $5, WS Members FREE
Hosted By: Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
MasterPiece the poetess was born in Dallas, Tx. She also lived in Arizona for seven years while studying Theatre Arts and Business Administration at the University of Arizona. She began performing and acting at the age of 6 and also discovered a love for poetry at 13. Her passion for poetry and performing arts has inspired many people. The debut album Mind of MasterPiece introduces a new genre of music coined by MasterPiece herself: rhythm and poetry. The cd chronicles her story through powerful words, emotions, rhyme, thought provoking lyrics and smooth rhythmic music that has a hint of hip hop, soul, and jazz all mixed into one. Fans recognize her as a dynamic writer with poise, talent, and beauty. She continues to maintain a balance between the arts and business by being an extraordinary poet/performer and business woman. Her hobbies include basketball, dancing, cooking, designing webpages, traveling, and watching movies. Her poet name MasterPiece stems from the idea that all artists strive to achieve and put forth their best work possible. It is a metaphor for a successful artist. She continues to travel to Phoenix, Tucson, St. Louis, Austin, and Dallas to perform spoken word.
Big Ant at Dallas Poetry Slam
What: Big Ant at Dallas Poetry Slam
When: November 15, 2013 at 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave., Dallas, TX 75231
Admission: $5
Hosted By: Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
Anthony “Big Ant” Gordon is a father, poet and educator. He was born in Detroit, MI where he began writing at a very young age. Gordon moved to Fort Worth, TX in 2002 and found a new home. In 2008 Gordon was introduce to the world of Slam Poetry and instantly fell in love. Some of his accomplishments include three- time member of the Fort Worth National Poetry Slam Team (2009- 2010, 2013), Three- time performer at the prestigious MLK Evening of Spoken Word at UTA, 2009 Waco Arts Fest Slam Champion, the 2010 Arkansas Southern Fried Slam off Champion and the 2013 Fort Worth Poetry Grand Slam Champion. Big Ant is a teacher in Dallas, one of the top spoken word DJ’s in the Metroplex and a coach/mentor for the 2013 Fort Worth Poetry Slam Team.
Imani Cezanne at Dallas Poetry Slam
What: Imani Cezanne at Dallas Poetry Slam
When: December 13, 2013 at 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave., Dallas, TX 75231
Admission: $5
Hosted By: Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
Born and raised in San Diego, CA, Imani Cezanne enlightens, empowers and inspires audiences with her words. As the youngest member ever to make the San Diego Slam team, she helped the team place 6th in the Nation at the 2010 National Poetry Slam in St. Paul, MN. She has participated in countless poetry slams throughout California including the Individual World Poetry Youth Slam in 2009, in which she came in 3rd. Imani always thrives to better herself through the power of the spoken word and loves to share her passion with anyone willing to listen. She is now pursuing her Bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University.
Imani is also the Founder and President of Spoken Poetry Expressed by All Kinds (S.P.E.A.K.), an on-campus organization that creates and plans events that elevate, empower, inspire, and motivate not only the entire San Francisco State University community, but the surrounding areas as well. S.P.E.A.K. thrives on the interest and the sharing of the arts. Open-mic events, writing workshops and poetry slams are just a few of the ways we stir the creative pot. We not only allow students to feel comfortable with their talents, but create an environment for networking and collaborations. Imani’s goal is to continue to help S.P.E.A.K. thrive on the SFSU campus, and expand to other campuses nationwide.
Dallas Poetry Slam Youth Series
When: Saturday, December 7, 4-6 pm
Where: Half Price Books, 5803 NW Hwy
Hosted by: Alexandra Marie and Joaquin Zihuatanejo
Dallas Poetry Youth Slam When: Every first Saturday at 4-6 pm Where: Half Price Books, 5803 E. NW Highway, Program Room- Hosted by: Alexandra Marie and Joaquin Zihuatanejo. WordSpace is honored to partner with Dallas Poetry Slam to bring Poetry and Slam outreach to area youth for workshops and performance.
Dallas Poetry Slam Youth Series
When: Saturday, November 2, 4-6 pm
Where: Half Price Books, 5803 NW Hwy
Hosted by: Alexandra Marie and Joaquin Zihuatanejo
WordSpace is honored to partner with Dallas Poetry Slam to bring Poetry and Slam outreach to area youth for workshops and performance.
