Wishing all of you a great Black History Month! I’ve already led a poetry workshop that was very special. If you look in the background of the photo below, you will see the poet Jericho Brown. I taught his poem “The Tradition” as part of an introduction to poetry workshop for YourWords STL. J...

My heart was full today because this was the first year BOTH of my children were at a maturity level where BOTH their gifts were individually purchased and I could tell BOTH had put real thought into their gifts. My daughter bought me this: Medieval Traditional Initial Alphabet Wax Seal Stamp and...

Womanist/Feminist Approaches To Community Archives And Memory Keeping ___ Join me for this INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNITY ARCHIVES Learning Experience. An intensive accessible for all learning levels specific to what community archiving is and some fun ways to preserve history. ___ What topics will be...

In this presentation, I show educators how to use art in their classroom to increase engagement, deepen connection, and extend learning. HANDOUT: http://femininepronoun.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/My-Life-In-Songs.pdf JAMBOARD LINK: https://jamboard.google.com/d/1p1D9luqgM8sYNqigxh535rQcyRQ66D...

In my work as a poet, and more specifically a poet whose work centers the ancestral, it has been an especially fruitful season. Two events have provided an opportunity for me to engage with community as a poet and to place the ancestral front and center. I delivered my poem about our brave enslav...

I wrote “hoodoo for 9 offenses (a little rock ritual)” in anticipation of performing at the 66th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine’s historic act of bravery at Central High School. I was gifted a signed copy of Elizabeth Eckford’s book The Worst First Day: Bullied While Desegregating Centra...

Our retreat house, (Fannie Lou Hamer House) where we give away space to Black artists, needs a new air conditioning system. Will you donate so that we can host artists in the fashion that matches how much they give to the community? We’ve partnered with my non profit THE COMMUNITY ARCHIVE & it is...

In 2016 the U.S. shocked me for the last time. I read this poem at the St. Louis leg of the National Women’s March:

At the beginning of this year, I was waking up at 4 am every night.  Because I value my sleep, I would lay there and stubbornly will myself back to slumber. I was determined that this weird insomnia would not leave me tired for the coming day. I had things to do. People routinely asked […]