Written by Tanya Terry
Semaj Brown, Flint’s first poet laureate, is not the only one excited about her upcoming poetry reading to take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday Feb. 24! The community has been enjoying Brown’s work since she became the first poet laureate of the city of Flint by mayoral proclamation on September 27, 2019. This tends to build momentum for any event Brown is to recite poems as part of. The upcoming event is to be hosted by Woodside Church of Flint and take place via Zoom. Brown and event moderator; Dr. Deborah Conrad, hope the poem fuels a healthy discussion afterwards.
The poem begins in Africa, goes through the savage journey across the ocean, to the shore of servitude, to where the African American woman is today.
“I think Black women would feel the experience of this poem, and for me it’s instructive,” said Conrad, who is also the pastor of Woodside Church and is also white.
“It begins with the personification of the ocean carrying women on the Middle Passage, and of course that’s not an experience that any of my ancestors that I know of had,” Conrad said. “So, that’s nothing I can relate to on that personal, visceral level.”
Still, Conrad said through the poem she is able to “in some much smaller way” begin to feel the small seeds of oppression and to wonder what it has done to a people, what it has done to a memory and what it forebodes.
Woodside was the first Baptist Church in Flint and was originally organized in 1853. The church has a priority of lifting up voices of color and other voices outside the mainstream, according to Conrad.
“We are doing everything we can to dismantle White supremacy to the degree it’s in our power to do that.”
Conrad first “glanced” at the poem “Mother Ocean” back in the summer.
“Then, I attended a webinar August 13 hosted by UM-Flint called ‘The Power of Words,’ and I heard Semaj perform it, along with a couple of her other poems. Her imagery is so strong. The poetry is so strong, and it was very insightful to me. I was so pleased to be able to schedule something like this to engage Woodsiders and anyone else who would like to sign on.”
“For the ‘Mother Ocean; Odyssey” Brown said she will be “dramatic,” which seems often to come naturally for Brown. She will assume the character Mother Ocean.
Brown explained the poem was originally titled “Making of a New Tribe.”
“The advent of Mr. Jerry Taliaferro’s Photographic exhibit: “Women of a New Tribe” at the Flint Institute of Art inspired the writing of the poem “Mother Ocean (Making of a New Tribe),” Brown wrote in notes she shared with the Flint Courier News.
Brown described the “Women of a New Tribe” exhibit as not only beautiful, but “majestic.” It featured all black and white Hollywood style photos of African American women in the Flint community. The exhibit went all around the country, and women were photographed in their various cities. The photographs were displayed at museums. After Brown was photographed, she thought she could write a poem about the experience.
“The photo session to which I was subject, stirred something internal,” Brown also wrote in her notes.
“Upon completion, I spoke in a quiet tone to myself and to Mr. Taliaferro and Sarah Kohn; assistant curator, ‘I feel like I could write something about this,” Brown continues. “They both gave an affirming nod. Exiting the Flint Institute of Arts, feeling richly increased by the experience, I returned to my world of projects and deadlines, ‘Women of a New Tribe’ seemed far away.”
Nine months later it was time for the photographs to be exhibited.
“I felt a poem coming,” Brown said. “I could feel it in my body. It was like a rumbling.”
Brown saw skulls and ocean. She knew it was the African American women’s story. She could just feel it. That night she thought it was about the transatlantic slave trade. She prayed she would be able to write the poem, realizing it was very sorrowful.
“When I woke up that morning, I felt like a scribe.”
Although Brown had not written a poem in over a decade, the poem was written in a day or two.
Interestingly, this will not be the first time “Mother Ocean” has been the focus of an entire event. Indiana University looked at “Mother Ocean” through the lens of power, oppression and complicity, for example.
It was also presented at Alabama Contemporary Art Museum.
Brown read it at a gala at the private home and was invited there by the head of the Flint Institute of Arts to read it the next day-right back where the poem originated.
In addition, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History hosted large, sold out events centered around the poem in the General Motors Theatre in 2018 and 2019.
When it became a performance, with Mother Ocean as a character in costume telling the story of receiving her daughters on the ocean when they got off of the enslavement ships, Brown changed the poem’s title from “Making of a New Tribe” to “Mother Ocean.”
“From the transatlantic slave trade, through Jim Crow, through Civil Rights, all the way up to the Flint Water Crisis, we’re constantly being reformed and transforming ourselves through intense pressure that we’re under to transcend our own oppression. So, the new tribe is made.”
But, according to Brown’s poem, Mother Ocean never left her daughters.
“I never left my daughters; I persisted in all my forms sometimes, water vapor whispering dignity sometimes, hail storm summoning strength from Ella Baker Ancestors,” the poem reads.
The poem ends with the Flint Water Crisis and the courageous women standing on water.
“They are reverse waterfalls standing — erect! Standing on testament of swirling ancestors —reverse waterfalls standing erect, standing on Water,” the poem reads.
To register for “Mother Ocean” Odyssey: An evening with Semaj Brown.” click here: bit.ly/3aFjrsp.
