Golden Gate Park Music Concourse Music Concourse Dr San Francisco CA 94118
Thu
Dec 16, 2021
3:00 am
 - 
4:30 am
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About

Join MoAD in celebrating the radical tradition of Black poetry with featured Bay Area poets Darius Simspon, Asia Bryant-Wilkerson, Landon Smith, and Jazz Hudson. ​​Building on the momentum of MoAD’s monthly Open Mic series, this event will be curated and hosted by poet Nia McAllister.

This event is part of a month-long series of poetry and music events as part of the Alterverse: San Francisco’s Celebration of Poetry and Light. Learn more about the full schedule of events in Golden Gate Park at https://thealterverse.org/.

Join MoAD again on Sunday December 26th for our annual Kwanzaa Celebration with an afternoon of poetry at the Golden Gate Music Concourse.

Featured Poets

Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. Much like the means of production, he believes poetry belongs to and with the masses. He aims to inspire those chills that make you frown and slightly twist up ya face in approval.

Darius believes in the dissolution of empire and the total liberation of Africans and all oppressed people by any means available.

Free The People. Free The Land. Free All Political Prisoners.

Asia Bryant-Wilkerson (she/they) is a writer, installation artist and arts organizer from Watts.  In 2016 they received a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of San Francisco, and in 2020 they earned an MFA in Performance + Performance Studies from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.  She has toured the U.S. performing and facilitating writing workshops at various colleges & universities such as Emerson college, UC Berkeley, Barnard College, and Agnes Scott College.

Asia is a 2018 & 2019 Watering Hole Fellow. She is also a devoted teaching artist who coached the 2019 Penn State Poetry Slam team who won the 2019 College Union Poetry Slam (CUPSI) in Houston, TX. She is currently organizing and facilitating Til We Meet Again, a free year long online workshop series for emerging writers.

Under the Til We Meet umbrella, Asia has launched Books & Bud, a series of reviews that pairs books with different cannabis products.  

You can find out more about the work by following the organization on instagram @tilwemeetagain_

Landon Smith (he/him) is a father, a professor, a poet, a painter, half Mende and half Balanta & Fulani, that feeling of falling that wakes you up in a dream, the amethyst geode on your desk, Angela Davis’ afro, Frantz Fanon’s pocket notebook, Walter Rodney’s fingernail, the 7-10 bowling split, your favorite pillow.

Despite his institutional degrees, he really became a poet through the East Side Arts Alliance in Oakland. Landon thanks his older sister Alia for buying him his first journal, starting his ever-evolving relationship with words. You can often find him processing the world through poetry.

Jazz Hudson is an award-winning artist, speaker, educator, and young girl advocate. She serves a host of communities facilitating transformation and healing through art. With a holistic approach to content & development, her interdisciplinary work engages audiences in dialogue and activism that extend beyond the page and stage.

She recently transitioned from serving as the program director for E.M.E.R.G.E. (Educating, Mentoring, Empowering, and Reaffirming our Girls for Excellence), a pilot educational re-entry program that helps young women ages 16-18, to focus on her motherhood and consulting.  Jazz has over 12 years of experience as a keynote performer, educator, and consultant for corporate, educational, nonprofit, and community-based organizations.

She has expertise in facilitating “experiential workshops” on race, gender, class, hip-hop/arts, and radical healing. Jazz leads and design workshops utilizing oral and written tradition to reclaim and define the self. She is competent in the theoretical and practical application of gender-specific, culturally inclusive, trauma-informed, learner-focused, and restorative justice learning.

Her work is a  dynamic fusion of Hip Hop, Poetry, & Soul.

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