This month, every.Word poetry will present Lines for Liberation, a spoken word poetry performance for Black History Month. every.Word is a program of the Poet House, a collaborative group co-directed by Michael Hatcher. “We use poetry to kind of reach people,” he says, “use it as a tool to help people, get through life, cope with the trauma that’s been going on lately and all kinds of other things.”
Poet Ms. Trin-I-Tee adds that the goal of the Poet House is to “combat injustice… fight against the systems and institutions that we’re in, using [poetry] as a tool to help our community to free ourselves.”
The Poet House does have an official mission statement, which Hatcher made sure to get on tape while in the studio: “the Poet House cultivates a care-centered community of spoken word poets by uplifting the marginalized and building spaces where art is a catalyst for change.”
Trin-I-Tee and Hatcher are two of the poets who will be performing in Lines for Liberation (along with Jasmine Games and Dre’ Jackson), and they agree that transformation is a major theme of the show. “It’s a choreopoem, really,” Hatcher explains. “It’s basically four poets. We’re gonna be on stage the whole time and it’s really like a journey, a journey to a place we don’t know where we’re going. It kinda turns into like a metaphorical journey… a transformation… of becoming something different. One of the poems in the show is a poem called Butterfly, and what that poem is about is basically my own personal transformation. But I really feel like that poem is a microcosm for the whole show and kind of what we’ve all went through as far as writing the show, making the show. I definitely don’t feel like the same person I was before the show started, if that makes sense.”
“Every show is always… gonna be a big experience and as the performer you’re gonna take a lot from it,” Trin-I-Tee adds. “You’re gonna transform a lot. We know at the end of next week we’re not gonna be the same.”
She says that creating her part of the show has been a transformative experience in itself. “Even that process was transformative, and now by the end of the show… [with] the script done and we are rehearsing it, every time we go through it, I’m like I’m figuring out something else that I said. I’m looking at it now and I’m like, dang, I didn’t know that about you. You know, we learned a lot about ourselves. It’s a beautiful process.”
Trin-I-Tee says it took her some time to get her work for Lines for Liberation ready for the stage, but that the difficult process was worth it. “It took some processing to get it on paper,” she says, “but, yeah, once I got it, yeah.”
All the hard work, she says, is part of the process of transformation – an important process we all go through multiple times in our live. “That’s the cool thing about humans, you know,” she says. “We don’t have the butterfly lifespan. We have a lot of opportunities to, you know, get in our cocoons and transform again and again. So of course, yes, I’m in this process right now and I will become a butterfly by next Sunday. But I’m gonna be in a cocoon again, you know? We all will.”
“That’s a poet talking right there, y’all!” Hatcher exclaims with a laugh. “That’s a poet talking right there.”
“That’s stuff poets say,” Trin-I-Tee replies.
“Exactly, exactly,” says Hatcher, still laughing, “it just comes out naturally!”
‘Lines for Liberation’ runs February 26 – March 1 at the VORTEX
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