Flint’s First Poet Laureate On The Power of Literary Arts: “Flint Is Rising, Don’t Count Us Out”
Stephen Henderson sits down with Semaj Brown to talk about the ways that creative writing and thinking can heal a community.
When is the last time you sat down and wrote a poem, a story or a letter just for fun?
This weekend, the community-based literary center, the Tuxedo Project, along with the Live6 Alliance, will host Write-A-Thon Detroit.
The event takes place tomorrow and will feature Semaj Brown, who will deliver a keynote speech. Semaj Brown is Flint’s first poet laureate, and ahead of her appearance at the Write-A-Thon, she joins Detroit Today’s Stephen Henderson in studio at WDET.
“We are resilient people in Flint, we call ourselves Flint-stones for a reason,” Brown tells Henderson. In discussing the trauma that came with the Flint Water Crisis, she notes that “art has been a major force, there is a movement and a spirit in Flint of people being enlivened.”
Brown says “Flint is rising, don’t count us out. Yes [the crisis] happened, yes we are still repairing but at the same time we are rising.”
