Culture Canvas: Detroit poet jessica Care moore talks a new book, art investments

What up doe, 

This is BridgeDetroit Engagement Editor Bryce Huffman, filling in for Micah Walker, and for this week’s edition of Culture Canvas, I figured I’d talk to a Detroiter who has left a big impression on me. 

Given my background as a slam poet, it’s probably no secret that I admire the work of Detroit’s Poet Laureate jessica Care moore. Earlier this month, the Academy of American Poets named the longtime poet, activist, musician, and author as a recipient of a $50,000 grant. moore was among 23 poet laureates from across the country to share in $1.1 million from the academy for community arts projects.

I spoke with moore about how she plans to use the grant money in Detroit and her recently published children’s book, Your Crown Shines: For Ketanji Brown Jackson and You. You can read the full Q&A below.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

BridgeDetroit: You were awarded $50,000 from the Academy of American Poets, and I know you’re doing a lot of work around literacy in Detroit. How will the grant money help you do this work?

jessica Care moore: That’s going toward my programs. There are three different tiers; the first is a program called Detroit Love Haiku. It’s something that mirrors the Philadelphia Mural Arts program, which Sonia Sanchez spearheaded. It’s this incredible campaign in Philly around the word “love.” So what I’ll be doing, and already have been doing, is going across the city and asking people to tell me what they love about Detroit in 17 syllables. 

I feel like our city deserves to get loved on, and so 17 syllables is something that a four-year-old can write, making sure this would be intergenerational. If you can count syllables, you can write a haiku. I think haiku is a very revolutionary and effective, accessible tool for literacy. I’ve been using it for years inside of classrooms and inside of jails, inside of workshops with young people, some of whom are struggling with language. 

The other part of it is a mural program. I know we have lots of murals in the city already, but I see there’s no poetry on the walls. I’m talking to my sister Sabrina Nelson, who’s a great painter in the city, about helping me pull together painters, artists inside of (the College of Creative Studies) and inside of our Detroit public school system, who are emerging artists, and getting them to paint the haikus. 

We’re going to do one large haiku mural. I want to do several in the city, but I want to start putting these love haikus for Detroit, not just on murals, though. This is what I’m using the money for: to make a poster campaign, so we have them, ideally inside buses. When I have more money, I’d like to wrap the People Mover in haikus the way that New York has poetry inside of their train systems. I would love to see poetry at bus stops and transit centers here in Detroit.

The idea is accessibility to art and making poetry a public art. It’s a public art campaign, a poetry-driven public art campaign, so that people see the damn thing. Because if I put my poetry just inside books, that means that people have to go to a bookstore to find me. 

The third part of that is an audiobook project that will take all the voices of the people that have been doing haikus. We’ll have a day and we’re gonna go into The LOVE Building. They have a recording studio in-house, and we’re gonna record all these haikus and create, like, an audio tapestry of all these different voices that I’ll put out on all the platforms for people to have. It’s a three-tiered project. It’s audio, it’s public art in a visual form, and it’s literary.

BD: It’s funny you mentioned the literary part last, because my next question was actually about the book you recently published, Your Crown Shines. You wrote it for Ketanji Brown Jackson. What inspired you to write this book?

moore: I didn’t even write it as a book; it started as a poem. It was inspired by Ketanji becoming the first Black woman Supreme Court Justice. But the poem itself was written initially because I was on a call with Win With Black Women, and beforehand, I was told we would be celebrating Ketanji after she was finally named to the Supreme Court, after all that she went through in those hearings, to get what she deserved, which was that seat. 

I’m so grateful for her being in that seat with the state of the country being what it is. Now, she’s one of the few dissenting voices that we have on the Supreme Court that’s really upholding the law correctly. So her story was easy to write about. I was asked to join this call and give some words for our dear sister who’s on the US Supreme Court. So I wrote the poem, and I got on the call. The call is lots of movers and shakers on that call, and senators and congresswomen and actors and activists and folks from all kinds of walks of life, Black women in different powerful spaces in the country, and Oprah Winfrey is often on that call. 

It’s not a big deal that Oprah was on this call, but when I saw the run of show that day, and it said opening prayer, jessica Care moore poem, and then Oprah Winfrey, I was like, ‘Okay, well she will hear my poem.’ So I did the poem like I always do, and it was well-received. Then Oprah jumped on the call and said, “Hey, jessica, I need someone to connect us because I need that poem.”

Oprah shared my video on her social media platforms, on her Facebook page, on her Instagram page, on Oprah Daily, and she quoted her favorite lines. I wasn’t expecting the poem to become a book. It was just gonna probably be a poem in my next book, but my agent got a lot of calls from several different publishing houses asking about the book, and it just made sense for me to do an edited version of the book to make it accessible for young girls and young boys.

Then I was paired with Dare Coulter, who is a goddess of a visual artist. I didn’t know Dare, but she took my poem and took it, just made it visual magic. I don’t know how else to explain it. I cried when I saw what she’d done with my work. That’s how the book came to be. 

BD: Why is this book so important for Detroit, for the country right now?

moore: Where the country is now, it’s worse than ever. So I think the book is needed and necessary more than ever now, because this place is unwell. Books that are about our children, that lift up our children’s stories, are being banned. We have a very racist regime that’s in place right now. That’s very scary. 

That’s reminiscent of, if not even worse than maybe the 60s on some level, on what some of my parents had to endure in a segregated America. And so, as we are embarking on these things, we need books and we need people to keep pouring into our young people how fantastic they are, and that all of this belongs to them, too.

If you look at the back of the book, which is one of my favorite parts, you’ll see the words, “I see you.” That was a gift the publisher did that Harper Kids added that touch to the book, but that’s what I would say to them, is that I see them, and that they are seen, and that this book is for them too because I wanted even middle school girls and boys to know that I see them and someone cares about them. 

BD: Where can Detroiters find the book? And where can we see you next?

moore: All the bookstores in Detroit have this book. Pages Bookshop has it, Source Booksellers has it. Next Chapter Books has it. So all the local bookstores are carrying the book. Go support the local bookstore. You could even get it on this cool site called Bookshop.org, which will give the proceeds of any book you buy to a local bookstore of your choosing. 

As for where to see me next, if they want to come see me live, I’ll be at the Detroit Jazz Festival on Aug. 29 with Jeff Mills and Jason Moran. Please come through and be in community with me. 

313 Scene

• “Detroit: The City of Chefs II,” the second installment of a film showcasing metro Detroit chefs and the city’s culinary history, debuts next month. Filmmaker and former chef Keith Famie premiered the first film, “Detroit: The City of Chefs,” in December. (Detroit Free Press) 
• Funeral services are set for longtime Phoenicia restaurant owner Sameer Eid, who died Friday at age 85. (The Detroit News) 
• Nushrat Rahman kicks off our Resilience in the D series with a feature on Niesha Lee. Through her mobile salon, Inspiring Hair LLC, the Detroiter provides free hairstyles, makeup and grooming at Detroit homeless shelters. Read the story here.

What’s Going on in the D?

• Catch Raheem DeVaughn and Teedra Moses with Nadim Azzam at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre on Aug. 20. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. Lawn tickets are $26.75 per person.
• Join the Nourish Detroit Wellness Celebration from 4-8 p.m. Aug. 23 at 16745 Lamphere St. for a day of fitness and family-friendly activities. The event, hosted by the nonprofit Arukah, will feature dancing, nutrition and skincare workshops and wellness vendors for tips, products and more. Sign up for free on Eventbrite.

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