I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with my mentor poet mother at the African World Festival. This was a beautiful event which to me was also a reminder that the summer was coming to an end.The school year is coming back up but there is still plenty going on.
Unfortunately the collaboration album with poet "Untitled" is to again be postponed for a later release but it is not over. It is still happening just that other projects and responsibilities are requiring more time. The album People of the Water is out, selling for only 10 dollars and featuring 19 great tracks of poetry and artistic journey.
I will be featuring at well known Detroit venue They Say Thursday, September 2nd. There i'll do poems from the album and also new ones i've written since. Following that I feature Wednesday September 8th at the Sweet Epiphany poetry lounge. Here i'll do a second set of poetry both from the album and other new ones, and I have a few surprises for this one. Later in the month i'll be a performer at Peace Day in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is a celebration of ethnic and cultural diversity, acceptance and equality.
Outside of poetry,i've gotten the honorable privledge of being nominated as Presidential Ambassador for University of Detroit Mercy's College of Liberal Arts and Education (CLAE). There will be plenty of other events that I will attend representing my peers and school. I'm also looking forward to a new occupation working with the schools newspaper. More details will be provided on that later.
The future is what we make it,despite everything going on in the world we can make a brighter day. Hope to hear from you all in the days to come.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
New Releases
It's been quite a while but this summer has been moving by so fast and has been so busy. I've done a couple out of town shows and plenty around the city and hope for more in the future but there is a more important bit of news than that.
This Saturday at my feature at Che Cosa Coffehouse in Mt.Clemons will be the release of my debut poetry album People of the Water. Also in the beginning of September the collaboration album between Christopher "Untitled" Jones and I titled Heroes Die Young will be coming out.
More than just doing shows and selling Cd's there are other plans in the works to not just speak on issues and bring them to the forefront, but to also do something about it. As I frequently say,I don't consider myself an entertainer but rather an artist and once things are solidified it will only be a matter of time before actions are taken to remedy all the plights that are put out before us.
This Saturday at my feature at Che Cosa Coffehouse in Mt.Clemons will be the release of my debut poetry album People of the Water. Also in the beginning of September the collaboration album between Christopher "Untitled" Jones and I titled Heroes Die Young will be coming out.
More than just doing shows and selling Cd's there are other plans in the works to not just speak on issues and bring them to the forefront, but to also do something about it. As I frequently say,I don't consider myself an entertainer but rather an artist and once things are solidified it will only be a matter of time before actions are taken to remedy all the plights that are put out before us.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Newly Published Poem
I finally wrote something about my aforementioned experience last summer and it was just recently published at this link.
http://www.troubadour21.com/poetry/deonteosayande/a-lions-roar/
http://www.troubadour21.com/poetry/deonteosayande/a-lions-roar/
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Updates
Hey,
been really busy recently and a lot has changed over the past month.
Personally and as far as Track and Field goes everything has been on the up and up.
Just keeping things up to date
TBA-I'm currently in works on a collaborative album with local poet Christopher "Untitled" Jones and on my own individual recording of poems.
June 19th,2010-I'll be the featured poet at Times Square Deli,on hoover between 11 and 12 mile road,from 7:30 until and it's free.
TBA-The date is yet to be determined but I will also be featuring at The Russell Bazaar on a saturday to be announced soon
TBA-I'll start a website that i'll actually update some time soon once there is actually time to sort out everything and post a free online chapbook of poetry.
Sorry it's so many things still yet to be announced, i've just been experiencing a lot of positive changes and happenings going on and this is a quick rundown on the new poetry updates.
been really busy recently and a lot has changed over the past month.
Personally and as far as Track and Field goes everything has been on the up and up.
Just keeping things up to date
TBA-I'm currently in works on a collaborative album with local poet Christopher "Untitled" Jones and on my own individual recording of poems.
June 19th,2010-I'll be the featured poet at Times Square Deli,on hoover between 11 and 12 mile road,from 7:30 until and it's free.
TBA-The date is yet to be determined but I will also be featuring at The Russell Bazaar on a saturday to be announced soon
TBA-I'll start a website that i'll actually update some time soon once there is actually time to sort out everything and post a free online chapbook of poetry.
Sorry it's so many things still yet to be announced, i've just been experiencing a lot of positive changes and happenings going on and this is a quick rundown on the new poetry updates.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Renaissance City Online Magazine
Two poems i've written were accepted in the Renaissance City Online Arts Magazine for their second issue. See the link on the side for the site where this can be viewed.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Undefined: A poem about Poets
Undefined
People,
Parading around pain
is not poetry. The point
which where we
draw our lines and rays
towards the sun
is being missed.
We are parenting parallelograms
with uneven sides and angles
that appear in acute ways
but are so far obtuse
that it cannot be right.
Relating modern music
or society to slavery
doesn’t make an awesome African American
poem unless providing a solution.
We are a people tattooed in torture
but fully sitting in the seat
to allow someone to etch sorrow in our skin.
The color of our paper is conspiring
in classes and behind pages of anthologies
stating that we should not write
about experiences that are definitely there.
If poetry is only old, dead, male and white,
than by no means is what is scribed bow
that. It is illustrations of egg shells
hatched and broken at birth
making mosaics out of story.
It is a problem we aren’t taught
to solve, but to just show the work
that brought us to the conclusion,
Undefined.
A mean rhyme scheme
may seem
to beam what we deem
supreme poetry or lyrics
but it is no more than the tune
of the Orcas in the ocean
echoing sounds,
it isn’t their original voices.
If you must be woman than be more
than a queen, be a goddess for goodness sake.
Sculpt yourself in the mud
made from your earth bearing womb and tears.
You will be judged until you
bake cakes of demons with your face
and see rain clouds in your car,
and after all that like
Sylvia and Anne
they will still judge you.
You are greater than that
you are our Lourdes and Angelou.
You are a heaven
battling hells they refuse to read.
If you must be a hue of man
than douse yourself in it’s
bottomless bucket of splendor
and paint with the brushes
borrowing down from
your hardened knuckles.
If you be young and White
than don yourself as a cloud
and fly into forever rather
than be as unmoving and unchanging
as your marble predecessors.
Be uniquely you, undefined.
If you be Black know your possibilities
are as endless as the night sky.
Don’t be confined in corners
like shadows any longer
because eventually there will be
light coming to erase you.
If you are Asian know now
that the origami unfolded
has always brought
wise willows and wonderful words.
Your history is as rich
as any others and always will be.
If you are Latino
raging bulls are awaiting
to be released from the salsa
sitting inside of your veins.
Do not allow yourself
to be overlooked.
If you hail from the Middle East
the desert is not empty
but filled with a treasured legacy
endowed to you. Your words rejected
by the canon of the European
have been powerful cannons of their own for ages.
And all else must remember that this
undefined art we create
is made of nothing more
than the ink welled in our eyes,
the lead resonating in our bones,
and the stanzas stretching the strength of our muscles.
We can’t be defined into
experiences of the excruciating,
memories of the melodious,
intelligent images in sentences
or stories structured in Sestinas.
Our work will remain as diverse
as the people who read them.
We will continue to collide
planets of thought
over what is and is not something
that we don’t really have the power to decide.
We are undefined,
a quantity of infinity equal only to quality.
We are undefined,
a question unanswered because it can’t be.
We are undefined,
and this is our definition.
People,
Parading around pain
is not poetry. The point
which where we
draw our lines and rays
towards the sun
is being missed.
We are parenting parallelograms
with uneven sides and angles
that appear in acute ways
but are so far obtuse
that it cannot be right.
Relating modern music
or society to slavery
doesn’t make an awesome African American
poem unless providing a solution.
We are a people tattooed in torture
but fully sitting in the seat
to allow someone to etch sorrow in our skin.
The color of our paper is conspiring
in classes and behind pages of anthologies
stating that we should not write
about experiences that are definitely there.
If poetry is only old, dead, male and white,
than by no means is what is scribed bow
that. It is illustrations of egg shells
hatched and broken at birth
making mosaics out of story.
It is a problem we aren’t taught
to solve, but to just show the work
that brought us to the conclusion,
Undefined.
A mean rhyme scheme
may seem
to beam what we deem
supreme poetry or lyrics
but it is no more than the tune
of the Orcas in the ocean
echoing sounds,
it isn’t their original voices.
If you must be woman than be more
than a queen, be a goddess for goodness sake.
Sculpt yourself in the mud
made from your earth bearing womb and tears.
You will be judged until you
bake cakes of demons with your face
and see rain clouds in your car,
and after all that like
Sylvia and Anne
they will still judge you.
You are greater than that
you are our Lourdes and Angelou.
You are a heaven
battling hells they refuse to read.
If you must be a hue of man
than douse yourself in it’s
bottomless bucket of splendor
and paint with the brushes
borrowing down from
your hardened knuckles.
If you be young and White
than don yourself as a cloud
and fly into forever rather
than be as unmoving and unchanging
as your marble predecessors.
Be uniquely you, undefined.
If you be Black know your possibilities
are as endless as the night sky.
Don’t be confined in corners
like shadows any longer
because eventually there will be
light coming to erase you.
If you are Asian know now
that the origami unfolded
has always brought
wise willows and wonderful words.
Your history is as rich
as any others and always will be.
If you are Latino
raging bulls are awaiting
to be released from the salsa
sitting inside of your veins.
Do not allow yourself
to be overlooked.
If you hail from the Middle East
the desert is not empty
but filled with a treasured legacy
endowed to you. Your words rejected
by the canon of the European
have been powerful cannons of their own for ages.
And all else must remember that this
undefined art we create
is made of nothing more
than the ink welled in our eyes,
the lead resonating in our bones,
and the stanzas stretching the strength of our muscles.
We can’t be defined into
experiences of the excruciating,
memories of the melodious,
intelligent images in sentences
or stories structured in Sestinas.
Our work will remain as diverse
as the people who read them.
We will continue to collide
planets of thought
over what is and is not something
that we don’t really have the power to decide.
We are undefined,
a quantity of infinity equal only to quality.
We are undefined,
a question unanswered because it can’t be.
We are undefined,
and this is our definition.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Broadside Press Theatre, Sunday April 18th, 2010
This Sunday the Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture and Broadside Press Poets' Theater will host the winners of this year’s Dudley Randall Poetry Competition, Brandon Clark, Alex Jones, and Deonte Osayande. The reading will be followed by an open mic session. This event is free and open to the public.
Broadside Press Poets' Theater takes place on UDM's McNichols Campus the third Sunday of each month. For more information, contact Rosemary Weatherston, Director, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture at weatherr@udmercy.edu. We hope you can join us.
About the Poets:
Brandon Clark has been a writer since he was in the 5th grade. He just took third place in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest. He also is one of the founding members of Rhymes with Orange Poetry Collective (alongside Alex Jones and Deonte Osayande) who have read their poetry at the 2009 Symposium of the Society of the Study of Midwestern Literature at Michigan State University. Has been a poetry feature at open mics at the University of Detroit Mercy. Brandon is currently majoring in English with a minor in philosophy.
Alex Jones is this year's first place winner of the Dudley Randall Poetry competition. He has been published in the Metro Times as well as [sic], UDM's student literary journal. He also served on the editorial board for [sic]'s latest issue. Alex has been a featured reader at the Byte This poetry series at Cliff Bell's Jazz Lounge. He is also a founding member of Metro Detroit area poetry collective Rhymes With Orange, who read at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature's annual symposium at Michigan State University in 2009. Alex has been scribbling creatively in some form or another since 6th grade, and possibly earlier. He is now a Senior English major at the University of Detroit Mercy and will be seeking a Master of Fine Arts after a year off following graduation.
Deonte Osayande comes from a family of educators and activists and has been writing for a bit over two years. He just finished in second in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest and also finished in second in the University of Detroit Mercy’s Howling Wolf Chapbook Contest. He has read at the Converging Aesthetics display at the University of Toledo, been featured at many poetry venues around the city of Detroit, and had poems published at multiple online quarterlies. He is a graduate of the Broadside Press Institute of Cultural Studies and is an instructor at the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute’s Pathways to Freedom summer program. He is currently working with Broadside Press to complete his first chapbook of poems and is currently majoring in Elementary Education with a focus in Mathematics and English.
Dr. Rosemary Weatherston
Associate Professor of English
Co-Director, Women's & Gender Studies Program
University of Detroit Mercy
4001 W McNichols Road
Detroit, MI 48221-3038
p: 313.993.1083
f: 313.993.1166
Broadside Press Poets' Theater takes place on UDM's McNichols Campus the third Sunday of each month. For more information, contact Rosemary Weatherston, Director, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture at weatherr@udmercy.edu. We hope you can join us.
About the Poets:
Brandon Clark has been a writer since he was in the 5th grade. He just took third place in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest. He also is one of the founding members of Rhymes with Orange Poetry Collective (alongside Alex Jones and Deonte Osayande) who have read their poetry at the 2009 Symposium of the Society of the Study of Midwestern Literature at Michigan State University. Has been a poetry feature at open mics at the University of Detroit Mercy. Brandon is currently majoring in English with a minor in philosophy.
Alex Jones is this year's first place winner of the Dudley Randall Poetry competition. He has been published in the Metro Times as well as [sic], UDM's student literary journal. He also served on the editorial board for [sic]'s latest issue. Alex has been a featured reader at the Byte This poetry series at Cliff Bell's Jazz Lounge. He is also a founding member of Metro Detroit area poetry collective Rhymes With Orange, who read at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature's annual symposium at Michigan State University in 2009. Alex has been scribbling creatively in some form or another since 6th grade, and possibly earlier. He is now a Senior English major at the University of Detroit Mercy and will be seeking a Master of Fine Arts after a year off following graduation.
Deonte Osayande comes from a family of educators and activists and has been writing for a bit over two years. He just finished in second in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest and also finished in second in the University of Detroit Mercy’s Howling Wolf Chapbook Contest. He has read at the Converging Aesthetics display at the University of Toledo, been featured at many poetry venues around the city of Detroit, and had poems published at multiple online quarterlies. He is a graduate of the Broadside Press Institute of Cultural Studies and is an instructor at the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute’s Pathways to Freedom summer program. He is currently working with Broadside Press to complete his first chapbook of poems and is currently majoring in Elementary Education with a focus in Mathematics and English.
Dr. Rosemary Weatherston
Associate Professor of English
Co-Director, Women's & Gender Studies Program
University of Detroit Mercy
4001 W McNichols Road
Detroit, MI 48221-3038
p: 313.993.1083
f: 313.993.1166
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