♪♪ Welcome to ALL ARTS' presentation of the 2024 Artist in Residence program.

I'm James King.

We're happy to present "How to Build a City," a debut film by Brooklyn-based poet Mahogany L. Browne.

This piece, made in collaboration with Caroline Rothstein and Jive Poetic, documents the impact of Mahogany's work on the contemporary poetry scene and follows her journey from the Bay area to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe to Lincoln Center, where she currently serves as the inaugural Poet in Residence.

Brown and other globally recognized poets recall how performance poetry transformed this city of concrete and steel into one of family.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Mid-tempo jazz plays ] ♪♪ Lynne Procope: If we praise the names of our fallen, we lift the broken with our light.

Sarah Kay: We praise their names and the hands that write.

Praise the mouth that speaks.

Praise the truth that soars from the spine of the most nimble creatures.

Praise us creatures and our immodest fragility.

Praise the humility, the learned spaces, the space that dissolves and births the wind.

Praise the wind and the storms that change course.

Praise the creatures born and reborn.

Praise the boom bap, split silence shattered.

Mahogany: Praise the nightmares we've endured, the salt we've tasted in our release.

Praise the divine living and our voices reaching towards the sky singing our own name.

♪♪ ♪♪ Willie Perdormo: When I think of Mahogany Brown's impact on the poetry world, specifically in New York City, I think of Gwendolyn Brooks' impact on Chicago.

And the comparison is really about distillation.

Brooks thought that poetry was a form of distillation in Mahogany's case, that distillation is like a tree with so many branches.

It's a written word.

It's performed.

It's curated.

There's room for merchandise.

There's room for song, hip hop, film.

And she understands that poetry is at the core of that process.

And there's no one who can create Black Girl Magic like Mahogany Browne.

Mahogany L. Browne: My name is Mahogany L. Browne.

I am a poet, writer, organizer, curator.

Why poetry?

Poetry is the one true form of expression where I am my editor, I am mostly concerned about, you know, how I feel, what I see, and I'm owning a space where I don't allow others to tell me how I feel.

But I get to just, you know, experience the feeling without all of these outside voices dictating and determining what I should be doing with the voice, with the text.

Poetry is the one true space where I'm not judged.

So what brought me to New York City?

I received an internship at XXL and Honey and arrived and found out that they had sold, the magazine or were in the midst of selling it, so my fellowship was canceled.

However, I was a writer, and the editors still saw value in me being there.

They wanted to, you know, honor the promise.

That was Larry "Blackspot" Hester and Datwon Thomas.

And so I just started freelancing to stay in New York City for the three months as this journalist, intern.

I went back to Oakland, grabbed my daughter, who was staying with my grandmother, and we moved to Brooklyn in October of 1999.

Poison Pen: I met Mahogany Browne around the year 2000.

She had a battle series called DaCypha.

You know, I was just, I was cool with being behind the scenes and just, you know, helping facilitate things from that side.

But one day, one of our hosts didn't show up.

So Mahogany, you know, used her very influential language and I say that sarcastically.

[ Laughs ] She got me to go up there and host, and I pretty much jumped out the window.

And that's pretty much what I've been known for the past 20 plus years.

Mahogany is legitimately the first person to even let me know that I was -- that I even had that skill set, and she's completely the reason that I did that.

And that pretty much sparked a fire that is still alive and well today.

We pretty much created the history.

That's me speaking on Mahogany Browne.

Peace.

And the final, I guess, straw was one too many incidents where my life was in danger.

You know, I was physically in danger simply because I was a woman.

the last incident that I was, threatened to be pistol whipped.

And when I wrote that into the essay and my editor said, "No, we can't do that," that's when I knew, like, not only is my voice not safe, but my body is not safe here.

And that's when poetry became my only focus.

And that was January 8, 2001.

I had met Jive Poetic same day, which is why it's so funny that this is such an important time, of my career and my life because, like, the person who also became, like, the person I tour with, the person that, you know, I trust the most, that was the person that I met the day that I changed, you know, the trajectory of my life.

So we met through a friend at work.

I was working in public relations at the time, and she was a writer for hip hop magazines XXL, Source, and all of these types of things.

And we, we contracted her to write a story for an artist.

Dave Goodson was like, "Listen, I know this -- this woman, she does poetry.

She's got a show tonight."

And then he puts me on the phone with her, and she tells me, in order to figure out -- in order for her to give me the address, I have to do a poem for her on the phone.

Right?

I had to, like, kind of share this piece.

And so I was like, well, look, one of my second favorite poems, because I want her to steal -- steal my heat.

Nathan P: In the late '90s and the early 2000s, the poetry landscape in New York was phenomenal.

There was the Nuyorican Poets Café, Bar 13, the Brooklyn Moon, the Brooklyn Tea Party, the Sugar Shack, Uptown Soul, Salsa.

Even Sylvia's Soul Food restaurant did poetry for a while.

And we would just plan our week.

Sunday, I'm going here.

Monday, I'm going here.

Tuesday, I'm going here and here.

Friday, Nuyorican is always centered around whatever was going on.

The landscape was just unfurling with opportunities to engage and network and learn, and we were doing poems beside rappers.

We were doing poems beside singers, we were doing poems beside dance artists, and it just felt like really fertile ground.

The idea was like, let's try to build this poetry community, or let's contribute to it in a way in which there's overlap with all of the venues, you know, and at the time... at least the way I remember it, the venues were pretty separated.

Right?

There was there was uptown, you know, there were a bunch of things going on in Harlem, but then they rarely came downtown to the venues.

And then the Slam venues downtown had not that much overlap, a little bit, but not a lot.

Nuyo was like the "more spoken word-y" artist.

And that's just a code word for, like... writers of color, right?

To pigeonhole us.

And then there was the Bowery Poetry Slam, which was like where all the nerds went.

So as a 14 year old, I started showing up every week at the Bowery Poetry Club to witness more poets sharing their art.

And even though I was 14 and definitely did not belong in a dive bar, the poets that were showing up each week really made me feel welcome.

And they recognized that I was a kid, but they never condescended to me.

They always let me write the poems that a 14-year-old was going to write and share those poems and take me and my art seriously.

I believe that Mahogany competed for our team in either 2003 or 2004.

I know that she would have been on the the louderARTS team in 2004.

I think that she was, our Grand Slam champion.

Jason Reynolds: For me, as it pertains to the New York City poetry scene, I think, Mo Browne's greatest contribution was to strip away some of the esotericism around poetry.

I think especially back in the early aughts.

You know, poetry was, you know, for the youngest, for the younger class.

It was sort of like costumed.

And everybody had, like a particular way to walk and a particular way to talk.

And -- And it was all sort of, you know, performative in a particular way.

But when you went to see Mo and when Mo was hosting an event or hosting an open mic or doing anything around the art form of poetry, Mo was Mo, right?

Mahogany is Mahogany and she not with all of the extra theatrics, right, so we're going to dance in the spot.

We're going to crack some jokes.

We're going to be our normal selves instead of having to sort of put on all of the strange regalia of what we think a poet is supposed to be.

I will always be grateful for Mo, for reminding people that regular people are poets, and poets are regular people.

You can't afford to be a poet 'cause... Man: Oh, my God.

...cats like you don't believe "Love Jones" got you thinking It's all about that champ or red wine and deep breathing.

HBO got you twisted with the idea that it's easy to jump on stage and share a piece of your being touching personal parts of yourself that you haven't felt since 12th grade.

And truthfully, you ain't got the heart to start being honest.

The fact is, you fakers come a dime a dozen.

She and I and a poet named Hostage, we used to go around and challenge people in their cities.

We would tell them, you get your four poets and we'll bring three, and we'll promise a group piece, and we'll -- we'll guarantee we're going to win.

And, and some of the times we'd win.

Some of the times, we didn't always win.

But we did really good.

We were respected.

But the thing is, we believed in the work enough to take it on the road.

Mahogany: England was the first tour.

It was for two weeks.

And it was the end of 2001.

We learned that one person was in charge of everything -- Ne Parks, who is also a publisher and author himself.

Really amazing brother.

Thankfully, we found him because we came there thinking, alright, we have these two spaces that we can jump into, but we're here for two weeks.

Let's see what other, you know, interests we can garner and hopefully we get an invitation back.

And mind you, this is me and Jive.

I don't think Jive quit his job yet, but he had a break and we were gone on tour.

Jive: Right now we're in the Heathrow airport and we forgot... Everything.

...where the guy -- we forgot where Ne Parks lives and that's where we're staying.

And so what Mo's going to do is she's going to try and call Ne's house.

Hi.

Is Ne in?

Ne Parks?

Jive: Wrong number.

What's wrong, Mo?

Oh, I think I actually just dialed the wrong number.

You got a 20 pence?

I don't have any pences.

This is -- This guy right here is giving us pences right there.

[ Dial pad clicking ] Mailbox.

Coming back from that tour, that's when I think we realized how much of New York City was kind of splintered, kind of fractured, and we wanted to be able to have the same opportunities for folks visiting that we had when we visited England.

And so that became the impetus for us, you know, starting "Jam On It," which was a Jive and Mahogany production.

And it was these feature sets.

Yeah, "Jam On It" poetry, which is the first off-Broadway poetry production run by poets.

I don't even know how we -- why we thought we could have, like, a Broadway show, but we did.

We were like, we can either eat or do this work, and we always chose the work first.

Where does her ability to curate and build community come from?

It's hard, you know, it's hard to really say.

I mean, I imagine, you know, just having known her for so long and kind of understanding even historically, how she's from California, she's from Northern California and Oakland.

And these places got disrupted, like, political interventions, like, the government literally disrupted the sense of community in these environments.

And this is something she's grown up with.

And I think when she moved to New York, I mean, this is just me speculating, but I think when she moved to New York, she saw, like, there's a need for people to actually be together and to build together.

Mm, where did that ability to curate come from?

The baby-sitters club.

[ Laughs ] I'm not lying.

I literally have been reading about putting together groups, clubs since fourth grade, easy.

[ Laughs ] And so I started a baby-sitters club when I was in fifth grade.

But we were the youngest people in the neighborhood, so we wasn't babysitting nothing, child.

Um, but in that moment, I was like, I like this.

I like putting things together.

And I think that was the beginning.

Nathan P: When I accepted the Friday night, I had to sit down with one of the curators at the cafe, and they told me all the things that were involved being the slam master, you know, curating the night, getting the future poets, organizing the slam team, booking the flights, booking the hotel, getting a coach, all those things involved.

And I said, "Whew, this is work."

[ Chuckles ] I didn't get into poetry to work, you know?

So I said, the person that I have to pick to take the Wednesday night spot, they don't know it yet, but I already created my exit plan.

They're going to be the one that I groomed to take over the stage very shortly.

So Nathan P. came and saw me host, invited me to, you know, try out on Wednesday night, and I did it.

And he was like, "Oh, that's amazing.

Do you -- Do you want the gig?"

And I was like, "I don't -- Yeah, I would love to."

He said, "Okay, great.

I would just suggest you don't curse so much."

Ha!

If you know me, even now, me speaking is very difficult for me not to say my favorite curse words.

Right?

And so he had said that and I thought, I'll keep it in mind.

[ Laughs ] I did not, but that is how I started at the Nuyorican Poets Café.

Lynne: Up until our era, that's 1998 to 2004, 2005, sort of surge, it's the first time you see women step up who want to be in front of the mic, want to be behind the scenes making things work and run, and are profoundly supportive of the people in their community.

And Mo is the best example of it.

I think that the agility and the energy that Mahogany has for all three parts of the work are without Pas.

I mean, there's no comparison.

There was a point where she had all of the college Slam teams together, and there was a slam union.

Right?

And there was a point where we had all of the, you know, the Slam teams would try to meet together and do things that weren't competitive related or competition-related.

And then you know, that worked for a while.

But then, you know, the competition got in the way of it.

But she never stopped trying to build this.

Then it was, okay, well, look, if the venues or the institutions are in the way, then let's just get the people, you know, and let's -- let's build that.

And -- And some beautiful bonds have been made.

You know, there are probably poets and writers who owe their whole career to, like, those moments, you know.

Jennifer Falú: Mahogany literally convinced me to quit my 9-to-5 job and be a writer.

She would book me for gigs that forced me to take days off of work or to, you know, go to teach at somebody's school or take the day and drive with her to Boston, or take the day and drive with her to Connecticut.

And then one day she was like, look, you got this, I got you.

You don't need this job.

And I was a writer, full-time artist from 2006 to... two days before we went into quarantine on the pandemic.

Rico Frederick: I have an MFA in writing because Mahogany called me one day and said, "I think you should have an MFA in writing, and here's what we're going to do."

And we figured it out.

And I think one of the most important pieces of work I've ever done came out of that MFA.

And that's because my sister called me one day and said I think you should do this and let's try it together.

Dr. Adam Falkner: She has created more space in this city for poets and writers and artists to grow into themselves than any other writer working in American letters today.

Full stop.

And if you take Mahogany Browne out of that equation... ...we're talking about thousands of writers who just flat out don't exist.

Aja Monet: I had the privilege and honor of being able to be seen and affirmed by Mahogany Browne.

Like, knowing that someone was in my corner, that someone was rooting for me, that someone like her, of all people, was pouring into me, and the possibility of not just myself, but the collective of young people that she was, she had a hand in raising and literally lifting up.

It transformed our worldview.

It transformed the poetry community in New York City.

I don't even want to imagine what kind of teenager, what kind of young person little Aja would have been had she not had a role model or someone to look to, as I did, like Mahogany L Browne.

Tongo Eisen-Martin: Hilariously and beautifully, I'm almost known for kind of breaking social convention, especially of a poem on a page.

It was literally Mahogany that -- that gave me that.

Um, I was -- [ Chuckles ] I was an L-7.

[ Laughs ] I was an L-7 on these pages.

You know, I always thought, like, let the image do the work, let the word play do the work.

And she was -- she was -- she was looking at a group of my poems and, you know, she said, I love the -- I love the poetry, but the layout is, is kind of -- is kind of blah.

[ Laughing ] Kind of -- Kind of underwhelming or underutilized.

And, you know, I was -- I was defiant and or ready to be defiant, and she said, let me show you.

And she took one of my poems and she just like, you know, just moved it all around the page and just made all kind of, you know, just kind of an interesting geometric, or geometry of grammar.

But what's hilarious is -- is I've never been able to lay out a poem as well as she did that -- that poem.

So, that is my constant search in life to -- to -- to even match what she did with -- with my poem.

Jon Sands: I think it was, like, 2010, 2011, Like, Mahogany wears a lot of different hats.

And I don't think anybody actually thought this, but Mo, I think, felt like, okay, I think there's this feeling like I'm a host and I'm a curator, but people are kind of forgetting, how good I am at this thing.

And there was like a three-month stretch where you could feel the idea grow in Mahogany's head.

And she's like, you know what, I'm going to show up at every venue where there's a slam.

I will be signing up.

Uh, and I don't care what slot I pull.

And Mo just, like, took first place in, like, slam after slam after slam after slam.

And it was just such a fun moment to see where it was like, oh, this is a writer at the height of her powers that is coming through on like a grassroots weekly basis to remind you once again who she is.

Mahogany: I quit the Nuyorican January 2019.

I quit Urban Word coaching, and I quit NYU and Brooklyn Slam coaching.

Usually you see someone... gain success, published books, become a renowned name of their own, and then they start to build for others through the capacity, through the treasure that they want, through their talents.

Um, but Mo Browne did it the opposite.

And she literally gave people an attempt, a lifeline, to have a career in the arts before she centered herself.

All this time I've been waiting to do my work, but I felt like I owed it to my community to, like, give them what I learned.

And yeah, I had went to, you know, Cave Canem to work on my own writing.

I had had these moments, these small retreats, but I never had just an extensive time where I was only concerned about me.

And I never, ever had, within that 13 years, time to just say, what do I want to do next month?

I always had to be mindful of, oh, we have a national convening here, and I have to do this coaching here.

And then we have this other conversation that has to happen with, you know, transformative justice.

I didn't have to do any of that.

I could just finally focus on all the things that I was trying to give to the world and see how it fit in my life.

That changed everything.

I learned in that moment that there is such a thing as an empty well.

And if you don't replenish the well, who will?

Fast forward, I went to this residency in Florida and it was only 90 days, and in that time I sold six projects, and now I'm currently at Lincoln Center as the first Poet in Residence.

Poetry gave me an avenue where love was the only answer.

Now, I could have taken a detour, and it could have just been about who's winning, who's publishing, what MFA program are you in?

Because that still exists.

But I refuse it.

I rebuke it.

Huh?

Hallelujah!

I rebuke it because that is not the only way that I'm going to exist.

That's not the only way that I can teach my daughter, you know, who will soon become a parent.

And if not, she will be parenting your kids, right?

Because she is also an artist, so how do I make sure that I leave a good footprint on this earth?

That's my focus.

Mahogany, Like June Jordan, like Sonia Sanchez... Like Lucille Clifton... embodies the idea of the poet, who is deeply involved in the action of transformation from where we are to where we need to be.

Some poets be like that.

The world gets meaner.

The poet gets stronger.

The world grows darker.

The poet becomes anti-darkness.

Their lines spark up the world like battleship fireflies.

The world forges handcuffs.

Up pops the poet with a Houdini spell.

June Jordan, be like that.

Sonia Sanchez, be like that.

Alma Kujo, be like that.

Mahogany Browne is like that.

[ Mid-tempo jazz plays ] ♪♪ Mahogany is a New York City institution, from her work hosting, the Nuyorican Friday nights to her work with Urban Word, working with young poets, creating the Black Girl Magic Ball.

I am always just so in awe of Mahogany and the amount of energy she gives to poetry in general, yes, her work, other people's work, but also specifically New York City.

She's always doing something, for which I'm always saying, sit down somewhere and take a breath.

but where would we be if she -- if she did that?

♪♪ ♪♪