Department of English

• Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 6:00pm to 7:00pm

Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, Arts Cafe

On Thursday, November 8, at 6:00 PM, please join us at the Writers House for an open rehearsal of DESEGREGATION REMIX: 3 WOMEN SING THE BORDERS, a multimedia performance piece, with text by Janice A. Lowe and Lee Ann Brown, and music by Janice A. Lowe. Inspired by the choreopoems of Ntozake Shange, DESEGREGATION REMIX is a multimedia play with live music, a DJ, poetry, and projection— culminating in an interactive sound installation where audience members will consider this question: do you remember a time when you were the only one? Please RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM to reserve your spot.

DESEGREGATION REMIX: 3 WOMEN SING THE BORDERS
Text by Janice A. Lowe and Lee Ann Brown, music by Janice A. Lowe
Performers: Janice Lowe & Namaroon, DJ Manny Ward, Olithea Anglin, Lee Ann Brown, Melanie Dyer, Aliria Johnson, Bi Jean Ngo, and Yohann Potico
Sponsored by Creative Ventures, The Creative Writing Program, and The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

JANICE A. LOWE is the current Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at University of Pennsylvania. Lowe is a composer, poet and vocalizing pianist who creates music-text hybrids. In 2017, she opened the Cleveland INKubator fest with a performance by her band, Namaroon. She is the author of Leaving CLE: Poems of Nomadic Dispersal (Miami University Press) and the chapbook SWAM, a short play (Belladonna Series). Her poems have been published in Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, The Poetry Project Online, (Pre) Conceivable Bridges, American Poetry Review,Resist Much/Obey Little, Radiant Re-Sisters, The Hat, and In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers, and on a digital album with Drew Gardner’s Poetics Orchestra. She participated in the Renga for Obama project, the Broadside Series at Center for Book Arts, Words and Music at Word Up Bookshop, and as a writer-in-residence with Melted Away’s American Dream installation at Transformer Station. Lowe composed the opera Dusky Alice as well as the musical Lil Budda (text by Stephanie L. Jones), which was presented at the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theater Conference and in the National Alliance for Musical Theater Festival of New Works. She is also composer of the musicals Sit-In at the Five & Dime (words by Marjorie Duffield), Somewhere in Texas, and Langston & Zora (book & lyrics by Charles E. Drew, Jr.). She was commissioned to compose musical settings of the Millie-Christine poems from the Pulitzer Prize-awarded collection Olio by Tyehimba Jess, and has composed music for plays including Liza Jessie Peterson's Chiron’s Homegurl Healer Howls, Jenni Lamb's 12th and Clairmount, and Nehassiau DeGannes's Door of No Return. Lowe performs internationally and is currently recording the album Leaving CLE: Song Cycle-Songs of Nomadic Dispersal. A cofounder of both the Dark Room Collective and absolute theater co., she has taught multimedia composition at Rutgers University, sound art and writing in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program at Naropa University, and poetry and performance at Purchase College. Lowe is a longtime mentor of youth creative writing and music programs in New York City. She earned an MFA in musical theater writing from New York University and has received residencies from the Dramatists Guild, New Harmony Project, Voice and Vision, the Millay Colony, and the Rockefeller Fund at Pocantico.

LEE ANN BROWN is a poet, curator, editor, teacher and singer of neo-hymns and ballads. She has published over six books of poetry including Polyverse (Sun & Moon, 1999) which won the New American Series Award, The Sleep That Changed Everything(Wesleyan University Press, 2003), and In the Laurels, Caught (Fence, 2013) which won the Fence Modern Poets Series Award. Brown was born in Japan in 1963. After growing up in the North Carolina, she attended Brown University for both graduate and undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing. She in active in the New York City and North Carolina poetry worlds and has taught and performed her work internationally. She was the 2017-2018 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Brown teaches poetry at St. John’s University and since 1989, runs Tender Buttons Press to publish innovative women’s poetry: www.TenderButtonsPress.com. Updates can be found at LeeAnnBrownPoet.com.

KWH calendar: writing.upenn.edu/wh/calendar/1118.php#8
Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/2252058525023810/
Watch online: writing.upenn.edu/wh/multimedia/tv/