Hurricane Season Tour

A friend, Jenne, peeped me to a spoken word/video/music/art group that is based in Brooklyn but touring around the states, called Climbing PoeTree. Another friend, Rob, introduced me to them this summer at the Social Justice Training Institute, so when I heard they'd be in Portland I quickly contacted yet another friend to see if we couldn't get some Willamette students to their performance. We succeeded, and I GOTS to tell everybody about them!! I wrote an article for the Collegian (our University newspaper) and Seeking Justice at WU (our social justice blog), and would like to share with you. :) Here it is...



“Her name was Katrina. She was born by the waters of Babylon stirring in our sleep…born to anger and retribution in the heat of passion, she was abandoned in a basket on the shore, adopted by Uncle Sam who charted her girlhood to wage another Gulf War…” (Climbing PoeTree, Hurricane Season).

I must thank WEB for sponsoring the trip to Portland for the Hurricane Season Tour with Climbing PoeTree, a group of women from Brooklyn inspired to affect change through artistic and political activism. The show is nearly two hours of a story-telling montage; spoken word, dance, photography, video, and song, all with the purpose of bringing light to this era of “hurricanes” in which we live. They provide a solution cipher in between the first and second acts to introduce local groups that are also doing this work, like Inside-Out, OPAL, and Global Fam in Portland.

Naima and Alixa make up the group Climbing PoeTree. They drop powerful words in unison, move with grace and exude warmth and love on stage. Their symbol is an oak tree. To quote from their pamphlet, “When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, there was one tree that did not fall over in abundance. The oak tree stood strong in the midst of fierce winds and rising water. Why? Because its roots grow far and wide, and interlock with other oak trees in the area.” Throughout the performance this symbol appeared and reappeared on a screen used for videos and collage, the trees’ roots growing and words becoming clearer among the branches. The larger metaphor describes a need to become those roots, connecting in our communities to combat the unnatural disasters that allow thousands of people to be displaced and abused. They write, “The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was a man-made catastrophe, and what we see unfolding in the Gulf Coast region is symptomatic of the injustice and devastation that are plaguing our communities across this country and the globe.” Climbing PoeTree’s art challenges structures like the Prison Industrial Complex, institutionalized racism, global trafficking and sweatshops, and the evil of hateful ideology.

In the last section of the show, they call for action and liberation of humanity, using the words of Arundhati Roy: “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.” May we love, and never forget.