Sunday, March 15, 2009

Robins Book Store Book Signing

Dr. Maurice Henderson set me up for my first signing for " The Reflections Of A Blackman's Mind." at Robins Book Store located one block above Walnut Street in Philadelphia. I was on the bill with with Miss Black America Laverne Pinkney a beautiful slender woman who was also releasing her first poetry chapbook under " New Arts Production" a mini publishing company owned by Dr. Maurice Henderson.

This small yet quaint book store hosted some of the greatest writers of Philadelphia
and tonight I would make my debut. Laverne Pinkney went up first and read some powerful poems that had the women nodding their head in agreement with her words and gestures. When I was introduced to the mic a sense a nervousness hovered over me until I reached the podium.

There is where I first introduced myself to the small audience with my then Fiance',Shambra, My son Simon and daughter Ebony eagerly waiting to see what I had in store for them and the audience.

I began with a poem I wrote in a 8Th grade creative writing class. This poem was simple yet good enough to be graded with a B- the minus was for punctuation.

This poem broke the ice for me because after the applause from my first poem I wanted to share my enter most thoughts.

So I went to a poem called the pretender. This poem show how I dealt with living in a foreign country while in the US Navy. There were other Blacks on the ship I served on but they even seemed foreign to me because the were from all over.

Louisiana, New York, Baltimore, South Carolina, and Detroit. At 18 it was hard to navigate new surroundings but through writing I keep things even and calm.

The audience responded to this poem and others read such as Black Destruction, Black Survival, and The Reflections of a Battlefield.

I sold most of my books that night which was a good accomplishment for a first timer.
Maurice told me that I had a lot of work to do because I read from the book and he wanted to see me be more expressive and explosive on the mic.