Episode Details

Where do poetry and democracy intersect?

In part two of our conversation with Dayton poet laureate, educator, activist, culture keeper, and Kettering Foundation Democracy and the Arts resident artist Sierra Leone, we follow the threads of memory and imagination from a gallery of story quilts in Hamilton, Ohio, to the Legacy Sites of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.

Along the way, Sierra reads American Libation III: Weaving an Amendment for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, her response to Carolyn Crump's quilt Lovely One. She takes us inside The Belonging Project, where the stories of more than 100 Dayton residents are being harvested and turned into theater. And she shares a new poem born of a week with fellow Democracy Defenders led by Kimberlé Crenshaw in partnership with, a poem about how ideas persist and how thorns of memory grow from the womb of subjugation.

If you've ever wondered what poetry has to do with the work of self-government, or how a life of civic leadership actually begins, this one's for you.

In this episode we explore:

• Poetry asks. Democracy asks too. A poem doesn't go looking for answers. It leaves something behind for others to grapple with, and each generation has to decide what democracy will be.
• The petals that fall to the ground. Every society chooses which stories rise to the surface. Poets pick up the parts that fall and put some wind under them.
• Belonging becomes theater. Verbatim stories from returning citizens, bankers, fathers, teachers, and teens become a stage for the hard conversations communities need to have.

Notable Mentions

People

• Sierra Leone: Dayton's first Poet Laureate, playwright, educator, and Kettering Foundation artist-in-residence.
• Willis "Bing" Davis: Dayton artist and educator, founder of EbonNia Gallery, honored in Sierra's American Libation: Homage to an Elder (part one).
• Ketanji Brown Jackson: Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 2022, the first Black woman to serve on the Court.
• Carolyn Crump: Houston-based quilt and multimedia artist whose quilt Ketanji Brown Jackson: Lovely One inspired Sierra's poem.
• Dr. Carolyn L. Mazloomi: Quilt artist, historian, curator, NEA National Heritage Fellow, and founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network.
• John Coltrane: Jazz saxophonist and composer. Sierra's poem closes on "a love supreme."
• Angela Siner: University of Toledo faculty member in Africana Studies and Sierra's mentor, who told her, "Choose your approach."
• Joni Doherty: Senior Program Officer for Democracy and the Arts at the Kettering Foundation. She invited Sierra to accompany her to Montgomery as a guest of t