`Poetic Soul' wins national award
People may be buzzing about Russell Simmons' pending poetry show, but Chicago's "Poetic Soul" beat them to the punch.
"Poetic Soul," Chicago Cable/Channel 19's premier poetry show, surpassed 20,000 entries nationwide to win first place in the 2001 Hometown Video Festival.
Sponsored by the Alliance for Community Media in Washington, D.C., the award honors innovative independent performing arts programming.
"Whenever I get a group of people together, I want to drop a positive message," said host Jimmi Ware of the show's focus on "conscious" poetry.
The award-winning episode did just that. Oscar "Triple Black" Lester, who won Chicago's Def Poetry Jam competition, performed "I Can," a piece about a single mother raising a son.
Nanette Banks' "Sisters in Motion" was inspired by the Million Woman March and Janet "Hip Cat" Sandifer did her "Ghetto Nursery Rhymes."
Ware and producer Corneal Harper Jr. launched "Poetic Soul" last year. Ware, who's been writing poetry for 20 years and also hosts poetry sets for Black Feather Productions, said she created the show to give an outlet to performance poets with a message.
She claims the show is filling a void.
Feedback has been great. After Ware performed her ode to adoption in "Only in the Movies," she received a request by social agency Ada S. McKinley to perform the poem for its staff. Such requests are frequent.
"We get requests all the time because people want to hear these messages," Ware said.
"Poetic Soul" will tape its next show Sunday at TJ's in the Park, 5500 South Shore Drive, 6 p.m.
Article Copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.
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