Art Sanctuary Resident Artist Trapeta B. Mayson - P.A.W. Print

"Just a Simple Place People Can Read Their Work."
Art Sanctuary Resident Artist Trapeta B. Mayson Hosts Open Poetry in Germantown
by Victor Thompson

"I'd make you guys some fish and rice, but it's late," Trapeta Mayson offered. Mayson was, in a deeper sense, offering all of Philadelphia-- poets and listeners, her spiritual nourishment. But how late was it, really?


Trapeta Mayson

Despite her accomplishments, Monrovia Liberia-born poet Mayson downplays the significance of her Germantown series. "I just hope the readings continue. I don't think we're doing anything that much different. I think the fact that we enjoy doing it, and [that] it doesn't seem like a burden, [that] it's a place where people can come and share their work." The Germantown Poetry Series, which Mayson runs with the help of her friend Camille Edwards, happens on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month. Mensa Anh Tchaas, who works in the bookstore, sets up folding chairs in a space in the Nile Bookstore and Restaurant.

"I do think that I need to commit more to get more people out, so that we can keep it going, keep it at the venue, 'cause it's a good venue, and it needs to be," Mayson stresses. Regarding the difficulty of the location, "I think the Germantown area scares a lot of people, not because of the location, but it seems out of the way. It's not that much out of the way."

People begin showing up around 7pm. If only a few make it out-- as in the case of a snow storm, the chairs might be arranged in a circle.

Mayson, speaking candidly, said, "In order for me to be connected with something, whether two people show up or twenty people show up, to me it just is. I try to keep it as pure as possible, authentic, no pretensions- it doesn't matter. To me, you could have written your poem last night in your room."

The 2002 Pew Fellow and 2000 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellow usually starts the evening with a poem by an established poet she has discovered. Mayson has been a poetic institution in Philadelphia for many years and has run several reading series before now. Resident Artist at Art Sanctuary in North Philadelphia, Mayson has led poetry workshops at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Franklin Institute and the Germantown Women's Center in Philadelphia. She has performed in the illustrious company of Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni.

Mayson speaking with modesty, added, "To me fifty percent of being a writer is reading other people and studying people and all different cultures, all different walks of life. And to be able to read, to me, is the most important thing. And then to have your true voice. But I've always tried to tell the truth in my writing, even if I look back and I'm like, God that poem sucked. I never pretended or try to twist my story around to fit with a mold. You might embellish maybe, all our memories. You know, it's kind of weird."

Readers are invited in turn up to the mic to read a poem or two, sometimes to sing a song. "Just the stage is sacred for you," advised Mayson, who added, "Feel safe. This is the only place where you can go and feel safe and, you know, the people, even if they don't understand what you're saying, [are] not going to sit there and go, oh yeah at you, but… "

After everyone has had a chance to share, the reading starts over again.

Mayson explained, "The poetry reading is important, and I think Camille [Edwards] probably feels this way too, I would love for poets to come through and feel safe, feel honored, feel that if I read Pabla Neruda or if I read Maya Angelou. . . ." Edwards finishing the statement, said, "You can come to the reading and do whatever you feel on your heart."

By nine o'clock, it's time for a collaborative group poem. Everyone offers a word and then another. One poet reads: "Puzzle hunt over through picture blossom frame picture color tomorrow arrive on lavender clouds soon."

"It was important for me to have that space because as a writer who has been writing for a long, long time in the city and reading my work , I went through a period of insecurities where I actually let it bother me that, I would go to a certain reading and feel, I mean, my material has changed over the years, because I've grown over the years, but they haven't changed to adapt to fit into the whatever the pop culture is or the mold. I used to write a lot about being a woman and being an African woman in America and I still do write about that but I write about it in a different way," said Mayson, who concluded, "It's about my experience as an individual."

The Germantown Poetry Series happens on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at the Nile Bookstore and Restaurant, 6008 Germantown Avenue, just a few blocks north of Chelten Avenue. For more information on Mayson's work with Art Sanctuary's programs visit http://www.artsanctuary.org.