ROSWELL, Ga. — Complimented by the sounds of cello, bass and violin, Atlanta-based poet Ashlee Haze opened Lyrics and Lyre Feb. 2 with a spoken word performance describing an “afrofuture” of liberation and Black love.
For Haze, an afrofuture is where Black girls get to be themselves, where “abundance is the norm” and the “playing field is fair.” It also carries artists like rapper Missy Elliot, whom Haze aspired to be growing up.
At the Roswell Cultural Arts Center, more than 200 guests watched Haze and other featured poets, Ninel Nekay and Jon Goode, build around “Art of the Afrofuture,” this year’s theme for Lyrics and Lyre. The returning Roswell Roots Festival event had accompaniments from cellist Okorie “OK Cello” Johnson, bassist Téja Veal and violinist Carey Durham.
“It is my theory, my belief that as poets, we are servants of people from our communities,” Haze said. “It’s my job to reflect their experiences and emotions as much as my own, but our shared experiences and emotions.”
Haze’s writing process varies, whether it be the result of something that had happened, like a breakup, or a stream of consciousness, or what she calls a “gumbo” poem, created from singular lines stored on her Google Drive.
Many times, Haze said she tries to channel a specific set of emotions or theme. At Lyrics and Lyre, she asked people to imagine a future, who and what will be there.
“I hope in our future, our collective future, we wish, and we dream and think beyond what we see in the present,” Haze said, as she introduced her poem that takes after a ghazal, an Arabic sonnet. She said the work was “very simply about giving yourself permission to want what you want.”
Haze said she first writes for Black women, Black millennial femmes, placed in the American South, expanding her audience to all African…
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